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diff --git a/44223-0.txt b/44223-0.txt index 13b0d83..3345242 100644 --- a/44223-0.txt +++ b/44223-0.txt @@ -1,34 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Back Home - Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and his People - -Author: Irvin S. Cobb - -Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44223] -Last Updated: March 11, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44223 *** BACK HOME @@ -8410,358 +8380,4 @@ swallowed him up. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. 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Cobb </title> @@ -38,42 +39,7 @@ Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb </style> </head> <body> - - -<pre> - -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Back Home -Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and his People - -Author: Irvin S. Cobb - -Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44223] -Last Updated: March 11, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger - - - - - -</pre> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44223 ***</div> <div style="height: 8em;"> <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> @@ -9576,378 +9542,6 @@ old tired man with lagging legs, and the shadows swallowed him up. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> </div> - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 44223-h.htm or 44223-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/2/2/44223/ - -Produced by David Widger - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, -set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to -copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to -protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project -Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you -charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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-Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Back Home
-Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and his People
-
-Author: Irvin S. Cobb
-
-Release Date: November 18, 2013 [EBook #44223]
-Last Updated: March 11, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME ***
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-Produced by David Widger
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-</pre>
-
-<div style="height: 8em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h1>
-BACK HOME
-</h1>
-<h3>
-BEING THE NARRATIVE OF JUDGE PRIEST AND HIS PEOPLE
-</h3>
-<h2>
-By Irvin S. Cobb
-</h2>
-<p>
-<br />
-</p>
-<h5>
-New York, George H. Doran Company
-</h5>
-<h4>
-1912
-</h4>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-<b>CONTENTS</b>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I. WORDS AND MUSIC </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II. THE COUNTY TROT </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0006"> IV. A JUDGMENT COME TO DANIEL </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0007"> V. UP CLAY STREET </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VI. WHEN THE FIGHTING WAS GOOD </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VII. STRATAGEM AND SPOILS </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0010"> VIII. THE MOB FROM MASSAC </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0011"> IX. A DOGGED UNDER DOG </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2H_4_0012"> X. BLACK AND WHITE </a>
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-PREFACE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER I came North to live it seemed to me, as probably it has seemed to
-many Southern born men and women that the Southerner of fiction as met
-with in the North was generally just that—fiction—and nothing
-else; that in the main he was a figment of the drama and of the story
-book; a type that had no just claim on existence and yet a type that was
-currently accepted as a verity.
-</p>
-<p>
-From well meaning persons who apparently wished to convey an implied
-compliment for the southern part of this republic I was forever hearing of
-“southern pride” and “hot southern blood” and “old southern families,”
- these matters being mentioned always with a special emphasis which seemed
-to betray a profound conviction on the part of the speakers that there was
-a certain physical, tangible, measurable distinction between, say, the
-pride of a Southerner and the blood-temperature of a Southerner and the
-pride and blood heat of a man whose parents had chosen some other part of
-the United States as a suitable place for him to be born in. Had these
-persons spoken of things which I knew to be a part and parcel of the
-Southerner's nature—such things for example as his love for his own
-state and his honest veneration for the records made by men of southern
-birth and southern blood in the Civil War—I might have understood
-them. But seemingly they had never heard of those matters.
-</p>
-<p>
-I also discovered or thought I discovered that as a rule the Southerner as
-seen on the stage or found between the covers of a book or a magazine was
-drawn from a more or less imaginary top stratum of southern life, or else
-from a bottom-most stratum—either he purported to be an elderly,
-un-reconstructed, high-tempered gentleman of highly aristocratic
-tendencies residing in a feudal state of shabby grandeur and proud poverty
-on a plantation gone to seed; or he purported to be a pure white of the
-poorest. With a few exceptions the playwright and the story writers were
-not taking into account sundry millions of southern born people who were
-neither venerable and fiery colonels with frayed wrist bands and limp
-collars, nor yet were they snuffdipping, ginseng-digging clay-eaters, but
-just such folk as allowing for certain temperamental differences—created
-by climate and soil and tradition and by two other main contributing
-causes: the ever-present race question and the still living and vivid
-memories of the great war—might be found as numerously in Iowa or
-Indiana or any other long-settled, typically American commonwealth as in
-Tennessee or Georgia or Mississippi, having the same aspirations, the same
-blood in their veins, the same impulses and being prone under almost any
-conceivable condition to do the same thing in much the same way.
-</p>
-<p>
-Viewing my own state and my own people across the perspective of time and
-distance I had the ambition to set down on paper, as faithfully as I
-might, a representation of those people as I knew them. By this I do not
-mean to declare that I sensed any audible and visible demand for such a
-piece of writing; so far as I know there has been no such demand. It was
-my own notion solely. I wanted, if I could to describe what I believed to
-be an average southern community so that others might see it as I had seen
-it. This book is the result of that desire.
-</p>
-<p>
-For my material I draw upon the life of that community as I remembered it.
-Most of the characters that figure in the events hereinafter described
-were copies, to the best of my ability as a copyist, of real models; and
-for some of the events themselves there was in the first place a fairly
-substantial basis of fact.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having such an aim I wrote what I conceived to be a series of pictures,
-out of the life of a town in the western part of Kentucky; that part of
-Kentucky which gave to the nation among others, Abraham Lincoln and
-Jefferson Davis. These, pictures fell into the form of inter-related
-stories, and as such were first printed in the <i>Saturday Evening Post.</i>
-They are now offered here as a whole.
-</p>
-<h3>
-LSC
-</h3>
-<p>
-New York, November 1912
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-I. WORDS AND MUSIC
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HEN Breck Tandy killed a man he made a number of mistakes. In the first
-place, he killed the most popular man in Forked Deer County—the
-county clerk, a man named Abner J. Rankin. In the second place, he killed
-him with no witnesses present, so that it stood his word—and he a
-newcomer and a stranger—against the mute, eloquent accusation of a
-riddled dead man. And in the third place, he sent north of the Ohio River
-for a lawyer to defend him.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the first Monday in June—Court Monday—the town filled up
-early. Before the field larks were out of the grass the farmers were tying
-their teams to the gnawed hitch-racks along the square. By nine o'clock
-the swapping ring below the wagonyard was swimming in red dust and
-clamorous with the chaffer of the horse-traders. In front of a vacant
-store the Ladies' Aid Society of Zion Baptist Church had a canvas sign
-out, announcing that an elegant dinner would be served for twenty-five
-cents from twelve to one, also ice cream and cake all day for fifteen
-cents.
-</p>
-<p>
-The narrow wooden sidewalks began to creak and chum under the tread of
-many feet. A long-haired medicine doctor emerged from his frock-coat like
-a locust coming out of its shell, pushed his high hat off his forehead and
-ranged a guitar, sundry bottles of a potent mixture, his tooth-pulling
-forceps, and a trick-handkerchief upon the narrow shelf of his stand
-alongside the Drummers' Home Hotel. In front of the little dingy tent of
-the Half Man and Half Horse a yellow negro sat on a split-bottom chair
-limbering up for a hard day. This yellow negro was an artist. He played a
-common twenty-cent mouth organ, using his left hand to slide it back and
-forth across his spread lips. The other hand held a pair of polished beef
-bones, such as end men wield, and about the wrist was buckled a broad
-leather strap with three big sleigh-bells riveted loosely to the leather,
-so that he could clap the bones and shake the bells with the same motion.
-He was a whole orchestra in himself. He could play on his mouth organ
-almost any tune you wanted, and with his bones and his bells to help out
-he could creditably imitate a church organ, a fife-and-drum corps, or,
-indeed, a full brass band. He had his chair tilted back until his woolly
-head dented a draggled banner depicting in five faded primary colon the
-physical attractions of the Half Man and Half Horse—Marvel of the
-Century—and he tested his mouth organ with short, mellow, tentative
-blasts as he waited until the Marvel and the Marvel's manager finished a
-belated breakfast within and the first ballyhoo could start. He was
-practicing the newest of the ragtime airs to get that far South. The name
-of it was The Georgia Camp-Meeting.
-</p>
-<p>
-The town marshal in his shirt sleeves, with a big silver shield pinned to
-the breast of his unbuttoned blue waistcoat and a hickory stick with a
-crook handle for added emblem of authority, stalked the town drunkard,
-fair game at all seasons and especially on Court Monday. The town gallant
-whirled back and forth the short hilly length of Main Street in his new
-side-bar buggy. A clustering group of negroes made a thick, black blob,
-like hiving bees, in front of a negro fishhouse, from which came the smell
-and sounds of perch and channel cat frying on spitting-hot skillets. High
-up on the squat cupola of the courthouse a red-headed woodpecker clung,
-barred in crimson, white, and blue-black, like a bit of living bunting,
-engaged in the hopeless task of trying to drill through the tin sheathing.
-The rolling rattle of his beak's tattoo came down sharply to the crowds
-below. Mourning doves called to one another in the trees round the
-red-brick courthouse, and at ten o'clock, when the sun was high and hot,
-the sheriff came out and, standing between two hollow white pillars,
-rapped upon one of them with a stick and called upon all witnesses and
-talesmen to come into court for the trial of John Breckinridge Tandy,
-charged with murder in the first degree, against the peace and dignity of
-the commonwealth of Tennessee and the statutes made and provided.
-</p>
-<p>
-But this ceremonial by the sheriff was for form rather than effect, since
-the witnesses and the talesmen all sat in the circuit-court chamber along
-with as many of the population of Forked Deer County as could squeeze in
-there. Already the air of the crowded chamber was choky with heat and
-rancid with smell. Men were perched precariously in' the ledges of the
-windows. More men were ranged in rows along the plastered walls, dunking
-their heels against the cracked wooden baseboards. The two front rows of
-benches were full of women. For this was to be the big case of the June
-term—a better show by long odds than the Half Man and Half Horse.
-</p>
-<p>
-Inside the low railing that divided the room and on the side nearer the
-jury box were the forces of the defense. Under his skin the prisoner
-showed a sallow paleness born of his three months in the county jail. He
-was tall and dark and steady eyed, a young man, well under thirty. He gave
-no heed to those who sat in packed rows behind him, wishing him evil. He
-kept his head turned front, only bending it sometimes to whisper with one
-of his lawyers or one of his witnesses. Frequently, though, his hand went
-out in a protecting, reassuring way to touch his wife's brown hair or to
-rest a moment on her small shoulder. She was a plain, scared, shrinking
-little thing. The fingers of her thin hands were plaited desperately
-together in her lap. Already she was trembling. Once in a while she would
-raise her face, showing shallow brown eyes dilated with fright, and then
-sink her head again like a quail trying to hide. She looked pitiable and
-lonely.
-</p>
-<p>
-The chief attorney for the defense was half turned from the small counsel
-table where he might study the faces of the crowd. He was from Middle
-Indiana, serving his second term in Congress. If his party held control of
-the state he would go to the Senate after the next election. He was an
-orator of parts and a pleader of almost a national reputation. He had
-manly grace and he was a fine, upstanding figure of a man, and before now
-he had wrung victories out of many difficult cases. But he chilled to his
-finger-nails with apprehensions of disaster as he glanced searchingly
-about the close-packed room.
-</p>
-<p>
-Wherever he looked he saw no friendliness at all. He could feel the
-hostility of that crowd as though it had substance and body.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a tangible thing; it was almost a physical thing. Why, you could
-almost put your hand out and touch it. It was everywhere there.
-</p>
-<p>
-And it focussed and was summed up in the person of Aunt Tilly Haslett,
-rearing on the very front bench with her husband, Uncle Fayette, half
-hidden behind her vast and over-flowing bulk. Aunt Tilly made public
-opinion in Hyattsville. Indeed she was public opinion in that town. In her
-it had its up-comings and its out-flowings. She held herself bolt upright,
-filling out the front of her black bombazine basque until the buttons down
-its front strained at their buttonholes. With wide, deliberate strokes she
-fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan. The fan had an edging of black tape
-sewed round it—black tape signifying in that community age or
-mourning, or both. Her jaw was set like a steel latch, and her little gray
-eyes behind her steel-bowed specs were leveled with a baleful, condemning
-glare that included the strange lawyer, his client, his client's wife, and
-all that was his client's.
-</p>
-<p>
-Congressman Durham looked and knew that his presence was an affront to
-Aunt Tilly and all those who sat with her; that his somewhat vivid tie,
-his silken shirt, his low tan shoes, his new suit of gray flannels—a
-masterpiece of the best tailor in Indianapolis—were as insults,
-added up and piled on, to this suspendered, gingham-shirted constituency.
-Better than ever he realized now the stark hopelessness of the task to
-which his hands were set. And he dreaded what was coming almost as much
-for himself as for the man he was hired to defend. But he was a trained
-veteran of courtroom campaigns, and there was a jauntily assumed
-confidence in his bearing as he swung himself about and made a brisk show
-of conferring with the local attorney who was to aid him in the choosing
-of the jurors and the questioning of the witnesses.
-</p>
-<p>
-But it was real confidence and real jauntiness that radiated from the
-other wing of the inclosure, where the prosecutor sat with the assembled
-bar of Forked Deer County on his flanks, volunteers upon the favored side,
-lending to it the moral support of weight and numbers. Rankin, the dead
-man, having been a bachelor, State's Attorney Gilliam could bring no lorn
-widow and children to mourn before the jurors' eyes and win added sympathy
-for his cause. Lacking these most valued assets of a murder trial he
-supplied their places with the sisters of the dead man—two
-sparse-built elderly women in heavy black, with sweltering thick veils
-down over their faces. When the proper time came he would have them raise
-these veils and show their woeful faces, but now they sat shrouded all in
-crepe, fit figures of desolation and sorrow. He fussed about busily,
-fiddling the quill toothpick that hung perilously in the corner of his
-mouth and evening up the edges of a pile of law books with freckled
-calfskin covers. He was a lank, bony garfish of a man, with a white goatee
-aggressively protruding from his lower lip. He was a poor speaker but
-mighty as a cross-examiner, and he was serving his first term and was a
-candidate for another. He wore the official garbing of special and
-extraordinary occasions—long black coat and limp white waistcoat and
-gray striped trousers, a trifle short in the legs. He felt the importance
-of his place here almost visibly—his figure swelled and expanded out
-his clothes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Look yonder at Tom Gilliam,” said Mr. Lukins, the grocer, in tones of
-whispered admiration to his next-elbow neighbor, “jest prunin' and honin'
-hisse'f to git at that there Tandy and his dude Yankee lawyer. If he don't
-chaw both of 'em up together I'll be dad-burned.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You bet,” whispered back his neighbor—it was Aunt Tilly's oldest
-son, Fayette, Junior—“it's like Maw says—time's come to teach
-them murderin' Kintuckians they can't be a-comin' down here a-killin' up
-people and not pay for it. I reckon, Mr. Lukins,” added Fayette, Junior,
-with a wriggle of pleased anticipation, “we shore are goin' to see some
-carryin's-on in this cotehouse today.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Lukins' reply was lost to history because just then the judge entered—an
-elderly, kindly-looking man—from his chambers in the rear, with the
-circuit-court clerk right behind him bearing large leather-clad books and
-sheaves of foolscap paper. Their coming made a bustle. Aunt Tilly squared
-herself forward, scrooging Uncle Fayette yet farther into the eclipse of
-her shapeless figure. The prisoner raised his head and eyed his judge. His
-wife looked only at the interlaced, weaving fingers in her lap.
-</p>
-<p>
-The formalities of the opening of a term of court were mighty soon over;
-there was everywhere manifest a haste to get at the big thing. The clerk
-called the case of the Commonwealth versus Tandy. Both sides were ready.
-Through the local lawyer, delegated for these smaller purposes, the
-accused man pleaded not guilty. The clerk spun the jury wheel, which was a
-painted wooden drum on a creaking wooden axle, and drew forth a slip of
-paper with the name of a talesman written upon it and read aloud:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Isom W. Tolliver.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In an hour the jury was complete: two townsmen, a clerk and a telegraph
-operator, and ten men from the country—farmers mainly and one
-blacksmith and one horse-trader. Three of the panel who owned up frankly
-to a fixed bias had been let go by consent of both sides. Three more were
-sure they could give the defendant a fair trial, but those three the local
-lawyer had challenged peremptorily. The others were accepted as they came.
-The foreman was a brownskinned, sparrowhawk-looking old man, with a
-smoldering brown eye. He had spare, knotted hands, like talons, and the
-right one was marred and twisted, with a sprayed bluish scar in the midst
-of the crippled knuckles like the mark of an old gunshot wound. Juror No.
-4 was a stodgy old man, a small planter from the back part of the county,
-who fanned himself steadily with a brown-varnished straw hat. No. 7 was
-even older, a white-whiskered patriarch on crutches. The twelfth juryman
-was the oldest of the twelve—he looked to be almost seventy, but he
-went into the box after he had sworn that his sight and hearing and
-general health were good and that he still could do his ten hours a day at
-his blacksmith shop. This juryman chewed tobacco without pause. Twice
-after he took his seat at the bade end of the double line he tried for a
-wooden cuspidor ten feet away. Both were creditable attempts, but he
-missed each time. Seeing the look of gathering distress in his eyes the
-sheriff brought the cuspidor nearer, and thereafter No. 12 was content,
-chewing steadily like some bearded contemplative ruminant and listening
-attentively to the evidence, meanwhile scratching a very wiry head of
-whity-red hair with a thumbnail that through some injury had taken on the
-appearance of a very thick, very black Brazil nut. This scratching made a
-raspy, filing sound that after a while got on Congressman Durham's nerves.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was late in the afternoon when the prosecution rested its case and
-court adjourned until the following morning. The state's attorney had not
-had so very much evidence to offer, really—the testimony of one who
-heard the single shot and ran in at Rankin's door to find Rankin upon the
-floor, about dead, with a pistol, unfired, in his hand and Tandy standing
-against the wall with a pistol, fired, in his; the constable to whom Tandy
-surrendered; the physician who examined the body; the persons who knew of
-the quarrel between Tandy and Rankin growing out of a land deal into which
-they had gone partners—not much, but enough for Gilliam's purposes.
-Once in the midst of examining a witness the state's attorney, seemingly
-by accident, let his look fall upon the two black-robed, silent figures at
-his side, and as though overcome by the sudden realization of a great
-grief, he faltered and stopped dead and sank down. It was an old trick,
-but well done, and a little humming murmur like a breeze coming through
-treetops swept the audience.
-</p>
-<p>
-Durham was sick in his soul as he came away.
-</p>
-<p>
-In his mind there stood the picture of a little, scared woman's drawn,
-drenched face. She had started crying before the last juror was chosen and
-thereafter all day, at half-minute intervals, the big, hard sobs racked
-her. As Durham came down the steps he had almost to shove his way through
-a knot of natives outside the doors. They grudged him the path they made
-for him, and as he showed them his back he heard a snicker and some one
-said a thing that cut him where he was already bruised—in his
-egotism. But he gave no heed to the words. What was the use?
-</p>
-<p>
-At the Drummers' Home Hotel a darky waiter sustained a profound shock when
-the imported lawyer declined the fried beefsteak with fried potatoes and
-also the fried ham and eggs. Mastering his surprise the waiter offered to
-try to get the Northern gentleman a fried pork chop and some fried June
-apples, but Durham only wanted a glass of milk for his supper. He drank it
-and smoked a cigar, and about dusk he went upstairs to his room. There he
-found assembled the forlorn rank and file of the defense, the local lawyer
-and three character witnesses—prominent citizens from Tandy's home
-town who were to testify to his good repute in the place where he was born
-and reared. These would be the only witnesses, except Tandy himself, that
-Durham meant to call. One of them was a bustling little man named
-Felsburg, a clothing merchant, and one was Colonel Quigley, a banker and
-an ex-mayor, and the third was a Judge Priest, who sat on a circuit-court
-bench back in Kentucky. In contrast to his size, which was considerable,
-this Judge Priest had a voice that was high and whiny. He also had the
-trick, common to many men in politics in his part of the South, of being
-purposely ungrammatical at times.
-</p>
-<p>
-This mannerism led a lot of people into thinking that the judge must be an
-uneducated man—until they heard him charging a jury or reading one
-of his rulings. The judge had other peculiarities. In conversation he
-nearly always called men younger than himself, son. He drank a little bit
-too much sometimes; and nobody had ever beaten him for any office he
-coveted. Durham didn't know what to make of this old judge—sometimes
-he seemed simple-minded to the point of childishness almost.
-</p>
-<p>
-The others were gathered about a table by a lighted kerosene lamp, but the
-old judge sat at an open window with his low-quarter shoes off and his
-white-socked feet propped against the ledge. He was industriously stoking
-at a home-made corncob pipe. He pursed up his mouth, pulling at the long
-cane stem of his pipe with little audible sucks. From the rocky little
-street below the clatter of departing farm teams came up to him. The
-Indian medicine doctor was taking down his big white umbrella and packing
-up his regalia. The late canvas habitat of the Half Man and Half Horse had
-been struck and was gone, leaving only the pole-holes in the turf and a
-trodden space to show where it had stood. Court would go on all week, but
-Court Monday was over and for another month the town would doze along
-peacefully.
-</p>
-<p>
-Durham slumped himself into a chair that screeched protestingly in all its
-infirm joints. The heart was gone clean out of him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't understand these people at all,” he confessed. “We're beating
-against a stone wall with our bare hands.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“If it should be money now that you're needing, Mister Durham,” spoke up
-Felsburg, “that boy Tandy's father was my very good friend when I first
-walked into that town with a peddling pack on my back, and if it should be
-money——?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It isn't money, Mr. Felsburg,” said Durham. “If I didn't get a cent for
-my services I'd still fight this case out to the aid for the sake of that
-game boy and that poor little mite of a wife of his. It isn't money or the
-lack of it—it's the damned hate they've built up here against the
-man. Why, you could cut it off in chunks—the prejudice that there
-was in that courthouse today.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Son,” put in Judge Priest in his high, weedy voice, “I reckon maybe
-you're right. I've been projectin' around cotehouses a good many years,
-and I've taken notice that when a jury look at a prisoner all the time and
-never look at his women folks it's a monstrous bad sign. And that's the
-way it was all day today.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The judge will be fair—he always is,” said Hightower, the local
-lawyer, “and of course Gilliam is only doing his duty. Those jurors are as
-good solid men as you can find in this country anywhere. But they can't
-help being prejudiced. Human nature's not strong enough to stand out
-against the feeling that's grown up round here against Tandy since he shot
-Ab Rankin.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Son,” said Judge Priest, still with his eyes on the darkening square
-below, “about how many of them jurors would you say are old soldiers?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Four or five that I know of,” said Hightower—“and maybe more. It's
-hard to find a man over fifty years old in this section that didn't see
-active service in the Big War.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, hah,” assented Judge Priest with a squeaky little grunt. “That
-foreman now—he looked like he might of seen some fightin'?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Four years of it,” said Hightower. “He came out a captain in the
-cavalry.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, hah.” Judge Priest sucked at his pipe. “Herman,” he J wheezed back
-over his shoulder to Felsburg, “did you notice a tall sort of a
-saddle-colored darky playing a juice harp in front of that there sideshow
-as we came along up? I reckon that nigger could play almost any tune you'd
-a mind to hear him play?”
- </p>
-<p>
-At a time like this Durham was distinctly not interested in the
-versatilities of strange negroes in this corner of the world. He kept
-silent, shrugging his shoulders petulantly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I wonder now is that nigger left town yet?” mused the old judge half to
-himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I saw him just a while ago going down toward the depot,” volunteered
-Hightower. “There's a train out of here for Memphis at 8:50. It's about
-twenty minutes of that now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, hah, jest about,” assented the judge. When the judge said “Ah, hah!”
- like that it sounded like the striking of a fiddle-bow across a fiddle's
-tautened E-string.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, boys,” he went on, “we've all got to do the best we can for Breck
-Tandy, ain't we? Say, son”'—this was aimed at Durham—“I'd like
-mightily for you to put me on the stand the last one tomorrow. You wait
-until you're through with Herman and Colonel Quigley here, before you call
-me. And if I should seem to ramble somewhat in giving my testimony—why,
-son, you just let me ramble, will you? I know these people down here
-better maybe than you do—and if I should seem inclined to ramble,
-just let me go ahead and don't stop me, please?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Judge Priest,” said Durham tartly, “if you think it could possibly do any
-good, ramble all you like.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Much obliged,” said the old judge, and he struggled into his low-quarter
-shoes and stood up, dusting the tobacco fluff off himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Herman have you got any loose change about you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Felsburg nodded and reached into his pocket. The judge made a
-discriminating selection of silver and bills from the handful that the
-merchant extended to him across the table.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll take about ten dollars,” he said. “I didn't come down here with more
-than enough to jest about buy my railroad ticket and pay my bill at this
-here tavern, and I might want a sweetenin' dram or somethin'.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He pouched his loan and crossed the room. “Boys,” he said, “I think I'll
-be knockin' round a little before I turn in. Herman, I may stop by your
-room a minute as I come back in. You boys better turn in early and git
-yourselves a good night's sleep. We are all liable to be purty tolerable
-busy tomorrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-After he was outside he put his head back in the door and said to Durham:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Remember, son, I may ramble.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Durham nodded shortly, being somewhat put out by the vagaries of a mind
-that could concern itself with trivial things on the imminent eve of a
-crisis.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the judge creaked ponderously along the hall and down the stairs those
-he had left behind heard him whistling a tune to himself, making false
-starts at the air and halting often to correct his meter. It was an
-unknown tune to them all, but to Felsburg, the oldest of the four, it
-brought a vague, unplaced memory.
-</p>
-<p>
-The old judge was whistling when he reached the street. He stood there a
-minute until he had mastered the time to his own satisfaction, and then,
-still whistling, he shuffled along the uneven board pavement, which, after
-rippling up and down like a broken-backed snake, dipped downward to a
-little railroad station at the foot of the street.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the morning nearly half the town—the white half—came to the
-trial, and enough of the black half to put a dark hem, like a mourning
-border, across the back width of the courtroom. Except that Main Street
-now drowsed in the heat where yesterday it had buzzed, this day might have
-been the day before. Again the resolute woodpecker drove his bloodied head
-with unimpaired energy against the tin sheathing up above. It was his
-third summer for that same cupola and the tin was pocked with little dents
-for three feet up and down. The mourning doves still pitched their
-lamenting note back and forth across the courthouse yard; and in the
-dewberry patch at the bottom of Aunt Tilly Haslett's garden down by the
-creek the meadow larks strutted in buff and yellow, with crescent-shaped
-gorgets of black at their throats, like Old Continentals, sending their
-dear-piped warning of “Laziness g'wine kill you!” in at the open windows
-of the steamy, smelly courtroom.
-</p>
-<p>
-The defense lost no time getting under headway. As his main witness Durham
-called the prisoner to testify in his own behalf. Tandy gave his version
-of the killing with a frankness and directness that would have carried
-conviction to auditors more even-minded in their sympathies. He had gone
-to Rankin's office in the hope of bringing on a peaceful settlement of
-their quarrel. Rankin had flared up; had cursed him and advanced on him,
-making threats. Both of them reached for their guns then. Rankin's was the
-first out, but he fired first—that was all there was to it. Gilliam
-shone at cross-examination; he went at Tandy savagely, taking hold like a
-snapping turtle and hanging on like one.
-</p>
-<p>
-He made Tandy admit over and over again that he carried a pistol
-habitually. In a community where a third of the male adult population went
-armed this admission was nevertheless taken as plain evidence of a nature
-bloody-minded and desperate. It would have been just as bad for Tandy if
-he said he armed himself especially for his visit to Rankin—to these
-listeners that could have meant nothing else but a deliberate, murderous
-intention. Either way Gilliam had him, and he sweated in his eagerness to
-bring out the significance of the point. A sinister little murmuring
-sound,4 vibrant with menace, went purring from bench to bench when Tandy
-told about his pistol-carrying habit.
-</p>
-<p>
-The cross-examination dragged along for hours. The recess for dinner
-interrupted it; then it went on again, Gilliam worrying at Tandy, goading
-at him, catching him up and twisting his words. Tandy would not be shaken,
-but twice under the manhandling he lost his temper and lashed back at
-Gilliam, which was precisely what Gilliam most desired. A flary fiery man,
-prone to violent outbursts—that was the inference he could draw from
-these blaze-ups.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was getting on toward five o'clock before Gilliam finally let his
-bedeviled enemy quit the witness-stand and go back to his place between
-his wife and his lawyer. As for Durham, he had little more to offer. He
-called on Mr. Felsburg, and Mr. Felsburg gave Tandy a good name as man and
-boy in his home town. He called on Banker Quigley, who did the same thing
-in different words. For these character witnesses State's Attorney Gilliam
-had few questions. The case was as good as won now, he figured; he could
-taste already his victory over the famous lawyer from up North, and he was
-greedy to hurry it forward.
-</p>
-<p>
-The hot round hub of a sun had wheeled low enough to dart its thin red
-spokes in through the westerly windows when Durham called his last
-witness. As Judge Priest settled himself solidly in the witness chair with
-the deliberation of age and the heft of flesh, the leveled rays caught him
-full and lit up his round pink face, with the short white-bleached beard
-below it and the bald white-bleached forehead above. Durham eyed him half
-doubtfully. He looked the image of a scatter-witted old man, who would
-potter and philander round a long time before he ever came to the point of
-anything. So he appeared to the others there, too. But what Durham did not
-sense was that the homely simplicity of the old man was of a piece with
-the picture of the courtroom, that he would seem to these watching,
-hostile people one of their own kind, and that they would give to him in
-all likelihood a sympathy and understanding that had been denied the
-clothing merchant and the broadclothed banker.
-</p>
-<p>
-He wore a black alpaca coat that slanted upon him in deep, longitudinal
-folds, and the front skirts of it were twisted and pulled downward until
-they dangled in long, wrinkly black teats. His shapeless gray trousers
-were short for him and fitted his pudgy legs closely. Below them dangled a
-pair of stout ankles encased in white cotton socks and ending in
-low-quarter black shoes. His shirt was clean but wrinkled countlessly over
-his front. The gnawed and blackened end of a cane pipestem stood out of
-his breast pocket, rising like a frosted weed stalk.
-</p>
-<p>
-He settled himself back in the capacious oak chair, balanced upon his
-knees a white straw hat with a string band round the crown and waited for
-the question.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What is your name?” asked Durham. “William Pitman Priest.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Even the voice somehow seemed to fit the setting. Its high nasal note had
-a sort of whimsical appeal to it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When and where were you born?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In Calloway County, Kintucky, July 27, 1889.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What is your profession or business?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am an attorney-at-law.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What position if any do you hold in your native state?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I am presidin' judge of the first judicial district of the state of
-Kintucky.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And have you been so long?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“For the past sixteen years.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When were you admitted to the bar?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In 1860.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And you have ever since been engaged, I take it, either in the practice
-of the law before the bar or in its administration from the bench?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Exceptin' for the four years from April, 1861, to June, 1866.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Up until now Durham had been sparring, trying to fathom the probable trend
-of the old judge's expected meanderings. But in the answer to the last
-question he thought he caught the cue and, though none save those two knew
-it, thereafter it was the witness who led and the questioner who followed
-his lead blindly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And where were you during those four years?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I was engaged, suh, in takin' part in the war.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The War of the Rebellion?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, suh,” the old man corrected him gently but with firmness, “the War
-for the Southern Confederacy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a least bit of a stir at this. Aunt Tilly's tape-edged palmleaf
-blade hovered a brief second in the wide regular arc of its sweep and the
-foreman of the jury involuntarily ducked his head, as if in affiance of an
-indubitable fact.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ahem!” said Durham, still feeling his way, although now he saw the path
-more clearly. “And on which side were you engaged?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I was a private soldier in the Southern army,” the old judge answered
-him, and as he spoke he straightened up. “Yes, suh,” he repeated, “for
-four years I was a private soldier in the late Southern Confederacy. Part
-of the time I was down here in this very country,” he went on as though he
-had just recalled that part of it. “Why, in the summer of '64 I was right
-here in this town. And until yistiddy I hadn't been back since.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He turned to the trial judge and spoke to him with a tone and manner half
-apologetic, half confidential.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Your Honor,” he said, “I am a judge myself, occupyin' in my home state a
-position very similar to the one which you fill here, and whilst I
-realize, none better, that this ain't all accordin' to the rules of
-evidence as laid down in the books, yet when I git to thinkin' about them
-old soldierin' times I find I am inclined to sort of reminiscence round a
-little. And I trust your Honor will pardon me if I should seem to ramble
-slightly?”
