#The trail of the lonesome pine by john fox windows#
And thewondering people saw at the back windows of the Court House and at thethreatening port-holes more youngsters manning Winchesters, more at thewindows of the jailer's frame house, which joined and fronted the jail,and more still-a line of them-running all around the jail and theold men wagged their heads in amazement and wondered if, after all, aTolliver was not really going to be hanged. He knew thatthere would be no attempt at rescue until Rufe was led to the scaffold,and he knew that neither Falins nor Tollivers would come in a band, sothe incoming tide found on the outskirts of the town and along everyroad boyish policemen who halted and disarmed every man who carried aweapon in sight, for thus John Hale would have against the pistolsof the factions his own Winchesters and repeating shot-guns. A stranger wouldhave thought that a county fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus was theirgoal, but they were on their way to look upon the Court House withits black port-holes, the graystone jail, the tall wooden box, theprojecting beam, and that dangling rope which, when the wind moved,swayed gently to and fro. With the day, through mountain and valley, came in converging linesmountain humanity-men and women, boys and girls, children and babesin arms all in their Sunday best-the men in jeans, slouched hats, andhigh boots, the women in gay ribbons and brilliant home-spun in wagons,on foot and on horses and mules, carrying man and man, man and boy,lover and sweetheart, or husband and wife and child-all moving throughthe crisp autumn air, past woods of russet and crimson and along browndirt roads, to the straggling little mountain town.
And nowthose same birds of evil omen had come again, he believed, right on theheels of the last sworn oath old Judd had sent him that he would neverhang. Rufe had told the jailer, his one friendthrough whom he had kept in constant communication with the Tollivers,how on the night after the shooting of Mockaby, when he lay down tosleep high on the mountain side and under some rhododendron bushes, aflock of little birds flew in on him like a gust of rain and perchedover and around him, twittering at him until he had to get up and pacethe woods, and how, throughout the next day, when he sat in the sunplanning his escape, those birds would sweep chattering over his headand sweep chattering back again, and in that mood of despair he had saidonce, and only once: "Somehow I knowed this time my name was Dennis"-aphrase of evil prophecy he had picked up outside the hills.
"Not much," he answered grimly, but the jailer noticed that while heate, his eyes kept turning again and again to the bars and the turnkeywent away shaking his head. "Don't lose yo' nerve, Rufe," said the jailer, and the old laugh ofdefiance came, but from lips that were dry.
"Them damn birds ag'in," he growled sullenly. From the centre of this beamdangled a rope that swung gently to and fro when the wind moved.And with the day a flock of little birds lighted on the bars of thecondemned man's cell window, chirping through them, and when the jailerbrought breakfast he found Bad Rufe cowering in the corner of his celland wet with the sweat of fear. Day broke on the old Court House with its black port-holes, on thegraystone jail, and on a tall topless wooden box to one side, fromwhich projected a cross-beam of green oak.
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