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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




"The baby come, and the store wouldn't chalk nothin' for us no more."
Then she added, quickly, as if in defence of the humiliating position,
"Our corn-crib was sot afire last fall and we got behind."

For a brief instant she leaned heavily against the bars as if for
support, then her eyes sought her child. I waited until she had
reassured herself of its safety, and continued my questions, my
finger-nails sinking deeper all the time into the palms of my hands.

"Did you make the whiskey?"

"No, it was Martin Young's whiskey. My husband works for him. Martin
sent the kag down one day, and I sold it to the men. I give the money
all to Martin 'cept the dollar he was to gimme for sellin' it."

"How came you to be arrested?"

"One o' the men tol' on me 'cause I wouldn't trust him. Martin tol' me
not to let 'em have it 'thout they paid."

"How long have you been here?"

"Three months next Tuesday."

"That baby only two weeks old when they arrested you?" My blood ran hot
and cold, and my collar seemed five sizes too small, but I still held on
to myself.

"Yes." The answer was given in the same monotonous, listless voice--not
a trace of indignation over the outrage. Women with suckling babies had
no rights that anybody was bound to respect--not up in Pineyville;
certainly not the gentlemen with brass shields under the lapels of
their coats and Uncle Sam's commissions in their pockets. It was the
law of the land--why find fault with it?

I leaned closer so that I could touch her hand if need be.

"What's your name?"

"Samanthy North."

"What's your husband's name?"

"His name's North." There was a trace of surprise now in the general
monotone Then she added, as if to leave no doubt in my mind,
"Leslie North."

"Where is he?" I determined now to round up every fact.

"He's home. We've got another child, and he's takin' care of it till I
git back. He'd be to the railroad for me if he knowed I was coming; but
I couldn't tell him when to start 'cause I didn't know how long
they'd keep me."

"Is your home near the railroad?"

"No, it's thirty-six miles furder."

"How will you get from the railroad?"

"Ain't no way 'cept walkin'."

I had it now, the whole damnable, pitiful story, every fact clear-cut to
the bone. I could see it all: the look of terror when the deputy woke
her from her sleep and laid his hand upon her; the parting with the
other child; the fright of the helpless husband; the midnight ride, she
hardly able to stand, the pitiful scrap of her own flesh and blood
tight in her arms; the procession to the jail, the men in front chained
together, she bringing up the rear, walking beside the last guard; the
first horrible night in jail, the walls falling upon her, the darkness
overwhelming her, the puny infant resting on her breast; the staring,
brutal faces when the dawn came, followed by the coarse jest. No wonder
that she hung limp and hopeless to the bars of her cage, all the spring
and buoyancy, all the youth and lightness, crushed out of her.

I put my hand through the bars and laid it on her wrist.

"No, you won't walk; not if I can help it." This outburst got past the
lump slowly, one word at a time, each syllable exploding hot like balls
from a Roman candle. "You get your things together quick as you can, and
wait here until I come back," and I turned abruptly and motioned to the
turnkey to open the gate.

In the office of the Chief of Police outside I found Marny talking to
Sergeant Cram. He was waiting until I finished. It was all an old story
with Marny--every month a new batch came to Covington jail.

"What about that girl, Sergeant--the one with the baby?" I demanded, in
a tone that made them both turn quickly.

"Oh, she's all right. She told the Judge a straight story this morning,
and he let her go on 'spended sentence. They tried to make her plead
'Not guilty,' but she wouldn't lie about it, she said. She can go when
she gets ready. What are you drivin' at? Are you goin' to put up for
her?"--and a curious look overspread his face.

"I'm going to get her a ticket and give her some money to get home.
Locking up a seventeen-year-old girl, two hundred miles from home, in a
den like that, with a baby two weeks old, may be justice, but I call it
brutality! Our Government can pay its expenses without that kind of
revenue." The whole bundle of Roman candles was popping now.
Inconsequent, wholly illogical, utterly indefensible explosions. But
only my heart was working.

The Sergeant looked at Marny, relaxed the scowl about his eyebrows, and
smiled; such "softies" seemed rare to him.

"Well, if you're stuck on her--and I'm damned if I don't believe you
are--let me give you a piece of advice. Don't give her no money till she
gets on the train, and whatever you do, don't leave her here over night.
There's a gang around here"--and he jerked his thumb in the direction of
the door--"that might--" and he winked knowingly.

"You don't mean--" A cold chill suddenly developed near the roots of my
hair and trickled to my spine.