- </p>
-<p>
-His tone was more than apologetic and more than confidential. It was
-winning. The judge upon the bench was a veteran himself. He looked toward
-the prosecutor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Has the state's attorney any objection to this line of testimony?” he
-asked, smiling a little.
-</p>
-<p>
-Certainly Gilliam had no fear that this honest-appearing old man's
-wanderings could damage a case already as good as won. He smiled back
-indulgently and waved his arm with a gesture that was compounded of equal
-parts of toleration and patience, with a top-dressing of contempt. “I
-fail,” said Gilliam, “to see wherein the military history and achievements
-of this worthy gentleman can possibly affect the issue of the homicide of
-Abner J. Rankin. But,” he added magnanimously, “if the defense chooses to
-encumber the record with matters so trifling and irrelevant I surely will
-make no objection now or hereafter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The witness may proceed,” said the judge. “Well, really, Your Honor, I
-didn't have so very much to say,” confessed Judge Priest, “and I didn't
-expect there'd be any to-do made over it. What I was trying to git at was
-that cornin' down here to testify in this case sort of brought back them
-old days to my mind. As I git along more in years—” he was looking
-toward the jurors now—“I find that I live more and more in the
-past.”
- </p>
-<p>
-As though he had put a question to them several of the jurors gravely
-inclined their heads. The busy cud of Juror No. 12 moved just a trifle
-slower in its travels from the right side of the jaw to the left and back
-again. “Yes, suh,” he said musingly, “I got up early this mornin' at the
-tavern where I'm stoppin' and took a walk through your thrivin' little
-city.” This was rambling with a vengeance, thought the puzzled Durham. “I
-walked down here to a bridge over a little creek and back again. It
-reminded me mightily of that other time when I passed through this town—in
-'64—just about this season of the year—and it was hot early
-today just as it was that other time—and the dew was thick on the
-grass, the same as 'twas then.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He halted a moment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Of course your town didn't look the same this mornin' as it did that
-other mornin'. It seemed like to me there are twicet as many houses here
-now as there used to be—it's got to be quite a little city.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Lukins, the grocer, nodded silent approval of this utterance, Mr.
-Lukins having but newly completed and moved into a two-story brick store
-building with a tin cornice and an outside staircase.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, your town has grown mightily, but”—and the whiny,
-humorous voice grew apologetic again—“but your roads are purty much
-the same as they were in '64—hilly in places—and kind of
-rocky.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Durham found himself sitting still, listening hard. Everybody else was
-listening too. Suddenly it struck Durham, almost like a blow, that this
-simple old man had somehow laid a sort of spell upon them all. The
-flattening sunrays made a kind of pink glow about the old judge's face,
-touching gently his bald head and his white whiskers. He droned on:
-</p>
-<p>
-“I remember about those roads particularly well, because that time when I
-marched through here in '64 my feet was about out ef my shoes and them
-flints cut 'em up some. Some of the boys, I recollect, left bloody prints
-in the dust behind 'em. But shucks—it wouldn't a-made no real
-difference if we'd wore the bottoms plum off our feet! We'd a-kept on
-goin'. We'd a-gone anywhere—or tried to—behind old Bedford
-Forrest.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Aunt Tilly's palmleaf halted in air and the twelfth juror's faithful quid
-froze in his cheek and stuck there like a small wen. Except for a general
-hunching forward of shoulders and heads there was no movement anywhere and
-no sound except the voice of the witness:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Old Bedford Forrest hisself was leadin' us, and so naturally we just went
-along with him, shoes or no shoes. There was a regiment of Northern troops—Yankees—marchin'
-on this town that mornin', and it seemed the word had traveled ahead of
-'em that they was aimin' to burn it down.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Probably it wasn't true. When we got to know them Yankees better
-afterward we found out that there really wasn't no difference, to speak
-of, between the run of us and the run of them. Probably it wasn't so at
-all. But in them days the people was prone to believe 'most anything—about
-Yankees—and the word was that they was cornin' across country,
-a-burnin' and cuttin' and slashin,' and the people here thought they was
-going to be burned out of house and home. So old Bedford Forrest he
-marched all night with a battalion of us—four companies—Kintuckians
-and Tennesseeans mostly, with a sprinklin' of boys from Mississippi and
-Arkansas—some of us ridin' and some walkin' afoot, like me—we
-didn't always have horses enough to go round that last year. And somehow
-we got here before they did. It was a close race though between us—them
-a-comin' down from the North and us a-comin' up from the other way. We met
-'em down there by that little branch just below where your present
-railroad depot is. There wasn't no depot there then, but the branch looks
-just the same now as it did then—and the bridge too. I walked
-acros't it this momin' to see. Yes, suh, right there was where we met 'em.
-And there was a right smart fight.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, there was a right smart fight for about twenty minutes—or
-maybe twenty-five—and then we had breakfast.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He had been smiling gently as he went along. Now he broke into a throaty
-little chuckle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, it all come back to me this mornin'—every little bit of
-it—the breakfast and all. I didn't have much breakfast, though, as I
-recall—none of us did—probably just corn pone and branch water
-to wash it down with.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as though the taste of
-the gritty cornmeal cakes was still there.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was another little pause here; the witness seemed to be through.
-Durham's crisp question cut the silence like a gash with a knife.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Judge Priest, do you know the defendant at the bar, and if so, how well
-do you know him?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I was just comin' to that,” he answered with simplicity, “and I'm obliged
-to you for puttin' me back on the track. Oh, I know the defendant at the
-bar mighty well—as well as anybody on earth ever did know him, I
-reckin, unless 'twas his own maw and paw. I've known him, in fact, from
-the time he was born—and a gentler, better-disposed boy never grew
-up in our town. His nature seemed almost too sweet for a boy—more
-like a girl's—but as a grown man he was always manly, and honest,
-and fair—and not quarrelsome. Oh, yes, I know him. I knew his father
-and his mother before him. It's a funny thing too—comin' up this way—but
-I remember that his paw was marchin' right alongside of me the day we came
-through here in '64. He was wounded, his paw was, right at the edge of
-that little creek down yonder. He was wounded in the shoulder—and he
-never did entirely git over it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Again he stopped dead short, and he lifted his hand and tugged at the lobe
-of his right ear absently. Simultaneously Mr. Felsburg, who was sitting
-close to a window beyond the jury box, was also seized with nervousness,
-for he jerked out a handkerchief and with it mopped his brow so vigorously
-that, to one standing outside, it might have seemed that the handkerchief
-was actually being waved about as a signal.
-</p>
-<p>
-Instantly then there broke upon the pause that still endured a sudden
-burst of music, a rollicking, jingling air. It was only a twenty-cent
-touth organ, three sleigh bells, and a pair of the rib bones of a beef-cow
-being played all at once by a saddle-colored negro man but it sounded for
-all the world like a fife-and-drum corps:
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-If you want to have a good time,
-If you want to have a good time,
-If you want to have a good time,
-If you want to ketch the devil—
-Jine the cavalree!
-</pre>
-<p>
-To some who heard it now the time was strange; these were the younger
-ones. But to those older men and those older women the first jubilant bars
-rolled back the years like a scroll.
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-If you want to have a good time,
-If yu want to have a good time,
-If you want to have a good time,
-If you want to ride with Bedford—
-Jine the cavalree!
-</pre>
-<p>
-The sound swelled and rippled and rose through the windows—the
-marching song of the Southern trooper—Forrest's men, and Morgan's,
-and Jeb Stuart's and Joe Wheeler's. It had in it the jingle of saber
-chains, the creak of sweaty saddle-girths, the nimble clunk of hurrying
-hoofs. It had in it the clanging memories of a cause and a time that would
-live with these people as long as they lived and their children lived and
-their children's children. It had in it the one sure call to the emotions
-and the sentiments of these people.
-</p>
-<p>
-And it rose and rose and then as the unseen minstrel went slouching down
-Main Street, toward the depot and the creek it sank lower and became a
-thin thread of sound and then a broken thread of sound and then it died
-out altogether and once more there was silence in the court house of
-Forked Deer County.
-</p>
-<p>
-Strangely enough not one listener had come to the windows to look out. The
-interruption from without had seemed part and parcel of what went on
-within. None faced to the rear, every one faced to the front.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was Mr. Lukins now. As Mr. Lukins got upon his feet he said to
-himself in a tone of feeling that he be dad-fetched. But immediately
-changing his mind he stated that he would preferably be dad-blamed, and as
-he moved toward the bar rail one overhearing him might have gathered from
-remarks let fall that Mr. Lukins was going somewhere with the intention of
-being extensively dad-burned. But for all these threats Mr. Lukins didn't
-go anywhere, except as near the railing as he could press.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nearly everybody else was standing up too. The state's attorney was on his
-feet with the rest, seemingly for the purpose of making some protest.
-</p>
-<p>
-Had any one looked they might have seen that the ember in the smoldering
-eye of the old foreman had blazed up to a brown fire; that Juror No. 4,
-with utter disregard for expense, was biting segments out of the brim of
-his new brown-varnished straw hat; that No. 7 had dropped his crutches on
-the floor, and that no one, not even their owner, had heard them fall;
-that all the jurors were half out of their chairs. But no one saw these
-things, for at this moment there rose up Aunt Tilly Haslett, a dominant
-figure, her huge wide bade blocking the view of three or four immediately
-behind her.
-</p>
-<p>
-Uncle Fayette laid a timid detaining hand upon her and seemed to be saying
-something protestingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Turn loose of me, Fate Haslett!” she commanded. “Ain't you ashamed of
-yourse'f, to be tryin' to hold me back when you know how my only dear
-brother died a-followin' after Gineral Nathan Bedford Forrest. Turn loose
-of me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-She flirted her great arm and Uncle Fayette spun flutteringly into the
-mass behind. The sheriff barred her way at the gate of the bar.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mizz Haslett,” he implored, “please, Mizz Haslett—you must keep
-order in the cote.” Aunt Tilly halted in her onward move, head up high and
-elbows out, and through her specs, blazing like burning-glasses, she fixed
-on him a look that instantly charred that, unhappy official into a burning
-red ruin of his own self-importance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Keep it yourse'f, High Sheriff Washington Nash, Esquire,” she bade him;
-“that's whut you git paid good money for doin'. And git out of my way! I'm
-a-goin' in there to that pore little lonesome thing settin' there all by
-herself, and there ain't nobody goin' to hinder me neither!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The sheriff shrunk aside; perhaps it would be better to say he evaporated
-aside. And public opinion, reorganized and made over but still incarnate
-in Aunt Tilly Haslett, swept past the rail and settled like a billowing
-black cloud into a chair that the local attorney for the defense vacated
-just in time to save himself the inconvenience of having it snatched
-bodily from under him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There, honey,” said Aunt Tilly crooningly as she gathered the forlorn
-little figure of the prisoner's wife in her arms like a child and mothered
-her up to her ample bombazined bosom, “there now, honey, you jest cry on
-me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Then Aunt Tilly looked up and her specs were all blurry and wet. But she
-waved her palmleaf fan as though it had been the baton of a marshal.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, Jedge,” she said, addressing the bench, “and you other gentlemen—you
-kin go ahead now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The state's attorney had meant evidently to make some sort of an
-objection, for he was upon his feet through all this scene. But he looked
-back before he spoke and what he saw kept him from speaking. I believe I
-stated earlier that he was a candidate for rejection. So he settled back
-down in his chair and stretched out his legs and buried his chin in the
-top of his limp white waistcoat in an attitude that he had once seen in a
-picture entitled, “Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You may resume, Judge Priest,” said the trial judge in a voice that was
-not entirely free from huskiness, although its owner had been clearing it
-steadily for some moments.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thank you kindly, suh, but I was about through anyhow,” answered the
-witness with a bow, and for all his homeliness there was dignity and
-stateliness in it. “I merely wanted to say for the sake of completin' the
-record, so to speak, that on the occasion referred to them Yankees did not
-cross that bridge.” With the air of tendering and receiving
-congratulations Mr. Lukins turned to his nearest neighbor and shook hands
-with him warmly.
-</p>
-<p>
-The witness got up somewhat stiffly, once more becoming a commonplace old
-man in a wrinkled black alpaca coat, and made his way back to his vacant
-place, now in the shadow of Aunt Tilly Haslett's form. As he passed along
-the front of the jury-box the foreman's crippled right hand came up in a
-sort of a clumsy salute, and the juror at the other end of the rear row—No.
-12, the oldest juror—leaned forward as if to speak to him, but
-remembered in time where his present duty lay. The old judge kept on until
-he came to Durham's side, and he whispered to him: “Son, they've quit
-lookin' at him and they're all a-lookin' at her. Son, rest your case.”
- Durham came out of a maze.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Your Honor,” he said as he rose, “the defense rests.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The jury were out only six minutes. Mr. Lukins insisted that it was only
-five minutes and a half, and added that he'd be dad-rotted if it was a
-second longer than that.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the lately accused Tandy came out of the courthouse with his imported
-lawyer—Aunt Tilly bringing up the rear with his trembling, weeping,
-happy little wife—friendly hands were outstretched to clasp his and
-a whiskered old gentleman with a thumbnail like a Brazil nut grabbed at
-his arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Whichaway did Billy Priest go?” he demanded—“little old Fightin'
-Billy—whar did he go to? Soon as he started in talkin' I placed him.
-Whar is he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Walking side by side, Tandy and Durham came down the steps into the soft
-June night, and Tandy took a long, deep breath into his lungs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mr. Durham,” he said, “I owe a great deal to you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How's that?” said Durham.
-</p>
-<p>
-Just ahead of them, centered in a shaft of light from the window of the
-barroom of the Drummers' Home Hotel, stood Judge Priest. The old judge had
-been drinking. The pink of his face was a trifle more pronounced, the high
-whine in his voice a trifle weedier, as he counted one by one certain
-pieces of silver into the wide-open palm of a saddle-colored negro.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How's that?” said Durham. “I say I owe everything in the world to you,”
- repeated Tandy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” said Durham, “what you owe me is the fee you agreed to pay me for
-defending you. There's the man you're looking for.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And he pointed to the old judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-II. THE COUNTY TROT
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ATURDAY was the last day of the county fair and the day of the County
-Trot. It was also Veterans' Day, when the old soldiers were the guests of
-honor of the management, and likewise Ladies' Day, which meant that all
-white females of whatever age were admitted free. So naturally, in view of
-all these things, the biggest day of fair week was Saturday.
-</p>
-<p>
-The fair grounds lay in a hickory flat a mile out of town, and the tall
-scaly barks grew so close to the fence that they poked their limbs over
-its top and shed down nuts upon the track. The fence had been whitewashed
-once, back in the days of its youth when Hector was a pup; but Hec was an
-old dog now and the rains of years had washed the fence to a misty gray,
-so that in the dusk the long, warped panels stood up in rows, palely
-luminous—like the highshouldered ghosts of a fence. And the rust had
-run down from the eaten-out nail-holes until each plank had two staring
-marks in its face—like rheumy, bleared eyes. The ancient grandstand
-was of wood too, and had lain outdoors in all weathers until its rheumatic
-rafters groaned and creaked when the wind blew.
-</p>
-<p>
-Back of the grandstand stood Floral Hall and Agricultural Hall. Except for
-their names and their flagstaffs you might have taken them for two rather
-hastily built and long-neglected bams. Up the track to the north were the
-rows of stables that were empty, odorous little cubicles for fifty-one
-weeks of the year, but now—for this one week—alive with darky
-stable hands and horses; and all the good savors of woodfires, clean hay,
-and turned-up turf were commingled there.
-</p>
-<p>
-The fair had ideal weather for its windup. No frost had fallen yet, but in
-the air there were signs and portents of its coming. The long yellow
-leaves of the hickories had begun to curl up as if to hold the dying
-warmth of the sap to the last; and once in a while an ash flamed red like
-a signal fire to give warning for Indian summer, when all the woods would
-blaze in warpaints before huddling down for the winter under their tufted,
-ragged tawnies and browns—like buffalo robes on the shoulders of
-chilled warriors. The first flights of the wild geese were going over,
-their V's pointed to the Gulf; and that huckstering little bird of the
-dead treetops, which the negroes call the sweet-potato bird—maybe
-it's a pewee, with an acquired Southern accent—was calling his
-mythical wares at the front door of every woodpecker's hole. The woods
-were perfumy with ripening wild grapes and pawpaws, and from the orchards
-came rich winy smells where the windfalls lay in heaps and cider mills
-gushed under the trees; and on the roof of the smokehouse the pared,
-sliced fruit was drying out yellow and leathery in the sun and looking—a
-little way off—like countless ears all turned to listen for the same
-thing.
-</p>
-<p>
-Saturday, by sunup, the fair grounds were astir. Undershirted
-concessionaries and privilege people emerged from their canvas sleeping
-quarters to sniff at a the tantalizing smell that floated across to them
-from certain narrow trenches dug in the ground. That smell, just by
-itself, was one square meal and an incentive to another; for these
-trenches were full of live red hickory coals; and above them, on greenwood
-stakes that were stretched across, a shoat and a whole sheep, and a rosary
-of young squirrels impaled in a string, had been all night barbecuing.
-Uncle Isom Woolfolk was in charge here—mightily and solely in charge—Uncle
-Isom Woolfolk, no less, official purveyor to the whole county at fish
-fries or camp breakfasts, secretary of the Republican County Committee,
-high in his church and his lodges and the best barbecue cook in seven
-states. He bellowed frequent and contradictory orders to two negro women
-of his household who were arranging clean white clothes on board trestles;
-and constantly he went from shoat to sheep and from sheep to squirrels,
-basting them with a rag wrapped about a stick and dipped into a potent
-sauce of his own private making. Red pepper and sweet vinegar were two of
-its main constituents, though, and in turn he painted each carcass as
-daintily as an artist retouching the miniature of his lady fair, so that
-under his hand the crackling meatskins sizzled and smoked, and a yellowish
-glaze like a veneer spread over their surfaces. His white chin-beard
-waggled with importance and the artistic temperament.
-</p>
-<p>
-Before Uncle Isom had his barbecue off the fire the crowds were pouring
-in, coming from the town afoot, and in buggies and hacks, and from the
-country in farm wagons that held families, from grandsire to baby in arms,
-all riding in kitchen chairs, with bedquilt lap robes. At noon a thin
-trickle of martial music came down the pike; and pretty soon then the
-veterans, forty or fifty of them, marched in, two by two, some in their
-reunion gray and some in their best Sunday blacks. At the head of the
-limping line of old men was a fife-and-drum corps—two sons of
-veterans at the drums and Corporal Harrison Treese, sometime bugler of
-Terry's Cavalry, with his fife half buried in his whiskers, ripping the
-high notes out of The Girl I Left Behind Me. Near the tail of the
-procession was Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's Hellhounds. Back in
-war times that organization had borne a more official and a less
-sanguinary title; but you would never have guessed this, overhearing
-Sergeant Jimmy Bagby's conversation.
-</p>
-<p>
-The sergeant wore a little skirtless jacket, absurdly high-collared, faded
-to all colors and falling to pieces with age. Three tarnished buttons and
-a rag of rotted braid still dung to its front. Probably it had fitted the
-sergeant well in the days when he was a slim and limber young partisan
-ranger; but now the peaked little tail showed halfway up his back where
-his suspenders forked, and his white-shirted paunch jutted out in front
-like a big cotton pod bursting out of a gray-brown boll. The sergeant wore
-his jacket on all occasions of high military and civic state—that,
-and a gangrened leather cartridge-box bouncing up and down on his plump
-hip—and over his shoulder the musket he had carried to war and back
-home again, an ancient Springfield with a stock like a log butt and a
-hammer like a mule's ear, its barrel merely a streak of rust.
-</p>
-<p>
-He walked side by side with his closest personal friend and bitterest
-political foe, Major Ashcroft, late of the Ninth Michigan Volunteers—walking
-so close to him that the button of the Loyal Legion in the major's
-left-hand lapel almost touched the bronze Southern Cross pinned high up on
-the right breast of the sergeant's flaring jacket.
-</p>
-<p>
-From time to time the sergeant, addressing the comrades ahead of him,
-would poke the major in the side and call out:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Boys, I've took the first prisoner—this here pizen Yank is my
-meat!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And the imperturbable major would invariably retort:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, and along about dark the prisoner will have to be loading you into a
-hack and sending you home—the same as he always does.” Thereupon a
-cackling laugh would run up the double line from its foot to its head.
-</p>
-<p>
-The local band, up in its coop on the warped gray roof of the grandstand,
-blared out Dixie, and the crowd cheered louder than ever as the uneven
-column of old soldiers swung stiffly down the walkway fronting the
-grandstand and halted at the word—and then, at another word,
-disbanded and melted away into individuals and groups. Soon the veterans,
-with their womenfolks, were scattered all over the grounds, elbowing a way
-through the narrow aisles of Floral Hall to see the oil paintings and the
-prize cakes and preserves, and the different patterns of home-made rag
-quilts—Hen-and-Chickens and Lone Star and Log Cabin—or
-crowding about the showpens where young calves lowed vainly for parental
-attention and a Berkshire boar, so long of body and so vast of bulk that
-he only needed to shed his legs to be a captive balloon, was shoving his
-snout through a crack in his pen and begging for goodies. And in
-Agricultural Hall were water-melons like green boulders, and stalks of
-corn fourteen feet long, and saffron blades of prize-winning tobacco, and
-families of chickens unhappily domiciled in wooden coops. The bray of
-sideshow barkers, and the squeak of toy balloons, and the barnyard sounds
-from the tied-up, penned-up farm creatures, went up to the treetops in a
-medley that drove the birds scurrying over the fence and into the quieter
-woods. And in every handy spot under a tree basket dinners were spread,
-and family groups ate cold fried chicken and lemon meringue pie, picnic
-fashion, upon the grass.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the middle of this a cracked bugle sounded and there was a rush to the
-grandstand. Almost instantly its rattling gray boards clamored under the
-heels of a multitude. About the stall of the one lone bookmaker a small
-crowd, made up altogether of men, eddied and swirled. There were men in
-that group, strict church members, who would not touch a playing card or a
-fiddle—playthings of the devil by the word of their strict
-orthodoxy; who wouldn't let their children dance any dance except a square
-dance or go to any parties except play parties, and some of them had never
-seen the inside of a theater or a circus tent. But they came each year to
-the county fair; and if they bet on the horses it was their own private
-affair.
-</p>
-<p>
-So, at the blare of that leaky bugle, Floral Hall and the cattlepens were
-on the moment deserted and lonely. The Berkshire boar returned to his
-wallow, and a young Jersey bullock, with a warm red coat and a temper of
-the same shade, was left shaking his head and snorting angrily as he tried
-vainly to dislodge a blue ribbon that was knotted about one of his short,
-curving black horns. Had he been a second prizewinner instead of a first,
-that ribbon would have been a red ribbon and there is no telling what
-might have happened.
-</p>
-<p>
-The first race was a half-mile dash for running horses. There were four
-horses entered for it and three of the four jockeys wore regular jockey
-outfits, with loose blouses and top boots and long-peaked caps; but the
-fourth jockey was an imp-black stable boy, wearing a cotton shirt and the
-ruins of an old pair of pants. The brimless wreck of a straw hat was
-clamped down tight on his wool like a cup. He be-straddled a sweaty little
-red gelding named Flitterfoot, and Flitterfoot was the only local entry,
-and was an added starter, and a forlorn hope in the betting.
-</p>
-<p>
-While these four running horses were dancing a fretful schottische round
-at the half-mile post, and the starter, old man Thad Jacobson, was
-bellowing at the riders and slashing a black-snake whip round the shins of
-their impatient mounts, a slim black figure wormed a way under the arms
-and past the short ribs of a few belated betters yet lingering about the
-bookmaker's block. This intruder handled himself so deftly and so nimbly
-as not to jostle by one hair's breadth the dignity of any white gentleman
-there present, yet was steadily making progress all the while and in ample
-time getting down a certain sum of money on Flitterfoot to win at odds.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ain't that your nigger boy Jeff?” inquired Doctor Lake of Judge Priest,
-as the new comer, still boring deftly, emerged from the group and with a
-last muttered “Scuse me, boss—please, suh—scuse me!” darted
-away toward the head of the stretch, where others of his race were draping
-themselves over the top rail of the fence in black festoons.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, I suppose 'tis—probably,” said Judge Priest in that high
-singsong of his. “That black scoundrel of mine is liable to be everywhere—except
-when you want him, and then he's not anywhere. That must be Jeff, I
-reckin.” And the old judge chuckled indulgently in appreciation of Jeff's
-manifold talents.
-</p>
-<p>
-During the parade of the veterans that day Judge Priest, as commandant of
-the camp, had led the march just behind the fife and drums and just ahead
-of the color-bearer carrying the silken flag; and all the way out from
-town Jeff, his manservant, valet, and guardian, had marched a pace to his
-right. Jeff's own private and personal convictions—convictions which
-no white man would ever know by word of mouth from Jeff anyhow—
-</p>
-<p>
-were not with the late cause which those elderly men in gray represented.
-Jeff's political feelings, if any such he had, would be sure to lean away
-from them; but it was a chance to march with music—and Jeff had
-marched, his head up and his feet cutting scallops and double-shuffles in
-the dust.
-</p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest's Jeff was a small, jet-black person, swift in his gait and
-wise in his generation. He kept his wool cropped close and made the part
-in it with a razor. By some subtle art of his own he could fall heir to
-somebody else's old clothes and, wearing them, make than look newer and
-better than when they were new. Overcome by the specious wiles of Jeff
-some white gentleman of his acquaintance would bestow upon him a garment
-that seemed shabby to the point of open shame and a public scandal. Jeff
-would retire for a season with a pressing iron and a bottle of cleansing
-fluid, and presently that garment would come forth, having undergone a
-glorious resurrection. Seeing it, then, the former proprietor would repent
-his generosity and wonder what ever possessed him to part with apparel so
-splendid.
-</p>
-<p>
-For this special and gala occasion Jim wore a blue-serge coat that had
-been given to him in consideration of certain acts of office-tending by
-Attorney Clay Saunders. Attorney Clay Saunders weighed two hundred and
-fifty pounds If he weighed an ounce, and Jeff would never see one hundred
-and twenty-five; but the blue serge was draped upon Jeff's frame with just
-the fashionable looseness. The sleeves, though a trifle long, hung most
-beautifully. Jeff's trousers were of a light and pearly gray, and had been
-the property originally of Mr. Otter-buck, cashier at the bank, who was
-built long and rangy; whereas Jeff was distinctly short and ducklike. Yet
-these same trousers, pressed now until you could have peeled peaches with
-their creases and turned up at the bottoms to a rakish and sporty length,
-looked as if they might have been specially coopered to Jeff's legs by a
-skilled tailor.
-</p>
-<p>
-This was Judge Priest's Jeff, whose feet would fit anybody's shoes and
-whose head would fit anybody's hat. Having got his money safely down on
-Flitterfoot to win, Jeff was presently choking a post far up the
-homestretch. With a final crack of the starter's coiling blacksnake and a
-mounting scroll of dust, the runners were off on their half-mile dash.
-While the horses were still spattering through the dust on the far side of
-the course from him Jeff began encouraging his choice by speech.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come on, you little red hoss!” he said in a low, confidential tone. “I
-asks you lak a gen'leman to come on and win all that money fur me. Come
-on, you little red hoss—you ain't half runnin'! little red hoss”—his
-voice sank to a note of passionate pleading—“whut is detainin' you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Perhaps even that many years back, when it had just been discovered, there
-was something to this new theory of thought transference. As if Jeff's
-tense whispers were reaching to him across two hundred yards of track and
-open field Flitterfoot opened up a gap between his lathered flanks and the
-rest of them. The others, in a confused group, scrambled and hinged out
-with their hoofs; but Flitterfoot turned into a long red elastic rubber
-band, stretching himself out to twice his honest length and then snapping
-back again to half. High up on his shoulder the ragged black stable boy
-hung, with his knees under his chin and his shoulders hunched as though
-squaring off to do a little flying himself. Twenty long yards ahead of the
-nearest contender, Flitterfoot scooted over the line a winner. Once
-across, he expeditiously bucked the crouching small incumbrance off his
-withers and, with the bridle dangling, bounced riderless back to his
-stable; while above the roar from the grandstand rose the triumphant
-remark of Jeff: “Ain't he a regular runnin' and a-jumpin' fool!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The really important business of the day to most, however, centered about
-the harness events, which was only natural, this being an end of the state
-where they raised the standard breds as distinguished from the section
-whence came the thoroughbreds. A running race might do for an appetizer,
-like a toddy before dinner; but the big interest would focus in the
-two-twenty pace and the free-for-all consolation, and finally would
-culminate in the County Trot—open only to horses bred and owned in
-the county and carrying with it a purse of two thousand dollars—big
-money for that country—and a dented and tarnished silver trophy that
-was nearly fifty years old, and valued accordingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-After the half-mile dash and before the first heat of the two-twenty pace
-there was a balloon ascension and parachute drop. Judge Priest's Jeff was
-everywhere that things were happening. He did two men's part in holding
-the bulging bag down to earth until the spangled aeronaut yelled out for
-everybody to let go. When the man dropped, away over by the back fence,
-Jeff was first on the spot to brush him off and to inquire in a voice of
-respectful solicitude how he was feeling, now that he'd come down. Up in
-the grandstand, Mrs. Major Joe Sam Covington, who was stout and wore a
-cameo breastpin as big as a coffee saucer at her throat, expressed to
-nobody in particular a desire for a glass of cool water; and almost
-instantly, it seemed, Judge Priest's Jeff was at her side bowing low and
-ceremoniously with a brimming dipper in one hand and an itch for the
-coming tip in the other. When the veterans adjourned back behind Floral
-Hall for a watermelon cutting, Jeff, grinning and obsequious, arrived at
-exactly the properly timed moment to receive a whole butt-end of
-red-hearted, green-rinded lusciousness for his own. Taking the opportunity
-of a crowded minute about Uncle Isom Woolfolk's barbecued meat stand he
-bought extensively, and paid for what he bought with a lead half dollar
-that he had been saving for months against just such a golden chance—a
-half dollar so palpably leaden that Uncle Isom, discovering it half an
-hour later, was thrown into a state of intense rage, followed by a period
-of settled melancholy, coupled with general suspicion of all mankind. Most
-especially, though, Judge Priest's Jeff concerned himself with the running
-of the County Trot, being minded to turn his earlier winnings over and
-over again.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the outset Jeff, like most of the fair crowd, had favored Van
-Wallace's black mare, Minnie May, against the only other entry for the
-race, Jackson Berry's big roan trotting stallion, Blandville Boy. The
-judgment of the multitude stood up, too, for the first two heats of the
-County Trot, alternating in between heats of the two-twenty pace and the
-free-for-all, were won handily by the smooth-gaited mare. Blandville Boy
-was feeling his oats and his grooming, and he broke badly each time, for
-all the hobble harness of leather that was buckled over and under him.
-Nearly everybody was now betting on Minnie May to take the third and the
-decisive heat.
