The sudden darkness was comparative, not absolute, for gradually all
objects of his environment became again visible. In the dawn of the morning Holt found himself entering the village at a
point opposite to that at which he had left it. He soon arrived at the
house of his brother, who hardly knew him. He was wild-eyed, haggard,
and gray as a rat. Almost incoherently, he related his night’s
experience. “Go to bed, my poor fellow,” said his brother, “and—wait. We shall hear
more of this.”

An hour later came the predestined telegram. Holt’s dwelling in one of
the suburbs of Chicago had been destroyed by fire. Her escape cut off by
the flames, his wife had appeared at an upper window, her child in her
arms. There she had stood, motionless, apparently dazed. Just as the
firemen had arrived with a ladder, the floor had given way, and she was
seen no more. The moment of this culminating horror was eleven o’clock and twenty-five
minutes, standard time. AN ARREST


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 town
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. SOLDIER-FOLK


A MAN WITH TWO LIVES


HERE is the queer story of David William Duck, related by himself. Duck
is an old man living in Aurora, Illinois, where he is universally
respected. He is commonly known, however, as “Dead Duck.”

“In the autumn of 1866 I was a private soldier of the Eighteenth
Infantry. My company was one of those stationed at Fort Phil Kearney,
commanded by Colonel Carrington. The country is more or less familiar
with the history of that garrison, particularly with the slaughter by the
Sioux of a detachment of eighty-one men and officers—not one
escaping—through disobedience of orders by its commander, the brave but
reckless Captain Fetterman. When that occurred, I was trying to make my
way with important dispatches to Fort C. F. Smith, on the Big Horn. As
the country swarmed with hostile Indians, I traveled by night and
concealed myself as best I could before daybreak. The better to do so, I
went afoot, armed with a Henry rifle and carrying three days’ rations in
my haversack. “For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the darkness a
narrow cañon leading through a range of rocky hills. It contained many
large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills. Behind one of
these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed for the day, and soon fell
asleep. It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it
was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet
striking the bowlder just above my body. A band of Indians had trailed
me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an
execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside
above. The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my
feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity. Then I ran in a
stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of
bullets from invisible enemies. The rascals did not rise and pursue,
which I thought rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that
they had to deal with only one man. The reason for their inaction was
soon made clear. I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the
limit of my run—the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a cañon. It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute
of vegetation. In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in a pen. Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait. “They waited. For two days and nights, crouching behind a rock topped
with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, suffering
agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the
fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke of their rifles,
as they did at that of mine.