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An Arrest

Categories: SOLDIER-FOLK
Scary Books: Present At A Hanging
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Having murdered his brother-in-law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a

fugitive from justice. From the county jail where he had been

confined to await his trial he had escaped by knocking down his

jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of his keys and, opening the

outer door, walking out into the night. The jailer being unarmed,

Brower got no weapon with which to defend his recovered liberty. As

soon as he was out of the
own he had the folly to enter a forest;

this was many years ago, when that region was wilder than it is now.



The night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and

as Brower had never dwelt thereabout, and knew nothing of the lay of

the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing himself. He could

not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going

back to it--a most important matter to Orrin Brower. He knew that

in either case a posse of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would

soon be on his track and his chance of escape was very slender; but

he did not wish to assist in his own pursuit. Even an added hour of

freedom was worth having.



Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an old road, and there

before him saw, indistinctly, the figure of a man, motionless in the

gloom. It was too late to retreat: the fugitive felt that at the

first movement back toward the wood he would be, as he afterward

explained, "filled with buckshot." So the two stood there like

trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart;

the other--the emotions of the other are not recorded.



A moment later--it may have been an hour--the moon sailed into a

patch of unclouded sky and the hunted man saw that visible

embodiment of Law lift an arm and point significantly toward and

beyond him. He understood. Turning his back to his captor, he

walked submissively away in the direction indicated, looking to

neither the right nor the left; hardly daring to breathe, his head

and back actually aching with a prophecy of buckshot.



Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged; that

was shown by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had

coolly killed his brother-in-law. It is needless to relate them

here; they came out at his trial, and the revelation of his calmness

in confronting them came near to saving his neck. But what would

you have?--when a brave man is beaten, he submits.



So they pursued their journey jailward along the old road through

the woods. Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head: just

once, when he was in deep shadow and he knew that the other was in

moonlight, he looked backward. His captor was Burton Duff, the

jailer, as white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid mark

of the iron bar. Orrin Brower had no further curiosity.



Eventually they entered the town, which was all alight, but

deserted; only the women and children remained, and they were off

the streets. Straight toward the jail the criminal held his way.

Straight up to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the

knob of the heavy iron door, pushed it open without command, entered

and found himself in the presence of a half-dozen armed men. Then

he turned. Nobody else entered.



On a table in the corridor lay the dead body of Burton Duff.



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