-</p>
-<p>
-Waiting for it, the crowd spread over the grounds, leaving wide patches of
-the grandstand empty. The sideshows and the medicine venders enjoyed heavy
-patronage, and once more the stalled ox and the fatted pig were surrounded
-by admiring groups. There was a thick jam about the crowning artistic gem
-of Floral Hall—a crazy quilt with eight thousand different pieces of
-silk in it, mainly of acutely jarring shades, so that the whole was a
-thing calculated to blind the eye and benumb the mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-The city marshal forcibly calmed down certain exhilarated young bucks from
-the country—they would be sure to fire off their pistols and yell
-into every dooryard as they tore home that night, careening in their dusty
-buggies; but now they were made to restrain themselves. Bananas and
-cocoanuts advanced steadily in price as the visible supply shrank. There
-is a type of Southern countryman who, coming to town for a circus day or a
-fair, first eats extensively of bananas—red bananas preferred; and
-then, when the raw edge of his hunger is abated, he buys a cocoanut and,
-after punching out one of its eyes and drinking the sweet milky whey,
-cracks the shell apart and gorges on the white meat. By now the grass was
-cumbered with many shattered cocoanut shells, like broken shards; and
-banana peels, both red and yellow, lay wilted and limp everywhere in the
-litter underfoot.
-</p>
-<p>
-The steam Flyin' Jinny—it would be a carousel farther North—ground
-unendingly, loaded to its gunwales with family groups. Crap games started
-in remote spots and fights broke out. In a far shadow of the fence behind
-the stables one darky with brass knuckles felled another, then broke and
-ran. He scuttled over the fence like a fox squirrel, with a bullet from a
-constable's big blue-barreled revolver spatting into the paling six indies
-below him as he scaled the top and lit flying on the other side. Sergeant
-Jimmy Bagby, dragging his Springfield by the barrel, began a long story
-touching on what he once heard General Buckner say to General
-Breckinridge, went to sleep in the middle of it, enjoyed a refreshing nap
-of twenty minutes, woke up with a start and resumed the anecdote at the
-exact point where he left off—“An' 'en General Breckinridge he says
-to General Buckner, he says, 'General—'”
- </p>
-<p>
-But Judge Priest's Jeff disentangled himself from the center of things,
-and took a quiet walk up toward the stables to see what might be seen and
-to hear what might be heard, as befitting one who was speculating heavily
-and needed all available information to guide him. What he saw was Van
-Wallace, owner of the mare, and Jackson Berry, owner of the studhorse,
-slipping furtively into an empty feed-shed. As they vanished within Van
-Wallace looked about him cautiously, but Jeff had already dived to shelter
-alongside the shed and was squatting on a pile of stable scrapings, where
-a swarm of flies flickered above an empty pint flask and watermelon rinds
-were curling up and drying in the sun like old shoesoles. Jeff had seen
-something. Now he applied his ear to a crack between the planks of the
-feedshed and heard something.
-</p>
-<p>
-For two minutes the supposed rivals confabbed busily in the shelter of a
-broken hay-'rack. Then, suddenly taking alarm without cause, they both
-poked their heads out at the door and looked about them searchingly—right
-and left. There wasn't time for Jeff to get away. He only had a second's
-or two seconds' warning; but all the conspirators saw as they issued forth
-from the scene of their intrigue was a small darky in clothes much too
-large for him lying alongside the shed in a sprawled huddle, with one
-loose sleeve over his face and one black forefinger shoved like a snake's
-head down the neck of a flat pocket-flask. Above this figure the flies
-were buzzing in a greedy cloud.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Just some nigger full of gin that fell down there to sleep it off,” said
-Van Wallace. And he would have gone on; but Berry, who was a tall
-red-faced, horsy man—a blusterer on the surface and a born coward
-inside—booted the sleeper in the ribs with his toe.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here, boy!” he commanded. “Wake up here!” And he nudged him again hard.
-</p>
-<p>
-The negro only flinched from the kicks, then rolled farther over on his
-side and mumbled through a snore.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Couldn't hear it thunder,” said Berry reassured. “Well, let's get away
-from here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You bet!” said Van Wallace fervently. “No use takin' chances by bein'
-caught talkin' together. Anyhow, they'll be ringing the startin' bell in a
-minute or two.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Don't forget, now!” counseled Berry as Wallace started off, making by a
-roundabout and devious way for his own stable, where Minnie May, hitched
-to her sulky and with her legs bandaged, was being walked back and forth
-by a stable boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't you worry; I won't!” said Wallace; and Berry grinned joyously and
-vanished in the opposite direction, behind the handy feedshed.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the instant that both of them disappeared Judge Priest's Jeff rose to
-his feet, magically changing from a drunken darky to an alert and flying
-black Mercury. His feet hardly hit the high places as he streaked it for
-the grandstand—looking for Judge Priest as hard as he could look.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nearly there he ran into Captain Buck Owings. Captain Buck Owings was a
-quiet, grayish man, who from time to time in the course of a busy life as
-a steamboat pilot and master had had occasion to shoot at or into divers
-persons. Captain Buck Owings had a magnificent capacity for attending
-strictly to his own business and not allowing anybody else to attend to
-it. He was commonly classified as dangerous when irritated—and
-tolerably easy to irritate.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Cap'n Buck! Cap'n Buck!” sputtered
-</p>
-<p>
-Jeff, so excited that he stuttered. “P-please, suh, is you seen my boss—Jedge
-Priest? I suttinly must see him right away. This here next heat is goin'
-to be thro wed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was rarely that Captain Buck Owings raised his voice above a low,
-deliberate drawl. He raised it a trifle now.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's that, boy?” he demanded. “Who's goin' to throw this race?”
- </p>
-<p>
-He caught up with Jeff and hurried along by him, Jeff explaining what he
-knew in half a dozen panted sentences. As Captain Buck Owings' mind took
-in the situation, Captain Buck Owings' gray eyes began to flicker a
-little.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nowhere in sight was there any one who looked like the judge. Indeed,
-there were few persons at all to be seen on the scarred green turf across
-which they sped and those few were hurrying to join the crowds that packed
-thick upon the seats of the grandstand, and thicker along the infield
-fence and the homestretch. Somewhere beyond, the stable bell jangled. The
-little betting ring was empty almost and the lone bookmaker was turning
-his blackboard down.
-</p>
-<p>
-His customary luck served Jeff in this crisis, however. From beneath a
-cuddy under the grandstand that bore a blue board lettered with the word
-“Refreshments” appeared the large, slow-moving form of the old judge. He
-was wiping his mouth with an enormous handkerchief as he headed
-deliberately for the infield fence. His venerable and benevolent pink face
-shone afar and Jeff literally flung himself at him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, Jedge!” he yelled. “Oh, Jedge; please, suh, wait jes' a minute!”
- </p>
-<p>
-In some respects Judge Priest might be said to resemble Kipling's East
-Indian elephant. He was large as to bulk and conservative as to his bodily
-movements; he never seemed to hurry, and yet when he set out to arrive at
-a given place in a given time he would be there in due season. He faced
-about and propelled himself toward the queerly matched pair approaching
-him with such haste.
-</p>
-<p>
-As they met, Captain Buck Owings began to speak and his voice was back
-again at its level monotone, except that it had a little steaming sound in
-it, as though Captain Buck Owings were beginning to seethe and simmer
-gently somewhere down inside of himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Judge Priest, suh,” said Captain Buck, “it looks like there'd be some
-tall swindlin' done round here soon unless we can stop it. This boy of
-yours heard something. Jeff tell the judge what you heard just now.” And
-Jeff told, the words bubbling out of him in a stream:
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's done all fixed up betwixt them w'ite gen'lemen. That there Mr.
-Jackson Berry he's been tormentin' the stallion ontwell he break and lose
-the fust two heats. Now, w'en the money is all on the mare, they goin' to
-turn round and do it the other way. Over on the backstretch that Mr. Van
-Wallace he's goin' to spite and tease Minnie May ontwell she go all to
-pieces, so the stallion'll be jest natchelly bound to win; an' 'en they'll
-split up the money amongst 'em!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah!” said Judge Priest; “the infernal scoundrels!” Even in this
-emergency his manner of speaking was almost deliberate; but he glanced
-toward the bookmaker's block and made as if to go toward it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That there Yankee bookmaker gen'leman he's into it too,” added Jeff. “I
-p'intedly heared 'em both mention his name.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I might speak a few words in a kind of a warnin' way to those two,”
- purred Captain Buck Owings. “I've got a right smart money adventured on
-this trottin' race myself.” And he turned toward the track.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Too late for that either, son,” said the old judge, pointing. “Look
-yonder!”
- </p>
-<p>
-A joyful rumble was beginning to thunder from the grandstand. The
-constables had cleared the track, and from up beyond came the glint of the
-flashing sulky-spokes as the two conspirators wheeled about to score down
-and be off.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then I think maybe I'll have to attend to 'em personally after the race,”
- said Captain Buck Owings in a resigned tone.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” counseled Judge Priest, “I'd hate mightily to see you brought up
-for trial before me for shootin' a rascal—especially after the
-mischief was done. I'd hate that mightily—I would so.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But, Judge,” protested Captain Buck Owings, “I may have to do it! It
-oughter be done. Nearly everybody here has bet on Minnie May. It's plain
-robbin' and stealin'!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's so,” assented the judge as Jeff danced a dog of excitement just
-behind him—“that's so. It's bad enough for those two to be robbin'
-their own fellow-citizens; but it's mainly the shame on our county fair
-I'm thinkin' of.” The old judge had been a director and a stockholder of
-the County Jockey Club for twenty years or more. Until now its record had
-been clean. “Tryin' to declare the result off afterward wouldn't do much
-good. It would be the word of three white men against a nigger—and
-nobody would believe the nigger,” added Captain Buck Owings, finishing the
-sentence for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And the scandal would remain jest the same,” bemoaned the old judge.
-“Buck, my son, unless we could do something before the race it looks like
-it's hopeless. Ah!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The roar from the grandstand above their heads deepened, then broke up
-into babblings and exclamations. The two trotters had swung past the mark,
-but Minnie May had slipped a length ahead at the tape and the judges had
-sent them back again. There would be a minute or two more of grace anyhow.
-The eyes of all three followed the nodding heads of the horses back up the
-stretch. Then Judge Priest, still watching, reached out for Jeff and
-dragged him round in front of him, dangling in his grip like a hooked
-black eel.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jeff, don't I see a gate up yonder in the track fence right at the first
-turn?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” said Jeff eagerly. “'Tain't locked neither. I come through it
-myse'f today. It opens on to a little road whut leads out past the stables
-to the big pike. I kin—”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old judge dropped his wriggling servitor and had Captain Buck Owings
-by the shoulder with one hand and was pointing with the other up the
-track, and was speaking, explaining something or other in a voice
-unusually brisk for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“See yonder, son!” he was saying. “The big oak on the inside—and the
-gate is jest across from it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Comprehension lit up the steamboat captain's face, but the light went out
-as he slapped his hand back to his hip pocket—and slapped it flat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I knew I'd forgot something!” he lamented, despairingly. “Needin' one
-worse than I ever did in my whole life—and then I leave mine home in
-my other pants!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He shot the judge a look. The judge shook his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” he said, “the circuit judge of the first judicial district of
-Kintucky don't tote such things.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Captain Buck Owings raised a clenched fist to the blue sky above and swore
-impotently. For the third time the grandstand crowd was starting its roar.
-Judge Priest's head began to waggle with little sidewise motions.
-</p>
-<p>
-Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, late of King's Hell hounds, rambled with weaving
-indirectness round the corner of the grandstand not twenty feet from them.
-His gangrened cartridge-box was trying to climb up over his left shoulder
-from behind, his eyes were heavy with a warm and comforting drowsiness,
-and his Springfield's iron butt-plate was scurfing up the dust a yard
-behind him as he hauled the musket along by the muzzle.
-</p>
-<p>
-The judge saw him first; but, even as he spoke and pointed, Captain Buck
-Owings caught the meaning and jumped. There was a swirl of arms and legs
-as they struck, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, sorely shocked, staggered back
-against the wall with a loud grunt of surprise and indignation.
-</p>
-<p>
-Half a second later, side by side, Captain Buck Owings and Judge Priest's
-Jeff sped northward across the earth, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby staggered
-toward the only comforter near at hand, with his two empty arms upraised.
-Filled with a great and sudden sense of loss he fell upon Judge Priest's
-neck, almost bearing his commander down by the weight of his grief.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Carried her four years!” he exclaimed piteously; “four endurin' years,
-Judge, and not a single dam' Yankee ever laid his hand on her! Carried her
-ever since, and nobody ever dared to touch her! And now to lose her this
-away!”
- </p>
-<p>
-His voice, which had risen to a bleat, sank to a sob and he wept
-unrestrainedly on the old judge's shoulder. It looked as though these two
-old men were wrestling together, catch-as-catch-can.
-</p>
-<p>
-The judge tried to shake his distressed friend off, but the sergeant clung
-fast. Over the bent shoulders of the other the judge saw the wheels flash
-by, going south, horses and drivers evened up. The “Go!” of the starting
-judge was instantly caught up by five hundred spectators and swallowed in
-a crackling yell. Oblivious of all these things the sergeant raised his
-sorrowing head and a melancholy satisfaction shone through his tears.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I lost her,” he said; “but, by gum, Judge, it took all four of 'em to git
-her away from me, didn't it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-None, perhaps, in all that crowd except old Judge Priest saw the two
-fleeting figures speeding north. All other eyes there were turned to the
-south, where the county's rival trotters swung round the first turn,
-traveling together like teammates. None marked Captain Buck Owings as,
-strangely cumbered, he scuttled across the track from the outer side to
-the inner and dived like a rabbit under the fence at the head of the
-homestretch, where a big oak tree with a three-foot bole cast its
-lengthening shadows across the course. None marked Judge Priest's Jeff
-coiling down like a black-snake behind an unlatched wooden gate almost
-opposite where the tree stood.
-</p>
-<p>
-None marked these things, because at this moment something direful
-happened. Minnie May, the favorite, was breaking badly on the back length.
-Almost up on her hindlegs she lunged out ahead of her with her forefeet,
-like a boxer. That far away it looked to the grandstand crowds as though
-Van Wallace had lost his head entirely. One instant he was savagely
-lashing the mare along the flanks, the next he was pulling her until he
-was stretched out flat on his back, with his head back between the painted
-sulky wheels. And Blandville Boy, steady as a clock, was drawing ahead and
-making a long gap between them.
-</p>
-<p>
-Blandville Boy came on grandly—far ahead at the half; still farther
-ahead nearing the three-quarters. All need for breaking her gait being now
-over, crafty Van Wallace had steadied the mare and again she trotted
-perfectly—trotted fast too; but the mischief was done and she was
-hopelessly out of it, being sure to be beaten and lucky if she saved being
-distanced.
-</p>
-<p>
-The whole thing had worked beautifully, without a hitch. This thought was
-singing high in Jackson Berry's mind as he steered the stud-horse past the
-three-quarter post and saw just beyond the last turn the straightaway of
-the homestretch, opening up empty and white ahead of him. And then,
-seventy-five yards away, he beheld a most horrifying apparition!
-</p>
-<p>
-Against a big oak at the inner-track fence, sheltered from the view of all
-behind, but in full sight of the turn, stood Captain Buck Owings, drawing
-down on him with a huge and hideous firearm. How was Jackson Berry, thus
-rudely jarred from pleasing prospects, to know that Sergeant Jimmy Bagby's
-old Springfield musket hadn't been fired since Appomattox—that its
-lode was a solid mass of corroded metal, its stock worm-eaten walnut and
-its barrel choked up thick with forty years of rust! All Jackson Berry
-knew was that the fearsome muzzle of an awful weapon was following him as
-he moved down toward it and that behind the tall mule's ear of a hammer
-and the brass guard of the trigger he saw the cold, forbidding gray of
-Captain Buck Owings' face and the colder, more forbidding, even grayer eye
-of Captain Buck Owings—a man known to be dangerous when irritated—and
-tolerably easy to irritate!
-</p>
-<p>
-Before that menacing aim and posture Jackson Berry's flesh turned to wine
-jelly and quivered on his bones. His eyes bulged out on his cheeks and his
-cheeks went white to match his eyes. Had it not been for the stallion's
-stern between them, his knees would have knocked together. Involuntarily
-he drew back on the reins, hauling in desperately until Blandville Boy's
-jaws were pulled apart like the red painted mouth of a hobby-horse and his
-forelegs sawed the air. The horse was fighting to keep on to the nearing
-finish, but the man could feel the slugs of lead in his flinching body.
-</p>
-<p>
-And then—and then—fifty scant feet ahead of him and a scanter
-twenty above where the armed madman stood—a wide gate flew open;
-and, as this gap of salvation broke into the line of the encompassing
-fence, the welcome clarion of Judge Priest's Jeff rose in a shriek: “This
-way out, boss—this way out!”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was a time for quick thinking; and to persons as totally, wholly scared
-as Jackson Berry was, thinking comes wondrous easy. One despairing
-half-glance he threw upon the goal just ahead of him and the other half on
-that unwavering rifle-muzzle, now looming so dose that he could catch the
-glint of its sights. Throwing himself far back in his reeling sulky
-Jackson Berry gave a desperate yank on the lines that lifted the sorely
-pestered stallion clear out of his stride, then sawed on the right-hand
-rein until he swung the horse's head through the opening, grazing one
-wheel against a gatepost—and was gone past the whooping Jeff,
-lickety-split, down the dirt road, through the dust and out on the big
-road toward town.
-</p>
-<p>
-Jeff slammed the gate shut and vanished instantly. Captain Buck Owings
-dropped his weapon into the long, rank grass and slid round the treetrunk.
-And half a minute later Van Wallace, all discomfited and puzzled, with all
-his fine hopes dished and dashed, sorely against his own will jogged
-Minnie May a winner past a grandstand that recovered from its dumb
-astonishment in ample time to rise and yell its approval of the result.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest being a childless widower of many years' standing, his
-household was administered for him by Jeff as general manager, and by Aunt
-Dilsey Turner as kitchen goddess. Between them the old judge fared well
-and they fared better. Aunt Dilsey was a master hand at a cookstove; but
-she went home at night, no matter what the state of the weather, wearing
-one of those long, wide capes—dolmans, I think they used to call
-them—that hung dear down to the knees, hiding the wearer's hands and
-whatsoever the hands might be carrying.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a fad of Aunt Dilsey's to bring one covered splint basket and one
-close-mouthed tin bucket with her when she came to work in the morning,
-and to take both of them away with her—under her dolman cape—at
-night; and in her cabin on Plunkett's Hill she had a large family of her
-own and two paying boarders, all of whom had the appearance of being well
-nourished. If you, reader, are Southern-born, these seemingly trivial
-details may convey a meaning to your understanding.
-</p>
-<p>
-So Aunt Dilsey Turner looked after the judge's wants from the big old
-kitchen that was detached from the rest of the rambling white house, and
-Jeff had the run of his sideboard, his tobacco caddy, and his wardrobe.
-The judge was kept comfortable and they were kept happy, each respecting
-the other's property rights.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was nine o'clock in the evening of the last day of the county fair. The
-judge, mellowly comfortable in his shirtsleeves, reclined in a big easy
-rocking-chair in his sitting room. There was a small fire of hickory wood
-in the fireplace and the little flames bickered together and the embers
-popped as they charred a dimmer red. The old judge was smoking his
-homemade corncob pipe with the long cane stem, and sending smoke wreaths
-aloft to shred away like cobweb skeins against the dingy ceiling.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jeff!” he called to a black shadow fidgeting about in the background.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh, Jedge; right yere!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jeff, if your discernin' taste in handmade sour-mash whisky has permitted
-any of that last batch of liquor I bought to remain in the demijohn, I
-wish you'd mix me up a little toddy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Jeff snickered and mixed the toddy, mixing it more hurriedly then common,
-because he was anxious to be gone. It was Saturday night—a night
-dedicated by long usage to his people; and in Jeff's pocket was more ready
-money than his pocket had ever held before at any one time. Moreover, in
-the interval between dusk and dark, Jeff's wardrobe had been most grandly
-garnished. Above Mr. Clay Saunders' former blue serge coat a crimson
-necktie burned like a beacon, and below the creased legs of Mr.
-Otterbuck's late pearl-gray trousers now appeared a pair of new
-patent-leather shoes with pointed toes turned up at the ends like
-sleigh-runners and cloth uppers in the effective colors of the Douglas
-plaid and rows of 24-point white pearl buttons.
-</p>
-<p>
-Assuredly Jeff was anxious to be on his way. He placed the filled toddy
-glass at the old judge's elbow and sought unostentatiously to withdraw
-himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jeff!” said the judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I believe Mr. Jackson Berry did not see fit to return to the fair grounds
-this evenin' and protest the result of the third heat?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, suh,” said Jeff; “frum whut I heared some of the w'ite folks sayin',
-he driv right straight home and went to bed and had a sort of a chill.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah!” said the judge, sipping reflectively. Jeff fidgeted and drew
-nearer a halfopen window, listening out into the maple-lined street. Two
-blocks down the street he could hear the colored brass band playing in
-front of the Colored Odd Fellows Hall for a “festibul.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jeff,” said Judge Priest musingly, “violence or a show of violence is
-always to be deplored.” Jeff had only a hazy idea of what the old judge
-meant by that, but in all his professional life Jeff had never
-intentionally disagreed in conversation with any white adult—let
-alone a generous employer. So:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” assented Jeff promptly; “it suttinly is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But there are times and places,” went on the old judge, “when it is
-necessary.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” said Jeff, catching the drift—“lak at a racetrack!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah! Quite so,” said Judge Priest, nodding. “And, Jeff, did it ever
-occur to you that there are better ways of killin' a cat than by chokin'
-him with butter?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Indeed yas, suh,” said Jeff. “Sometimes you kin do it best with one of
-these yere ole rusty Confedrit guns!”
- </p>
-<p>
-At that precise moment, in a little house on the next street, Sergeant
-Jimmy Bagby's family, having prevailed upon him to remove his shoes and
-his cartridge-belt before retiring, were severally engaged in an attempt
-to dissuade him from a firmly expressed purpose of taking his Springfield
-musket to bed with him.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-III. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS REWARD
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>E had a feud once down in our country, not one of those sanguinary feuds
-of the mountains involving a whole district and forcing constant
-enlargements of hillside burying grounds, nor yet a feud handed down as a
-deadly legacy from one generation to another until its origin is forgotten
-and its legatees only know how they hate without knowing why, but a
-shabby, small neighborhood vendetta affecting but two families only, and
-those in a far corner of the county—the Flemings and the Faxons.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nevertheless, this feud, such as it was, persisted in a sluggish
-intermittent kind of a way for twenty years or so. It started in a dispute
-over a line boundary away back in War Times when a Faxon shot a Fleming
-and was in turn shot by another Fleming; and it lasted until the Faxons
-tired of fence-corner, briar-patch warfare and moved down into Tennessee,
-all but one branch of them, who came into town and settled there, leaving
-the Flemings dominant in the Gum Spring precinct. So the feud ceased to be
-an institution after that and became a memory, living only in certain
-smouldering animosities which manifested themselves at local elections and
-the like, until it flared up momentarily in the taking-off of old Ranee
-Fleming at the hands of young Jim Faxon; and then it died, and died for
-good.
-</p>
-<p>
-It is the manner of the taking-off of this one of the Flemings that makes
-material for the story I am telling here. By all accounts it would appear
-that the Faxons had been rather a weak-spined race who fought mostly on
-the defensive and were lacking in that malignant persistency that made old
-Ranee Fleming's name one to scare bad children with in the unsettled days
-following the Surrender. I remember how we boys used to watch him,
-half-fearsomely and half-admiringly, when he came to town on a Court
-Monday or on a Saturday and swaggered about, unkempt and mud-crusted and
-frequently half drunk. Late in the afternoon he would mount unsteadily to
-the tilted seat of his spring wagon and go back home to the Gum Spring
-country lashing at his team until they danced with terror and splitting
-the big road wide open through the middle. And that night at the places
-where the older men congregated there would be tales to tell of those
-troubled mid-sixties when old Ranee had worn the turn-coat of a guerilla,
-preying first on one side and then on the other.
-</p>
-<p>
-Now young Jim Faxon, last male survivor of his clan, and direct in the
-line of the original fighting Faxons, was a different sort of person
-altogether, a quiet, undersized, decent-spoken young chap who minded well
-his own business, which was keeping a truck stand on the Market. He lived
-with his aunt, old Miss Puss Whitley—certain women were still called
-Miss in our town even though they had been married for twenty years and
-widowed for as many more, as was the case in this instance—and he
-was her main support and stand-by. It was common rumor that when young Jim
-came of age and had a little money laid by on his own account, he meant to
-marry the little Hardin girl—Emmy Hardin—and this was a
-romance that nearly everybody in town knew about and favored most
-heartily. She was his distant cousin and an orphan, and she lived with
-Miss Puss too. Sometimes in good weather she would come in with him and
-help out at the truck stand. She was a little quail-like creature, quick
-in her movements and shy as a bunny, with pretty irregular features and a
-skin so clear and white that when she blushed, which was a hundred times a
-day, the color would drench her face to the temples and make her prettier
-than ever. All of Jim's regular customers approved his choice of a
-sweetheart and wished him mighty well. He was regarded as about the pick
-of the thinned-out Faxon breed.
-</p>
-<p>
-For the years that young Jim was growing up, his tribal enemy left him
-alone. Perhaps old Ranee regarded the lank sapling of a boy as being not
-worth even the attention of an insult. Probably in crowds they had rubbed
-elbows a dozen times with no engendering of friction. But when young Jim
-had passed his twentieth birthday and was almost a man grown, then all
-without warning Ranee Fleming set to work, with malice aforethought, to
-pick a quarrel with him. It was as deliberate and as brutal as anything
-could be. Of a sudden, it seemed, the torrents of long-submerged hate came
-spuming up from some deep back eddy in his muddied, fuddled old mind,
-making an evil whirlpool of passion.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was on a Saturday afternoon in November that old Ranee came, boiling
-with his venom, to spew it out on the son of his dead and gone enemy. It
-happened on the market, and if old Ranee aimed to add brim measure to the
-humiliation of the boy, not in a year of choosing could he have picked
-fitter time and place. The green grocer wasn't known then; everybody went
-to market in person on week day mornings and particularly everybody went
-of a Saturday afternoon. In the market square, town aristocrat and town
-commoner met on the same footing, a market basket over every arm, with
-this distinction only:—that ordinary folk toted their loaded baskets
-back home and the well-to-do paid to have theirs sent. There were at least
-twenty darkies who picked up a living by packing market baskets home. They
-all had their regular patrons and regarded them with jealous, proprietary
-eyes. You took a customer away from a basket darky and you had him to
-fight.
-</p>
-<p>
-There is a new market house now on the site of the old one, a pretentious
-affair of brick with concrete floors and screened window openings and
-provision for steam heat in the winter; but then, and for many years
-before that, the market was a decrepit shed-like thing, closed in the
-middle and open at the ends, with a shingled roof that sagged in on itself
-and had hollows in it like the sunken jaws of a toothless old hag; and
-there were cracks in the side walls that you could throw a dog through,
-almost. In the middle, under half-way shelter, were the stalls of the
-butchers, which were handed down from father to son so that one stall
-would remain in a family for generations; and here one bought the beef
-steaks of the period—long bib-shaped segments of pale red meat, cut
-miraculously long and marvelously thin, almost like apron patterns. This
-thinness facilitated the beating process—the cooks would pound them
-with tools devised for that purpose—and then they were fried through
-and through and drenched with a thick flour gravy. Such was the accustomed
-way of treating a beef steak. Persons with good teeth could eat them so,
-and for the others the brown flour gravy provided a sustenance. But the
-spring chickens were marvels for plumpness and freshness and cheapness;
-and in the early spring the smoked hog jowls hung in rows, fairly begging
-people to carry them off and boil them with salad greens; and in the fall
-when the hog killing season was at hand, the country sausage and the
-chines and backbones and spare ribs made racks of richness upon the worn
-marble slabs.
-</p>
-<p>
-Up at the far end of the square beyond the shed eaves stood the public
-scales, and around it hay growers and cord wood choppers and Old Man
-Brimm, the official charcoal burner of the county, waited for trade
-alongside their highpiled wagons. Next to them was the appointed place of
-the fish hucksters, which was an odorous place, where channel cats and
-river perch and lake crappies were piled on the benches, some still alive
-and feebly flapping. The darkies were sure to be thickest here. There was
-an unsung but none the less authentic affinity existing between a
-fresh-caught catfish and an old negro man.
-</p>
-<p>
-Down at the other end was the domain of the gardeners and the truck patch
-people—an unwritten law as old as the market itself ordained these
-apportionments of space—and here you might find in their seasons all
-manner of edibles, wild and tame. The country boys and girls ranged the
-woods and the fields for sellable things, to go along with the product of
-orchard and garden and berry patch. In the spring, when herb teas and
-home-brewed tonics were needed for the thinning of the blood, there would
-be yellow-red sassafras root tied up in fragrant, pungent bunches, all
-ready for steeping; and strings of fresh-shot robins for pot-pies were
-displayed side by side with clumps of turnip-greens and mustard greens.
-And in summer there would be all manner of wild berries and heaps of the
-sickish-smelling May apples; and later, after the first light frost, ripe
-pawpaws and baskets of wild fox grapes, like blue shoe buttons; and then
-later on, scaly-bark hickory nuts and fresh-brewed persimmon beer in kegs,
-and piggins and crocks of the real lye hominy, with the big blue grains of
-the corn all asmoke like slaking lime, and birds—which meant quail
-always—and rabbits, stretched out stark and stiff, and the native
-red-skinned yams, and often possums, alive and “suiting” in small wooden
-cages, or else dead and dressed, with the dark kidney-fat coating their
-immodestly exposed interiors.
-</p>
-<p>
-As I was saying, it was on a Saturday in November and getting along toward
-Thanksgiving when old Ranee Fleming came to the market to shame young Jim
-Faxon before the crowd. And when he came, you could tell by his look and
-by the way he shouldered through the press of people between the double
-rows of stands that all the soured animosities of his nature had swelled
-to bursting under the yeasty ferment of an unstable, hair-triggered
-temper.
-</p>
-<p>
-The liquor he had drunk might have had something to do with it too. He
-came up with a barely perceptible lurch in his gait and stopped at the
-Faxon stall, which was the third from the lower end of the shed. With his
-head down between his shoulders and his legs spraddled he began staring
-into the face of young Jim.
-</p>
-<p>
-Deadly offense can be carried just as well in a look as in the spoken
-word, if you only know how to do it—and Ranee Fleming knew.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was outright obscenity in his glower.
-</p>
-<p>
-Instantly it seemed, everybody in that whole end of the market square
-sensed what was impending. Sellers and buyers ceased trafficking and faced
-all the same way. Those in the rear were standing on tiptoe the better to
-see over the heads of those nearer to these two blood enemies. Some
-climbed upon the wheel hubs of the wagons that were backed up in rows
-alongside the open shed and balanced themselves there. The silence grew
-electric and tingled with the feeling of a coming clash.
