The Silent Stranger

Judge Braxton was a brave man, but Gilman, the wildest county in the circuit that he habitually rode, lay on the slopes of the mountains, a broken region of uneasy summits and narrow valleys, and none knew better than he the doubtful character of many of its inhabitants. In the little court-house at Westfield he had defended more than one whom he did not believe to be at fault, because his bullet had sped too true, somewhere in that, quarrelsome region. He would have abandoned the county long ago, but he had practiced there in his youth, and the sentimental tie was strengthened by the urgent calls which old acquaintances often made for his services. The Judge was like the Texan’s pistol; when he was needed he was needed badly.

Judge Braxton, as he rode on, was troubled more and more by the aspect of the country, which was without the grandeur of high mountains or the mild beauty of low rolling-hills, just a succession of steep bleak ridges, with narrow rocky valleys between. Westfield, too, was yet a good ten miles away, and already in the East, the dwarf-forest and the low crests were beginning to show somber tints. Night was not far off and it would come with a moonless dusk and a chill wind. Judge Braxton liked the prospect but little. Hardened as he was by years of lonely riding, habitual exposure, and now and then danger, the landscape seemed weird and forbidding to him, as if it contained the portent of trouble.

He whipped up his horse, and when he reached the crest of the ridge, he saw another man and horse, at the summit of the next slope, outlined against the blood-red setting sun. They were so sharply defined that, the judge could trace almost every detail of a powerful figure sitting easily in the saddle, and he felt a distinct thrill of gladness, because he could now have companionship on a rough and dark ride. Judge Braxton was of an eminently sociable nature, and it seldom took him more than five minutes to become acquainted with anybody.

He urged his horse to greater speed, and the distance between him and the stranger narrowed so rapidly that he would overtake him about the bottom of the next slope. But he was surprised that the man did not slow up and look back. Travelers were all too few on the mountain-roads for one, with the horse-hoofs of another ringing in his ears, to ride steadily on, and never once turn his face to see who came.

Judge Braxton’s curiosity was now aroused, but as he came nearer the manner and figure of the stranger did not cause any increase of confidence. Obviously, he was of stalwart build, and the hair under the broad brim of his soft hat was dark, long, and slightly curling. He looked around, at last, but not until the second horse was almost beside him, and then he disclosed a strong, powerful face, almost covered by thick dark beard, through which two burning eyes shone like lights in the dusk. Their gaze, too, was so distinctly hostile that Judge Braxton, the friendliest of men, felt repelled, and the last thought of companionship on the ride disappeared from his mind. He saw clearly that here was one who neither wanted nor would have a comrade.

“Good-evening,” said Judge Braxton politely.

“Good-evening,” responded the stranger in a surly tone. His left hand held the reins, and, as he spoke, his right hand dropped toward his hip. Judge Braxton, always a keen observer, noticed the movement, one full of significance in the mountains, the act of a man who intends to be ready at an instant’s notice for any danger, and he did not check the speed of his horse, intending to ride on now and leave the stranger behind. He wanted companionship but not the companionship of this man.

Judge Braxton’s ready mind had jumped to a conclusion. The celebrated outlaw, Tom Bose, who ranged over a wide circuit in the Southwest had appeared lately in these hills, and two or three tales of his robberies had come out of them to the lowlands and to the ears of the Judge. This was Tom Bose! His surly manner, his obvious desire to be let alone, the quick movement of his hand toward his hip and his resemblance to the floating descriptions of him that the Judge had heard were sure indications of it. Yes,this was Tom Bose! He could not doubt it! The Judge looked back once, and the man was still slowly riding on, his set, grim face looking straight ahead, and his right hand still lying on his hip. At the next crest the Judge looked back again but the stranger was lost in the valley below.

Judge Braxton did not reach Westfield that evening. The night suddenly came down over the hills so dark, and so grim, and the wind rose suddenly, so sharp and so chill, that he turned into a side-road, sought the two-roomed log cabin of a humble farmer whom he knew, and slept peacefully on a pallet by a hospitable fireside.

Judge Braxton had not realized the night before how tired and worn he was, but the good people of the cabin let him sleep late, gave him a good breakfast, over which he lingered long, and it was full noon the next day before he rode into Westfield, to find the little town in a state of excitement, the like of which it had not known since the days of the civil war, when Bragg marched through its single street with an army of forty thousand men. Two hours before the arrival of Judge Braxton the Westfield stagecoach had been held up and robbed by a single horseman, a powerfully built man, with thick, dark hair, who had got clean away with considerable money taken from the mail and the passengers. He had secured a long start before the news reached the town, and, with a good mount and confederates somewhere, it was more than probable he would not be caught.