"Well, she's too good-lookin' to be wanderin' round huntin' for a
boardin'-house. You see her on the train, that's all. Starts at eight
to-night. That's the one they all go by--those who git out and can raise
the money. She ought to leave now, 'cordin' to the regulations, but as
long as you're a friend of Mr. Marny's I'll keep her here in the office
till I go home at seven o'clock. Then you'd better have someone to look
after her. No, you needn't go back and see her"--this in answer to a
movement I made toward the prison door. "I'll fix everything. Mr. Marny
knows me."

I thanked the Sergeant, and we started for the air outside--something we
could breathe, something with a sky overhead and the dear earth
underfoot, something the sun warmed and the free wind cooled.

Only one thing troubled me now. I could not take the girl to the train
myself, neither could Marny, for I had promised to lecture that same
night for the Art Club at eight o'clock, and Marny was to introduce me.
The railroad station was three miles away.

"I've got it!" cried Marny, when we touched the sidewalk, elbowing our
way among the crowd of loafers who always swarm about a place of this
kind. (He was as much absorbed in the girl's future, when he heard her
story, as I was.) "Aunt Chloe lives within two blocks of us--let's hunt
her up. She ought to be at home by this time."

The old woman was just entering her street door when she heard Marny's
voice, her basket on her arm, a rabbit-skin tippet about her neck.

"Dat I will, honey," she answered, positively, when the case was laid
before her. "_Dat I will_; 'deed an' double I will."

She stepped into the house, left her basket, joined us again on the
sidewalk, and walked with us back to the Sheriff's office.

"All right," said the Sergeant, when we brought her in. "Yes, I know the
old woman; the gal will be ready for her when she comes, but I guess I'd
better send one of my men along with 'em both far as the depot. Ain't no
use takin' no chances."

The dear old woman followed us again until we found a clerk in a branch
ticket-office, who picked out a long green slip from a library of
tickets, punched it with the greatest care with a pair of steel nippers,
and slipped it into an official envelope labelled: "K.C. Pineyville,
Ky. 8 P.M."

With this tightly grasped in her wrinkled brown hand, together with
another package of Marny's many times in excess of the stage fare of
thirty-six miles and which she slipped into her capacious bosom, Aunt
Chloe "made her manners" with the slightest dip of a courtesy and left
us with the remark:

"Sha'n't nothin' tech her, honey; gwinter stick right close to her till
de steam-cars git to movin', I'll be over early in de mawnin' an' let ye
know. Doan' worry, honey; ain't nothin' gwinter happen to her arter I
gits my han's on her."

When I came down to breakfast, Aunt Chloe was waiting for me in the
hall. She looked like the old woman in the fairy-tale in her short black
dress that came to her shoe-tops, snow-white apron and headkerchief,
covered by a close-fitting nun-like hood--only the edge of the
handkerchief showed--making her seem the old black saint that she was.
It not being one of her cleaning-days, she had "kind o' spruced herself
up a li'l mite," she said. She carried her basket, covered now with a
white starched napkin instead of the red-and-yellow bandanna of
work-days. No one ever knew what this basket contained. "Her luncheon,"
some of the art-students said; but if it did, no one had ever seen her
eat it. "Someone else's luncheon," Marny added; "some sick body whom she
looks after. There are dozens of them."

"Larrovers fur meddlins," Aunt Chloe invariably answered those whose
curiosity got the better of their discretion--an explanation which only
deepened the mystery, no one being able to translate it.

"She's safe, honey!" Aunt Chloe cried, when she caught sight of me. "I
toted de baby, an' she toted de box. Po' li'l chinkapin! Mos' break a
body's heart to see it! 'Clar to goodness, dat chile's leg warn't
bigger'n a drumstick picked to de bone. De man de Sheriff sent wid us
didn't go no furder dan de gate, an' when he lef us dey all sneaked in
an' did dere bes' ter git her from me. Wuss-lookin' harum-scarums you
ever see. Kep' a-tellin' her de ticket was good for ten days an' dey'd
go wid her back to town; an' dat if she'd stay dey'd take her 'cross de
ribber to see de city. I seed she wanted ter git home to her husban',
an' she tol' 'em so. Den dey tried to make her believe he was comin' for
her, an' dey pestered her so an' got her so mixed up wid deir lies dat I
was feared she was gwine to give in, arter all. She warn't nothin' but a
po' weak thing noways. Den I riz up an' tol' 'em dat I'd call a
pleeceman an' take dat ticket from her an' de money I gin her beside, if
she didn't stay on dat car. I didn't give her de 'velope; I had dat in
my han' to show de conductor when he come, so he could see whar she was
ter git off. Here it is"--and she handed me the ticket-seller's
envelope. "Warn't nothin' else saved me but _dat_. When dey see'd it,
dey knowed den somebody was a-lookin' arter her an' dey give in. Po'
critter! I reckon she's purty nigh home by dis time!"

