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Show A TALS OF THE FLATYOOJJ.ff rv Q THE LYNCHERS. Synopsis. Never having known his tut her, and living with his mother on a houseboat on the Wabash Wa-bash river, I'earlhunLtr the only name he has learns from her a part of the atory of her sad life. He mueta a youriR girl whom he mentally christens the Wild Hose. She eludes htm before he can make her acquaintance. A vacant cabin on the shore has attracted the attention at-tention of tlie ailing woman, and they move Into it. Their first meal Is interrupted by the Man-in -t lie-Fun lie-Fun cy-V'eat. Pearlhunter strikes him. Gunplay threatens. The mother dramatically drives the intruder away. &he says he Is the "Other Man," whom she has not seen for 20 years. They find a red mask dropped by the Other Man. That nitfht Pearlhunter finds the Fihie Moon, a great freshwater pt.arl. His mother dies without revealing re-vealing his father's name. Pearl-huntt-r and the Other Man meet in t he village ; a pistol fight Is narrowly nar-rowly averted. Pearlhunter believes be-lieves him to be the Red Mask ciimhuil. Pearlhunter rescues Wild Rose from the Other Man and meets Wild Man, her father. He Is a man of culture, crazed from concussion of the brain, the result of an attack by someone wearing a red mask. Nobody knows his Identity; he Is known at the post oillce simply as Box 23. Pearlhunter Pearl-hunter proposes that he sell the Ulue Moon and send for a surgeon to operate. Wild J.ce agrees. Pearlhunter sells the Flue Moon for $;X0 to Louie ..lomon. The Red Mask murder! Solomon and steals the Blue M"on. Pearlhunter is charged with the crime. o o CHAPTER VII Continued. 10 "I'm not the lied Slash. I didn't kill Louie Solomon. And I don't know where the Blue Moon Is." The answer was not convincing. Nothing he could have said just then would have heen. Whether the Jew believed it, or any part of it, his face ave no siRti. He backed nway two steps and leveled his revolver full at the Pearlhunter's breast, like a man about to pisto! another and deliberately deliberate-ly planning to make a clean job of it. The Instant came when the Pearlhunter Pearl-hunter believed the grimy finger w-as about to press the trigger and he was almost In the act of diving beneath the muzzle when the Jew motioned to one of the others and said something in Yiddish. The man spoken to darted away through the bushes toward the boat landing. The Pearlhunter breathed again. The man soon reappeared, carrying a piece of rope. One at a time, he took the Tearlhunter's hands, drew them behind his hack, and bound them securely together. Even then, so great was their dread of the man he was supposed to be, that one of them constantly held a gun on him. With the knife still sticking in the flead man's breast, they carried him down to the boat, driving the Pearlhunter Pearl-hunter before them. There they loaded load-ed them in, the dead and the living, and rowed back up the river to the village the second time that day; the same trip; the same boat; the same live men. Then, a great day opening; the greatest trade ever made among penrl fishers along the Wabash In prospect; now, the day nearly done; the pearl lost; one of the men dead; another likely soon to be! What a difference in the crowd that met them at the wharf! Again driving driv-ing their prisoner before them, the three grim henchmen carried the dead man up the hill to a small plot of open ground west of the Mud Hen and laid him down upon the grass. For the second time that day the Tillage emptied its houses to meet them. Women came this time old women with seared faces; girls with blooming cheeks; and children. Hard men that had drunk to the rearlhunt-er rearlhunt-er barely two hours ago came out of the Mud Hen and stood staring at him in sullen silence. Men from the stores and shops came running. Men that had neither stores nor shops straggled strag-gled in from every quarter of the village vil-lage and jostlod about in the ever-.growing. ever-.growing. ominously muttering circle. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, two of the henchmen mr.ght the Pearlhunter and held him while the third tied the red mask over his eyes. Bound as he was, he had flung thorn loose in an instant in-stant and raked the mask off against his shoulder. But that one brief mo-- mo-- ment wns enough. The mischief was done. Women screamed ; men muttered mut-tered and swore; but all shrank buck, widening the cirele. Who started it, who said it first, will never be known. Nobody knows how the mob forms a low mumble; a quick Hare into frenzy; mild eyes grown wild: stolid faces afire; a rabble; rab-ble; a clamor; reason down, blood lust up. "I i:i tiL' 'i" ! 