And now those
same birds of evil omen had come again, he believed, right on the
heels of the last sworn oath old Judd had sent him that he would
never hang.
With the day, through mountain and valley, came in converging
lines mountain humanity--men and women, boys and girls, children
and babes in arms; all in their Sunday best--the men in jeans,
slouched hats, and high 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 through the crisp autumn
air, past woods of russet and crimson and along brown dirt roads,
to the straggling little mountain town. A stranger would have
thought that a county fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus was their
goal, but they were on their way to look upon the Court House with
its black port-holes, the graystone jail, the tall wooden box, the
projecting beam, and that dangling rope which, when the wind
moved, swayed gently to and fro. And Hale had forged his plan. He
knew that there 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, so the incoming tide found on the outskirts
of the town and along every road boyish policemen who halted and
disarmed every man who carried a weapon in sight, for thus John
Hale would have against the pistols of the factions his own
Winchesters and repeating shot-guns.
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