It was enough. Stricken, paralyzed, they fell back before such courage--and Conway found himself backing off into the woods, covering the retreat of the prisoner. Then afterward he felt the motion of buggy wheels, and of a galloping drive, and the jail, and he in the sheriff's room, the old prisoner safe for the time. CHAPTER XXIII DIED FOR THE LAW And thus was begun that historical lynching in the Tennessee Valley--a tragedy which well might have remained unwritten had it not fallen into the woof of this story. A white man had been killed for a negro--that was enough. It is true the man was attempting to commit murder in the face of the law of the land; and in attempting it had shot the representative of the law. It is true, also, that he had no grievance, being one of several hundred law-breakers bent on murder. This, too, made no difference; they neither thought nor cared;--for mobs, being headless, do not think; and being soulless, do not suffer. They had failed only for lack of a leader. But now they had a leader, and a mob with a leader is a dangerous thing. That leader was Richard Travis. It was after midnight when he rode up on the scene. Before he arrived, Jud Carpenter had aroused the mob to do its first fury, and still held them, now doubly vengeful and shouting to be led against the jail. But to storm a jail they needed a braver man than Jud Carpenter. And they found him in Richard Travis--especially Richard Travis in the terrible mood, the black despair which had come upon him that night. Why did he come? He could not say. In him had surged two great forces that night--the force of evil and the force of good. Twice had the good overcome--now it was the evil's turn, and like one hypnotized, he was led on. He sat his horse among them, pale and calm, but with a cruel instinct flashing in his eyes. At least, so Jud Carpenter interpreted the mood which lay upon him; but no one knew the secret workings of this man's heart, save God. He had come to them haggard and blanched and with a nameless dread, his arm tied up where the dog's fang had been buried in his flesh, his heart bitter in the thought of the death that was his. Already he felt the deadly virus pulsing through his veins. A hundred times in the short hour that had passed he suffered death--death beginning with the gripping throat, the shortened breath, the foaming mouth, the spasm! He jerked in the saddle--that spasmodic chill of the nerves,--and he grew white and terribly silent at the thought of it--the death that was his! Was his! And then he thought: "No, there shall be another and quicker way to die. A braver way--like a Travis--with my boots on--my boots on--and not like a mad-dog tied to a stake. "Besides--Alice--Alice!"