1 1.mu' 'im !" Y.vt- u tool; up the cry, so great was the terror of his name the Red Mask a name that might have stampeded the village. The mob charged him. Bound as he was, he dashed at them. A butt of his shoulder shoul-der caught the foremost man, a burly blacksmith, on the jaw. He went down like a beef under the mallet. A drive of his head to the pit of the stomach crumpled up another. A well-directed well-directed kick laid out a third. He fought as the men of his blood had always fought. But what can one man, with his hands tied, do against many? They had his blouse ripped off, his shirt In shreds, and a hundred hands still itching to get at him'. They beat his face; his body wherever a fist or a club could reach him. A stick of stove wood In the hands of a lanky woodchopper laid open an ugly gash across his head. Half-dazed, he was trying to wink the blood and mist out of his eyes when a roar was heard on the outskirts out-skirts of the crowd, and the stocky form of the old Boss was seen fighting fight-ing his way into the circle. He had probably gone up to Fallen Rock, as he had promised the night before, missed the Pearlhunter, and come on to the village. He fought well, and opened a narrow swath, half-way through the circle to his friend. But just there somebody struck him above the ear with the flat of a barrel stave. The ripple subsided ; the swath closed. The rearlhuntcr's last friend was down and out. The rope was flung over a limb. Half a hundred hands, some of them women's hands, stretched up ready to pull. Half a hundred hands did pull. The rope tightened slowly. A hush fell on the mob ; a hush so deep that the creak-of the tightening rope could be distinctly heard. That last final scene, the last stroke that stops a life it is a solemn moment ; even to a mob. The Pearlhunter was lifted ; the last light tips of his toes left the grass ; flames ran up and down his spine; the world turned black. There came a sudden dash of hoofs, and a man rode straight at the mob. It takes a hardy person to withstand the charge of a horse. The crowd parted. The horseman reached the dangling man, and with one slash of a huge iackknife, cut the rope. The stroke came barely in time. The Pearlhunter, only saved from crumpling down to the grass by the arm of the horseman, drooped limp and gasping against the side of the horse. Slowly the world quit reeling; "Who Is This Man?" Yelled the Sheriff. the light came back ; he raised his eyes ; caught the glitter of a sheriff's star upon the vest of his rescuer. It Is marvelous how one brave man, with the law behind him, can awe a mob. "Who Is this man?" yelled the sheriff. A man, whose mouth had been mashed by a butt of the Pearlhunter's head, clawed the red mask up from the ground, trampled and soiled, but still unmistakable, and held it high. The sheriff started; glared hard at the Pearlhunter. "An' so it's you they've roped !" he growled. "Damned if 1 hain't a notion no-tion to let 'em finish the job." A snarl ran through the mob. They surged forward. The sheriff drew his revolver again, and cursed them back. "Hod Mask or red devil !" lie stormed, "he's entitled to a trial under un-der the law ; and a trial he'll git." The moo muttered ominously but fell back, leaving some little space about the horse. The Pearlhunter was the tallest man there. His height enabled him to see with tolerable clearness to the outskirts of the crowd. He swept his eyes over the heads of the others like a man looking for something he fully expected to find. He was not disappointed. In the outer edge of the crowd, leaning carelessly against a hitch rack, stood the man he was expecting to see. He had come out of the Mud Hen at the beginning of the uproar but had taken no part in the lynching. He didn't need to. He had a whole town to do It for him. The Pearlhunter was not surprised to see him there. Why shouldn't he he there, a very moeh interested spectator spec-tator nt the final working out of his well-laid plot, a plot that had worked out so infinitely better than he had planned? Why shouldn't a man come to see himself hanged? And there the Pearlhunter stood, with the rope around his neck the wrong neck and no proof to put it around the right one. Something swelled under the rope; something that surged up to his eyes and struck out a splinter of fire. He turned to the man on the horse. "Sheriff, If you'll stick my gun back and cut my hands loose, I'll rope you the real Red Mask." It was an unwise thing to say. lie knew it the moment he'd said it. It was unlike him. The man leaning in apparent carelessness against the hitch rack was probably quite unaware un-aware that he was suspected. It might prove a costly mistake to let him know that he was. Besides, it was extremely unlikely that he would have the pearl still on him. Witli the pearl gone, the proof would be gone. The Pearlhunter's usual slow caution should have brought a good many considerations con-siderations to