-</p>
-<p>
-Young Jim wanted no trouble, that was plain enough to be seen. The first
-darting realization that his tribal foe had forced a meeting on him seemed
-to leave him dazed, and at a loss for the proper course to follow. He bent
-his face away from the blasphemous insistent—glare of the old man
-and made a poor pretense at straightening up his wares upon the bench in
-front of him; but his hands trembled so he overturned a little wooden
-measure that held a nickel's worth of dried lady-peas. The little round
-peas rolled along a sunken place in the wood and began spattering off in a
-steady stream, like buck-shot spilling from a canister. A dark red flush
-came up the back of the boy's neck. He was only twenty, anyhow, and those
-who looked on were sorry for him and for his youth and helplessness and
-glad that little Emmy Hardin, his sweetheart, wasn't there.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a long half minute that old Ranee, without speaking, stood there,
-soaking his soul in the sight of a Faxon's discomfiture, and when he spoke
-he grated the words as though he had grit in his mouth.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Looky here you,” he ordered, and the boy, as though forced to obey by a
-will stronger than his own, lifted his head and looked at him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister Fleming,” he answered, “what—what is it you want with me—Mister
-Fleming?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Mister Fleming—Mister Fleming,” mimicked the older man, catching at
-his words, “Mister Fleming, huh? Well, you know mighty good and well, I
-reckin, whut it is I want with you. I want to see if you're as
-white-livered as the rest of your low-flung, hound-dawg, chicken-hearted
-breed used to be. And I reckin you are.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister Fleming, huh? Well, from now on that's whut it better be and don't
-you fail to call me by them entitlements either. The next time I come by I
-reckin you better take off your hat to me too. Do you hear me, plain, whut
-I'm a-sayin'? You—”
- </p>
-<p>
-He called him the unforgivable, unatonable name—the fighting word,
-than which, by the standards of that community and those people, no blow
-with a clenched fist could be in one twentieth part so grievous an injury;
-yes, it was worse than a hundred blows of a fist. So at that, the
-onlookers gave back a little, making way for the expected rush and
-grapple. But there was no forward rush by the younger man, no grapple with
-the older.
-</p>
-<p>
-Young Jim Faxon took it—he just stood and took it without a word or
-a step. Old Ranee looked at him and laughed out his contempt in a derisive
-chuckle and then he turned and slouched off, without looking back, as
-though he disdained to watch for a rear attack from so puny and spineless
-an enemy. It all started and happened and was over with in a minute or
-less. The last of the spilt lady peas were still spattering down upon the
-rough bricks of the market and running away and hiding themselves in
-cracks. Young Jim, his head on his breast and his shamed eyes looking down
-at nothing, was fumbling again with his wares and Ranee Fleming's hunching
-shoulders were vanishing at the end of the shed.
-</p>
-<p>
-People talked about it that night and for days after. It was not a thing
-to forget—a man near grown who lacked the sand to resent that
-insult. A fist fight might have been forgotten, even a fist fight between
-these two heritors of a feud instinct, but not this. Some of the younger
-fellows didn't see, they said, how Jim Faxon could hold his head up again
-and look people in the eye. And Jim didn't hold his head up—not as
-high as he had held it before this happened. Broody-eyed and glum and
-tight-lipped, he tended Miss Puss Whitley's truck patch and brought his
-products to market every morning. He had always been quiet and sparing of
-speech; now he was quiet to the point almost of dumbness.
-</p>
-<p>
-A month and more went by, and old Ranee didn't ride in from Gum Spring,
-and then the Christmas came. Christmas Day fell on a Monday so that the
-Christmas itself properly started on the Saturday before. It was a warm
-and a green Christmas as most of them are in that climate, mild enough at
-midday for folks to sit on their front porches and just cold enough at
-night to beard the grass with a silver-gray frost rime. Languid looking
-house flies crawled out in the afternoons and cleaned their gummy wings
-while they sunned themselves on the southern sides of stables. The
-Christmas feeling was in the air. At the wharfboat lay the Clyde, deep
-laden for her annual jug-trip, with thousands of bottles and jugs and
-demi-johns consigned to the dry towns up the river. There was a big
-sidewalk trade going on in fire crackers and rockets, the Christinas and
-not the Fourth being the time for squibbing of crackers in the South, the
-market, though, was the busiest place of all. It fairly milled with
-people. Every huckster needed four hands, and still he wouldn't have had
-enough.
-</p>
-<p>
-Jimmy Faxon had little Emmy Hardin helping him through the hours when the
-pressure was greatest and the customers came fastest. She kept close to
-him, with little nestling motions, and yet there was something protecting
-in her attitude, as though she would stand between him and any danger, or
-any criticism. The looks she darted at him were fairly caressing. Through
-the jam appeared Ranee Fleming, elbowing his way roughly. His face above
-his straggly whiskers was red with temper and with liquor. His cotton
-shirt was open at the throat so that his hairy chest showed. His shapeless
-gray jeans trousers—gray originally but now faded and stained to a
-mud color—were both beltless and suspenderless, and were girthed
-tightly about his middle by the strap at the back. From much ramming of
-his hands into the pockets, they were now crowded down far upon his hips,
-showing an unwontedly long expanse of shirt; and this gave to him an
-abnormally short-legged, long-waisted look.
-</p>
-<p>
-A lot of those little fuzzy parasitic pods called beggar-lice were stuck
-thick upon his bagged knees—so thick they formed irregular patterns
-in grayish green. He wore no coat nor waistcoat, but an old mud-stiffened
-overcoat was swung over his shoulders with the arms tied loosely around
-his neck and the skirts dangling in folds behind him; and cuckleburrs
-clung to a tear in the lining. He was a fit model of unclean and
-unwholesome ferocity.
-</p>
-<p>
-Before young Jim or little Emmy Hardin saw him, he was right up on them;
-only the width of the bench separated him from them. He leaned across it
-and called Jim that name again and slapped him in the face with a
-wide-armed sweeping stroke of his open hand. The boy flinched back from
-the coming blow so that only the ends of old Ranee's flailing fingers
-touched his cheek, but the intent was there. Before the eyes of his
-sweetheart, he had been slapped in the face. The girl gave a startled
-choking gasp and tried to put her arms about young Jim. He shook her off.
-</p>
-<p>
-Well content with his work, old Ranee fell back, all the time watching
-young Jim. People gave way for him involuntarily. When he was clear of the
-shed he turned and made for one of the saloons that lined the square on
-its western side. He had a choice of several such places; the whole row
-was given over to saloons, barring only a couple of cheap john clothing
-stores and a harness store, and two or three small dingy pawn shops.
-Pistol stores these last were, in the vernacular of the darkies, being so
-called because the owners always kept revolvers and spring-back knives on
-display in the show windows, along with battered musical instruments and
-cheap watches.
-</p>
-<p>
-The spectators followed old Ranee's figure with their eyes until the
-swinging doors of the nearest bar room closed behind him. When they looked
-back again toward Stall No. 3 young Jim was gone too. He had vanished
-silently; and Emmy Hardin was alone, with her face buried in her arms and
-her arms stretched across the counter, weeping as though she would never
-leave off.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the next stall there came to her, comfortingly, a middle aged market
-woman, a motherly figure in a gray shawl with puckered and broad red
-hands. She lifted Emmy up and led her away, calling out to her nearest
-neighbor to watch her stall and the Faxon stall until she got back.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There's liable to be trouble,” she added, speaking in a side whisper so
-the sobbing girl wouldn't hear what she said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I reckin not,” said the man. “It looks to me like Jimmy Faxon is plumb
-cowed down and 'feared of that there old bush whacker—it looks like
-he ain't got the spirit of a rabbit left in him. But you take her on away
-somewheres, Mizz Futrell—me and my boys will 'tend stand for both of
-you, and you needn't worry.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Under such merciful guardianship little Emmy Hardin was taken away and so
-she was spared the sight of what was to follow.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Ranee stayed in the nearest saloon about long enough to take one drink
-and then he came out and headed for the next saloon along the row. To
-reach it he must pass one of the pawn-brokers' shops. He had just passed
-it when a sort of smothered warning outcry went up from behind him
-somewhere, and he swung round to look his finish square in the face.
-</p>
-<p>
-Young Jim Faxon was stepping out of the pawn-broker's door. He was crying
-so the tears streamed down his face. His right arm was down at his side
-stiffly and the hand held clenched a weapon which the Daily Evening News
-subsequently described as “a Brown & Rogers thirty-eight calibre,
-nickle plated, single-action, with a black rubber handle, and slightly
-rusted upon the barrel.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Old Ranee made no move toward his own hip pocket. It came out at the
-inquest that he was not carrying so much as a pen-knife. He half crouched
-and began stumbling backward toward the front of the building with his
-arms out and his hands making empty pawing clutches behind him as though
-he were reaching for some solid support to hold him up in his peril. But
-before he had gone three steps, young Jim brought the pistol up and fired—just
-once.
-</p>
-<p>
-Once was enough. If you had never before this seen a man shot, you would
-have known instinctively that this one was mortally stricken. Some who
-were near and looking right at him told afterward how the loose end of one
-overcoat sleeve, dangling down on his breast, flipped up a little at the
-shot. A slightly pained, querulous look came into his face and he brought
-his arms round and folded them tightly across his stomach as though taken
-with a sudden cramp. Then he walked, steadily enough, to the edge of the
-sidewalk and half-squatted as though he meant to sit on the curbing with
-his feet in the gutter. He was half way down when death took him in his
-vitals. He pitched forward and outward upon his face with his whiskers
-flattening in the street. Two men ran to him and turned him over on his
-back. His face had faded already from its angry red to a yellowish white,
-like old tallow. He breathed hard once or twice and some thought they saw
-his eyelids bat once; then his chest fell inward and stayed so, and he
-seemed to shrink up to less than his proper length and bulk.
-</p>
-<p>
-Young Jim stood still ten feet away looking at his handiwork. He had
-stopped crying and he had dropped the pistol and was wiping both hands
-flatly against the breast of his wool sweater as though to cleanse them of
-something. Allard Jones, the market-master, who had police powers and wore
-a blue coat and a German silver star to prove it, came plowing through the
-ring of on-lookers, head tilt, and laid hands upon him. Allard Jones
-fumbled in his pocket and produced a pair of steel nippers and made as if
-to twine the chain round the boy's right wrist.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You don't need to be putting those things on me, Mr. Jones,” said his
-prisoner. “I'll go all right—I'll go with you. It's all over now—everything's
-over!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Part of the crowd stayed behind, forming a scrooging, shoving ring around
-the spot in front of Benny Michelson's pawn shop where the body of old
-Ranee lay face upward across the gutter with the stiffening legs on the
-sidewalk, and the oddly foreshortened body out in the dust of the road;
-and the rest followed Allard Jones and young Jim as they walked side by
-side up Market Square to Court Street and along Court Street a short block
-to the lock-up.
-</p>
-<p>
-The sympathy of the community was with young Jim—and the law of the
-land was dead against him on all counts. He had not fired in sudden heat
-and passion; there had been time, as the statutes measured time, for due
-deliberation. However great the provocation and by local standards the
-provocation had been great enough and pressing hard to the breaking point,
-he could not claim self-defense. Even though Fleming's purpose had been,
-ultimately, to bring things to a violent issue, he was retreating,
-actually, at the moment itself. As a bar to punishment for homicide, the
-plea of temporary insanity had never yet been set up in our courts. Jim
-Faxon was fast in the snarls of the law.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the lock-up he went to the county jail, the charge, wilful and
-premeditated murder. Dr. Lake and Mr. Herman Felsburg and Major Covington,
-all customers of the accused, and all persons of property, stood ready to
-go bail for him in any sum namable, but murder was not bailable. In time a
-grand jury buttressed the warrant with an indictment—murder in the
-first degree, the indictment read—and young Jim stayed in jail
-awaiting his trial when circuit court should open in the spring.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nobody, of course, believed that his jury would vote the extreme penalty.
-The dead man's probable intentions and his past reputation, taken with the
-prisoner's youth and good repute, would stand as bars to that, no matter
-how the letter of the law might read; but it was generally accepted that
-young Jim would be found guilty of manslaughter. He might get four years
-for killing old Ranee, or six years or even ten—this was a subject
-for frequent discussion. There was no way out of it. People were sorrier
-than ever for Jim and for his aunt and for the tacky, pretty little Hardin
-girl.
-</p>
-<p>
-All through the short changeable winter, with its alternate days of snow
-flurrying and sunshine, Emmy Hardin and Miss Puss Whitley, a crushed
-forlorn pair, together minded the stall on the market, accepting
-gratefully the silent sympathy that some offered them, and the awkward
-words of good cheer from others. Miss Puss put a mortgage of five hundred
-dollars on her little place out in the edge of town. With the money she
-hired Dabney Prentiss, the most silvery tongued orator of all the silver
-tongues at the county bar, to defend her nephew. And every day, when
-market hours were over, in rain or snow or shine, the two women would
-drive in their truck wagon up to the county jail to sit with young Jim and
-to stay with him in his cell until dark.
-</p>
-<p>
-Spring came earlier than common that year. The robins came back from the
-Gulf in February on the tail of a wet warm thaw. The fruit trees bloomed
-in March and by the beginning of April everything was a vivid green and
-all the trees were clumped with new leaves. Court opened on the first
-Monday.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the Sunday night before the first Monday, Judge Priest sat on his porch
-as the dusk came on, laving his spirits in the balm of the young spring
-night. In the grass below the steps the bull-cricket that wintered under
-Judge Priest's front steps was tuning his fairy-fiddle at regular,
-half-minute intervals. Bull bats on the quest for incautious gnats and
-midges were flickering overhead, showing white patches on the tinder sides
-of their long wings. A flying squirrel, the only night-rider of the whole
-squirrel tribe, flipped out of his hole in a honey locust tree, and cocked
-his head high, and then he spread the furry gray membranes along his sides
-and sailed in a graceful, downward swoop to the butt of a silver leaf
-poplar, fifty feet away, where he clung against the smooth bark so closely
-and so flatly he looked like a little pelt stretched and nailed up there
-to dry.
-</p>
-<p>
-The front gate clicked and creaked. The flying squirrel flipped around to
-the safe side of his tree and fled upward to the shelter of the branches,
-like a little gray shadow, and Judge Priest, looking down the aisle of
-shady trees, saw two women coming up the walk toward him, their feet
-crunching slowly on the gravel. He laid his pipe aside and pulled chairs
-forward for his callers, whoever they might be. They were right up to the
-steps before he made them out—Miss Puss Whitley and little Emmy
-Hardin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Howdy do, ladies,” said the old Judge with his homely courtesy. “Howdy,
-Miss Puss? Emmy, child, how are you? Come in and set down and rest
-yourselves.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But for these two, this was no time for the small civilities. The weight
-of trouble at their hearts knocked for utterance at their lips. Or, at
-least, it was so with the old aunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest,” she began, with a desperate, driven eagerness, “we've come
-here tonight to speak in private with you about my boy—about Jimmy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In the darkness they could not see that the old Judge's plump figure was
-stiffening.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Did Mister Dabney Prentiss—did anyone, send you here to see me on
-this business?” he asked, quickly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, suh, nobody a'tall,” answered the old woman. “We jest came on our own
-accord—we felt like as if we jest had to come and see you. Court
-opens in the momin' and Jimmy's case, as you know, comes up the first
-thing. And oh, Jedge Priest, we air in so much trouble, Emmy and me—and
-you've got the name of bein' kind hearted to them that's borne down and in
-distress—and so we come to you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He raised his hand, as though to break in on her, but the old woman was
-not to be stopped. She was pouring out the grievous burden of her lament:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest, you knowed my husband when he was alive, and you've knowed
-me these many years. And you know how it was in them old days that's gone
-that the Flemings was forever and a day fightin' with my people and
-forcin' trouble on 'em 'till finally they hunted 'em plum' out of the
-county and out of the State, away from the places where they was born and
-raised. And you know Jimmy too, and know what a hard time he had growin'
-up, and how he's always stood by me and helped me out, jest the same as if
-he was my own son. And I reckin you know about him—and Emmy here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She broke off to wipe her eyes. Had it been a man who came on such an
-errand the Judge would have sent him packing—he would have been at
-no loss to put his exact meaning into exact language; for the Judge held
-his place on the bench in a high and scriptural regard. But here, in the
-presence of these two woeful figures, their faces drenched and steeped
-with sorrow, he hesitated, trying to choose words that would not bruise
-their wounds.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Miss Puss,” he said very softly, almost as though he were speaking to a
-child, “whatever my private feelin's may be towards you and yours, it is
-not proper for me as the Judge upon the bench, to express them in advance
-of the trial. It is my sworn duty to enforce the law, as it is written and
-laid down in the books. And the law is merciful, and is just to all.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old woman's angular, slatty figure straightened. In the falling light
-her pinched and withered face showed, a white patch with deep grayish
-creases in it, the color of snow in a quick thaw.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The law!” she flared out, “the law, you say, Jedge. Well, you kin talk
-mighty big about the law, but what kind of a law is that that lets a
-fightin', swearin', drunken bully like Ranee Fleming plague a poor boy and
-call him out of his name with vile words and shame him before this child
-here, and yit not do nothin' to him for it? And what kind of a law is it
-that'll send my boy up yonder to that there penitentiary and wreck his
-life and Emmy's life and leave me here alone in my old age, ashamed to
-lift my head amongst my neighbors ever again?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Madame,” said the Judge with all kindliness in his tone, “it's not for me
-to discuss these matters with you, now. It's not even proper that I should
-let you say these things to me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, but Jedge,” she said, “you must listen to me, please. You oughter
-know the truth and there ain't no way for you to know it without I tell it
-to you. Jimmy didn't want no quarrel with that man—it wasn't never
-none of his choosin'. He tried not to bear no grudge for what had gone
-before—he jest craved to be let alone and not be pestered. Why, when
-Ranee Fleming cussed him that first time, last Fall, he come home to me
-cryin' like his heart would break. He said he'd been insulted and that
-he'd have to take it up and fight it out with Ranee Fleming; he felt like
-he just had to. But we begged him on our bended knees mighty nigh, me and
-Emmy did, not to do nothin' for our sakes—and for our sakes he
-promised to let it go, and say nothin'. Even after that, if Ranee Fleming
-had just let him be, all this turrible trouble wouldn't a-come on us. But
-Ranee Fleming he come back again and slapped Jimmy's face, and Jimmy
-knowed then that sooner or later he'd have to kill Ranee Fleming or be
-killed his-self—there wasn't no other way out of it for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest, he's been the best prop a lone woman ever had to lean on—he's
-been like a son to me. My own son couldn't a-been more faithful or more
-lovin. I jest ask you to bear all these things in mind tomorrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I will, Madame,” said the old Judge, rather huskily. “I promise you I
-will. Your nephew shall have a fair trial and all his rights shall be
-safe-guarded. But that is all I can say to you now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Emmy Hardin, who hadn't spoken at all, plucked her by the arm and sought
-to lead her away. Shaking her head, the old woman turned away from the
-steps.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jest one minute, please, Miss Puss,” said Judge Priest, “I'd like to ask
-you a question, and I don't want you to think I'm pryin' into your private
-and personal affairs; but is it true what I hear—that you've
-mortgaged your home place to raise the money for this boy's defense?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I ain't begredgin' the money,” she protested. “It ain't the thought of
-that, that brought me here tonight. I'd work my fingers to the bone if
-'twould help Jimmy any, and so would Emmy here. We'd both of us be willin'
-and ready to go to the porehouse and live and die there if it would do him
-any good.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I feel sure of that,” repeated the old Judge patiently, “but is it true
-about this mortgage?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh,” she answered, and then she began to cry again, “it's true, but
-please don't even let Jimmy know. He thinks I had the money saved up from
-the marketin' to hire Mr. Prentiss with, and I don't never want him to
-know the truth. No matter how his case goes I don't never want him to
-know.” They had moved off down the gravel walk perhaps twenty feet, when
-suddenly the smouldering feud-hate stirred in the old woman's blood; and
-it spread through her and made her meager frame quiver as if with an ague.
-And now the words came from her with a hiss of feeling:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest, that plague-taken scoundrel deserved killin'! He was black
-hearted from the day he came into the world and black hearted he went out
-of it. You don't remember, maybe—you was off soldierin' at the time—when
-he was jayhawkin' back and forth along the State line here, burnin' folks'
-houses down over their heads and mistreatin' the wimmin and children of
-them that was away in the army. I tell you, durin' that last year before
-you all got back home, there was soldiers out after him—out with
-guns in their hands and orders to shoot him down on sight, like a
-sheep-killin' dog. He didn't have no right to live!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The girl got her quieted somehow; she was sobbing brokenly as they went
-away. For a long five minutes after the gate clicked behind the forlorn
-pair, Judge Priest stood on his porch in the attitude of one who had been
-pulled up short by the stirring of a memory of a long forgotten thing.
-After a bit he reached for his hat and closed the front door. He waddled
-heavily down the steps and disappeared in the aisle of the maples and
-silver leaf trees.
-</p>
-<p>
-Half an hour later, clear over on the other side of town, two windows of
-the old court house flashed up as rectangles of light, set into a block of
-opaque blackness. Passers by idling homeward under the shade trees of the
-Square, wondered why the lights should be burning in the Judge's chambers.
-Had any one of them been moved to investigate the whys and wherefores of
-this phenomenon he would have discovered the Judge at his desk, with his
-steel bowed spectacles balanced precariously on the tip of his pudgy nose
-and his round old face pulled into a pucker of intenseness as he dug
-through one sheaf after another of musty, snuffy-smelling documents. The
-broad top of the desk in front of him was piled with windrows of these
-ancient papers, that were gray along their creases with the pigeonhole
-dust of years, and seamy and buffed with age. Set in the wall behind him
-was a vault and the door of the vault was open, and within was a gap of
-emptiness on an upper shelf, which showed where all these papers had come
-from; and for further proof that they were matters of court record there
-was a litter of many crumbly manila envelopes bearing inscriptions of
-faded ink, scattered about over the desk top, and on the floor where they
-had fallen.
-</p>
-<p>
-For a good long time the old Judge rummaged briskly, pawing into the heaps
-in front of him and snorting briskly as the dust rose and tickled his
-nostrils. Eventually he restored most of the papers to their proper
-wrappers and replaced them in the vault, and then he began consulting
-divers books out of his law library—ponderous volumes, bound in
-faded calf skin with splotches of brown, like liverspots, on their covers.
-It was nearly midnight before he finished. He got up creakily, and
-reaching on tiptoe—an exertion which created a distinct hiatus of
-inches between the bottom of his wrinkled vest and the waistband of his
-trousers—he turned out the gas jets. Instantly the old courthouse,
-sitting among the trees, became a solid black mass. He felt his way out
-into the hallway, barking his shins on a chair, and grunting softly to
-himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-When young Jim Faxon's case was called the next morning and the jailor
-brought him in, Jim wore hand-cuffs. At the term of court before this, a
-negro cow thief had got away coming across the court house yard and the
-Judge had issued orders to the jailor to use all due precautions in
-future. So the jailor, showing no favoritism, had seen fit to handcuff
-young Jim. Moreover, he forgot to bring along the key to the irons and
-while he was hurrying back to the jail to find it, young Jim had to wait
-between his women folk, with his bonds still fast upon him. Emmy Hardin
-bent forward and put her small hands over the steel, as though to hide the
-shameful sight of it from the eyes of the crowd and she kept her hands
-there until Jailor Watts came back and freed Jim. The little group of
-three sitting in a row inside the rail, just back of Lawyer Dabney
-Prentiss' erect and frock-coated back, were all silent and all pale-faced,
-young Jim with the pallor of the jail and Emmy Hardin with the whiteness
-of her grief and her terror, but the old aunt's face was a streaky,
-grayish white, and the wrinkles in her face and in her thin, corded neck
-looked inches deep.
-</p>
-<p>
-Right away the case was called and both sides—defense and
-commonwealth—announced as ready to proceed to trial. The audience
-squared forward to watch the picking of the jurors, but there were never
-to be any jurors picked for the trial of this particular case.
-</p>
-<p>
-For Judge Priest had readied the point where he couldn't hold in any
-longer. He cleared his throat and then he spoke, using the careful English
-he always used on the bench—and never anywhere else.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Before we proceed,” he began, and his tone told plainly enough that what
-he meant to say now would be well worth the hearing, “before we proceed,
-the court has something to say, which will have a direct bearing upon the
-present issue.” He glanced about him silently, commanding quiet. “The
-defendant at the bar stands charged with the death of one Ransom Fleming
-and he is produced here to answer that charge.”
- </p>
-<p>
-From the desk he lifted a time-yellowed, legal-looking paper, folded flat;
-he shucked it open with his thumb. “It appears, from the records, that in
-the month of February and of the year 1865, the said Ransom Fleming, now
-deceased, was a fugitive from justice, going at large and charged with
-divers and sundry felonious acts, to wit, the crime of arson and the crime
-of felonious assault with intent to kill, and the crime of confederating
-with others not named, to destroy the property of persons resident in the
-State of Kentucky. It appears further that a disorganized condition of the
-civil government existed, the State being overrun with stragglers and
-deserters from both armies then engaged in civil war, and therefore,
-because of the inability or the failure of the duly constituted
-authorities to bring to justice the person charged with these lawless and
-criminal acts, the Governor of this State did offer a reward of $500 for
-the apprehension of Ransom Fleming, dead or alive.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Now, for sure, the crowd knew something pregnant with meaning for the
-prisoner at the bar was coming—knew it without knowing yet what
-shape it would assume. Heads came forward row by row and necks were craned
-eagerly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I hold here in my hand an official copy of the proclamation issued by the
-Governor of the State,” continued Judge Priest. “Under its terms this
-reward was open to citizens and to officers of the law alike. All
-law-abiding persons were in fact urged to join in ridding the commonwealth
-of this man. He stood outside the pale of the law, without claim upon or
-right to its protection.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It would appear further,”—the old Judge's whiny voice was rising
-now—“that this proclamation was never withdrawn, although with the
-passage of years it may have been forgotten. Under a strict construction
-of the law of the land and of the commonwealth, it may be held to have
-remained in force up to and including the date of the death of the said
-Ransom Fleming. It accordingly devolves upon this court, of its own
-motion, to set aside the indictment against the defendant at the bar and
-to declare him free—”
- </p>
-<p>
-For the time being His Honor got no further than that. Even the stupidest
-listener there knew now what had come to pass—knew that Judge Priest
-had found the way to liberty for young Jim Faxon. Cheering broke out—loud,
-exultant cheering and the stamping of many feet. Persons outside, on the
-square and in the street, might have been excused for thinking that a
-dignified and orderly session of court had suddenly turned into a public
-rally—a ratification meeting. Most of those actually present were
-too busy venting their own personal satisfaction to notice that young Jim
-was holding his sweetheart and his aunt in his arms; and there was too
-much noise going on round about them for any one to hear the panted
-hallelujahs of joy and relief that poured from the lips of the young woman
-and the old one.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge pounded for order with his gavel, pounding long and hard, before
-the uproar simmered down into a seething and boiling of confused, excited
-murmurings.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister Sheriff,” he ordered, with a seeming sternness which by no means
-matched the look on his face, “keep order in this court! If any further
-disorder occurs here you will arrest the offenders and arraign them for
-contempt.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The sheriff's bushy eyebrows expressed bewilderment. When it came to
-arresting a whole court house full of people, even so vigilant and
-earnest-minded an official as Sheriff Giles Bindsong hardly knew where to
-start in. Nevertheless he made answer promptly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, Your Honor,” he promised, “I will.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As I was saying when this interruption occurred,” went on the Judge, “it
-now devolves upon the court to discharge the defendant at the bar from
-custody and to declare him entitled to the reward of $500 placed upon the
-head of the late Ransom Fleming by the Governor of Kentucky in the year
-1865—” Young Jim Faxon with his arms still around the heaving
-shoulders of the women, threw his head up:
-</p>
-<p>
-“No Judge, please, sir, I couldn't touch that money—not that”—he
-began, but Judge Priest halted him:
-</p>
-<p>
-“The late defendant not being of legal age, the court rules that this
-reward when collected may be turned over to his legal guardian. It may be
-that she will find a good and proper use to which this sum of money may be
-put.” This time, the cheering, if anything, was louder even than it had
-been before; but when the puzzled sheriff looked around for instructions
-regarding the proper course of procedure in such an emergency, the judge
-on the bench was otherwise engaged. The judge on the bench was exchanging
-handshakes of an openly congratulatory nature with the members of the
-county bar headed by Attorney for the Defense, Dabney Prentiss.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-IV. A JUDGMENT COME TO DANIEL
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE sidewheel packet Belle of Memphis landed at the wharf, and the
-personal manager of Daniel the Mystic came up the gravel levee with a
-darky behind him toting his valises. That afternoon all of the regular
-town hacks were in use for a Masonic funeral, or he could have ridden up
-in solitary pomp. You felt on first seeing him that he was the kind of
-person who would naturally prefer to ride.
-</p>
-<p>
-He was a large man and, to look at, very impressive. On either lapel of
-his coat he wore a splendid glittering golden emblem. One was a design of
-a gold ax and the other was an Indian's head. His watch-charm was made of
-two animal claws—a tiger's claws I know now they must have been—jointed
-together at their butts by a broad gold band to form a downward-dropping
-crescent. On the middle finger of his right hand was a large solitaire
-ring, the stone being supported by golden eagles with their wings
-interwoven. His vest was the most magnificent as to colors and pattern
-that I ever saw. The only other vest that to my mind would in any way
-compare with it I saw years later, worn by the advance agent of a trained
-dog and pony show.
-</p>
-<p>
-From our perch on the whittled railings of the boat-store porch we viewed
-his advent into our town. Steamboats always brought us to the river front
-if there was no business more pressing on hand, and particularly the Belle
-of Memphis brought us, because she was a regular sidewheeler with a double
-texas, and rising suns painted on her paddle boxes, and a pair of enormous
-gilded buckhorns nailed over her pilot house to show she held the speed
-record of the White Collar Line. A big, red, sheet-iron spread-eagle was
-swung between her stacks, and the tops of the stacks were painted red and
-cut into sharp points like spearheads. She had a string band aboard that
-came out on the guards and played Suwannee River when she was landing and
-Goodby, My Lover, Goodby when she pulled out, and her head mate had the
-loudest swearing voice on the river and, as everybody knew, would as soon
-kill you as look at you, and maybe sooner.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Belle was not to be compared with any of our little stem wheel local
-packets. Even her two mud clerks, let alone her captain and her pilots,
-wore uniforms; and she came all the way from Cincinnati and ran clean
-through to New Orleans, clearing our wharf of the cotton and tobacco and
-the sacked ginseng and peanuts and such commonplace things, and leaving
-behind in their stead all manner of interesting objects in crates and
-barrels. Once she brought a whole gipsy caravan—the Stanley family
-it was called—men, women and children, dogs, horses, wagons and all,
-a regular circus procession of them.
-</p>
-<p>
-She was due Tuesdays, but generally didn't get in until Wednesdays, and
-old Captain Rawlings would be the first to see her smoke coiling in a hazy
-smudge over Livingston Point and say the Belle was coming. Captain
-Rawlings had an uncanny knack of knowing all the boats by their smokes.
-The news would spread, and by the time she passed the Lower Towhead and
-was quartering across and running down past town, so she could turn and
-land upstream, there would be a lot of pleasurable excitement on the
-wharf. The black draymen standing erect on their two-wheeled craft, like
-Roman chariot racers, would whirl their mules down the levee at a perilous
-gallop, scattering the gravel every which way, and our leisure class—boys
-and darkies—and a good many of the business men, would come down to
-the foot of Main Street to see her land and watch the rousters swarm off
-ahead of the bellowing mates and eat up the freight piles. One trip she
-even had white rousters, which was an event to be remembered and talked
-about afterward. They were grimy foreigners, who chattered in an
-outlandish tongue instead of chanting at their work as regular rousters
-did.
-</p>
-<p>
-This time when the Belle of Memphis came and the personal manager of
-Daniel the Mystic came up the levee, half a dozen of us were there and saw
-him coming. We ran down the porch steps and trailed him at a respectful
-distance, opinion being acutely divided among us as to what he might be.
-He was associated with the great outer world of amusement and
-entertainment; we knew that by the circumstances of his apparel and his
-jewels and high hat and all, even if his whole bearing had not advertised
-his calling as with banners. Therefore, we speculated freely as we trailed
-him. He couldn't be the man who owned the Eugene Robinson Floating Palace,
-because the Floating Palace had paid its annual visit months before and by
-now must be away down past the Lower Bends in the bayou country. Likewise,
-the man who came in advance of the circus always arrived by rail with a
-yellow car full of circus bills and many talented artists in white
-overalls. I remember I decided that he must have something to do with a
-minstrel show—Beach & Bowers' maybe, or Thatcher, Primrose &
-West's.