Judge Braxton felt a pang of conscience. He had seen Tom Bose in the road at the coming of the twilight the day before, and he should have ridden on to Westfield, despite the dark and the cold, to give warning. It was his first impulse to tell of the brief meeting by the wayside, but a tinge of shame over his dereliction—Judge Braxton’s heart never beat with a dishonest impulse—and a feeling that, after all, it could neither help nor harm, caused him to keep silent. So he listened without comment, while several of the passengers who had been robbed told how the man looked, and the description answered in every detail to the one whom he had seen.

“Tom Bose! Tom Bose did it!” was repeated throughout the hamlet—all leaping to the inevitable conclusion—and to most minds the name conveyed a certain feeling of awe, mingled with horror. Feuds they knew, and to violent quarrels of men in drink they were accustomed; but here was a crime done for gain, and that to them was the worst of all crimes.

The sheriff and a dozen deputies, all armed and all fearless, rode away among the hills, and meanwhile the term of the Gilman circuit-court, with its usual calendar, opened—it could not be postponed even for a stage robbery by Tom Bose—and Judge Braxton was counsel in a half a dozen cases which would keep him in Westfield a week or more. Two of those cases would require all of Judge Braxton’s skill, penetration, and dexterity, but, despite them, his mind reverted to the stage robbery and the dark man by the roadside. If he had only ridden on and given warning! The Judge’s conscience was a very tender one, despite forty years of the law.

The first day of the circuit-court was completed and, as usual, the lawyers gathered in the public-room of the little hotel. It was a frame-structure, rude in many respects, but this room, on occasion, could wear a cheerful aspect, and good company was gathered there. The lawyers, who moved with the court from county-seat to county-seat, represented most of the intellect and culture of the region, and all had known one another for years. Now they were sitting around a great wood fire, which crackled and blazed and threw pleasant ruddy gleams across the floor, and, after the custom, they were telling good stories picked up in many years on the circuit. Judge Braxton sat at one corner, a place of honor always accorded to him, and, at the other corner sat Circuit Judge Talbot, whom he did not like. Talbot had an oblique glance, and Judge Braxton held that a man who is always honest will always look you squarely in the eyes.

The commonwealth’s attorney had just finished a story on himself, telling how he had been cleverly defeated once by Judge Braxton, just as he thought he was tying the noose around the accused man’s neck, when someone knocked heavily on the door. Landlord Shippen promptly opened it and disclosed a group of men on horseback, all armed and stern of face, and, sitting on his horse in the center of the group, another man with his hands tied behind him.

There was for a moment a deep silence, and even to the experienced eyes of Judge Braxton it was a grim scene: the sheriff and his deputies, wordless and motionless, and the captured man, the highwayman, sitting there among them, he too without word or motion. The Judge recognized at once the stranger whom he had met by the roadside There was the stalwart figure, the same thick dark beard, and the eyes shining through the tangle like fire in the dark. But these eyes did not seem to the Judge to express fear or any other emotion that he could read.

Well, we’ve got him,“ said the sheriff, at last breaking the silence and showing pride ”It’s Tom Bose, right enough. He answers every description. We overtook him in the mountains, ambushed him, and nabbed him without firing a shot.”

“Did you recover the money?” asked the circuit-judge.

“No, we didn’t,” replied the sheriff, and his tone showed disappointment. “Of course he hid it somewhere, expecting to come back, and get it, when the county had grown quiet.”

“Very likely,” said the circuit-judge. “It is the trick a clever man would have played. You have done well, Mr. Camp, and in Tom Bose you have made a most important capture.”

The sheriff bowed and did not try to conceal his pride. A crowd was gathered already; the news that Bose had been taken spreading fast. But the prisoner still said nothing, and seemed to regard the people with an incurious eye. Once his glance met Judge Braxton’s and the Judge thought he saw in it a faint gleam of recognition, even a touch of appeal, but he was not sure. The next moment the man’s glance passed on, and did not meet his again.

Judge Braxton was on the point of telling of his meeting in the road with the stranger but he checked himself, he had a feeling that it was irrelevant; but deep down in his heart he knew that it was because of that faint and perhaps imaginary touch of appeal in the prisoner’s eyes. Judge Braxton could never resist the cry of help and he suddenly remembered that Tom Bose, after all, had his good qualities. He was said to be a generous bandit, and circumstances, rather than innate disposition, might have made him the outlaw that he was.

“Come, boys,” said the sheriff to his men, and they rode away toward the jail, the prisoner, his hands bound behind him, still in the center of the group but riding firmly, his head erect, and saying not a word.