his mind before he said that. But a rope around a man's neck makes a prodigious difference in the look of things. One cannot help wondering won-dering what would have been the outcome out-come had (he sheriff heeded the request re-quest and cut loose the hands of his prisoner. Things would have happened hap-pened and they would have happened hap-pened fast. The sheriff laughed ; a hard, raspy laugh. A good many things in that laugh: the jangle of handcuffs; the grate of keys in stiff locks but never a mile of mirth. "He's roped now." "He's not," was the Pearlhunter's incautious answer, "but he's handy." He had purposely raised his voice. But the man for whose ear it was intended in-tended never shifted his position ; never changed, even in the slightest, his easy smile. He did slip his hand down the front of his frock coat and loosen it against his side, hut that was all. The sheriff swore; turned slowly in his saddle and glanced the crowd over. "Ladies an' gentlemen," he said, raising rais-ing his voice, "as I said before, this man is entitled to a trial, an' a trial he'll git. He'll hang but it'll be the law that hangs Mm, an' not you. I advise ad-vise you to break up this damn foolishness fool-ishness an' go home." It could be seen with half -an eye that the sheriff was in no humor to stand any back talk. The crowd didn't try it; they obeyed many sullenly, some grumbling openly. A few stayed. The man leaning against the hitch rack went back to the Mud Hen. The village of Buckeye straggles for a quarter of a mile along the river road. The road is a bigger Institution than (he town. It formed the principal princi-pal street. The village lockup, or jail, stood in plain sight a short way to the west on the north side of the road. The sheriff dismounted, picked up the slit and trampled blouse, threw it about the shoulders of his prisoner and untied the severed rope end still knotted about bis neck. With a muttered mut-tered command, he made a slight motion mo-tion toward the jail with his revolver. The Pearlhunter, still with bound hands, his shirt so tattered that it left him half-naked from his waist up, the blood upon his face and body fast stiffening into clots, obeyed the command. com-mand. Inside the lockup the sheriff cut his hands loose, and Immediately stepped outside and locked the door, seeming to have no fancy to tarry after his prisoner's hands were free. Turning back to his prisoner he pointed out his house and told him he would bring over some supper later on. The Buckeye lockup wns a two-story, two-story, rectangular structure of heavy logs. There were two cells, with a hallway between, on the first floor, and the same arrangement above. The Pearlhunter was the only prisoner, so he had free range of both lower cells. The barred gate opening to the stair leading to the upper floor was heavily padlocked. The door of the jail faced south faced the river road. Each cell had one window ; the window of the one looking east, the window of the other looking west. These windows win-dows were both rather larger than might have been expected. Each contained con-tained a single sash, with the four bars to each window, set in auger holes in the logs at the top and bot-1W11. bot-1W11. The sash was hinged at the side so as to swing in. The Pearlhunter opened the sash at the west window and swung it back as far as It would go. Through the bars he could look out under the cool, calm trees In the jail yard. The river road wound dusty and dry toward the sundown; wound to the first curve and hid itself in the hills; wound 01. to that sharp turn at the ri:n of the deep woods by the low fence. Ami there the path began, the dim slim path worn by wonderful feel : the path that led to a girl with eyes i::e i in-placid in-placid sky at the l-o:!:ti tie spring; eyes that "trusted" him, that ' would look for him. What would they be like when he didn't come; when the word reached her that he was the Red Mask? He thought of that bit of scarlet cloth behind the books, with the knife thrust near an eyehole. What If he should never have the chance to set himself right if he should die without the chance? What would the eyes be like then? The thought distressed him well-nigh well-nigh past bearing. He winced as though it had heen a blade that stabbed him. The crinkle of paper in his tattered blouse caught his attention. atten-tion. He drew the paper forth the draft! In the fast failing light he smoothed it out and pored over the words again. His day ! His great day ! He had watched It slip Into a starry world upon the crest of midnight ; had watched It unbar the gates of dawn. And now It had driven across the world and out nt the gates of sunset. Dead ! Gj.ine back Into the night ! He left the window ; dropped down upon the one broken chair in the cell and buried his face In his hands. |