-</p>
-<p>
-He turned into the Richland House, with the darky following him with his
-valises and us following the darky; and after he had registered, old Mr.
-Dudley Dunn, the clerk, let us look at the register. But two or three
-grown men looked first; the coming of one who was so plainly a personage
-had made some stir among the adult population. None there present, though,
-could read the name the stranger had left upon the book. Old Mr. Dunn, who
-was an expert at that sort of thing, couldn't decide himself whether it
-was O. O. Driscoll or A. A. Davent. The man must have spent years
-practicing to be able to produce a signature that would bother any hotel
-clerk. I have subsequently ascertained that there are many abroad gifted
-as he was—mainly traveling salesmen. But if you couldn't read his
-name, all who ran might read the nature of his calling, for 'twas there
-set forth in two colors—he had borrowed the red-ink bottle from Mr.
-Dunn to help out the customary violet—and done in heavy shaded
-letters—“Representing Daniel the Mystic”—with an ornamental
-flourish of scrolls and feathery beaded lines following after. The whole
-took up a good fourth of one of Mr. Dudley Dunn's blue-ruled pages.
-</p>
-<p>
-Inside of an hour we were to know, too, who Daniel the Mystic might be,
-for in the hotel office and in sundry store windows were big bills showing
-a likeness of a man of magnificent mien, with long hair and his face in
-his hand, or rather in the thumb and forefinger of his hand, with the
-thumb under the chin and the finger running up alongside the cheek.
-Underneath were lines to the effect that Daniel the Mystic, Prince of
-Mesmerism and Seer of the Unseen, was Coming, Coming! Also that night the
-Daily Evening News had a piece about him. He had rented St. Clair Hall for
-two nights hand-running and would give a mysterious, edifying and
-educational entertainment dealing with the wonders of science and baffling
-human description. The preliminaries, one learned, had been arranged by
-his affable and courteous personal representative now in our midst, Mr. D.
-C. Davello—so old Mr. Dudley Dunn was wrong in both of his guesses.
-</p>
-<p>
-Next morning Daniel the Mystic was on hand, looking enough like his
-pictured likeness to be recognized almost immediately. True, his features
-were not quite so massive and majestic as we had been led to expect, and
-he rather disappointed us by not carrying his face in his hand, but he was
-tall and slim enough for all purposes and wore his hair long and was
-dressed all in black. He had long, slender hands, and eyes that, we
-agreed, could seem to look right through you and tell what you were
-thinking about.
-</p>
-<p>
-For one versed in the mysteries of the unseen he was fairly democratic in
-his minglings with the people; and as for D. C. Davello, no one, not even
-a candidate, could excel him in cordiality. Together they visited the
-office of the Daily Evening News and also the office of our other paper,
-the Weekly Argua-Eye, which was upstairs over Leaken's job-printing shop.
-They walked through the market house and went to the city hall to call on
-the mayor and the city marshal and invite them to come to St. Clair Hall
-that night and bring their families with them, free of charge. Skinny
-Collins, who was of their tagging juvenile escort, at once began to put on
-airs before the rest. The city marshal was his father.
-</p>
-<p>
-About the middle of the afternoon they went into Felsburg Brothers Oak
-Hall Clothing Emporium, steered by Van Wallace, who seemed to be showing
-them round. We followed in behind, half a dozen or more of us, scuffling
-our dusty bare feet on the splintery floor between the aisles of racked-up
-coats. In the rear was Willie Richey, limping along on one toe and one
-heel. Willie Richey always had at least one stone bruise in the
-stone-bruise season, and sometimes two.
-</p>
-<p>
-They went clear back to the end of the store where the office was and the
-stove, but we, holding our distance, halted by the counter where they kept
-the gift suspenders and neckties—Felsburg Brothers gave a pair of
-suspenders or a necktie with every suit, the choice being left to the
-customer and depending on whether in his nature the utilitarian or the
-decorative instinct was in the ascendency. We halted there, all eyes and
-ears and wriggling young bodies. The proprietors advanced and some of the
-clerks, and Van Wallace introduced the visitors to Mr. Herman Felsburg and
-to Mr. Ike Felsburg, his brother. Mr. Herman said, “Pleased to meetcher,”
- with professional warmth, while Mr. Ike murmured, “Didn't catch the name?”
- inquiringly, such being the invariable formula of these two on greeting
-strangers. Cigars were passed round freely by D. C. Davello. He must have
-carried a pocketful of cigars, for he had more of them for some of the
-business men who came dropping in as if by chance. All of a sudden Van
-Wallace, noting how the group had grown, said it would be nice if the
-professor would show us what he could do. D. C. Davello said it wasn't
-customary for Daniel the Mystic to vulgarize his art by giving impromptu
-demonstrations, but perhaps he would make an exception just for this once.
-He spoke to Daniel the Mystic who was sitting silently in the Messrs.
-Felsburg's swivel office-chair with his face in his hands—the poster
-likeness was vindicated at last—and after a little arguing he got up
-and looked all about him slowly and in silence. His eye fell on the little
-huddle of small boys by the necktie counter and he said sharp and quick to
-Jack Irons: “Come here, boy!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I don't know yet how Jack Irons came to be of our company on that day;
-mostly Jack didn't run with us. He was sickly. He had spells and was laid
-up at home a good deal.
-</p>
-<p>
-He couldn't even go barefooted in summer, because if he did his legs would
-be broken out all over with dew poison in no time.
-</p>
-<p>
-Jack Irons didn't belong to one of the prominent families either. He lived
-in a little brown house on the street that went down by the old Enders
-place. His mother was dead, and his sister worked in the county clerk's
-office and always wore black alpaca sleeves buttoned up on her forearms.
-His father was old Mr. Gid Irons that stayed in Scotter's hardware store.
-He didn't own the store, he just clerked there. Winter and summer he
-passed by our house four times a day, going to work in the morning and
-coming back at night, coming to dinner at twelve o'clock and going back at
-one. He was so regular that people used to say if the whistle on
-Langstock's planing mill ever broke down they could still set the clocks
-by old Mr. Gid Irons. Perhaps you have known men who were universally
-called old while they were yet on the up-side of middle life? Mr. Gid
-Irons was such a one as that.
-</p>
-<p>
-I used to like to slip into Scotter's just to see him scooping tenpenny
-nails and iron bolts out of open bins and kegs with his bare hands.
-Digging his hands down into those rusty, scratchy things never seemed to
-bother him, and it was fascinating to watch him and gave you little
-flesh-crawling sensations. He was a silent, small man, short but very
-erect, and when he walked he brought his heels down very hard first. The
-skin of his face and of his hands and his hair and mustache were all a
-sort of faded pinkish red, and he nearly always had iron rust on his
-fingers, as though to advertise that his name was Irons.
-</p>
-<p>
-By some boy intuition of my own I knew that he cut no wide swath in the
-lazy field of town life. When the veterans met at the city hall and
-organized their veterans' camp and named it the Gideon K. Irons Camp, it
-never occurred to me that they could be offering that honor to our old Mr.
-Gid Irons. I took it as a thing granted that there were some other Gideon
-Irons somewhere, one with a K in his name, a general probably, and no
-doubt a grand looking man on a white horse with a plume in his hat and a
-sword dangling, like the steel engraving of Robert E. Lee in our parlor.
-Whereas our Mr. Irons was shabby and poor; he didn't even own the house he
-lived in.
-</p>
-<p>
-This Jack Irons who was with us that day was his only son, and when Daniel
-the Mystic looked at him and called him, Jack stepped out from our midst
-and went toward him, his feet dragging a little and moving as if some one
-had him by the shoulders leading him forward. His thin arms dangled at his
-sides. He went on until he was close up to Daniel the Mystic. The man
-threw up one hand and snapped out “Stop,” as though he were teaching
-tricks to a dog, and Jack flinched and dodged. He stopped though, with red
-spots coming and going in the cheeks as though under the stoking of a
-blowpipe, and he breathed in sharp puffs that pulled his nostrils almost
-shut. Standing so, he looked as poor and weak and futile as a sprig of
-bleached celery, as a tow string, as a limp rag, as anything helpless and
-spineless that you had a mind to think of. The picture of him has hung in
-my mind ever since. Even now I recall how his meager frame quivered as
-Daniel the Mystic stooped until his eyes were on a level with Jack's eyes,
-and said something to Jack over and over again in a half-whisper.
-</p>
-<p>
-Suddenly his hands shot out and he began making slow stroking motions
-downward before Jack's face, with his fingers outstretched as though he
-were combing apart banks of invisible yam. Next with a quick motion he
-rubbed Jack's eyelids closed, and massaged his temples with his thumbs,
-and then stepped back.
-</p>
-<p>
-There stood Jack Irons with his eyes shut, fast asleep. He was still on
-his feet, bolt upright, but fast asleep—that was the marvel of it—with
-his hands at his side and the flushed color all gone from his cheeks. It
-scared us pretty badly, we boys. I think some of the grown men were a
-little bit scared too. We were glad that none of us had been singled out
-for this, and yet envious of Jack and his sudden elevation to prominence
-and the center of things.
-</p>
-<p>
-Daniel the Mystic seemed satisfied. He mopped drops of sweat off his face.
-He forked two fingers and darted them like a snake's tongue at Jack, and
-Jack, still asleep, obeyed them, as if he had been steel and they the two
-horns of a magnetic horseshoe. He swayed back and forth, and then Daniel
-the Mystic gave a sharp shove at the air with the palms of both hands—and
-Jack fell backward as though he had been hit.
-</p>
-<p>
-But he didn't fall as a boy would, doubling up and giving in. He fell
-stiff, like a board, without a bend in him anywhere. Daniel the Mystic
-leaped forward and caught him before he struck, and eased him down flat on
-his back and folded his arms up across his breast, and that made him look
-like dead.
-</p>
-<p>
-More wonders were coming. Daniel the Mystic and D. C. Davello hauled two
-wooden chairs up close together and placed them facing each other; then
-lifting Jack, still rigid and frozen, they put his head on the seat of one
-chair and his heels on the seat of the other and stepped back and left him
-suspended there in a bridge. We voiced our astonishment in an anthem of
-gasps and overlapping exclamations. Not one of us in that town, boy or
-man, had ever seen a person in hypnotic catalepsy.
-</p>
-<p>
-Before we had had time enough to take this marvel all in, Daniel the
-Mystic put his foot on Jack and stepped right up on his stomach, balancing
-himself and teetering gently above all our heads. He was tall and must
-have been heavy; for Jack's body bent and swayed under the weight, yet
-held it up in the fashion of a hickory springboard. Some of the men jumped
-up then and seemed about to interfere. Old Mr. Herman Felsburg's face was
-red and he sputtered, but before he could get the words out Daniel the
-Mystic was saying soothingly:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Be not alarmed, friends. The subject is in no danger. The subject feels
-no pain and will suffer no injury.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just the same, Mister, you get down off that little boy,” ordered Mr.
-Felsburg. “And you please wake him up right away. I don't care much to see
-things done like that in my store.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As you say,” said Daniel the Mystic easily, smiling all round him at the
-ring of our startled faces. “I merely wished to give you a small
-demonstration of my powers. And, believe me, the subject feels no pain
-whatsoever.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He stepped off of him, though, and Jack's body came up straight and flat
-again. They lifted him off the chairs and straightened him up, and Daniel
-the Mystic made one or two rapid passes in front of his face. Jack opened
-his eyes and began to cry weakly. One of the clerks brought him a drink,
-but he couldn't swallow it for sobbing, and only blubbered up the water
-when Mr. Felsburg held the glass to his lips. Van Wallace, who looked a
-little frightened and uneasy himself, gave two of the boys a nickel apiece
-and told us we had better get Jack home.
-</p>
-<p>
-Jack could walk all right, with one of us upon either side of him, but he
-was crying too hard to answer the questions we put to him, we desiring
-exceedingly to know how he felt and if he knew anything while he was
-asleep. Just as we got him to his own gate he gasped out, “Oh, fellows,
-I'm sick!” and collapsed bodily at our feet, hiccoughing and moaning. His
-sister met us at the door as we lugged Jade in by his arms and legs. Even
-at home she had her black alpaca sleeves buttoned up to her elbows. I
-think she must have slept in them. We told her what had happened, or tried
-to tell her, all of us talking at once, and she made us lay Jack on a
-little rickety sofa in their parlor—there was a sewing machine in
-there, too, I noticed—and as we were coming away we saw a negro girl
-who worked for them running across the street to Tillman & Son's
-grocery where there was a telephone that the whole neighborhood used.
-</p>
-<p>
-When I got home it was suppertime and the family were at the table. My
-sister said somebody must be sick down past the old Enders place, because
-she had seen Doctor Lake driving out that way as fast as his horse would
-take him. But I listened with only half an ear, being mentally engaged
-elsewhere. I was wondering how I was going to get my berry-picking money
-out of a nailed-up cigar-box savings bank without attracting too much
-attention on the part of other members of the family. I had been saving up
-that money hoping to amass seventy-five cents, which was the lowest cash
-price for Tom Birch's tame flying squirrel, a pet thing that would stay in
-your pocket all day and not bite you unless you tried to drag him out; but
-now I had a better purpose in view for my accumulated funds. If it took
-the last cent I meant to be in St. Clair Hall that night.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was no balcony in St. Clair Hall, but only a sort of little hanging
-coop up above where the darkies sat, and the fifteen-cent seats were the
-two back rows of seats on the main floor. These were very handy to the
-door but likely to be overly warm on cold nights, when the two big,
-pearshaped stoves would be red hot, with the live coals showing through
-the cracks in their bases like broad grins on the faces of apoplectic
-twins. The cracked varnish upon the back of the seats would boil and
-bubble visibly then and the scorching wood grow so hot you couldn't touch
-your bare hand to it, and a fine, rich, turpentiny smell would savor up
-the air.
-</p>
-<p>
-Being the first of the boys to arrive I secured the coveted corner seat
-from which you had a splendid view of the stage, only slightly obscured by
-one large wooden post painted a pale sick blue. D. C. Davello was at the
-door taking tickets, along with Sid Farrell, who ran
-</p>
-<p>
-St. Clair Hall. It kept both of them pretty busy, because there were men
-paying their way in whom I had never seen there at all except when the
-Democrats had their rally just before election, or when the ladies were
-holding memorial services on President Jefferson Davis' birthday—men
-like old Judge Priest, and Major Joe Sam Covington, who owned the big tan
-yard, and Captain Howell, the bookdealer, and Mr. Herman Felsburg, and
-Doctor Lake, and a lot of others. Most of them took seats well down in
-front, I supposing that the educational and scientific features of the
-promised entertainment had drawn them together.
-</p>
-<p>
-The curtain was cracked through in places and had a peephole in the
-middle, with black smudges round it like a bruised eye. It had a painting
-on it showing a street full of backwater clean up to the houses, and some
-elegant ladies and gentlemen in fancy-dress costumes coming down the stone
-steps of a large building like a county courthouse and getting into a
-couple of funny-looking skiffs. I seem to have heard somewhere that this
-represented a street scene in Venice, but up until the time St. Clair Hall
-burned down I know that I considered it to be a picture of some other,
-larger town than ours during a spring rise in the river, the same as we
-had every March. All round the inundated district were dirty white squares
-containing the lettered cards of business houses—Doctor Cupps, the
-dentist, and Anspach, the Old-Established Hatter—which never varied
-from year to year, even when an advertiser died or went out of business.
-We boys knew these signs by heart.
-</p>
-<p>
-But to pass the time of waiting we read them over and over again, until
-the curtain rolled up disclosing the palace scene, with a double row of
-chairs across the stage in half-moon formation, and down in front, where
-the villains died at regular shows, a table with a water pitcher on it.
-Daniel the Mystic came out of the wings and bowed, and there was a thin
-splashing of hand-clapping, mostly from the rear seats, with Sid Farrell
-and D. C. Davello furnishing lustier sounds of applause. First off Daniel
-the Mystic made a short speech full of large, difficult words. We boys
-wriggled during it, being anxious for action. We had it soon. D. C.
-Davello mounted the stage and he and Daniel the Mystic brought into view a
-thing they called a cabinet, but which looked to us like a box frame with
-black calico curtains nailed on it. When they got this placed to their
-satisfaction, Daniel the Mystic, smiling in a friendly way, asked that a
-committee of local citizens kindly step up and see that no fraud or
-deception was practiced in what was about to follow. I was surprised to
-see Doctor Lake and Mr. Herman Felsburg rise promptly at the invitation
-and go up on the stage, where they watched closely while D. C. Davello
-tied Daniel the Mystic's hands behind him with white ropes, and then
-meshed him to a chair inside the cabinet with so many knottings and
-snarlings of the twisted bonds that he looked like some long, black
-creature helplessly caught in a net. This done, the two watchers slipped
-into chairs at opposite ends of the half-moon formation. D. C. Davello
-laid a tambourine, a banjo and a dinner bell on the bound man's knees and
-whipped the calico draperies to. Instantly the bell rang, the banjo was
-thrummed and the tambourine rattled giddily, and white hands flashed above
-the shielding draperies. But when the manager cried out and jerked the
-curtains back, there sat the Mystic one still a prisoner, tied up all hard
-and fast. We applauded then like everything.
-</p>
-<p>
-The manager unroped him and went back to his place by the door, and after
-Daniel the Mystic had chafed his wrists where the red marks of the cords
-showed he came down a sort of little wooden runway into the audience, and
-standing in the aisle said something about now giving a demonstration of
-something. I caught the words occultism and spiritualism, both strangers
-to my understanding up to that time. He put his hands across his eyes for
-a moment, with his head thrown bade, and then he walked up the aisle four
-or five steps hesitating and faltering, and finally halted right alongside
-of Mr. Morton Harrison, the wharf master.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I seem,” he said slowly, in a deep, solemn voice, “to see a dim shape of
-a young man hovering here. I get the name of Claude—no, no, it is
-Clyde. Clyde would tell you,” his voice sank lower and quavered
-effectively—“Clyde says to tell you that he is very happy over there—he
-says you must not worry about a certain matter that is now worrying you
-for it will all turn out for the best—and you will be happy. And now
-Clyde seems to be fading away. Clyde is gone!”
- </p>
-<p>
-We didn't clap our hands at that—it would have been too much like
-clapping hands at a funeral—because we knew it must be Clyde
-Harrison, who had got drowned not two months before trying to save a
-little girl that fell overboard off the wharfboat. Just a day or two
-before there had been a piece in the paper telling about the public fund
-that was being raised to put a monument over Clyde's grave.
-</p>
-<p>
-So we couldn't applaud that, wonderful as it was, and we shivered in a
-fearsome, wholly delightful anticipation and sat back and waited for more
-spirits to come. But seemingly there weren't any more spirits about just
-then, and after a little Daniel the Mystic returned to the stage and
-announced that we would now have the crowning achievement of the evening's
-entertainment—a scientific exhibition of the new and awe-inspiring
-art of mesmerism in all its various branches.
-</p>
-<p>
-“For this,” he stated impressively, “I desire the aid of volunteers from
-the audience, promising them that I will do them no harm, but on the
-contrary will do them much good. I want fellow townspeople of yours for
-this—gentlemen in whom you all have confidence and respect. I insist
-only upon one thing—that they shall be one and all total strangers
-to me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He advanced to the tin trough of the flickering gas footlights and smiled
-out over it at us.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who among you will come forward now? Come!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Before any one else could move, two young fellows got up from seats in
-different parts of the hall and went up the little runway. We had never
-seen either of them before, which seemed a strange thing, for we boys kept
-a sharp eye upon those who came and went. They were both of them tall and
-terribly thin, with lank hair and listless eyes, and they moved as though
-their hip joints were rusty and hurt them. But I have seen the likes of
-them often since then—lying in a trance in a show window, with the
-covers puckered close up under the drawn face. I have peered down a wooden
-chute to see such a one slumbering in his coffin underground for a
-twenty-four or forty-eight-hour test. But these were the first of the
-tribe our town had encountered.
-</p>
-<p>
-On their lagging heels followed two that I did know. One was the lumpish
-youth who helped Riley Putnam put up showbills and the other was Buddy
-Grogan, who worked in Sid Farrell's livery stable. Both of them were
-grinning sheepishly and falling over their own feet. And following right
-behind them in turn came a shabby little man who had iron rust on his
-clothes, and walked all reared back, bringing his heels down hard with
-thumps at every step. It was old Mr. Gid Irons. We gaped at him.
-</p>
-<p>
-I had never seen Mr. Gid Irons at St. Clair Hall before, none of us had;
-and in our limited capacities we were by way of being consistent patrons
-of the drama. In a flash it came over me that Jack must have told his
-father what a wonderful sensation it was to be put to sleep standing up on
-your feet, and that his father had come to see for himself how it felt. I
-judged that others besides us were surprised. There was a burring little
-stir, and some of the audience got up and edged down closer to the front.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Gid Irons went on up the little runway and took a seat near one end of
-the half-moon of chairs. Where he sat the blowy glare of one of the gas
-footlights flickered up in his face and we could see that it seemed redder
-than common, and his eyes were drawn together so close that only little
-slits of them showed under his red-gray, bushy eyebrows. But that might
-have been the effect of the gaslight at his feet. You could tell though
-that Daniel the Mystic was puzzled and perplexed, startled almost, by the
-appearance of this middle-aged person among his volunteers. He kept eyeing
-him furtively with a worried line between his eyes as he made a round of
-the other four, shaking hands elaborately with each and bending to find
-out the names. He came to Mr. Irons last.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And what is the name of this friend?” he asked in his grand, deep voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Irons didn't answer a word. He stood up, just so, and hauled off and
-hit Daniel the Mystic in the face. Daniel the Mystic said “Ouch!” in a
-loud, pained tone of voice, and fell backward over a chair and sat down
-hard right in the middle of the stage. George Muller, the town wit,
-declared afterward that he was looking right at Daniel the Mystic, and
-that Daniel the Mystic sat down so hard it parted his hair in the middle.
-</p>
-<p>
-I heard somebody behind me make a choking outcry and turned to see D. C.
-Davello just bursting in upon us, with shock and surprise spreading all
-over his face. But just at that precise moment Fatty McManus, who was the
-biggest man in town, jumped up with an awkward clatter of his feet and
-stumbled and fell right into D. C. Davello, throwing his mighty arms about
-him as he did so. Locked together they rolled backward out of the door,
-and with a subconscious sense located somewhere in the back part of my
-skull I heard them go bumping down the steep stairs. I think there were
-ten distinct bumps.
-</p>
-<p>
-David Pryor, one of our policemen, was sitting almost directly in front of
-me. He had been a policeman only two or three months and was the youngest
-of the three who policed the town at nights. When old Mr. Gid Irons
-knocked Daniel the Mystic down David Pryor bounced out of his seat and
-called out something and started to run toward them.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Judge Priest blocked his way on the instant, filling the whole of the
-narrow aisle. “Son,” he said, “where you aimin' to go to?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Lemme by, Judge,” sputtered David Pryor; “there's a fight startin' up
-yonder!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest didn't budge a visible inch, except to glance quickly
-backward over his shoulder toward the stage.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” he asked, “it takes two, don't it, to make a fight?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” panted David Pryor, trying to get past him, “yes, but—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, son, if you'd take another look up there you'd see there's only one
-person engaged in fightin' at this time. That's no fight—only a
-merited chastisement.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A chesty which?” asked David Pryor, puzzled. He was young and new to his
-job and full of the zeal of duty. But Judge Priest stood for law and order
-embodied, and David Pryor wavered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“David, my son,” said Judge Priest, “if you, a sworn officer of the law,
-don't know what chastisement means you ought to. Set down by me here and
-I'll try to explain its meanin's.” He took him by the arm and pulled the
-bewildered young policeman down into a seat alongside his own and held him
-there, though David was still protesting and struggling feebly to be
-loose.
-</p>
-<p>
-This I heard and saw out of a corner of my mind, the rest of me being
-concentrated on what was going on up on the stage among the overturning
-chairs and those scattering recruits in the cause of mesmerism. I saw
-Daniel the Mystic scramble to his feet and skitter about. He was wildly,
-furiously pained and bewildered. It must be painful in the extreme, and
-bewildering too, to any man to be suddenly and emphatically smitten in his
-good right eye by one who seemed all peace and elderly sedateness, and to
-behold an audience, which though cold, perhaps, had been friendly enough,
-arise in its entirety and most vociferously cheer the smiting. How much
-more so, then, in the case of a Seer of the Unseen, who is supposed to be
-able to discern such things ahead of their happening?
-</p>
-<p>
-Daniel the Mystic looked this way and that, seeking a handy way of escape,
-but both ways were barred to him. At one side of the stage was Doctor
-Lake, aiming a walking stick at him like a spear; and at the other side
-was Mr. Felsburg, with an umbrella for a weapon.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Mr. Gid Irons was frightfully quick. His hands shot out with hard,
-fast dabbing motions like a cat striking at a rolling ball, and he planted
-his fists wheresoever he aimed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Daniel the Mystic's long arms flew and flailed wildly in air and his mane
-of hair tossed. He threw his crossed hands across his face to save it and
-Mr. Irons hit him in the stomach. He lowered his hands to his vitals in an
-agonized clutch and Mr. Irons hit him in the jaw.
-</p>
-<p>
-I know now in the light of a riper experience of such things that it was
-most wonderfully fast work, and all of it happening much faster than the
-time I have taken here to tell it, Mr. Gid Irons wading steadily in and
-Daniel the Mystic flopping about and threshing and yelling—he was
-beginning to yell—and the chairs flipping over on their backs and
-every-, body standing up and whooping. All of a sudden Daniel the Mystic
-went down flat on his back, calling for help on some one whose name I will
-take oath was not D. C. Davello. It sounded more like Thompson.
-</p>
-<p>
-Doctor Lake dropped his walking stick and ran out from the wings.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It would be highly improper to strike a man when he's down,” he counseled
-Mr. Irons as he grabbed Daniel the Mystic by the armpits and heaved him up
-flappingly. “Allow me to help the gentleman to his feet.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Irons hit him just once more, a straight jabbing center blow, and
-knocked him clear into and under his black calico cabinet, so far in it
-and under it that its curtains covered all but his legs, which continued
-to flutter and waggle feebly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Get a couple-a chairs, Gideon.” This advice came from Mr. Herman Felsburg
-who jumped up and down and directed an imaginary orchestra of bass
-drummers with his umbrella for a baton—“Get a couple-a chairs and
-stand on the son-of-a-gun's stomach. It does the subcheck no harm and the
-subcheck feels no pain. As a favor to me, Gideon, I ask you, stand on his
-stomach.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But Mr. Irons was through. He turned about and came down the runway and
-passed out, rearing back and jarring his heels down hard. If he had spoken
-a single word the whole time I hadn't heard it. As I remarked several
-times before he was a small man and so I am not trying to explain the
-optical delusion of the moment. I am only trying to tell how Mr. Gid Irons
-looked as he passed me. He looked seven feet tall.
-</p>
-<p>
-It must have been just about this time that D. C. Davello worked his way
-out from underneath the hippopotamously vast bulk of Fatty McManus and
-started running back up the stairs. But before he reached the door the
-city marshal, who had been standing downstairs all the time and strange to
-say, hadn't, it would appear, heard any of the clamor, ran up behind him
-and arrested him for loud talking and disorderly conduct. The city marshal
-obtusely didn't look inside the door for visual evidences of any trouble
-within; he would listen to no reason. He grabbed D. C. Davello by the coat
-collar and pulled him back to the sidewalk and had him halfway across
-Market Square to the lock-up before the captive could make him understand
-what had really happened. Even then the official displayed a dense and
-gummy stupidity, for he kept demanding further details and made the other
-tell everything over to him at least twice. This also took time, because
-D. C. Davello was excited and stammering and the city marshal was
-constantly interrupting him. So that, by the time he finally got the
-straight of things into his head and they got back to St. Clair Hall, the
-lights were out and the stairs were dark and the last of the audience was
-tailing away. The city marshal stopped, as if taken with a clever idea,
-and looked at his watch and remarked to D. C. Davello that he and his
-friend the Professor would just about have time to catch the 10:50
-accommodation for Louisville if they hurried; which seemed strange advice
-to be giving, seeing that D. C. Davello hadn't asked about trains at all.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nevertheless he took it—the advice—which also necessitated
-taking the train.
-</p>
-<p>
-Even in so short a time the news seemed to have spread with most
-mysterious speed, that Daniel the Mystic had canceled his second night's
-engagement and would be leaving us on the 10:50. Quite a crowd went to the
-depot to see him off. We boys tagged along, too, keeping pace with Judge
-Priest and Doctor Lake and Major Joe Sam Covington and certain other
-elderly residents, who, as they tramped along, maintained a sort of
-irregular formation, walking two by two just as they did when the
-Veterans' Camp turned out for a funeral or a reunion.
-</p>
-<p>
-There must have been something wrong down the road that night with the
-10:50. Usually she was anywhere from one to three hours late, but this
-night she strangely came in on time. She was already whistling for the
-crossing above Kattersmith's brickyard when we arrived, moving in force.
-D. C. Davello saw us from afar and remembered some business that took him
-briskly back behind the freight shed. But Daniel the Mystic sat on a
-baggage truck with a handkerchief to his face, and seemed not to see any
-of us coming until our advance guard filed up and flanked him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, suh,” said Judge Priest, “you had a signal honor paid you in this
-community tonight.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Daniel the Mystic raised his head. The light from a tin reflector lamp.
-shone on his face and showed its abundant damages. You would hardly have
-known Daniel the Mystic for the same person. His gorgeousness and grandeur
-of person had fallen from him like a discarded garment, and his nose
-dripped redly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I—had—what?” he answered, speaking somewhat thickly because
-of his swollen lip.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A mighty signal honor,” said Judge Priest, in his thin whine. “In the
-presence of a representative gatherin' of our best people you were licked
-by the most efficient and the quickest-actin' scout that ever served in
-General John Morgan's entire cavalry command.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But the reply of Daniel the Mystic, if he made one, was never heard of
-living man, because at that moment the 10:50 accommodation came in and her
-locomotive began exhausting.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-V. UP CLAY STREET
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NE behind the other, three short sections of a special came sliding into
-the yard sidings below the depot.
-</p>
-<p>
-The cars clanked their drawheads together like manacles, as they were
-chivied and bullied and shoved about by a regular chain-gang boss of a
-switch engine. Some of the cars were ordinary box cars, just the plain
-galley slaves of commerce, but painted a uniform blue and provided with
-barred gratings; some were flat cars laden with huge wheeled burdens
-hooded under tarpaulins; and a few were sleeping cars that had been a
-bright yellow at the beginning of the season, with flaring red lettering
-down the sides, but now were faded to a shabby saffron.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was just getting good broad day. The sleazy dun clouds that had been
-racked up along the east—like mill-ends left over from night's
-remnant counter, as a poet might have said had there been a poet there to
-say it—were now torn asunder, and through the tear the sun showed
-out, blushing red at his own nakedness and pushing ahead of him long
-shadows that stretched on the earth the wrong way. There was a taste of
-earliness in the air, a sort of compounded taste of dew and dust and maybe
-a little malaria.
-</p>
-<p>
-Early as it was, there was a whopping big delegation of small boys, white
-and black, on hand for a volunteer reception committee. The eyes of these
-boys were bright and expectant in contrast to the eyes of the yard hands,
-who looked half dead for sleep and yawned and shivered. The boys welcomed
-the show train at the depot and ran alongside its various sections. They
-were mainly barefooted, but they avoided splinters in the butts of the
-crossties and sharp clinkers in the cinder ballast of the roadbed with the
-instinctive agility of a race of primitives.
-</p>
-<p>
-Almost before the first string of cars halted and while the clanking of
-the iron links still ran down its length like a code signal being
-repeated, a lot of mop-headed men in overalls appeared, crawling out from
-all sorts of unsuspected sleeping places aboard. Magically a six-team of
-big white Norman horses materialized, dragging empty traces behind them.
