The Yellow Briar. Patrick Slater

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СКАЧАТЬ other side of the story was that Morgan had been helped to run away to Canada to avoid his creditors.

      “But,” as Mr. O’Hogan exclaimed, “if the said William Morgan was alive, why did they not produce the man and save their ugly faces?”

      The next morning early I slipped around to see what had happened at the Tavern Tyrone. Himself was about, as usual, giving orders. His daughter Violet was making up a feather bed in the double-bedded room upstairs over the bar. No sign saw I of ought untoward. The first meeting of King Solomon’s Lodge, No. 22, G.R.C., had evidently passed off without anyone being hurted.

      Young Jack Trueman may have heard more of that lodge meeting than was intended for his ears; or perhaps he had the gift of a powerful imagination. He claimed to have hidden under the bed in the back bedroom upstairs, with his ear to the partition. In any event, the matter was much on his mind; and, in the afternoon, he herded a dozen youngsters into the Trueman stable to hold a lodge meeting of his own. I was in charge of the door; and Jack had a hammer and an empty beer-barrel.

      He gave the barrel three smart knocks; and we all came to attention.

      “What now, brethren, is our first care?” he demanded, in the heavy burr that reminds one of St. Andrews.

      I had my instructions.

      “To see that the lodge is properly tyled, worshipful sir,” said I.

      “Direct that duty to be done,” commanded Trueman, Jr.

      So I hammered three times on the inside of the stable door, and a little negro boy, posted outside, hammered back three times to tell us everything was in order.

      But young Jack refused to believe our ears. Over and over, he insisted that we holler at him:

      “The door is properly tyled, worshipful sir!”

      So I went out to make dead sure about it; and then I quietly stole away on more interesting business of my own.

3 ADRIFT

      Jack Trueman’s dog was a black and tan collie with a bobtail. His was the general-purpose breed of a drover’s tyke; and he was all dog. Jack claimed to own the sharp-eyed, self-reliant fellow — but that was a matter of opinion, merely. In the dog’s way of looking at things, Rover owned Jack Trueman; and Trueman — he owned me. When a smart, clever dog has something of his very own, you understand — say a smelly bone or an unruly boy — naturally he thinks highly of his own property. And he puts up with the smell of his own bone and the kicks of his own boy as one of the inconveniences of proprietorship, just the same as you and I put up with taxes.

      Rover liked, at times, to have his boy throw sticks for him; and, of course, sticks can not be thrown if they are not fetched. But he only fancied that sort of thing in moderation. When the sport ceased to amuse him, he would cock his leg against a post, and then run away on business of his own. This was clear evidence, you will agree, that Rover was the chief executive.

      Jack Trueman had not bought the dog; nor had he been given the dog. One day, Rover had left the drover’s team he was looking after, and had dropped in, casual-like, to inspect the alley at the side and the stable in the rear of the Tavern Tyrone. He fancied the look of the place and the smell of the slop-bucket. Off-hand, he decided he would like to own a boy who lived round an interesting place like that. So the two of them struck up a bargain on the spot – at least they thought they did. There was a mutual understanding so complete that things worked out all right.

      Rover was old enough to have sense, but young enough to be full of devilment. He was a regular fellow. He never got into any squabbles with girl dogs; but the body-odours of any gent of his own kind who strayed within a block of the Tavern Tyrone seemed very displeasing to him. And, when he fought another dog, Rover stuck right at the job till he gave a thrashing to the son of a bitch, or enough silly humans ran together to make it a draw. Jack and his collie got into street fights daily. I was their partisan and did a lot of grunting for them. The three of us skylarked that spring about the streets of Toronto.

      One June day, we were down to the foot of Berkeley Street to see a double hanging; and that surely was one glorious, well-filled day. There was a high stone wall clear around the prison which stood close to the bay-shore; and the Fair Grounds lay open to the west. Two men, Turney and Hamilton, were to be hanged on a Tuesday morning. To give the public a tidy view of the drops, both before and after taking, a double gallows had been built facing the Fair Grounds and high on top of the prison wall.

      Before the early-risers were abroad, hundreds of heavy farm carts and lumbering wains came creaking into town with their loads of merry, holiday-making country folk from far and near. Along the muddy roads came also bands of stalky farm lads, faring stoutly on foot, with stick in hand and bag on back, stepping down thirty miles or so to see the doings. Two men were to be killed by the law in the morning as an example to the public; and the schools throughout the district were closed that the children might benefit by so valuable a lesson in morals and good living. That day the taverns of Toronto did a stirring business.

      “Your soul to the devil!” said young Jack to me. “Let us hooray down and see the necks stretched.”

      The hangings had been set for ten o’clock in the morning; but an hour ahead of time there was a good-natured throng of thousands jostling one another before the grim prison walls. It was the sort of crowd one sees nowadays at a big country fall fair. Neighbours were greeting neighbours, and joshing over local affairs. Men carried their liquor well in those days; and, of course, mothers had brought the young children in their arms. What else could the poor dears do?

      A stir among the men on the prison walls told us the death procession was coming. A hush of awed expectancy fell upon the great throng. And this gaping crowd, stirred with thoughts of human slaughter, was standing in the most humane and tolerant colony Europe ever established beyond the seas! New England had been developed by the labour of convicts transported to be sold as serfs on an auction-block. We are often told of the Mayflower landing the Pilgrim Fathers on the Plymouth Rock. Oh yes! But we hear little of the fact that for a century every other merchant ship touching a New England port landed a cargo of convicts on the Pilgrim Fathers. The outposts of those colonies were pushed westward by rough frontiersmen who murdered as they went on frolics of their own. The southern colonies were developed by slave labour, and the full wages of that slavery have not yet been paid. One of the first laws passed in Upper Canada, in 1793, provided for the abolition of slavery; and, in dealing with another human, there has never been a time or place in Canada, save in her wretched prisons, that any man could with impunity make his will a law to itself.

      You ask what brought thousands of people together to see such a terrible sight as a double hanging; and I answer you that fifty thousand of the likes of you would turn out any morning to view a well-bungled hanging today. A murderer is a celebrity; and people run open-mouthed to see a celebrity, to hear him speak and see him decorated — or hanged — as the case may be. Every crowd hungers for excitement and is looking for a thrill. Every mob is by nature cruel and bloodthirsty. With all his clothing and culture, man remains a savage, a fact that becomes obvious when a few of them run together.

      The breath going out of thousands of throats made a low murmur as the murderer, William Turney, in his grave clothes and pinioned, came into public view and stoutly mounted the stairs of the scaffold platform. A priest walked beside him. Behind them strode a hangman, who was closely masked.

      It was a matter of good form — and decently expected in those days — that a murderer make a speech and exhort the public. A lusty cheer went СКАЧАТЬ