The lawyers turned back to the warm, light room and the circuit-judge said:

“I scarcely expected the good fortune to try Tom Bose, but he’s bound to come before me now, and it will be a noted case.”

His tone was so hard and callous; he seemed to think so much of the reputation to be gained from the case and so little of the accused man’s fate that Judge Braxton, back in his old corner by the fire, frowned. The circuit-judge saw the frown and said nothing, but a little later his gaze rested a moment on Judge Braxton and the look was not wholly that of a friend.

The prisoner was indicted by the grand jury on the following day, and the day thereafter he was to appear for trial. The witnesses were close at hand and the circuit-judge was heard to remark that he intended making short work of the trial.

“Bose is sulking.” said Harry Carver, a young lawyer just admitted to the bar, to Judge Braxton. “He denies, of course, that he is Bose, but he refuses to tell his name, where he came from, and what he was doing in this county. But he is Bose, all right; he answers to the descriptions exactly, and his inability to give a good account of himself, as shown by his silence, condemns him. Moreover, three men who were on the stagecoach have seen him, and swear that he is the man. He’s as good as convicted now.”

“I suppose he is,” said Judge Braxton. “Who’s his lawyer?”

“He hasn’t any,” replied Carver. “No money; besides he doesn’t seem to want any lawyer.”

“Of course judge Talbot will have to appoint somebody,” said Judge Braxton. “Every man is entitled to counsel. Why don’t you push for it, Harry? You might make a reputation out of it?”

“Too much of a forlorn hope,” said young Carver with a shake of the head.

But it was in Judge Braxton’s mind to suggest him for the place.

The prisoner was brought into court the following afternoon, heavily guarded, and with arms bound again. The sheriff intended to take no chances with the famous Tom Bose. But the condemned man made no effort to escape, and preserved the same obstinate silence about himself; he would do no more than say he was not Tom Bose; beyond that he would neither affirm nor deny anything.

“Have you a lawyer?” asked the circuit-judge sharply.

“What do I want with a lawyer,” replied the prisoner sullenly.

The spectators laughed and Judge Talbot frowning, rapped for order.

“We must comply with the forms of the law,” he said in acrid tones. “The State says that every man brought to the bar shall have the service of counsel, and, since you are not able to provide a lawyer, it becomes my duty to appoint one for you.”

The circuit-judge paused, and glanced over the array of lawyers within the bar. Judge Braxton caught his eye and looked suggestively at young Harry Carver, but the eye of the circuit-judge passed on, and then came back again, with a malicious gleam in it.

“Prisoner at the bar,” he said in thin, dry tones, “you are without money and without friends, accused of a very grave crime. You need all the help you can get, hence I appoint as your counsel Judge William Braxton, who men say is the best criminal lawyer on this circuit.”

A murmur of amazement and protest ran through the courtroom. Young lawyers, with their reputations yet to make, were invariably appointed for such service, which was, in the nature of it gratuitous, and it was an insult to Judge Braxton’s age and eminence to choose him for the defense.

The circuit-judge’s eyes dropped to the desk before him, and he busied himself with his papers. A deep flush overspread his smoothly shaven face, but it passed in a moment, and then he took his resolve. Talbot had meant not only to insult, but also to injure him, by assigning him to a hopeless case, one that he was bound to lose, and, with it, something of his prestige. But it was like a call of battle to Judge Braxton, and he promptly accepted the gage.

“I take the case, gladly, your honor,” he said in a firm, strong voice “beause I am convinced not only that this man is innocent, but also that I shall clear him.”

Again the murmur of surprise ran through the courtroom, and Talbot lifted his head quickly, gazing at Judge Braxton in astonishment. He recognised the note of defiance in the Judge’s voice, and deep down in his malicious heart he was afraid; afraid of some new wonder, of the kind that Judge Braxton more than once had brought to pass. But second thought told him the case was impossible for the defense, and he said in his thinnest and dryest tones:

“How long a postponement do you wish, Judge Braxton, in order to consult with your client?”

The bound prisoner had stirred once in his seat, between two deputies, and now his eyes, usually so inexpressive, met those of his counsel, and Judge Braxton read in them wonder, appeal, and perhaps a little faith. Something in the Judge’s heart stirred—nature had made him for the defense—and he was not sorry now that a malicious judge had given this desperate case to him. He named a period of postponement that he considered long enough, and the Judge and the commonwealth’s attorney agreeing, the case was moved down the docket to the appointed time.