The story is told. It is all true, every sickening detail. Other stories
just like it, some of them infinitely more pitiful, can be written daily
by anyone who will peer into the cages of Covington jail. There is
nothing to be done; nothing _can_ be done.

It is the law of the land--the just, holy, beneficent law, which is no
respecter of persons.



II


BUD TILDEN, MAIL-THIEF

"That's Bud Tilden, the worst of the bunch," said the jail Warden--the
warden with the sliced ear and the gorilla hands. "Reminds me of a
cat'mount I tried to tame once, only he's twice as ugly."

As he spoke, he pointed to a prisoner in a slouch hat clinging half-way
up the steel bars of his cage, his head thrust through as far as his
cheeks would permit, his legs spread apart like the letter A.

"What's he here for?" I asked.

"Bobbin' the U-nited States mail."

"Where?"

"Up in the Kentucky mountains, back o' Bug Holler. Laid for the carrier
one night, held him up with a gun, pulled him off his horse, slashed the
bottom out o' the mail-bag with his knife, took what letters he wanted,
and lit off in the woods, cool as a chunk o' ice. Oh! I tell ye, he's no
sardine; you kin see that without my tellin' ye. They'll railroad
him, sure."

"When was he arrested?"

"Last month--come down in the November batch. The dep'ties had a circus
'fore they got the irons on him. Caught him in a clearin' 'bout two
miles back o' the Holler. He was up in a corn-crib with a Winchester
when they opened on him. Nobody was hurted, but they would a-been if
they'd showed the top o' their heads, for he's strong as a bull and kin
scalp a squirrel at fifty yards. They never would a-got him if they
hadn't waited till dark and smoked him out, so one on 'em told me."
He spoke as if the prisoner had been a rattlesnake or a
sheep-stealing wolf.

The mail-thief evidently overheard, for he dropped, with a cat-like
movement, to the steel floor and stood looking at us through the bars
from under his knit eyebrows, his eyes watching our every movement.

There was no question about his strength. As he stood in the glare of
the overhead light I could trace the muscles through his rough
homespun--for he was a mountaineer, pure and simple, and not a city-bred
thief in ready-made clothes. I saw that the bulging muscles of his
calves had driven the wrinkles of his butternut trousers close up under
the knee-joint and that those of his thighs had rounded out the coarse
cloth from the knee to the hip. The spread of his shoulders had
performed a like service for his shirt, which was stretched out of shape
over the chest and back. This was crossed by but one suspender, and was
open at the throat--a tree-trunk of a throat, with all the cords
supporting the head firmly planted in the shoulders. The arms were long
and had the curved movement of the tentacles of a devil-fish. The hands
were big and bony, the fingers knotted together with knuckles of iron.
He wore no collar nor any coat; nor did he bring one with him, so the
Warden said.

I had begun my inventory at his feet as he stood gazing sullenly at us,
his great red hands tightly clasped around the bars. When in my
inspection I passed from his open collar up his tree-trunk of a throat
to his chin, and then to his face, half-shaded by a big slouch hat,
which rested on his flaring ears, and at last looked into his eyes, a
slight shock of surprise went through me. I had been examining this wild
beast with my judgment already warped by the Warden; that's why I began
at his feet and worked up. If I had started in on an unknown subject,
prepared to rely entirely upon my own judgment, I would have begun at
his eyes and worked down. My shock of surprise was the result of this
upward process of inspection. An awakening of this kind, the awakening
to an injustice done a man we have half-understood, often comes after
years of such prejudice and misunderstanding. With me this awakening
came with my first glimpse of his eyes.