-They must have been harnessed up together beforehand in a stock car
-somewhere. A corrugated wooden runway appeared to sprout downward and
-outward from an open car door, and down it bumped a high, open wagon with
-a big sheet-iron cooking range mounted on it and one short length of
-stovepipe rising above like a stumpy fighting-top on an armored cruiser.
-As the wheels thumped against the solid earth a man in a dirty apron, who
-had been balancing himself in the wagon, touched a match to some fuel in
-his firebox. Instantly black smoke came out of the top of the stack and a
-stinging smell of burning wood trailed behind him, as the six-horse team
-hooked on and he and his moving kitchen went lurching and rolling across
-shallow gulleys and over a rutted common, right into the red eye of the
-upcoming sun.
-</p>
-<p>
-Other wagons followed, loaded with blue stakes, with coils of ropes, with
-great rolls of earth-stained canvas, and each took the same route, with
-four or six horses to drag it and a born charioteer in a flannel shirt to
-drive it. The common destination was a stretch of flat land a quarter of a
-mile away from the track. Truck patches backed up against this site on one
-side and the outlying cottages of the town flanked it on the other, and it
-was bordered with frayed fringes of ragweed and niggerheads, and was
-dotted over with the dried-mud chimneys of crawfish. In the thin turf here
-a geometric pattern of iron laying-out pins now appeared to spring up
-simultaneously, with rag pennons of red and blue fluttering in the tops,
-and at once a crew of men set to work with an orderly confusion, only
-stopping now and then to bellow back the growing swarms of boys who hung
-eagerly on the flank of each new operation. True to the promise of its
-lithographed glories the circus was in our midst, rain or shine, for this
-day and date only.
-</p>
-<p>
-If there is any of the boy spirit left in us circus day may be esteemed to
-bring it out. And considering his age and bulk and his calling, there was
-a good deal of the boy left in our circuit judge—so much boy, in
-fact, that he, an early riser of note in a town much given to early
-rising, was up and dressing this morning a good hour ahead of his usual
-time. As he dressed he kept going to the side window of his bedroom and
-looking out. Eventually he had his reward. Through a break in the
-silver-leaf poplars he saw a great circus wagon crossing his line of
-vision an eighth of a mile away. Its top and sides were masked in canvas,
-but he caught a flicker of red and gold as the sun glinted on its wheels,
-and he saw the four horses tugging it along, and the dipping figure of the
-driver up above. The sight gave the old judge a little thrill down inside
-of him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I reckin that fellow was right when he said a man is only as old as he
-feels,” said Judge Priest to himself. “And I'm glad court ain't in session—I
-honestly am.” He opened his door and called down into the body of the
-silent house below: “Jeff! Oh, Jeff!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” came up the prompt answer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jeff, you go out yonder to the kitchen and tell Aunt Dilsey to hurry
-along my breakfast. I'll be down right away.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” said Jeff; “I'll bring it right in, suh.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Jeff was as anxious as the judge that the ceremony of breakfast might be
-speedily over; and, to tell the truth, so was Aunt Dilsey, who fluttered
-with impatience as she fried the judge's matinal ham and dished up the
-hominy. Aunt Dilsey regularly patronized all circuses, but she specialized
-in sideshows. The sideshow got a dime of hers before the big show started
-and again after it ended. She could remember from year to year just how
-the sideshow banners looked and how many there were of them, and on the
-mantelpiece in her cabin was ranged a fly-blown row of freaks' photographs
-purchased at the exceedingly reasonable rate of ten cents for cabinet
-sizes and twenty-five for the full length.
-</p>
-<p>
-So there was no delay about serving the judge's breakfast or about
-clearing the table afterward. For that one morning, anyhow, the breakfast
-dishes went unwashed. Even as the judge put on his straw hat and came out
-on the front porch, the back door was already discharging Jeff and Aunt
-Dilsey. By the time the judge had traversed the shady yard and unlatched
-the front gate, Jeff was halfway to the showground and mending his gait
-all the time. Less than five minutes later Jeff was being ordered,
-somewhat rudely, off the side of a boarded-up cage, upon which he had
-climbed with a view to ascertaining, by a peep through the barred air-vent
-under the driver's seat, whether the mysterious creature inside looked as
-strange as it smelled; and less than five minutes after that, Jeff, having
-reached a working understanding with the custodian of the cage, who
-likewise happened to be in charge of certain ring stock, was convoying a
-string of trick ponies to the water-trough over by the planing mill. Aunt
-Dilsey, moving more slowly—yet guided, nevertheless, by a sure
-instinct—presently anchored herself at the precise spot where the
-sideshow tent would stand. Here several lodge sisters soon joined her.
-They formed a comfortable brown clump, stationary in the midst of many
-brisk; activities.
-</p>
-<p>
-The judge stood at his gate a minute, lighting his corncob pipe. As he
-stood there a farm wagon clattered by, coming in from the country. Its bed
-was full of kitchen chairs and the kitchen chairs contained a family,
-including two pretty country girls in their teens, who were dressed in
-fluttering white with a plenitude of red and blue ribbons. The head of the
-family, driving, returned the judge's waved greeting somewhat stiffly. It
-was plain that his person was chafed and his whole being put under
-restraint by the fell influences of a Sunday coat and the hard collar that
-was buttoned on to the neckband of his blue shirt.
-</p>
-<p>
-His pipe being lighted, the judge headed leisurely in the same direction
-that the laden farm wagon had taken. Along Clay Street from the judge's
-house to the main part of town, where the business houses and the stores
-centered, was a mile walk nearly, up a fairly steepish hill and down
-again, but shaded well all the way by water maples and silver-leaf trees.
-There weren't more than eight houses or ten along Clay Street, and these,
-with the exception of the judge's roomy, white-porched house standing
-aloof in its two acres of poorly kept lawn, were all little two-room frame
-houses, each in a small, bare inclosure of its own, with wide, weed-grown
-spaces between it and its next-door neighbors. These were the homes of
-those who in a city would haye been tenement dwellers. In front of them
-stretched narrow wooden sidewalks, dappled now with patches of shadow and
-of soft, warm sunshine.
-</p>
-<p>
-Perhaps halfway along was a particularly shabby little brown house that
-pushed dose up to the street line. A straggly catalpa tree shaded its
-narrow porch. This was the home of Lemuel Hammersmith; and Hammersmith
-seems such a name as should by right belong to a masterful, upstanding man
-with something of Thor or Vulcan or Judas Maccabaeus in him—it
-appears to have that sound. But Lemuel Hammersmith was no such man. In a
-city he would have been lost altogether—swallowed up among a mass of
-more important, pushing folk. But in a town as small as ours he had
-distinction. He belonged to more secret orders than any man in town—he
-belonged to all there were. Their small mummeries and mysteries, conducted
-behind closed doors, had for him a lure that there was no resisting; he
-just had to join. As I now recall, he never rose to high rank in any one
-of them, never wore the impressive regalia and the weighty title of a
-supreme officer; but when a lodge brother died he nearly always served on
-the committee that drew up the resolutions of respect. In moments of
-half-timid expanding he had been known to boast mildly that his signature,
-appended to resolutions of respect, suitably engrossed and properly
-framed, hung on the parlor walls of more than a hundred homes. He was a
-small and inconsequential man and he led a small and inconsequential life,
-giving his days to clerking in Noble & Barry's coal office for fifty
-dollars a month, and his nights to his lodge meetings and to drawing up
-resolutions of respect. In the latter direction he certainly had a gift;
-the underlying sympathy of his nature found its outlet there. And he had a
-pale, sickly wife and a paler, sicklier child.
-</p>
-<p>
-On this circus day he had been stationed in front of his house for a good
-half hour, watching up the street for some one. This some one, as it
-turned out, was Judge Priest. At sight of the old judge coming along, Mr.
-Hammersmith went forward to meet him and fell in alongside, keeping pace
-with him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Good momin', son,” said the old judge, who knew everybody that lived in
-town. “How's the little feller this mornin'?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Judge, I'm sorry to say that Lemuel Junior ain't no better this momin',”
- answered the little coal clerk with a hitching of his voice. “We're afraid—his
-mother and me—that he ain't never goin' to be no better. I've had
-Doctor Lake in again and he says there really ain't anything we can do—he
-says it's just a matter of a little time now. Old Aunt Hannah Holmes says
-he's got bone erysipelas, and that if we could 'a' got him away from here
-in time we might have saved him. But I don't know—we done the best
-we could. I try to be reconciled. Lemuel Junior he suffers so at times
-that it'll be a mercy, I reckin—but it's hard on you, judge—it's
-tumble hard on you when it's your only child.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“My son,” said the old judge, speaking slowly, “it's so hard that I know
-nothin' I could say or do would be any comfort to you. But I'm sorry—I'm
-mighty sorry for you all. I know what it is. I buried mine, both of 'em,
-in one week's time, and that's thirty years and more ago; but it still
-hurts mightily sometimes. I wish't there was something I could do.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, there is,” said Hammersmith—“there is, judge, maybe. That's
-why I've been standin' down here waitin' for you. You see, Lemmy he was
-tumble sharp set on goin' to the circus today. He's been readin' the
-circus bills that I'd bring home to him until he knew 'em off by heart. He
-always did have a mighty bright mind for rememberin' things. We was aimin'
-to take him to the show this evenin', bundled up in a bedquilt, you know,
-and settin' off with him in a kind of a quiet place somewhere. But he had
-a bad night and we just can't make out to do it—he's too weak to
-stand it—and it was most breakin' his heart for a while; but then he
-said if he could just see the parade he'd be satisfied.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And, judge, that's the point—he's took it into his head that you
-can fix it some way so he can see it. We tried to argue him out of it, but
-you know how it is, tryin' to argue with a child as sick as Lemuel
-Junior's been. He—he won't listen to nothin' we say.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A great compassion shadowed the judge's face. His hand went out and found
-the sloping shoulder of the father and patted it clumsily. He didn't say
-anything. There didn't seem to be anything to say.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So we just had to humor him along. His maw has had him at the front
-window for an hour now, propped up on a pillow, waitin' for you to come
-by. He wouldn't listen to nothin' else. And, judge—if you can humor
-him at all—any way at all—do it, please—”
- </p>
-<p>
-He broke off because they were almost in the shadow of the catalpa tree,
-and now the judge's name was called out by a voice that was as thin and
-elfin as though the throat that spoke it were strung with fine silver
-wires.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, judge—oh, Mister Judge Priest!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The judge stopped, and, putting his hands on the palings, looked across
-them at the little sick boy. He saw a face that seemed to be all eyes and
-mouth and bulging, blue-veined forehead—he was shockingly reminded
-of a new-hatched sparrow—and the big eyes were feverishly alight
-with the look that is seen only in the eyes of those who already have
-begun to glimpse the great secret that lies beyond the ken of the rest of
-us.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, hello, little feller,” said the judge, with a false heartiness. “I'm
-sorry to see you laid up again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Judge Priest, sir,” said the sick boy, panting with weak eagerness, “I
-want to see the grand free street parade. I've been sick a right smart
-while, and I can't go to the circus; but I do want mightily to see the
-grand free street parade. And I want you, please, sir, to have 'em come up
-by this house.”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a world of confidence in the plea. Unnoticed by the boy, his
-mother, who had been fanning him, dropped the fan and put her apron over
-her face and leaned against the window-jamb, sobbing silently. The father,
-silent too, leaned against the fence, looking fixedly at nothing and
-wiping his eyes with the butt of his hand. Yes, it is possible for a man
-to wipe his eyes on his bare hand without seeming either grotesque or
-vulgar—even when the man who does it is a little inconsequential man—if
-his child is dying and his sight is blurred and his heart is fit to burst
-inside of him. The judge bent across the fence, and his face muscles were
-working but his voice held steady.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, now, Lemmy,” he said, “I'd like to do it for you the best in the
-world; but, you see, boy, I don't own this here circus—I don't even
-know the gentleman that does own it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“His name is Silver,” supplied the sick child—“Daniel P. Silver,
-owner of Silver's Mammoth United Railroad Shows, Roman Hippodrome and
-Noah's Ark Menagerie—that's the man! I kin show you his picture on
-one of the showbills my paw brought home to me, and then you kin go right
-and find him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm afraid it wouldn't do much good if I did know him, Lemmy,” said the
-old judge very gently. “You see—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But ain't you the judge at the big cote-house?” demanded the child; “and
-can't you put people in jail if they don't do what you tell 'em? That's
-what my grandpop says. He's always tellin' me stories about how you and
-him fought the Yankees, and he always votes for you too—my grandpop
-talks like he thought you could do anything. And, judge, please, sir, if
-you went to Mister Daniel P. Silver and told him that you was the big
-judge—and told him there was a little sick boy livin' right up the
-road a piece in a little brown house—don't you reckin he'd do it? It
-ain't so very far out of the way if they go down Jefferson Street—it's
-only a little ways Judge, you'll make 'em do it, won't you—for me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll try, boy, I'll shorely try to do what I can,” said the old judge;
-“but if I can't make 'em do it you won't be disappointed, will you,
-Lemmy?” He fumbled in his pocket. “Here's four bits for you—you tell
-your daddy to buy you something with it. I know your maw and daddy
-wouldn't want you to take money from strangers, but of course it's
-different with old friends like you and me. Here, you take it. And there's
-something else,” he went on. “I'll bet you there's one of those dagoes or
-somebody like that downtown with a lot of these here big toy rubber
-balloons—red and green and blue. You tell me which color you like
-the best and I'll see that it's sent right up here to you—the
-biggest balloon the man's got—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't want any balloon,” said the little voice fretfully, “and I don't
-want any four bits. I want to see the grand free street parade, and the
-herd of elephants, and the down, and the man-eatin' tigers, and
-everything. I want that parade to come by this house.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The judge looked hopelessly from the child to the mother and then to the
-father—they both had their faces averted still—and back into
-the sick child's face again. The four-bit piece lay shining on the porch
-floor where it had fallen. The judge backed away, searching his mind for
-the right words to say.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, I'll do what I can, Lemmy,” he repeated, as though he could find no
-other phrase—“I'll do what I can.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The child rolled his head back against the pillow, satisfied. “Then it'll
-be all right, sir,” he said with a joyful confidence. “My grand-pop he
-said you could do 'most anything. You tell 'em, Mister Judge Priest, that
-I'll be a-waitin' right here in this very window for 'em when they pass.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Walking with his head down and his steps lagging, the old judge, turning
-into the main thoroughfare, was almost run over by a mare that came
-briskly along, drawing a light buggy with a tall man in it. The tall man
-pulled up the mare just in time. His name was Settle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“By gum, judge,” he said apologetically, “I came mighty near gettin' you
-that time!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hello, son,” said the judge absently; “which way are you headed?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Downtown, same as everybody else,” said Settle. “Jump in and I'll take
-you right down, sir.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Much obliged,” assented the old judge, as he heaved himself heavily up
-between the skewed wheels and settled himself so solidly at Settle's left
-that the seat springs whined; “but I wish't, if you're not in too big a
-hurry, that you'd drive me up by the showgrounds first.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Glad to,” said Settle, as he swung the mare round. “I just come from
-there myself—been up lookin' at the stock. 'Tain't much. Goin' up to
-look their stock over yourself, judge?” he asked, taking it for granted
-that any man would naturally be interested in horseflesh, as indeed would
-be a true guess so far as any man in that community was concerned.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stock?” said the judge. “No, I want to see the proprietor of this here
-show. I won't keep you waitin' but a minute or two.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The proprietor!” echoed Settle, surprised. “What's a circuit judge goin'
-to see a circus man for—is it something about their license?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,” said the judge—“no, just some business—a little private
-business matter I want to see him on.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He offered no further explanation and Settle asked for none. At the
-grounds the smaller tents were all up—there was quite a little
-dirty-white encampment of them—and just as they drove up the roof of
-the main tent rose to the tops of its center poles, bellying and billowing
-like a stage sea in the second act of Monte Cristo. Along the near edge of
-the common, negro men were rigging booths with planks for counters and
-sheets for awnings, and negro women were unpacking the wares that would
-presently be spread forth temptingly against the coming of the show crowds—fried
-chicken and slabs of fried fish, and ham and pies and fried apple
-turnovers. Leaving Settle checking the restive mare, the old judge made
-his way across the sod, already scuffed and dented by countless feet. A
-collarless, redfaced man, plainly a functionary of some sort, hurried
-toward him, and the judge put himself in this man's path.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are you connected with this institution, suh?” he asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the man shortly, but slowing his gait.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I judged from your manner and deportment, suh,” said the judge. “I'm
-lookin',” he went on, “for your proprietor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Silver? He's over yonder by the cookhouse.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The which?” asked the judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The cookhouse—the dining tent,” explained the other, pointing.
-“Right round yonder beyond that second stake wagon—where you see
-smoke rising. But he's likely to be pretty busy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Behind the second stake wagon the judge found a blocky, authoritative man,
-with a brown derby hat tilted back on his head and heavy-lidded eyes like
-a frog's, and knew him at once for the owner; but one look at the face
-made the judge hesitate. He felt that his was a lost cause already; and
-then the other opened his mouth and spoke, and Judge Priest turned on his
-heel and came away. The judge was reasonably well seasoned to sounds of
-ordinary profanity, but not to blasphemy that seemed to loose an evil
-black smudge upon the clean air. He came back to the buggy and climbed in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“See your man?” asked Settle.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the judge slowly, “I saw him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Especially downtown things had a holidaying look to them. Wall-eyed teams
-of country horses were tethered to hitching-racks in the short by-streets,
-flinching their flanks and setting themselves for abortive stampedes later
-on. Pedlers of toy balloons circulated; a vender with a fascinating line
-of patter sold to the same customers, in rapid succession, odorous
-hamburger and flat slabs of a heat-resisting variety of striped ice cream.
-At a main crossing, catercornered across from each other, the highpitch
-man and his brother of the flat joint were at work, one selling electric
-belts from the back of a buggy, the other down in the dust manipulating a
-spindle game. The same group of shillabers were constantly circulating
-from one faker to the other, and as constantly investing. Even the clerks
-couldn't stay inside the stores—they kept darting out and darting
-back in again. A group of darkies would find a desirable point of
-observation along the sidewalk and hold it for a minute or two, and then
-on a sudden unaccountable impulse would desert it and go streaking off
-down the middle of the street to find another that was in no way better.
-In front of the wagon yard country rigs were parked three deep. Every
-small boy who wasn't at the showground was swarming round underfoot
-somewhere, filled with a most delicious nervousness that kept him moving.
-But Judge Priest, who would have joyed in these things ordinarily, had an
-absent eye for it all. There was another picture persisting in his mind, a
-picture with a little brown house and a ragged catalpa tree for a
-background.
-</p>
-<p>
-In front of Soule's drug store his weekday cronies sat—the elder
-statesmen of the town—tilted back in hard-bottomed chairs, with
-their legs drawn up under them out of the tides of foot travel. But he
-passed them by, only nodding an answer to their choraled greeting, and
-went inside back behind the prescription case and sat down there alone,
-smoking his pipe soberly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Wonder what ails Judge Priest?” said Sergeant Jimmy Bagby. “He looks sort
-of dauncy and low in his mind, don't he?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He certainly does,” some one agreed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Half an hour later, when the sheriff came in looking for him, Judge Priest
-was still sitting alone behind the prescription case. With the sheriff was
-a middle-aged man, a stranger, in a wrinkled check suit and a somewhat
-soiled fancy vest. An upper pocket of this vest was bulged outward by such
-frank articles of personal use as a red celluloid toothbrush, carried
-bristle-end up, a rubber mustache-comb and a carpenter's flat pencil. The
-stranger had a longish mustache, iron-gray at the roots and of a greenish,
-blue-black color elsewhere, and he walked with a perceptible limp. He had
-a way, it at once developed, of taking his comb out and running it through
-his mustache while in conversation, doing so without seeming to affect the
-flow or the volume of his language.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mornin', Judge Priest,” said the sheriff. “This here gentleman wants to
-see you a minute about gittin' out an attachment. I taken him first to the
-county judge's office, but it seems like Judge Landis went up to
-Louisville last night, and the magistrates' offices air closed—both
-of them, in fact; and so seein' as this gentleman is in a kind of a hurry,
-I taken the liberty of bringin' him round to you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Before the judge could open his mouth, he of the dyed mustache was
-breaking in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, sirree,” he began briskly. “If you're the judge here I want an
-attachment. I've got a good claim against Dan Silver, and blame me if I
-don't push it. I'll fix him—red-lighting me off my own privilege
-car!” He puffed up with rage and injury.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What appears to be the main trouble?” asked the judge, studying this
-belligerent one from under his hatbrim.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, it's simple enough,” explained the man. “Stanton is my name—here's
-my card—and I'm the fixer for this show—the legal adjuster,
-see? Or, anyhow, I was until last night. And I likewise am—or was—half
-partner with Dan Silver in the privilege car and in the speculative
-interests of this show—the flat joints and the rackets and all. You
-make me now, I guess? Well, last night, coming up here from the last
-stand, me and Silver fell out over the split-up, over dividing the day's
-profits—you understand, the money is cut up two ways every night—and
-I ketched him trying to trim me. I called him down good and hard then, and
-blame if he didn't have the nerve to call in that big boss razor-back of
-his, named Saginaw, and a couple more rousters, and red-light me right off
-my own privilege car! Now what do you know about that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Only what you tell me,” replied Judge Priest calmly. “Might I ask you
-what is the process of red-lightin' a person of your callin' in life?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Chucking you off of a train without waiting for the train to stop, that's
-what,” expounded the aggrieved Mr. Stanton. “It was pretty soft for me
-that I lit on the side of a dirt bank and we wasn't moving very fast, else
-I'd a been killed. As 'twas I about ruined a suit of clothes and scraped
-most of the meat off of one leg.” He indicated the denuded limb by raising
-it stiffly a couple of times and then felt for his comb. Use of it
-appeared to have a somewhat soothing effect upon his feelings, and he
-continued: “So I limped up to the next station, two of the longest miles
-in the world, and caught a freight coming through, and here I am. And now
-I want to file against him—the dirty, red-lighting dog!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, he owes me money—plenty of it. Just like I told you, I'm the
-half owner of that privilege car, and besides he borrowed money off of me
-at the beginning of the season and never offered to pay it back. I've got
-his personal notes right here to prove it.” He felt for the documents and
-spread them, soiled and thumbed, upon the prescription shelf under the
-judge's nose. “He's sure got to settle with me before he gets out of this
-town. Don't worry about me—I'll put up cash bond to prove I'm on the
-level,” fishing out from his trousers pocket a bundle of bills with a
-rubber band on it. “Pretty lucky for me they didn't know I had my bankroll
-with me last night!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I suppose the attachment may issue,” said the judge preparing to get up.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Fine,” said Stanton, with deep gratification in his bearing. “But here,
-wait a minute,” he warned. “Don't make no mistake and try to attach the
-whole works, because if you do you'll sure fall down on your face, judge.
-That's all been provided for. The wagons and horses are all in Silver's
-name and the cage animals are all in his wife's name. And so when a hick
-constable or somebody comes round with an attachment, Dan says to him,
-'All right,' he says, 'go on and attach, but you can't touch them
-animals,' he says; and then friend wife flashes a bill of sale to show
-they are hers. The rube says 'What'll I do?' and Silver says, 'Why, let
-the animals out and take the wagons; but of course,' he says, 'you're
-responsible for the lions and that pair of ferocious man-eating tigers and
-the rest of 'em. Go right ahead,' he says, 'and help yourself,' 'Yes,' his
-wife says, 'go ahead; but if you let any of my wild animals get away I'll
-hold you liable, and also if you let any of 'em chew up anybody you'll pay
-the damages and not me,' she says. 'You'll have to be specially careful
-about Wallace the Ontamable,' she says; 'he's et up two trainers already
-this season and crippled two-three more of the hands.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, if that don't bluff the rube they take him round and give him a
-flash at Wallace. Wallace is old and feeble and he ain't really much more
-dangerous than a kitten, but he looks rough; and Dan sidles up 'longside
-the wagon and touches a button that's there to use during the ballyhoo,
-and then Wallace jumps up and down and roars a mile. D'ye make me there?
-Well, the floor of the cage is all iron strips, and when Dan touches that
-button it shoots about fifty volts of the real juice—electricity,
-you know—into Wallace's feet and he acts ontamable. So of course
-that stumps the rube, and Dan like as not gets away with it without ever
-settling. Oh, it's a foxy trick! And to think it was me myself that first
-put Silver on to it!” he added lamentingly, with a sidelong look at the
-sheriff to see how that official was taking the disclosure of these
-professional secrets. As well as one might judge by a glance the sheriff
-was taking it unmoved. He was cutting off a chew of tobacco from a black
-plug. Stowing the morsel in his jaw, he advanced an idea of his own:
-</p>
-<p>
-“How about attachin' the receipts in the ticket wagon?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't know about that either,” said the sophisticated Stanton. “Dan
-Silver is one of the wisest guys in this business. He had to be a wise guy
-to slip one over on an old big-leaguer like yours truly, and that's no
-sidewalk banter either. You might attach the wagon and put a constable or
-somebody inside of it, and then like as not Dan'd find some way to
-flimflam him and make his getaway with the kale intact. You gotter give it
-to Dan Silver there. I guess he's a stupid guy—yes, stupid like a
-bear cat!” His tone of reluctant admiration indicated that this last was
-spoken satirically and that seriously he regarded a bear cat as probably
-the astutest hybrid of all species.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are all circuses conducted in this general fashion, suh?” inquired the
-old judge softly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” admitted Stanton, “they ain't—the big ones ain't anyway; but a
-lot of the small ones is. They gotter do it because a circus is always
-fair game for a sore rube. Once the tents come down a circus has got no
-friends.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I tell you what,” he went on, struck amidships with a happy notion—“I
-tell you what you do. Lemme swear out an attachment against the band wagon
-and the band-wagon team, and you go serve it right away, sheriff. That'll
-fix him, I guess.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How so?” put in the judge, still seeking information for his own
-enlightenment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, you see, if you tie up that band wagon Dan Silver can't use it for
-parading. He ain't got but just the one, and a circus parade without a
-band wagon will look pretty sick, I should say. It'll look more like
-something else, a funeral, for example.” The pleased grafter grinned
-maliciously.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's like this—the band wagon is the key to the whole works,” he
-went on. “It's the first thing off the lot when the parade starts—the
-band-wagon driver is the only one that has the route. You cut the band
-wagon out and you've just naturally got that parade snarled up to hell and
-gone.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest got upon his feet and advanced upon the exultant stranger. He
-seemed more interested than at any time.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Suh,” he asked, “let me see if I understand you properly. The band wagon
-is the guidin' motive, as it were, of the entire parade—is that
-right?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've got it,” Stanton assured him. “Even the stock is trained to follow
-the band wagon. They steer by the music up ahead. Cop the band wagon out
-and the rest of 'em won't know which way to go—that's the rule
-where-ever there's a road show traveling.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah hah,” said the judge reflectively, “I see.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But say, look here, judge,” said Stanton. “Begging your pardon and not
-trying to rush you nor nothing, but if you're going to attach that band
-wagon of Dan Silver's for me you gotter hurry. That parade is due to leave
-the lot in less'n half an hour from now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He was gratified to note that his warning appeared to grease the joints in
-the old judge's legs. They all three went straightway to the sheriff's
-office, which chanced to be only two doors away, and there the
-preliminaries necessary to legal seizures touching on a certain described
-and specified parade chariot, tableau car or band wagon were speedily
-completed. Stanton made oath to divers allegations and departed,
-assiduously combing himself and gloating openly over the anticipated
-discomfiture of his late partner. The sheriff lingered behind only a
-minute or two longer while Judge Priest in the privacy of a back room
-impressed upon him his instructions. Then he, too, departed, moving at his
-top walking gait westward out Jefferson Street. There was this that could
-be said for Sheriff Giles Birdsong—he was not gifted in conversation
-nor was he of a quick order of intellect, but he knew his duty and he
-obeyed orders literally when conveyed to him by a superior official. On
-occasion he had obeyed them so literally—where the warrant had said
-dead or alive, for example—that he brought in, feet first, a
-prisoner or so who manifested a spirited reluctance against being brought
-in any other way. And the instructions he had now were highly explicit on
-a certain head.
-</p>
-<p>
-Close on Sheriff Birdsong's hurrying heels the judge himself issued forth
-from the sheriff's office. Hailing a slowly ambling public vehicle driven
-by a languid darky, he deposited his person therein and was driven away.
-Observing this from his place in front of the drug store, Sergeant Jimmy
-Bagby was moved to remark generally to the company: “You can't tell me I
-wasn't right a while ago about Judge Billy Priest. Look at him yonder now,
-puttin' out for home in a hack, without waitin' for the parade. There
-certainly is something wrong with the judge and you can't tell me there
-ain't.”
- </p>
-<p>
-If the judge didn't wait nearly everybody else did—waited with what
-patience and impatience they might through a period that was punctuated by
-a dozen false alarms, each marked with much craning of elderly necks and
-abortive rushes by younger enthusiasts to the middle of the street. After
-a while, though, from away up at the head of Jefferson Street there came
-down, borne along on the summer air, a faint anticipatory blare of brazen
-horns, heard at first only in broken snatches. Then, in a minute or two,
-the blaring resolved itself into a connected effort at melody, with drums
-throbbing away in it. Farmers grabbed at the bits of restive horses, that
-had their ears set sharply in one direction, and began uttering soothing
-and admonitory “whoas.” The stores erupted clerks and customers together.
-The awning poles on both sides of the street assumed the appearance of
-burdened grape trellises, bearing ripe black and white clusters of small
-boys. At last she was coming!
-</p>
-<p>
-She was, for a fact. She came on until the thin runlet of ostensible music
-became a fan-faring, crashing cataract of pleasing and exhilarating sound,
-until through the dancing dust could be made out the arching, upcurved
-front of a splendid red-and-gold chariot. In front of it, like wallowing
-waves before the prow of a Viking ship, were the weaving broad backs of
-many white horses, and stretching behind it was a sinuous, colorful mass
-crowned with dancing, distant banner-things, and suggesting in glintings
-of gold and splashings of flame an oncoming argosy of glitter and
-gorgeousness.
-</p>
-<p>
-She was coming all right! But was she? A sort of disappointed, surprised
-gasp passed along the crowded sidewalks, and boys began sliding down the
-awning poles and running like mad up the street. For instead of continuing
-straight on down Jefferson, as all circus parades had always done, the
-head of this one was seen now, after a momentary halt as of indecision, to
-turn short off and head into Clay. But why Clay Street—that was the
-question? Clay Street didn't have ten houses on it, all told, and it ran
-up a steep hill and ended in an abandoned orchard just beyond the old
-Priest place. Indeed the only way to get out of Clay Street, once you got
-into it, was by a distant lane that cut through to the paralleling street
-on the right. What would any circus parade in possession of its sane
-senses be doing going up Clay Street?
-</p>
-<p>
-But that indeed was exactly what this parade was doing—with the
-added phenomena of Sheriff Giles Birdsong sitting vigilantly erect on the
-front seat of the band wagon, and a band-wagon driver taking orders for
-once from somebody besides his rightful boss—taking them
-protestingly and profanely, but nevertheless taking them.
-</p>
-<p>
-Yes, sir, that's what she was doing. The band wagon, behind the oblique
-arc of its ten-horse team, was swinging into Clay Street, and the rest of
-the procession was following its leader and disappearing, wormlike, into a
-tunnel of overarching maples and silver-leaf poplars.