The prisoner was taken from the courtroom back to the jail and presently Judge Braxton followed, slowly and absorbed in thought. Talbot’s oblique and malicious gaze rested on him more than once, but the Judge did not see, nor seeing would he have cared.

Yet the Judge was deep in doubt. He could see no light ahead. Since the prisoner, through some strange and sudden obstinacy would not speak in the courtroom, how was his counsel to make him do so? But he had never known a case he was more anxious to win, and he had several motives. At the jail he was greeted familiarly by the jailer, who said to him, shaking his head:

“I guess you’re up against it this time, Judge. It was a mean trick of Talbot to appoint you to such a case. I’d have refused the service.”

“But I want to serve,” said Judge Braxton. “The man is innocent.”

The jailer winked at the wall, but he took care that Judge Braxton did not see him, and then he escorted the lawyer to his client’s cell, leaving them there together.

The prisoner was sitting on a stool, his thick, powerful shoulders bent over, and his face resting on his hands. His attitude was that of despondency and sullen resignation.

“Bose,” said the Judge meaning to feel his way, “what forced you into this life?”

“My name ain’t Bose,” said the man emphatically.

“Then what is it?”

Silence, and a sullen man sat staring steadily at the opposite wall of the cell!

The Judge talked to him a long time. He did not really expect answers to his questions, but he was a reader of minds, and what he wanted was time for observation. He drew the man’s eyes to his with his steady gaze and presently he said:

“If you are not Bose then, why were you running away?”

The stranger’s eyes fell, but he raised them again and in a moment he said:

“What makes you think I was running away?”

“You would not ride with me, or even speak to me, when I passed you on the road. In this country no innocent man ever does that.”

“You believe I am Tom Bose?”

“No,” said the Judge, “and I mean to prove that you are not, with or without your help.”

He remained two hours in the cell, but he drew no direct statement from the prisoner save that he was not Tom Bose, Yet it could never be said of Judge Braxton that he wasted two hours on a legal case, and when he came from the cell the jailer noticed a certain change in his appearance.

“Between you and me,” said the jailer that night to two of his cronies, “the old Judge has got a scheme in his head, or I’m a poor guesser. Because Talbot appointed him he’s goin’ to clear that man, or turn the whole county upside-down.” But his cronies shook their heads and said it was impossible.

“Tom Bose can’t get off,” said they.

The Judge endured the good-natured raillery of his fellow lawyers, and a few days later returned to his home in Groveton. An hour after his arrival there, he was in the office of the Record, where he found the editor, Mr. Ryan, with whom he seldom agreed on any topic, but who was perhaps his warmest personal friend. Mr. Ryan sat on the small of his back in a deep armchair before a table, a pot of ink at his right hand, and a pot of mucilage at his left, the two being used in just and equal proportions.

“Do you keep any of your county exchanges, Bob?” asked the Judge.

“I throw ’em all in the corner there,” said the editor. “And after a while, when the corner fills up, the scrubwoman cleans ’em all out. The corner is nearly full just now. By the way, I hear over the telephone from Westfield that they’ve got the notorious Tom Bose, and that you are to defend him.”

“Yes, and I’m going to acquit him, too.”

The editor laughed.

“If you do that.” he said, “it’ll be the biggest feather that you ever plucked for your cap, but at the same time you’ll be turning an unmitigated scoundrel loose on the state.”

The Judge said nothing, but putting on his glasses, went to work on the huge heap of county-weeklies, going with care through every one, no matter how small and insignificant. He didn’t cease his task, until dark came, making evasive replies to the editor’s polite or flippant inquiries, but, when he finished at last, he said in his most ingratiating tone:

“Now, Bob, I want you to do me a favor.”

Mr. Ryan could no more have denied the favor than he could have set fire to his own office, and they talked together earnestly for half an hour.

Judge Braxton went back to Westfield at the appointed time for the trial, and, when he entered the little town, the group of lawyers and old associates greeted him again with incredulous remarks.

“We don’t see any evidence piling up in favor of Bose,” they said. “He’s lying in the jail there, as sulky and silent as ever, and three of the passengers who were robbed are here, ready to swear that he is the man who got their money.”

“Men under the influence of great excitement at the time are often mistaken about identity,” said the Judge briefly, and passed on.

But his tone expressed so much confidence that a rumor spread through Westfield and grew all the next day. Judge Braxton, stirred perhaps by Talbot’s malice, had steeled himself for an unexampled effort, ran the story. He was going to secure the acquittal of a man whom everybody knew to be guilty; he was going to give liberty to the worst criminal in the state, and a growl, low but deep and dangerous, went up from the people of Gilman county, at best a rough-handed class, but the Judge in his room at the hotel, deep in the preparation of his case, knew nothing of it. Once he was called to the telephone, then a novelty in the hills, and he remained there talking a quarter of an hour, but he returned immediately thereafter to his room and his case. He ate supper absently, not noticing the dishes as they were placed before, him, and afterward, feeling the need of fresh air, stepped out into the street.

