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The article she feared to see was upon the first page of the paper. A Fugitive's Story of the Christmas-Week Execution in Granadas District John Makepiece Tells His Story in Cida; His Fellow-Prisoner, Broxton Day, Fills One of Raphele's "Christmas Graves" Janice Day could never have told how long she sat there, elbows on the bureau, eyes glued to those black lines on the newspaper page.
"Here hath been Increase Faith Higginson twice coopered up in a barrel, once for drunkenness, and a second time on suspicion thereof; Jonathan Makepiece hath lain in the stocks for quarreling with, and using contumacious language toward David Battle; Susannah Silence hath sat tied in a chair, before her door, with a cleft stick upon her tongue, for being too free in the use of that member; divers godly persons have connected themselves with the congregation, and two unworthy Achans been driven therefrom the one for incontinence, until he repent thereof, and the other for denying the just power of the elders."
With fiendish delight in seeing those two brave men suffer, he had commanded them to cast lots to see which should be escorted beyond the lines, while the other was marched to the edge of an open grave, there to find a sure and sudden end under the rain of bullets from a "firing squad." John Makepiece had drawn the long straw. There was no help for it.
There is no need to repeat it here in full; when Janice had read it twice she could not easily forget its most unimportant phrase. The man, John Makepiece, with Broxton Day, of Granadas district, had been held "incommunicado" for months by the bandit, Raphele.
There had been an execution on the day John Makepiece had fled from the place; but the victims were some unfortunate Indians. The bandit had not dared kill the remaining American prisoner. Mr. Broxton Day had managed to get into a shaft of the mine and there had lain hidden until Raphele, and his gang, had departed.
"That Buchanan evidently knows the John Makepiece who is telling this yarn," observed the telegraph operator, "and he doesn't have much confidence in him." "Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece reported." "Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all is good news."
If she had not written the messages she was anxious to send, she had already formulated them in her mind. It was but a few minutes' work to write both one to Mr. Buchanan at Juarez, and the other addressed to the man, John Makepiece, who claimed to have been a fellow-prisoner with Mr. Broxton Day. When the messages were sent, all they could do was to wait.
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