There was nothing of the Warden's estimate in these eyes; nothing of
cruelty nor deceit nor greed. Those I looked into were a light blue--a
washed-out china blue; eyes that shone out of a good heart rather than
out of a bad brain; not very deep eyes; not very expressive eyes; dull,
perhaps, but kindly. The features were none the less attractive; the
mouth was large, well-shaped, and filled with big white teeth, not one
missing; the nose straight, with wide, well-turned nostrils; the brow
low, but not cunning nor revengeful; the chin strong and well-modelled,
the cheeks full and of good color. A boy of twenty I should have
said--perhaps twenty-five; abnormally strong, a big animal with small
brain-power, perfect digestion, and with every function of his body
working like a clock. Photograph his head and come upon it suddenly in a
collection of others, and you would have said: "A big country bumpkin
who ploughs all day and milks the cows at night." He might be the
bloodthirsty ruffian, the human wild beast, the Warden had described,
but he certainly did not look it. I would like to have had just such a
man on any one of my gangs with old Captain Joe over him. He would have
fought the sea with the best of them and made the work of the surf-men
twice as easy if he had taken a hand at the watch-tackles.

I turned to the Warden again. My own summing up differed materially from
his estimate, but I did not thrust mine upon him. He had had, of course,
a much wider experience among criminals--I, in fact, had had none at
all--and could not be deceived by outward appearances.

"You say they are going to try him to-day?" I asked.

"Yes, at two o'clock. Nearly that now," and he glanced at his watch.
"All the witnesses are down, I hear. They claim there's something else
mixed up in it besides robbing the mail, but I don't remember what. So
many of these cases comin' and goin' all the time! His old father was in
to see him yesterday, and a girl. Some o' the men said she was his
sweetheart, but he don't look like that kind. You oughter seen his
father, though. Greatest jay you ever see. Looked like a
fly-up-the-creek. Girl warn't much better lookin'. They make 'em out o'
brick-clay and ham fat up in them mountains. Ain't human, half on 'em.
Better go over and see the trial."

I waited in the Warden's office until the deputies came for the
prisoner. When they had formed in line on the sidewalk I followed behind
the posse, crossing the street with them to the Court-house. The
prisoner walked ahead, handcuffed to a deputy who was a head shorter
than he and half his size. A second officer walked behind; I kept close
to this rear deputy and could see every movement he made. I noticed that
his fingers never left his hip pocket and that his eye never wavered
from the slouch hat on the prisoner's head. He evidently intended to
take no chances with a man who could have made mince-meat of both of
them had his hands been free.

We parted at the main entrance, the prisoner, with head erect and a
certain fearless, uncowed look on his boyish face, preceding the
deputies down a short flight of stone steps, closely followed by
the officer.

The trial, I could see, had evidently excited unusual interest. When I
mounted the main flight to the corridor opening into the trial chamber
and entered the great hallway, it was crowded with mountaineers--wild,
shaggy, unkempt-looking fellows, most of them. All were dressed in the
garb of their locality: coarse, rawhide shoes, deerskin waistcoats,
rough, butternut-dyed trousers and coats, and a coon-skin or army slouch
hat worn over one eye. Many of them had their saddle-bags with them.
There being no benches, those who were not standing were squatting on
their haunches, their shoulders against the bare wall. Others were
huddled close to the radiators. The smell of escaping steam from these
radiators, mingling with the fumes of tobacco and the effluvia from so
many closely packed human bodies, made the air stifling.

I edged my way through the crowd and pushed through the court-room door.
The Judge was just taking his seat--a dull, heavy-looking man with a
bald head, a pair of flabby, clean-shaven cheeks, and two small eyes
that looked from under white eyebrows. Half-way up his forehead rested a
pair of gold spectacles. The jury had evidently been out for luncheon,
for they were picking their teeth and settling themselves comfortably in
their chairs.

The court-room--a new one--outraged, as usual, in its construction every
known law of proportion, the ceiling being twice too high for the walls,
and the big, uncurtained windows (they were all on one side) letting in
a glare of light that made silhouettes of every object seen against it.
Only by the closest attention could one hear or see in a room like this.

The seating of the Judge was the signal for the admission of the crowd
in the corridor, who filed in through the door, some forgetting to
remove their hats, others passing the doorkeeper in a defiant way. Each
man, as soon as his eyes became accustomed to the glare from the
windows, looked furtively toward the prisoners' box. Bud Tilden was
already in his seat between the two deputies, his hands unshackled, his
blue eyes searching the Judge's face, his big slouch hat on the floor at
his feet. What was yet in store for him would drop from the lips of
this face.

The crier of the court, a young negro, made his announcements.