Night had come, but there was a good moon and Judge Braxton instantly came back to earth. His acute senses were conscious of a change. The atmosphere was different; the usual noises of the town had ceased, and to the Judge’s mind the silence was full of menace. The town had seemed crowded during the day, why were all these men gone from the street? The answer was at hand.

From the far end of Westfield, toward the jail, suddenly burst a cry that swelled at once into a loud threatening roll, like the roar of an escaped wild beast; and wild beast it was! The Judge knew too well. It was the shout of men, maddened by drink and the lust for blood.

The Judge stood for a moment, quivering, then ran with the speed of a young man directly toward the noise.

“They’ve broken in the jail and they’ve got Bose,” cried a boy. “They’re going to hang him to a tree in the courthouse square.”

Judge Braxton, in a moment, was in the dense throng of men, who, faces inflamed and cursing, struggled about the prisoner, and hurried him on to the fatal tree. He had made a good fight, he was very powerful, and more than one man was bruised and bleeding, but they carried him forward nevertheless, and the spirit of mercy was not in them.

Every instinct in Judge Braxton, a man of gentleness and of the law, recoiled at the sight, and he cried to them to stop. He even sought to thrust them back, but they pushed him out of the way, though offering him no violence, and said:

“No, Judge Braxton, you can’t cheat the law! Hang he will before he is half an hour older.”

Men have often said that Judge Braxton never made a better speech than he did that night to a mob, wild with drink and the spirit of vengeance, while his client stood pinioned among them, one end of a rope around his neck and the other flung over the branch of a tree above his head. He rushed on before them, sprang upon the courthouse steps, and his tremendous voice rang out, alternately threatening and pleading for delay. His very earnestness and power compelled them to pause, at least for a moment.

“What are we to wait for?” asked the leader of the mob.

A yell of derision went up from the crowd, but the Judge was undaunted. He looked down at the throng, their eyes bloodshot in the moonlight, and his soul sickened within him at the sight.

“There’s a messenger coming,” he said. “He ought to be here. He will be here in an hour at the furthest. Wait or you’ll have the sin of blood-guiltiness on your souls, I tell you, it’s not Bose you have!”

The roar of derision again went up from the crowd and when it died the leader said:

“Bose, you’d better begin to pray.”

That instant the clatter of a horse’s-hoofs was heard, and Judge Braxton looked up in thankfulness. The prisoner did not move. It may be he thought the world had already passed for him.

“Wait!” cried the Judge again in a voice of thunder, “The messenger is coming. Don’t you hear him?”

The crowd suddenly fell silent, and the horse’s-hoofs rang loud on the hard road, There was something weird and chilling in the sound made by the unseen messenger, and the men in the crowd began to feel afraid, as they would not have been of a visible presence.

A man and a horse shot out of the darkness, the man leaped to the ground, and ran to the judge, handing him an open newspaper.

“Thank God!” said the Judge, “I telephoned Mr. Ryan to wire you at the station to hurry, but I didn’t think it would be so close a shave as this.”

Then he turned to the crowd, and his strong face was full of the authority of a righteous cause.

“Men,” he cried in tones that rang out on the night, “this is a copy of the Groveton Record, printed this morning. It contains a full account of the capture at Harley, Tennessee, two hundred miles from here, of Tom Bose, the notorious outlaw, of his confession of his identity, and of many crimes, including the robbing of the stagecoach in Gilman County, Kentucky, two weeks ago. In the name of the law I demand that you release the innocent man whom you have here.”

The crowd melted away in the darkness, and the Judge was left alone with the stranger, around whose neck the rope still swung. But the Judge himself cut that rope, and few acts ever gave him greater pleasure.

About midnight, Judge Braxton was talking in his room to a large man who wore a thick, dark beard. He had drawn from his pocket a copy of a little county-newspaper, but it was not the one that had come that night.

“I have here,” he said “the picture of a man named Sam Watson, who in a fit of anger struck down his brother in Moss county, in the northeastern part of this state. It would serve very well as a picture of you. The man thought his brother was dead and he fled, but the brother will get well and I should advise Watson to return and make his peace, because he has been punished already,” said the Judge, looking squarely into the face of Watson.

“He will go,” said Watson with tones of deep gratitude, “and he will always remember the Judge who didn’t turn aside from him.”

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