-</p>
-<p>
-And so it moved, slowly and deliberately, after the fashion of circus
-parades, past some sparsely scattered cottages that were mainly closed and
-empty, seeing that their customary dwellers were even now downtown, until
-the head of it came to a particularly shabby little brown house that was
-not closed and was not empty. From a window here looked out a worn little
-woman and a little sick boy, he as pale as the pillow against which he was
-propped, and from here they saw it all—she through tears and he with
-eyes that burned with a dumb joy unutterable—from here these two
-beheld the unbelievable marvel of it. It was almost as though the whole
-unspeakable grandeur of it had been devised for those eyes alone—first
-the great grand frigate of a band wagon pitching and rolling as if in
-heavy seas, with <i>artistes</i> of a world-wide repute discoursing sweet
-strains from its decks, and drawn not by four or six, but by ten
-snow-white Arabian stallions with red pompons nodding above their proud
-heads—that is to say, they were snow-white except perhaps for a
-slight grayish dappling. And on behind this, tailing away and away, were
-knights and ladies on mettled, gayly caparisoned steeds, and golden
-pageant dens filled with ferocious rare beasts of the jungle, hungrily
-surveying the surging crowds—only, of course, there weren't any
-crowds—and sun-bright tableau cars, with crystal mirrors cunningly
-inset in the scrolled carved work, so that the dancing surfaces caught the
-sunlight and threw it back into eyes already joyously dazzled; and sundry
-closed cages with beautiful historical paintings on their sides,
-suggesting by their very secrecy the presence of marvelous prisoned
-creatures; and yet another golden chariot with the Queen of Sheba and her
-whole glittering court traveling in imperial pomp atop of it.
-</p>
-<p>
-That wasn't all—by no means was it all. There succeeded an open den
-containing the man-eating Bengal tigers, striped and lank, with the
-intrepid spangled shoulders of the trainer showing as he sat with his back
-against the bars, holding his terrible charges in dominion by the power of
-the human eye, so that for the time being they dared not eat anybody. And
-then followed a whole drove of trick ponies drawing the happy family in
-its wheeled home, and behind that in turn more cages, closed, and a
-fife-and-drum corps of old regimentals in blue and buff, playing Yankee
-Doodle with martial spirit, and next the Asiatic camel to be known by his
-one hump, and the genuine Bactrian dromedary to be known by his two,
-slouching by as though they didn't care whether school kept or not,
-flirting their under lips up and down and showing profiles like Old
-Testament characters. And then came more knights and ladies and more
-horses and more heroes of history and romance, and a veritable herd of
-vast and pondrous pachyderm performers, or elephants—for while one
-pachyderm, however vast and pachydermic, might not make a herd, perhaps,
-or even two yet surely three would, and here were no less than three,
-holding one another's tails with their trunks, which was a droll conceit
-thought up by these intelligent creatures on the spur of the moment, no
-doubt, with the sole idea of giving added pleasure to a little sick boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-That wasn't all either. There was more of this unapproachable pageant yet
-winding by—including such wonders as the glass-walled apartment of
-the lady snake-charmer, with the lady snake-charmer sitting right there in
-imminent peril of her life amidst her loathsome, coiling and venomous
-pets; and also there was Judge Priest's Jeff, hardly to be recognized in a
-red-and-yellow livery as he led the far-famed sacred ox of India; and then
-the funny old clown in his little blue wagon, shouting out “Whoa, January”
- to his mule and dodging back as January kicked up right in his face, and
-last of all—a crowning glory to all these other glories—the
-steam calliope, whistling and blasting and shrilling and steaming, fit to
-split itself wide open!
-</p>
-<p>
-You and I, reader, looking on at this with gaze unglamoured by the
-eternal, fleeting spirit of youth, might have noted in the carping light
-of higher criticism that the oriental trappings had been but poor shoddy
-stuffs to begin with, and were now all torn and dingy and shedding their
-tarnished spangles; might have noted that the man-eating tigers seemed
-strangely bored with life, and that the venomous serpents draped upon the
-form of the lady snake-charmer were languid, not to say torpid, to a
-degree that gave the lady snake-charmer the appearance rather of a female
-suspender pedler, carrying her wares hung over her shoulders. We might
-have observed further had we been so minded—as probably we should—that
-the Queen of Sheba bore somewhat a weatherbeaten look and held a quite
-common-appearing cotton umbrella with a bone handle over her regal head;
-that the East-Indian mahout of the elephant herd needed a shave, and that
-there were mud-stained overalls and brogan shoes showing plainly beneath
-the flowing robes of the Arabian camel-driver. We might even have guessed
-that the biggest tableau car was no more than a ticket wagon in thin
-disguise, and that the yapping which proceeded from the largest closed
-cage indicated the presence merely of a troupe of uneasy performing
-poodles.
-</p>
-<p>
-But to the transported vision of the little sick boy in the little brown
-house there were no flaws in it anywhere—it was all too splendid for
-words, and so he spoke no words at all as it wound on by. The lurching
-shoulders of the elephants had gone over the hill beyond and on down, the
-sacred ox of India had passed ambling from sight, the glass establishment
-of the snake-charmer was passing, and January and the down wagon and the
-steam calliope were right in front of the Hammersmith house, when
-something happened on ahead, and for a half minute or so there was a
-slowing-up and a closing-up and a halting of everything.
-</p>
-<p>
-Although, of course, the rear guard didn't know it for the time being, the
-halt was occasioned by the fact that when the band wagon reached the far
-end of Clay Street, with the orchard trees looming dead ahead, the
-sheriff, riding on the front seat of the band wagon, gave an order. The
-band-wagon driver instantly took up the slack of the reins that flowed
-through his fingers in layers, so that they stopped right in front of
-Judge Priest's house, where Judge Priest stood leaning on his gate. The
-sheriff made a sort of saluting motion of his fingers against the brim of
-his black slouch hat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Accordin' to orders, Your Honor,” he stated from his lofty perch.
-</p>
-<p>
-At this there spoke up another man, the third and furthermost upon the
-wide seat of the band wagon, and this third man was no less a personage
-than Daniel P. Silver himself, and he was as near to bursting with bottled
-rage as any man could well be and still remain whole, and he was as hoarse
-as a frog from futile swearing.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What in thunder does this mean—” he began, and then stopped short,
-being daunted by the face which Sheriff Giles Birdsong turned upon him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Look here, mister,” counseled the sheriff, “you art now in the presence
-of the presidin' judge of the first judicial district of Kintucky, settin'
-in chambers, or what amounts to the same thing, and you air liable to git
-yourself into contempt of cote any minute.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Baffled, Silver started to swear again, but in a lower key.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You better shut up your mouth,” said the sheriff with a shifting forward
-of his body to free his limbs for action, “and listen to whut His Honor
-has to say. You act like you was actually anxious to git yourself lamed
-up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sheriff,” said the judge, “obeyin' your orders you have, I observe,
-attached certain properties—to wit, a band wagon and team of horses—and
-still obeyin' orders, have produced said articles before me for my
-inspection. You will continue in personal possession of same until said
-attachment is adjudicated, not allowin' any person whatsoever to remove
-them from your custody. Do I make myself sufficiently plain?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, Your Honor,” said the sheriff. “You do.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In the meanwhile, pendin' the termination of the litigation, if the
-recent possessor of this property desires to use it for exhibition or
-paradin' purposes, you will permit him to do so, always within proper
-bounds,” went on the judge. “I would suggest that you could cut through
-that lane yonder in order to reach the business section of our city, if
-such should be the desire of the recent possessor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The heavy wheels of the band wagon began turning; the parade started
-moving on again. But in that precious half-minute's halt something else
-had happened, only this happened in front of the little brown house
-halfway down Clay Street. The clown's gaze was roving this way and that,
-as if looking for the crowd that should have been there and that was only
-just beginning to appear, breathless and panting, and his eyes fell upon a
-wasted, wizened little face looking straight out at him from a nest of
-bedclothes in a window not thirty feet away; and—be it remembered
-among that clown's good deeds in the hereafter—he stood up and
-bowed, and stretched his painted, powdered face in a wide and gorgeous
-grin, just as another and a greater Grimaldi once did for just such
-another audience of a grieving mother and a dying child. Then he yelled
-“Whoa, January,” three separate times, and each time he poked January in
-his long-suffering flanks and each time January kicked up his small quick
-hoofs right alongside the clown's floury ears.
-</p>
-<p>
-The steam calliope man had an inspiration too. He was a person of no great
-refinement, the calliope man, and he worked a shell game for his main
-source of income and lived rough and lived hard, so it may not have been
-an inspiration after all, but merely the happy accident of chance. But
-whether it was or it wasn't, he suddenly and without seeming reason
-switched from the tune he was playing and made his calliope sound out the
-first bars of the music which somebody once set to the sweetest childhood
-verses that Eugene Field ever wrote—the verses that begin:
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-The little toy dog is covered with dust,
-But sturdy and stanch he stands;
-And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
-And his musket molds in his hands.
-</pre>
-<p>
-The parade resumed its march then and went on, tailing away through the
-dappled sunshine under the trees, and up over the hill and down the other
-side of it, but the clown looked back as he scalped the crest and waved
-one arm, in a baggy calico sleeve, with a sort of friendly goodby motion
-to somebody behind him; and as for the steam calliope man, he kept on
-playing the little Boy Blue verses until he disappeared.
-</p>
-<p>
-As a matter of fact, he was still playing them when he passed a
-wide-porched old white house almost at the end of the empty street, where
-a stout old man in a wrinkly white linen suit leaned across a gate and
-regarded the steam calliope man with a satisfied almost a proprietorial
-air.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-VI. WHEN THE FIGHTING WAS GOOD
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ISTER SHERIFF,” ordered the judge, “bring Pressley G. Harper to the
-bar.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest, as I may have set forth before, had two habits of speech—one
-purposely ungrammatical and thickly larded with the vernacular of the
-country crossroads—that was for his private walks and conversations,
-and for his campaignings; but the other was of good and proper and
-dignified English, and it he reserved for official acts and utterances.
-Whether upon the bench or off it, though, his voice had that high-pitched,
-fiddle-string note which carried far and clearly; and on this day, when he
-spoke, the sheriff roused up instantly from where he had been enjoying
-forty winks between the bewhittled arms of a tilted chair and bestirred
-himself. He hurried out of a side door. A little, whispering, hunching
-stir went through the courtroom. Spectators reclining upon the benches,
-partly on their spines and partly on their shoulderblades, straightened
-and bent forward. Inside the rail, which set apart the legal goats from
-the civic sheep, a score of eyes were fixed speculatively upon the judge's
-face, rising above the top of the tall, scarred desk where he sat; but his
-face gave no dew to his thoughts; and if the mind back of the beneficent,
-mild blue eyes was troubled, the eyes themselves looked out unvexed
-through the steel-bowed spectacles that rode low on the old judge's nose.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was a minute's wait. The clerk handed up to the judge a sheaf of
-papers in blue wrappers. The judge shuffled through them until he found
-the one he wanted. It was the middle of the afternoon of a luscious spring
-day—the last day of the spring term of court. In at the open windows
-came spicy, moist smells of things sprouting and growing, and down across
-the courthouse square the big star-shaped flowers of the dogwood trees
-showed white and misty, like a new Milky Way against a billowy green
-firmament.
-</p>
-<p>
-A minute only and then the sheriff reëntered. At his side came a man. This
-newcomer must have been dose to seventy years—or sixty-five, anyway.
-He was long and lean, and he bore his height with a sort of alert and
-supple erectness, stepping high, with the seemingly awkward gait of the
-man trained at crossing furrows, yet bringing his feet down noiselessly,
-like a house-cat treading on dead leaves. The way he moved made you think
-of a deerstalker. Strength, tremendous strength, was shown in the outward
-swing of the long arms and the huge, knotty hands, and there was temper in
-the hot, brown eyes and in the thick, stiff crop of reddish-gray hair,
-rising like buckwheat stubble upon his scalp. He had high cheekbones and a
-long, shaven face, and his skin was tanned to a leathery red, like a
-well-smoked ham. Except for the colors of his hair and eyes, he might have
-passed for half Indian. Indeed, there was a tale in the county that his
-great-grandmother was a Shawnee squaw. He was more than six feet tall—he
-must have been six feet two.
-</p>
-<p>
-With the sheriff alongside him he came to the bar—a sagged oaken
-railing—and stood there with his big hands cupped over it. He was
-newly shaved and dressed in what was evidently his best.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Pressley G. Harper at the bar,” sang out the clerk methodically.
-Everybody was listen-ing.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Pressley G. Harper,” said the judge, “waiving the benefit of counsel and
-the right of trial by jury, you have this day pleaded guilty to an
-indictment charging you with felonious assault in that you did, on the
-twenty-first day of January last, shoot and wound with a firearm one
-Virgil Settle, a citizen of this county. Have you anything to say why the
-sentence of the law should not be pronounced upon you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Only eying him steadfastly, the confessed offender shook his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is the judgment of this court, then, that you be confined in the state
-penitentiary for the period of two years at hard labor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A babbling murmur ran over the room—for his sins old Press Harper
-was catching it at last. The prisoner's hands gripped the oaken rail until
-his knuckles nails showed white, and it seemed that the tough wood fibers
-would be dented in; other than that he gave no sign, but took the blow
-braced and steady, like a game man facing a firing squad. The sheriff
-inched toward him; but the judge raised the hand that held the
-blue-wrappered paper as a sign that he had more to say.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Pressley G. Harper,” said the judge, “probably this is not the time or
-the place for the court to say how deeply it regrets the necessity of
-inflicting this punishment upon you. This court has known you for many
-years—for a great many years. You might have been a worthy citizen.
-You have been of good repute for truthfulness and fair dealing among your
-neighbors; but you have been beset, all your life, with a temper that was
-your abiding curse, and when excited with liquor you have been a menace to
-the safety of your fellowman. Time and time again, within the recollection
-of this court, you have been involved in unseemly brawls, largely of your
-own making. That you were generally inflamed with drink, and that you
-afterward seemed genuinely penitent and made what amends you could, does
-not serve to excuse you in the eyes of the law. That you have never taken
-a human life outright is a happy accident of chance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Through the leniency of those appointed to administer the law you have
-until now escaped the proper and fitting consequences of your behavior;
-but, by this last wanton attack upon an inoffensive citizen, you have
-forfeited all claim upon the consideration of the designated authorities.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He paused for a little, fumbling at the bow of his spectacles.
-</p>
-<p>
-“In the natural course of human events you have probably but a few more
-years to live. It is to be regretted by all right-thinking men that you
-cannot go to your grave free from the stigma of a prison. And it is a
-blessing that you have no one closely related to you by ties of blood or
-marriage to share in your disgrace.” The old judge's high voice grew
-husked and roughened here, he being himself both widowed and childless.
-“The judgment of the court stands—two years at hard labor.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He made a sign that he was done. The sheriff edged up again and touched
-the sentenced man upon the arm. Without turning his head, Harper shook off
-the hand of authority with so violent a shrug that the sheriff dodged
-back, startled. Then for the first time the prisoner spoke.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Judge, Your Honor,” he said quietly, “jest a minute ago you asked me if I
-had anything to say and I told you that I had not. I've changed my mind; I
-want to ask you something—I want to ask you a mighty big favor. No,
-I ain't askin' you to let me off—it ain't that,” he went on more
-quickly, reading the look on the judge's face. “I didn't expect to come
-clear in this here case. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty and didn't
-have no defense. My bein' sorry for shootin' Virge Settle the way I did
-don't excuse me, as I know; but, Judge Priest, I'll say jest this to you—I
-don't want to be dragged off to that there penitentiary like a savage dumb
-beast. I don't want to be took there by no sheriff. And what I want to ask
-you is this: Can't I go there a free man, with free limbs? I promise you
-to go and to serve my time faithful—but I want to go by myself and
-give myself up like a man.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Instantly visualized before the eyes of all who sat there was the picture
-which they knew must be in the prisoner's mind—the same picture
-which all or nearly all of them had seen more than once, since it came to
-pass, spring and fall, after each term of court—a little procession
-filing through the street to the depot; at its head, puffed out with
-responsibility, the sheriff and one of his deputies—at its tail more
-deputies, and in between them the string of newly convicted felons,
-handcuffed in twos, with a long trace-chain looping back from one pair to
-the next pair, and so on, binding all fast together in a clanking double
-file—the whites in front and the negroes back of them, maintaining
-even in that shameful formation the division of race; the whites mainly
-marching with downcast heads and hurrying feet, clutching pitiably small
-bundles with their free hands—the negroes singing doggerel in chorus
-and defiantly jingling the links of their tether; some, the friendless
-ones, hatless and half naked, and barefooted after months of lying in jail—and
-all with the smell of the frowsy cells upon them. And, seeing this
-familiar picture spring up before them, it seemed all of a sudden a wrong
-thing and a very shameful thing that Press Harper, an old man and a member
-of a decent family, should march thus, with his wrists chained and the
-offscourings and scum of the county jail for company. All there knew him
-for a man of his word. If old Press Harper said he would go to the
-penitentiary and surrender himself they knew he would go and do it if he
-had to crawl there on his knees. And so now, having made his plea, he
-waited silently for the answer.
-</p>
-<p>
-The old judge had half swung himself about in his chair and with his hand
-at his beard was looking out of the window.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister Sheriff,” he said, without turning his head, “you may consider
-yourself relieved of the custody of the defendant at the bar. Mister
-Clerk, you may make out the commitment papers.” The clerk busied himself
-with certain ruled forms, filling in dotted lines with writing. The judge
-went on: “Despite the irregularity of the proceeding, this court is
-disposed to grant the request which the defendant has just made. Grievous
-though his shortcomings in other directions may have been, this court has
-never known the defendant to break his word. Does the defendant desire any
-time in which to arrange his personal affairs? If so how much time?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I would like to have until the day after tomorrow,” said Harper. “If I
-kin I want to find a tenant for my farm.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Has the commonwealth's attorney any objection to the granting of this
-delay?” inquired the judge, still with his head turned away.
-</p>
-<p>
-“None, Your Honor,” said the prosecutor, half rising. And now the judge
-was facing the prisoner, looking him full in the eye.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You will go free on your own recognizance, without bond, until the day
-after tomorrow,” he bade him. “You will then report yourself to the warden
-of the state penitentiary at Frankfort. The clerk of this court will hand
-you certain documents which you will surrender to the warden at the same
-time that you surrender yourself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The tall old man at the rail bowed his head to show he understood, but he
-gave no thanks for the favor vouchsafed him, nor did the other old man on
-the bench seem to expect any thanks. The clerk's pen, racing across the
-ruled sheets, squeaked audibly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“This consideration is granted, though, upon one condition,” said the
-judge, as though a new thought had just come to him. “And that is, that
-between this time and the time you begin serving your sentence you do not
-allow a drop of liquor to cross your lips. You promise that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I promise that,” said Harper slowly and soberly, like a man taking a
-solemn oath.
-</p>
-<p>
-No more was said. The clerk filled out the blanks—two of them—and
-Judge Priest signed them. The clerk took them back from him, folded them
-inside a long envelope; backed the envelope with certain writings, and
-handed it over the bar rail to Harper. There wasn't a sound as he stowed
-it carefully into an inner pocket of his ill-fitting black coat; nor,
-except for the curiously light tread of his own steps, was there a sound
-as he, without a look side-wise, passed down the courtroom and out at the
-doorway.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Mister Clerk,” bade Judge Priest, “adjourn the present term of this
-court.”
- </p>
-<p>
-As the crowd filed noisily out, old Doctor Lake, who had been a spectator
-of all that happened, lingered behind and, with a nod and a gesture to the
-clerk, went round behind the jury-box and entered the door of the judge's
-private chamber, without knocking. The lone occupant of the room stood by
-the low, open window, looking out over the green square. He was stuffing
-the fire-blackened bowl of his corncob pipe with its customary fuel; but
-his eyes were not on the task, or his fingers trembled—or something;
-for, though the pipe was already packed to overflowing, he still tamped
-more tobacco in, wasting the shreddy brown weed upon the floor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come in, Lew, and take a chair and set down,” he said. Doctor Lake,
-however, instead of taking a chair and sitting down, crossed to the window
-and stood beside him, putting one hand on the judge's arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That was pretty hard on old Press, Billy,” said Doctor Lake.
-</p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest was deeply sensitive of all outside criticism pertaining to
-his official conduct; his life off the bench was another matter. He
-stiffened under the touch.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Lewis Lake,” he said—sharply for him—“I don't permit even my
-best friends to discuss my judicial acts.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I didn't mean that, Billy,” Doctor Lake made haste to explain. “I
-wasn't thinking so much of what happened just now in the court yonder. I
-reckon old Press deserved it—he's been running hog-wild round this
-town and this county too long already. Let him get that temper of his
-roused and a few drinks in him and he is a regular mad dog. Nobody can
-deny that. Of course I hate it—and I know you do too—to see
-one of the old company—one of the boys who marched out of here with
-us in '61—going to the pen. That's only natural; but I'm not finding
-fault with your sending him there. What I was thinking of is that you're
-sending him over the road day after tomorrow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What of that?” asked the judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, day after tomorrow is the day we're starting for the annual
-reunion,” said Doctor Lake; “and, Billy, if Press goes on the noon train—which
-he probably will—he'll be traveling right along with the rest of us—for
-a part of the way. Only he'll get off at the Junction, and we—well,
-we'll be going on through, the rest of us will, to the reunion That's what
-I meant.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's so!” said the judge regretfully—“that's so! I did forget all
-about the reunion startin' then—I plum' forgot it. I reckin it will
-be sort of awkward for all of us—and for Press in particular.” He
-paused, holding the unlighted and overflowing pipe in his hands absently,
-and then went on:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Lewis, when a man holds an office such as mine is he has to do a lot of
-things he hates mightily to do. Now you take old Press Harper's case. I
-reckin there never was a braver soldier anywhere than Press was. Do you
-remember Brice's Crossroads?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the old doctor, his eyes suddenly afire. “Yes, Billy—and
-Vicksburg too.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah!” went on the old judge—“and the second day's fight at
-Chickamauga, when we lost so many out of the regiment, and Press came back
-out of the last charge, draggin' little Gil Nicholas by the arms, and both
-of them purty nigh shot to pieces? Yes, suh; Press always was a fighter
-when there was any fightin' to do—and the fightin' was specially
-good in them days. The trouble with Press was he didn't quit fightin' when
-the rest of us did. Maybe it sort of got into his blood. It does do jest
-that sometimes, I judge.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said Doctor Lake, “I suppose you're right; but old Press is in a
-fair way to be cured now. A man with his temper ought never to touch
-whisky anyhow.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You're right,” agreed the judge. “It's a dangerous thing, licker is—and
-a curse to some people. I'd like to have a dram right this minute. Lew, I
-wish mightily you'd come on and go home with me tonight and take supper.
-I'll send my nigger boy Jeff up to your house to tell your folks you won't
-be there until late, and you walk on out to my place with me. I feel sort
-of played out and lonesome—I do so. Come on now. We'll have a young
-chicken and a bait of hot waffles—I reckin that old nigger cook of
-mine does make the best waffles in the created world. After supper we'll
-set a spell together and talk over them old times when we were in the army—and
-maybe we can kind of forget some of the things that've come up later.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The noon accommodation would carry the delegation from Gideon K. Irons
-Camp over the branch line to the Junction, where it would connect with a
-special headed through for the reunion city. For the private use of the
-Camp the railroad company provided a car which the ladies of the town
-decorated on the night before with draped strips of red and white bunting
-down the sides, and little battle-flags nailed up over the two doors. The
-rush of the wind would soon whip away the little crossed flags from their
-tack fastenings end roll the bunting streamers up into the semblance of
-peppermint sticks; but the car, hitched to the tail end of the
-accommodation and surrounded by admiring groups of barelegged small boys,
-made a brave enough show when its intended passengers came marching down a
-good half hour ahead of leaving-time.
-</p>
-<p>
-Considering the wide swath which death and the infirmities of age had been
-cutting in the ranks all these years, the Camp was sending a good
-representation—Judge Priest, the commandant; and Doctor Lake; and
-Major Joe Sam Covington; and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who never missed a
-reunion; and Corporal Jake Smedley, the color-bearer, with the Camp's flag
-furled on its staff and borne under his arm; and Captain Shelby Woodward—and
-four or five more. There was even one avowed private. Also, and not to be
-overlooked on any account, there was Uncle Zach Matthews, an ink-black,
-wrinkled person, with a shiny bald head polished like old rosewood, and a
-pair of warped legs bent outward like saddlebows. Personally Uncle Zach
-was of an open mind regarding the merits and the outcome of the Big War.
-As he himself often put it:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh—I ain't got no set prejudices ary way. In de spring of '61
-I went out wid my own w'ite folks, as body-sarvant to my young marster,
-Cap'n Harry Matthews—and we suttinly did fight dem bluebellies up
-hill and down dale fer three endurin' years or more; but in de campaignin'
-round Nashville somewhars I got kind of disorganized and turn't round
-someway; and, when I sorter comes to myself, lo and behole, ef I ain't
-been captured by de Fed'rul army! So, rather'n have any fussin' 'bout it,
-I j'ined in wid dem; and frum den on till de surrender I served on de
-other side—cookin' fer one of their gin'els and doin' odd jobs round
-de camp; but when 'twas all over I come on back home and settled down
-ag'in 'mongst my own folks, where I properly belonged. Den, yere a few
-years back, some of 'em tum't in and done some testifyin' fer me so's I
-could git my pension. Doctor Lake, he says to me hisse'f, he says; 'Zach,
-bein' as de Yankee Gover'mint is a passin' out dis yere money so free you
-might jess as well have a little chunk of it too!' And he—him and
-Mistah Charley Reed and some others, they helped me wid my papers; and, of
-course, I been mighty grateful to all dem gen'l'men ever since.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So Uncle Zach drew his pension check quarterly, and regularly once a year
-went to the reunion as general factotum of the Camp, coming home laden
-with badges and heavy with small change. He and Judge Priest's Jeff, who
-was of the second generation of freedom, now furnished a touch of intense
-color relief, sitting together in one of the rearmost seats, guarding the
-piled-up personal baggage of the veterans.
-</p>
-<p>
-Shortly before train-time carriages came, bringing young Mrs. McLaurin,
-little Rita Covington and Miss Minnie Lyon—the matron of honor, the
-sponsor and the maid of honor respectively of the delegation. Other towns
-no larger would be sure to send a dozen or more sponsors and maids and
-matrons of honor; but the home Camp was proverbially moderate in this
-regard. As Captain Woodward had once said: “We are charmed and honored by
-the smiles of our womanhood, and we worship every lovely daughter of the
-South; but, at a reunion of veterans, somehow I do love to see a veteran
-interspersed here and there in among the fair sex.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So now, as their special guests for this most auspicious occasion, they
-were taking along just these three—Rita Covington, a little
-eighteen-year-old beauty, and Minnie Lyon, a tall, fair, slender, pretty
-girl, and Mrs. Mc-Laurin. The two girls were in white linen, with touches
-of red at throat and waist; but young Mrs. McLaurin, who was a bride of
-two years' standing and plump and handsome, looked doubly handsome and
-perhaps a wee mite plumper than common in a tailor-made suit of
-mouse-gray, that was all tricked out with brass buttons and gold-braided
-cuffs, and a wide black belt, with a cavalry buckle. That the inspired
-tailor who built this costume had put the stars of a major-general on the
-collar and the stripes of a corporal on the sleeve was a matter of no
-consequence whatsoever. The color was right, the fit of the coat was
-unflawed by a single wrinkle fore or aft, and the brass buttons poured
-like molten gold down the front. Originally young Mrs. McLaurin had
-intended to reserve her military suit for a crowning sartorial stroke on
-the day of the big parade; but at the last moment pride of possession
-triumphed over the whisperings of discretion, and so here she was now,
-trig and triumphant—though, if it must be confessed, a trifle
-closely laced in. Yet she found an immediate reward in the florid
-compliments of the old men. She radiated her satisfaction visibly as
-Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward ushered her and her two charges aboard
-the car with a ceremonious, Ivanhoeish deference, which had come down with
-them from their day to this, like the scent of old lavender lingering in
-ancient cedar chests.
-</p>
-<p>
-A further martial touch was given by the gray coats of the old men, by the
-big Camp badges and bronze crosses proudly displayed by all, and finally
-by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, who, true to a habit of forty years' standing,
-was wearing the rent and faded jacket that he brought home from the war,
-and carrying on his shoulder the ancient rusted musket that had served him
-from Sumter to the fall of Richmond.
-</p>
-<p>
-The last of the party was on the decorated coach, the last ordinary
-traveler had boarded the single day-coach and the conductor was signaling
-for the start, when an erect old man, who all during the flurry of
-departure had been standing silent and alone behind the protecting shadow
-of the far side of the station, came swiftly across the platform, stepping
-with a high, noiseless, deerstalker's tread, and, just as the engine
-bleated its farewell and the wheels began to turn, swung himself on the
-forward car. At sight of two little crossed flags fluttering almost above
-his head he lifted his slouch hat in a sort of shamed salute; but he kept
-his face turned resolutely away from those other old men to the rear of
-him. He cramped his great length down into a vacant seat in the daycoach,
-and there he sat, gazing straight ahead at nothing, as the train drew out
-of the station, bearing him to his two years at hard labor and these
-one-time comrades of his to their jubilating at the annual reunion.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for the train, it went winding its leisurely and devious way down the
-branch line toward the Junction, stopping now and then at small country
-stations. The air that poured in through the open windows was sweet and
-heavy with Maytime odors of blossoming and blooming. In the tobacco
-patches the adolescent plants stood up, fresh and velvet-green. Mating red
-birds darted through every track-side tangle of underbrush and wove
-threads of living flame back and forth over every sluggish, yellow creek;
-and sparrowhawks teetered above the clearings, hunting early grasshoppers.
-Once in a while there was a small cotton-patch.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was warm—almost as warm as a summer day. The two girls fanned
-themselves with their handkerchiefs and constantly brushed cinders off
-their starched blouses. Mrs. Mc-Laurin, buttoned in to her rounded throat,
-sat bolt-upright, the better to keep wrinkles from marring the flawless
-fit of her regimentals. She suffered like a Christian martyr of old,
-smiling with a sweet content—as those same Christian martyrs are
-said to have suffered and smiled. Judge Priest, sitting one seat to the
-rear of her, with Major Covington alongside him, napped lightly with his
-head against the hot red plush of the seat-back. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby
-found the time fitting and the audience receptive to his celebrated and
-more than familiar story of what on a certain history-making occasion he
-heard General Breckinridge say to General Buckner, and what General
-Buckner said to General Breckinridge in reply.
-</p>
-<p>
-In an hour or so they began to draw out of the lowlands fructifying in the
-sunlight, and in among the craggy foothills. Here the knobs stood up, like
-the knuckle-bones of a great rough hand laid across the peaceful
-countryside. “Deadenings” flashed by, with the girdled, bleached
-tree-trunks rising, deformed and gaunt, above the young corn. The purplish
-pink of the redbud trees was thick in clumps on the hillsides. The train
-entered a cut with a steep fill running down on one side and a seamed
-cliff standing close up on the other. Small saplings grew out of the
-crannies in the rocks and swung their boughs downward so that the leaves
-almost brushed the dusty tops of the coaches sliding by beneath them.