I found a seat between the prisoner and the bench, so that I could hear
and see the better. The Government prosecutor occupied a seat at a table
to my right, between me and the three staring Gothic windows. When he
rose from his chair his body came in silhouette against their light.
With his goat-beard, beak-nose, heavy eyebrows, long, black hair
resting on the back of his coat-collar, bent body, loose-jointed arms,
his coat-tails swaying about his thin legs, he looked (I did not see him
in any other light) like a hungry buzzard flapping his wings before
taking flight.

He opened the case with a statement of facts. He would prove, he said,
that this mountain-ruffian was the terror of the neighborhood, in which
life was none too safe; that although this was the first time he had
been arrested, there were many other crimes which could be laid at his
door, had his neighbors not been afraid to inform upon him.

Warming up to the subject, flapping his arms aloft like a pair of wings,
he recounted, with some dramatic fervor, what he called the "lonely ride
of the tried servant of the Government over the rude passes of the
mountains," recounting the risks which these faithful men ran; then he
referred to the sanctity of the United States mails, reminding the jury
and the audience--particularly the audience--of the chaos which would
ensue if these sacred mail-bags were tampered with; "the stricken,
tear-stained face of the mother," for instance, who had been waiting for
days and weeks for news of her dying son, or "the anxious merchant
brought to ruin for want of a remittance which was to tide him over some
financial distress," neither of them knowing that at that very moment
some highwayman like the prisoner "was fattening off the result of his
theft." This last was uttered with a slapping of both hands on his
thighs, his coat-tails swaying in unison. He then went on in a graver
tone to recount the heavy penalties the Government imposed for
violations of the laws made to protect this service and its agents, and
wound up by assuring the jury of his entire confidence in their
intelligence and integrity, knowing, as he did, how just would be their
verdict, irrespective of the sympathy they might feel for one who had
preferred "the hidden walks of crime to the broad open highway of an
honest life." Altering his tone again and speaking in measured accents,
he admitted that, although the Government's witnesses had not been able
to identify the prisoner by his face, he having concealed himself in the
bushes while the rifling of the pouch was in progress, yet so full a
view was gotten of his enormous back and shoulders as to leave no doubt
in his mind that the prisoner before them had committed the assault,
since it would not be possible to find two such men, even in the
mountains of Kentucky. As his first witness he would call the
mail-carrier.

Bud had sat perfectly stolid during the harangue. Once he reached down
with one long arm and scratched his bare ankle with his forefinger, his
eyes, with the gentle light in them that had first attracted me,
glancing aimlessly about the room; then he settled back again in his
chair, its back creaking to the strain of his shoulders. Whenever he
looked at the speaker, which was seldom, a slight curl, expressing more
contempt than anxiety, crept along his lips. He was, no doubt, comparing
his own muscles to those of the buzzard and wondering what he would do
to him if he ever caught him out alone. Men of enormous strength
generally measure the abilities of others by their own standards.

"Mr. Bowditch will take the chair!" cried the prosecutor.

At the summons, a thin, wizen-faced, stubbly-bearded man of fifty, his
shirt-front stained with tobacco-juice, rose from his seat and took the
stand. The struggle for possession of the bag must have been a brief
one, for he was but a dwarf compared to the prisoner. In a low,
constrained voice--the awful hush of the court-room had evidently
impressed him--and in plain, simple words, in strong contrast to the
flowery opening of the prosecutor, he recounted the facts as he knew
them. He told of the sudden command to halt; of the attack in the rear
and the quick jerking of the mail-bags from beneath his saddle,
upsetting him into the road; of the disappearance of the robber in the
bushes, his head and shoulders only outlined against the dim light of
the stars; of the flight of the robber, and of his finding the bag a few
yards away from the place of assault with the bottom cut. None of the
letters was found opened; which ones were missing tie couldn't say. Of
one thing he was sure--none were left behind by him on the ground, when
he refilled the bag.

The bag, with a slash in the bottom as big as its mouth, was then passed
around the jury-box, each juror in his inspection of the cut seeming to
be more interested in the way in which the bag was manufactured (some of
them, I should judge, had never examined one before) than in the way in
which it was mutilated. The bag was then put in evidence and hung over
the back of a chair, mouth down, the gash in its bottom in full view of
the jury. This gash, from where I sat, looked like one inflicted on an
old-fashioned rubber football by a high kicker.

Hank Halliday, in a deerskin waistcoat and dust-stained slouch hat,
which he crumpled up in his hand and held under his chin, was the
next witness.

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