-</p>
-<p>
-Suddenly, midway of this cut, there came a grinding and sliding of the
-wheels—the cars began creaking in all their joints as though they
-would rack apart; and, with a jerk which wakened Judge Priest and shook
-the others in their seats, the train halted. From up ahead somewhere,
-heard dimly through the escape of the freed steam, came a confusion of
-shouted cries. Could they be nearing the Junction so soon? Mrs. McLaurin
-felt in a new handbag—of gray broadcloth with a gold clasp, to match
-her uniform—for a powder-rag. Then she shrank cowering back in her
-place, for leaping briskly up the car steps there appeared, framed in the
-open doorway just beyond her, an armed man—a short, broad man in a
-flannel shirt and ragged overalls, with a dirty white handkerchief bound
-closely over the bridge of his nose and shielding the lower part of his
-face. A long-barreled pistol was in his right hand and a pair of darting,
-evilly disposed eyes looked into her startled ones from under the brim of
-a broken hat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hands up, everybody!” he called out, and swung his gun right and left
-from his hip, so that its muzzle seemed to point all ways at once. “Hands
-up, everybody—and keep 'em up!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Behind this man, back to back with him, was the figure of another man,
-somewhat taller, holding similar armed dominion over the astounded
-occupants of the day-coach. This much, and this much only, in a flash of
-time was seen by Uncle Zach Matthews and Judge Priest's Jeff, as, animated
-by a joint instantaneous impulse, they slid off their seat at the other
-end of the car and lay embraced on the floor, occupying a space you would
-not have believed could have contained one darky—let alone two. And
-it was seen more fully and at greater length by the gray veterans as their
-arms with one accord rose stiffly above the level of their heads; and also
-it was seen by the young matron, the sponsor and the maid of honor, as
-they huddled together, clinging to one another desperately for the poor
-comfort of close contact. Little Rita Covington, white and still, looked
-up with blazing gray eyes into the face of the short man with the pistol.
-She had the palms of both her hands pressed tightly against her ears. Rita
-was brave enough—but she hated the sound of firearms. Where she half
-knelt, half crouched, she was almost under the elbow of the intruder.
-</p>
-<p>
-The whole thing was incredible—it was impossible! Train robberies
-had passed out of fashion years and years before. Here was this drowsing,
-quiet country lying just outside the windows, and the populous Junction
-only a handful of miles away; but, incredible or not, there stood the
-armed trampish menace in the doorway, shoulder to shoulder with an
-accomplice. And from outside and beyond there came added evidence to the
-unbelievable truth of it in the shape of hoarse, unintelligible commands
-rising above a mingling of pointless outcries and screams.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is this a joke, sir, or what?” demanded Major Covington, choking with an
-anger born of his own helplessness and the undignifiedness of his
-attitude.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Old gent, if you think it's a joke jest let me ketch you lowerin' them
-arms of yourn,” answered back the yeggman. His words sounded husky, coming
-muffled through the handkerchief; but there was a grim threat in them, and
-for just a breathless instant the pistol-barrel stopped wavering and
-centered dead upon the major's white-vested breast.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Set right still, major,” counseled Judge Priest at his side, not firing
-his eyes off the muffled face. “He's got the drop on us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But to surrender without a blow—and we all old soldiers too!”
- lamented Major Covington, yet making no move to lower his arms.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I know—but set still,” warned Judge Priest, his puckered glance
-taking toll sideways of his fellow travelers—all of them with
-chagrin, amazement and indignation writ large upon their faces, and all
-with arms up and palms opened outward like a calisthenic class of elderly
-gray beards frozen stiff and solid in the midst of some lung-expanding
-exercise. Any other time the picture would have been funny; but now it
-wasn't. And the hold-up man was giving his further orders.
-</p>
-<p>
-“This ain't no joke and it ain't no time for foolin'. I gotter work fast
-and you all gotter keep still, or somebody'll git crippled up bad!”
- </p>
-<p>
-With his free hand he pulled off his broken derby, revealing matted red
-hair, with a dirty bald spot in the front. He held the hat in front of
-him, crown down.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm goin' to pass through this car,” he announced, “and I want everybody
-to contribute freely. You gents will lower one hand at a time and git yore
-pokes and kettles—watches and wallets—out of yore clothes. And
-remember, no monkey business—no goin' back to yore hip pockets—unless
-you wanter git bored with this!” he warned; and he followed up the warning
-with a nasty word which borrowed an added nastiness coming through his rag
-mask.
-</p>
-<p>
-His glance flashed to the right, taking in the quivering figures of the
-two girls and the young woman. “Loidies will contribute too,” he added.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” gasped Mrs. McLaurin miserably; and mechanically her right hand went
-across to protect the slender diamond bracelet on her left wrist; while
-tall Miss Lyon, crumpled and trembling, pressed herself still farther
-against the side of the car, and Rita Covington involuntarily clutched the
-front of her blouse, her fingers closing over the little chamois-skin bag
-that hung hidden there, suspended by a ribbon about her throat. Rita was
-an only daughter and a pampered one; her father was the wealthiest man in
-town and she owned handsomer jewels than an eighteen-year-old girl
-commonly possesses. The thief caught the meaning of those gestures and his
-red-rimmed eyes were greedy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You dog, you!” snorted old Doctor Lake; and he, like the major, sputtered
-in the impotence of his rage. “You're not going to rob these ladies too?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm a-goin' to rob these loidies too,” mimicked the thief. “And you, old
-gent, you'd better cut out the rough talk.” Without turning his head, and
-with his pistol making shifting fast plays to hold the car in subjection,
-he called back: “Slim, there's richer pickin' here than we expected. If
-you can leave them rubes come help me clean up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just a second,” was the answer from behind him, “till I git this bunch
-hypnotized good.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Now then,” called the red-haired man, swearing vilely to emphasize his
-meaning, “as I said before, cough up! Loidies first—you!” And he
-motioned with his pistol toward Mrs. McLaurin and poked his hat out at
-her. Her trembling fingers fumbled at the clasp of her bracelet a moment
-and the slim band fell flashing into the hat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You are no gentleman—so there!” quavered the unhappy lady, as a
-small, gemmed watch with a clasp, and a silver purse, followed the
-bracelet. Bessie Lyon shrank farther and farther away from him, with
-sobbing intakes of her breath. She was stricken mute and helpless with
-fear.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now then,” the red-haired man was addressing Rita, “you next. Them
-purties you've got hid there inside yore shirt—I'll trouble you for
-them! Quick now!” he snarled, seeing that she hesitated. “Git 'em out!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I ca-n't,” she faltered, and her cheeks reddened through their dead
-pallor; “my waist—buttons—behind. I can't and I won't.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The thief shifted his derby hat from his left hand to his right, holding
-it fast with his little finger hooked under the brim, while the other
-fingers kept the cocked revolver poised and ready.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll help you,” he said; and as the girl tried to dodge away from him he
-shoved a stubby finger under the collar of her blouse and with a hard jerk
-ripped the lace away, leaving her white neck half bare. At her cry and the
-sound of the tearing lace her father forgot the threat of the gunbarrel—forgot
-everything.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You vile hound!” he panted. “Keep your filthy hand off of my daughter!”
- And up he came out of his seat. And old Judge Priest came with him, and
-both of them lunged forward over the seatback at the ruffian, three feet
-away.
-</p>
-<p>
-So many things began to happen then, practically all simultaneously, that
-never were any of the active participants able to recall exactly just what
-did happen and the order of the happening. It stood out afterward, though,
-from a jumble of confused recollections, that young Mrs. McLaurin screamed
-and fainted; that Bessie Lyon fainted quietly without screaming; and that
-little Rita Covington neither fainted nor screamed, but snatched outward
-with a lightning quick slap of her hand at the fist of the thief which
-held the pistol, so that the bullet, exploding out of it with a jet of
-smoke, struck in the aisle instead of striking her father or Judge Priest.
-It was this bullet, the first and only one fired in the whole mix-up, that
-went slithering diagonally along the car floor, guttering out a hole like
-a worm-track in the wood and kicking up splinters right in the face of
-Unde Zach Matthews and Judge Priest's Jeff as they lay lapped in tight
-embrace, so that they instantly separated and rose, like a brace of
-flushed blackbirds, to the top of the seat in front. From that point of
-vantage, with eyes popped and showing white all the way round, they
-witnessed what followed in the attitude of quiveringly interested
-onlookers.
-</p>
-<p>
-All in an instant they saw Major Covington and Judge Priest struggling
-awkwardly with the thief over the intervening seatback, pawing at him,
-trying to wrest his hot weapon away from him; saw Mrs. McLaurin's head
-roll back inertly; saw the other hold-up man pivot about to come to his
-bleaguered partner's aid; and saw, filling the doorway behind this second
-ruffian, the long shape of old man Press Harper, as he threw himself
-across the joined platforms upon their rear, noiseless as a snake and
-deadly as one, his lean old face set in a square shape of rage, his hot
-red hair erect on his head like a Shawnee's scalplock, his gaunt, long
-arms upraised and arched over and his big hands spread like grapples. And
-in that same second the whole aisle seemed filled with gray-coated,
-gray-haired old men, falling over each other and impeding each other's
-movements in their scrambling forward surge to take a hand in the fight.
-</p>
-<p>
-To the end of their born days those two watching darkies had a story to
-tell that never lost its savor for teller or for audience—a story of
-how a lank, masked thief was taken by surprise from behind; was choked,
-crushed, beaten into instant helplessness before he had a chance to aim
-and fire; then was plucked backward, lifted high in the arms of a man
-twice his age and flung sidelong, his limbs flying like a whirligig as he
-rolled twenty feet down the steep slope to the foot of the fill. But this
-much was only the start of what Uncle Zach and Judge Priest's Jeff had to
-tell afterward.
-</p>
-<p>
-For now, then, realizing that an attack was being made on his rear, the
-stockier thief broke Judge Priest's fumbling grip upon his gun-hand and
-half swung himself about to shoot the unseen foe, whoever it might be;
-but, as he jammed its muzzle into the stomach of the newcomer and pressed
-the trigger, the left hand of old Harper closed down fast upon the lock of
-the revolver, so that the hammer, coming down, only pinched viciously into
-his horny thumb. Breast to breast they wrestled in that narrow space at
-the head of the aisle for possession of the weapon. The handkerchief mask
-had fallen away, showing brutal jaws covered with a red stubble, and loose
-lips snarled away from the short stained teeth. The beleaguered robber,
-young, stocky and stout, cursed and mouthed blasphemies; but the old man
-was silent except for his snorted breathing and his frame was distended
-and swollen with a terrible Berserker lust of battle.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Major Covington and Judge Priest and the foremost of the others got
-in one another's way and packed in a solid, heaving mass behind the pair,
-all shouting and all trying to help, but really not helping at all, the
-red ruffian, grunting with the fervor of the blow, drove his clenched fist
-into old Harper's face, ripping the skin on the high Indian cheekbone. The
-old man dealt no blows in return, but his right hand found a grip in the
-folds of flesh at the tramp's throat and the fingers closed down like iron
-clamps on his wind.
-</p>
-<p>
-There is no telling how long a man of Harper's age and past habits might
-have maintained the crushing strength of that hold, even though rage had
-given him the vigor of bygone youth; but the red-stubbled man, gurgling
-and wriggling to be free, began to die of suffocation before the grip
-weakened. To save himself he let go of the gunbutt, and the gun fell and
-bounced out of sight under a seat. Bearing down with both hands and all
-his might and weight upon Harper's right wrist, he tore the other's clasp
-off his throat and staggered back, drawing the breath with sobbing sounds
-back into his bursting lungs. He would have got away then if he could, and
-he turned as though to flee the length of the car and escape by the rear
-door.
-</p>
-<p>
-The way was barred, by whooping, panting old men, hornet-hot. Everybody
-took a hand or tried to. The color-bearer shoved the staff of the flag
-between his legs and half tripped him, and as he regained his feet
-Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, jumping on a seat to get at him over the bobbing
-heads of his comrades, dealt him a glancing, clumsy blow on the shoulder
-with the muzzle of his old musket. Major Covington and Judge Priest were
-still right on him, bearing their not inconsiderable bulk down upon his
-shoulders.
-</p>
-<p>
-He could have fought a path through these hampering forces. Wrestling and
-striking out, he half shoved, half threw them aside; but there was no
-evading the gaunt old man who bore down on him from the other direction.
-The look on the face of the old warlock daunted him. He yelled just once,
-a wordless howl of fear and desperation, and the yell was smothered back
-into his throat as Harper coiled down on him like a python, fettering with
-his long arms the shorter, thicker arms of the thief, crushing his ribs
-in, smothering him, killing him with a frightful tightening pressure.
-Locked fast in Harper's embrace, he went down on his back underneath; and
-now—all this taking place much faster than it has taken me to write
-it or you to read it—the old man reared himself up. He put his
-booted foot squarely on the contorted face of the yeggman and twisted the
-heel brutally, like a man crushing a worm, and mashed the thief's face to
-pulp. Then he seized him by the collar of his shirt, dragged him like so
-much carrion back the length of the car, the others making a way for him,
-and, with a last mighty heave, tossed him off the rear platform and stood
-watching him as he flopped and rolled slackly down the steep grade of the
-right-of-way to the gully at the bottom.
-</p>
-<p>
-All this young Jeff and Uncle Zach witnessed, and at the last they began
-cheering. As they cheered there was a whistle of the air and the cars
-began to move—slowly at first, with hard jerks on the couplings; and
-then smoother and faster as the wheels took hold on the rails', and the
-track-joints began to click-clack in regular rhythm. And, as the train
-slid away, those forward who mustered up the hardihood to peer out of the
-windows saw one man—a red-haired, half-bald one—wriggling
-feebly at the foot of the cut, and another one struggling to his feet
-uncertainly, meanwhile holding his hands to his stunned head; and, still
-farther along, a third, who fled nimbly up the bank and into the
-undergrowth beyond, without a backward glance. Seemingly, all told, there
-had been only three men concerned in the abortive holdup.
-</p>
-<p>
-Throughout its short length the train sizzled with excitement and rang
-with the cries of some to go on and of others to go back and make
-prisoners of the two crippled yeggs; but the conductor, like a wise
-conductor, signaled the engineer to make all speed ahead, being glad
-enough to have saved his train and his passengers whole. On his way
-through to take an inventory of possible damage and to ascertain the cause
-of things, he was delayed in the day-coach by the necessity of calming a
-hysterical country woman, so he missed the best part of what was beginning
-to start in the decorated rear coach.
-</p>
-<p>
-There Mrs. McLaurin and tall Miss Lyon were emerging from their fainting
-fits, and little Rita Covington, now that the danger was over and past,
-wept in a protecting crook of her father's arm. Judge Priest's Jeff was
-salvaging a big revolver, with one chamber fired, from under a seat. Eight
-or nine old men were surrounding old Press Harper, all talking at once,
-and all striving to pat him on the bade with clumsy, caressing slaps. And
-out on the rear platform, side by side, stood Sergeant Jimmy Bagby and
-Corporal Jake Smedley; the corporal was wildly waving his silk flag, now
-unfurled to show the blue St. Andrew's cross, white-starred on a red
-background, waving it first up and down and then back and forth with all
-the strength of his arms, until the silk square popped and whistled in the
-air of the rushing train; the sergeant was going through the motions of
-loading and aiming and firing his ancient rusted musket. And at each
-imaginary discharge both of them, in a cracked duet, cheered for Jefferson
-Davis and the Southern Confederacy!
-</p>
-<p>
-Just about then the locomotive started whistling for the Junction;
-outlying sheds and shanties, a section house and a water-tank or so began
-to flitter by. At the first blast of the whistle all the lingering fire of
-battle and victory faded out of Harper's face and he sat down heavily in a
-seat, fumbling at the inner breast pocket of his coat. There was a bloody
-smear high up on his cheek and blood dripped from the ball of his split
-thumb.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Boys, there's some fight left in us yet,” exulted Captain Shelby
-Woodward, “and nobody knows it better than those two scoundrels back
-yonder! We all took a hand—we all did what we could; but it was you,
-Press—it was you that licked 'em both—single-handed! Boys,” he
-roared, glancing about him, “won't this make a story for the reunion—and
-won't everybody there be making a fuss over old Press!” He stopped then—remembering.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't go through with you,” said old Press, steadily enough. “I git off
-here. You fellers are goin' on through—but I git off here to wait
-for the other train.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You don't do no such of a thing!” broke in Judge Priest, his voice
-whanging like a bowstring. “Press Harper, you don't do no such of a thing.
-You give me them papers!” he demanded almost roughly. “You're goin' right
-on through to the reunion with the rest of us—that's where you're
-goin'. You set right where you are in this car, and let little Rita
-Covington wipe that there blood off your face and tie up that thumb of
-yours. Why, Press, we jest naturally couldn't get along without you at the
-reunion. Some of us are liable to celebrate a little too much and maybe
-git a mite overtaken, and we'll be needin' you to take care of us.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You see, boys,” the old judge went on, with a hitch in his voice,
-addressing than generally, “Press here is under a pledge to me not to
-touch another drop of licker till he begins servin' the sentence I imposed
-on him; and, boys, that means Press is goin'' to be a temperance man for
-the balance of his days—if I know anything about the pardonin' power
-and the feelin's of the governor of this state!”
- </p>
-<p>
-So, as the accommodation ran in to the Junction, where crowds were packed
-on the platform and pretty girls, dressed in white, with touches of red at
-throat and belt, waved handkerchiefs, and gimpy-legged old men in gray
-uniforms hobbled stiffly back and forth, and the local band blared out its
-own peculiar interpretation of My Old Kentucky Home, the tall old man with
-the gashed cheek sat in his seat, his face transfigured with a great light
-of joy and his throat muscles clicking with the sobs he was choking down,
-while little Rita Covington's fingers dabbed caressingly at his wound with
-a handkerchief dipped in ice water and a dozen old veterans jostled one
-another to shake his hand. And they hit him on the back with comradely
-blows—and maybe they did a little crying themselves. But Sergeant
-Jimmy Bagby and Corporal Jacob Smedley took no part in this. Out on the
-rear platform they still stood, side by side, waving the flag and firing
-the unfirable musket harder and faster than ever; and, as one waved and
-the other loaded and fired, they cheered together:
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Rah for Jefferson Davis, the Southern Confederacy—and Pressley G.
-Harper!”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-VII. STRATAGEM AND SPOILS
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>S THE Daily Evening News, with pardonable enthusiasm, pointed out at the
-time, three events of practically national importance took place in town
-all in that one week. On Tuesday night at 9:37 there was a total eclipse
-of the moon, not generally visible throughout the United States; on
-Wednesday morning the Tri-State Steam and Hand Laundrymen's Association
-began a two-days annual convention at St. Clair Hall; and on Saturday at
-high noon Eastern capital, in the person of J. Hayden Witherbee, arrived.
-</p>
-<p>
-And the greatest of these was Witherbee. The eclipse of the moon took
-place on its appointed schedule and was witnessed through opera glasses
-and triangular fragments of windowpane that had been smudged with
-candlesmoke. The Tri-State Laundrymen came and heard reports, elected
-officers, had a banquet at the Richland House and departed to their
-several homes. But J. Hayden Witherbee stayed on, occupying the bridal
-chamber at the hotel—the one with the private bath attached; and so
-much interest and speculation did his presence create, and so much space
-did the Daily Evening News give in its valued columns to his comings and
-goings and his sayings and doings, that the name of J. Hayden Witherbee
-speedily became, as you might say, a household word throughout the breadth
-and length of the Daily Evening News' circulation.
-</p>
-<p>
-It seemed that J. Hayden Witherbee, sitting there in his lofty office
-building far away in Wall Street, New York, had had his keen eye upon the
-town for some time; and yet—such were the inscrutable methods of the
-man—the town hadn't known anything about it, hadn't even suspected
-it. However, he had been watching its growth with the deepest interest;
-and when, by the count of the last United States census, it jumped from
-seventh in population in the state to fifth he could no longer restrain
-himself. He got aboard the first train and came right on. He had, it would
-appear, acted with such promptness because, in his own mind, he had
-already decided that the town would make an ideal terminal point for his
-proposed Tobacco & Cotton States Interurban Trolley line, which would
-in time link together with twin bonds of throbbing steel—the words
-are those of the reporter for the Daily Evening News—no less-than
-twenty-two growing towns, ranging southward from the river. Hence his
-presence, exuding from every pore, as it were, the very essences of power
-and influence and money. The paper said he was one of the biggest men in
-Wall Street, a man whose operations had been always conducted upon the
-largest scale.
-</p>
-<p>
-This, within the space of three or four months, had been our second
-experience of physical contact with Eastern capital. The first one,
-though, had been in the nature of a disappointment. A man named Betts—Henry
-Betts—had come down from somewhere in the North and, for a lump sum,
-had bought outright the city gasworks. It was not such a big lump sum,
-because the gasworks had been built right after the war and had thereafter
-remained untouched by the stimulating hand of improvement. They consisted
-in the main of a crumbly little brick engine house, full of antiquated and
-self-willed machinery, and just below it, on the riverbank, a round and
-rusted gas tank, surrounded by sloping beds of coal cinders, through which
-at times sluggish rivulets of molten coal tar percolated like lava on the
-flanks of a toy volcano. The mains took in only the old part of town—not
-the new part; and the quality of illumination furnished was so flickery at
-all seasons and so given to freezing up in winter that many subscribers,
-including even the leading families, used coal-oil lamps in their
-bedchambers until the electric power house was built. A stock company of
-exceedingly conservative business men had owned the gasworks prior to the
-advent of Henry Betts, and the general manager of the plant had been
-Cassius Poindexter, a fellow townsman. Cash Poindexter was a man who, in
-his day, had tried his 'prentice hand at many things. At one time he
-traveled about in a democrat wagon, taking orders for enlarging crayon
-portraits from photographs and tintypes, and also for the frames to
-accompany the same.
-</p>
-<p>
-At a more remote period he had been the authorized agent, on commission,
-for a lightning-rod company, selling rods with genuine guaranteed platinum
-tips; and rusty iron stringers, with forked tails, which still adhered to
-outlying farm buildings here and there in the county, testified to his
-activities in this regard. Again, Cash Poindexter had held the patent
-rights in four counties for an improved cream separator. In the early
-stages of the vogue for Belgian-hare culture in this country he was the
-first to import a family group of these interesting animals into our
-section. He had sold insurance of various sorts, including life, fire and
-cyclone; he was a notary public; he had tried real estate, and he had once
-enjoyed the distinction of having read lawbooks and works on medicine
-simultaneously. But in these, his later years, he had settled down more or
-less and had become general manager of the gasworks, which position also
-included the keeping of the books, the reading of meters and the making
-out and collecting of the monthly accounts. Nevertheless, he was
-understood to be working at spare moments on an invention that would make
-him independently wealthy for life. He was a tall, thin, sad man, with
-long, drooping aide whiskers; and he was continually combing back his side
-whiskers with both hands caressingly, and this gave him the appearance of
-a man parting a pair of string portières and getting ready to walk through
-them, but never doing so.
-</p>
-<p>
-When this Mr. Betts came down from the North and bought the gasworks it
-was the general expectation that he would extensively overhaul and enlarge
-the plant; but he did nothing of the sort, seeming, on the contrary, to be
-amply satisfied with things as they were. He installed himself as general
-manager, retained Cash Poindexter as his assistant, and kept right on with
-the two Kettler boys as his engineers and the two darkies, Ed Greer and
-Lark Tilghman, as his firemen. He was a man who violated all traditions
-and ideals concerning how Northern capitalists ought to look. He neither
-wore a white piqué vest nor smoked long, black cigars; in fact, he didn't
-smoke at all. He was a short, square, iron-gray person, with a sort of
-dead and fossilized eye. He looked as though he might have been rough-hewn
-originally from one of those soapstone days which grow the harder with age
-and exposure. He had a hard, exact way of talking, and he wore a hard,
-exact suit of clothes which varied not, weekdays or Sundays, in texture or
-in cut.
-</p>
-<p>
-In short, Mr. Henry Betts, the pioneer Eastern investor in those parts,
-was a profound disappointment as to personality and performances. Not so
-with J. Hayden Witherbee. From his Persian-lamb lapels to his
-patent-leather tips he was the physical embodiment of all the town had
-learned to expect of a visiting Wall Street capitalist. And he liked the
-town—that was plain. He spoke enthusiastically of the enterprise
-which animated it; he referred frequently and with praise to the awakening
-of the New South, and he was even moved to compliment publicly the cooking
-at the Richland House. It was felt that a stranger and a visitor could go
-no further.
-</p>
-<p>
-Also, he moved fast, J. Hayden Witherbee did, showing the snap and push so
-characteristic of the ruling spirits of the great moneymarts of the East.
-Before he had been in town a week he had opened negotiations for the
-purchase outright of the new Light and Power Company, explaining frankly
-that if he could come to terms he intended making it a part of his
-projected interurban railway. Would the present owners care to sell at a
-fair valuation?—that was what Mr. Witherbee desired to know.
-</p>
-<p>
-Would a drowning man grasp at a life-preserver? Would a famished colt
-welcome the return of its maternal parent at eventide? Would the present
-owners, carrying on their galled backs an unprofitable burden which local
-pride had forced upon them—would they sell? Here, as manna sent from
-Heaven by way of Wall Street, as you might say, was a man who would buy
-from them a property which had never paid and which might never pay; and
-who, besides, meant to do something noble and big for the town. Would they
-sell? Ask them something hard!
-</p>
-<p>
-There was a series of conferences—if two conferences can be said to
-constitute a series—one in Mr. Witherbee's room at the hotel, where
-cigars of an unknown name but an impressive bigness were passed round
-freely; and one in the office of the president of the Planters' National
-Bank. Things went well and swimmingly from the first; Mr. J. Hayden
-Witherbee had a most clear and definite way of putting things; and yet,
-with all that, he was the embodiment of cordiality and courtesy. So
-charmed was Doctor Lake with his manner that he asked him, right in the
-midst of vital negotiations, if he were not of Southern descent; and when
-he confessed that his mother's people had come from Virginia Doctor Lake
-said he had felt it from the first moment they met, and insisted on
-shaking hands with Mr. Witherbee again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Witherbee—this was said at the first meeting,
-the one in his room—“as I have already told you, I need this town as
-a terminal for my interurban road and I need your plant. I expect, of
-course, to enlarge it and to modernize it right up to the minute; but, so
-far as it goes, it is a very good plant and I want it. I suggest that you
-gentlemen, constituting the directors and the majority stockholders, get
-together between now and tomorrow—this evening, say—and put a
-price on the property. Tomorrow I will meet you again, here in this hotel
-or at any point you may select; and if the price you fix seems fair, and
-the papers prove satisfactory to my lawyers, I know of no reason why we
-cannot make a trade. Gentlemen, good day. Take another cigar all round
-before leaving.” They went apart and confabbed industriously—old
-Major Covington, who was the president of the Light and Power Company
-Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward, the two heaviest stockholders, Colonel
-Courtney Cope, the attorney for the company and likewise a director, and
-sundry others. Between themselves, being meanwhile filled with sweet and
-soothing thoughts, they named a price that would let them out whole, with
-a margin of interest on the original venture, and yet one which,
-everything considered—the growing population, the new suburbs and
-all that—was a decent enough price. They expected to be hammered
-down a few thousand and were prepared to concede something; but it would
-seem that the big men of the East did not do business in that huckstering,
-cheese-trimming way. Time to them was evidently worth more than the money
-to be got by long chaffering over a proposition.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gentlemen,” J. Hayden Witherbee had said right off, “the figures seem
-reasonable and moderate. I think I will buy from you.” A warm glow visibly
-lit up the faces of those who sat with him. It was as though J. Hayden
-Witherbee was an open fireplace and threw off a pleasant heat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will take over these properties,” repeated Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee;
-“but on one condition—I also want the ownership of your local
-gasworks.”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a little pause and the glow died down a trifle—just the
-merest trifle. “But, sir, we do not own those gasworks,” said the stately
-Major Covington.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I know that,” said Mr. Witherbee; “but the point is—can't you
-acquire them?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I suppose we might,” said the major; “but, Mr. Witherbee, that gasworks
-concern is worn out—our electric-light plant has nearly put it out
-of business.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I understand all that too,” Mr. Witherbee went on, “perfectly well.
-Gentlemen, where I come from we act quickly, but we look before we leap.
-During the past twenty-four hours I have examined into the franchise of
-those gasworks. I find that nearly forty years ago your common council
-issued to the original promoters and owners of the gas company a
-ninety-year charter, giving the use of any and all of your streets, not
-only for the laying of gas mains, but for practically all other purposes.
-It was an unwise thing to do, but it was done and it stands so today.
-Gentlemen, this is a growing community in the midst of a rich country. I
-violate no confidence in telling you that capital is looking this way. I
-am merely the forerunner—the first in the field. The Gatins crowd,
-in Chicago, has its eyes upon this territory, as I have reason to know.
-You are, of course, acquainted with the Gatins crowd?” he said in a tone
-of putting a question.
-</p>
-<p>
-Major Covington, who made a point of never admitting that he didn't know
-everything, nodded gravely and murmured the name over to himself as though
-he were trying to remember Gatins' initials. The others sat silent,
-impressed more than ever with the wisdom of this stranger who had so many
-pertinent facts at his finger tips.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Suppose now,” went on Mr. Witherbee—“suppose, now, that Ike Gratins
-and his crowd should come down here and find out what I have found out and
-should buy out that gas company. Why, gentlemen, under the terms of that
-old franchise, those people could actually lay tracks right through the
-streets of this little city of yours. They could parallel our lines—they
-could give us active opposition right here on the home ground. It might
-mean a hard fight. Therefore I need those gasworks. I may shut them up or
-I may run them—but I need them in my business.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have inquired into the ownership of this concern,” continued Mr.
-Witherbee before any one could interrupt him, “and I find it was recently
-purchased outright by a gentleman from somewhere up my way named—named—”
- He snapped his fingers impatiently.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Named Betts,” supplied Doctor Lake—“named Henry Betts.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Quite so,” Mr. Witherbee assented. “Thank you, doctor—Betts is the
-name. Now the fact that the whole property is vested in one man simplifies
-the matter—doesn't it? Of course I would not care to go to this Mr.
-Betts in person. You understand that.” If they didn't understand they let
-on they did, merely nodding and waiting for more light to be let in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Once let it be known that I was personally interested in a consolidation
-of your lighting plants, and this Mr. Betts, if I know anything about
-human nature, would advance his valuation far beyond its proper figure.
-Therefore I cannot afford to be known in the matter. You see that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-They agreed that they saw.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I would suggest that all of you—or some of you—go and call
-upon Mr. Betts and endeavor to buy the gasworks from him outright. If you
-can get the plant for anything like its real value you may include the
-amount in the terms of the proposition you have today made me and I will
-take over all of the properties together.
-</p>
-<p>
-“However, remember this, gentlemen—there is need of haste. Within
-forty-eight hours I should be in Memphis, where I am to confer with
-certain of my associates—Eastern men like myself, but who, unlike
-me, are keeping under cover—to confer with them concerning our
-rights-of-way through the cotton-raising country. I repeat, then, that
-there is pressing need for immediate action. May I offer you gentlemen
-fresh cigars?” and he reached for a well-stuffed, silver-mounted case of
-dull leather.
-</p>
-<p>
-But they were already going—going in a body to see Mr. Henry Betts,
-late of somewhere up North. Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee's haste, great though
-it might be, could be no greater than theirs. On their way down Market
-Street to the gashouse it was decided that, unless the exigencies of the
-situation demanded a chorus of argument, Major Covington should do the
-talking. Indeed it was Major Covington who suggested this. Talking, with
-financial subjects at the back of the talk, was one of the things at which
-the major fancied himself a success.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Betts sat in the clutter of his small, untidy office like an elderly
-and reserved gray rat in a paper nest behind a wainscoting. His feet, in
-square-toed congress gaiters, rested on the fender of a stove that was
-almost small enough to be an inkstand, and his shoulders were jammed back
-against a window-ledge. By merely turning his head he commanded a view of
-his entire property, with the engine house in the near distance and the
-round tunlike belly of the gas tank rising just beyond it. He was alone.
-</p>
-<p>
-As it happened, he knew all of his callers, having met them in the way of
-business—which was the only way he ever met anybody. To each man
-entering he vouchsafed the same greeting—namely, “How-do?”—spoken
-without emotion and mechanically.
-</p>
-<p>
-Major Covington had intended to shake hands with Mr. Betts, but something
-about Mr. Betts' manner made him change his mind. He cleared his throat
-impressively; the major did nearly everything impressively.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A fine day, sir,” said the major.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Betts turned his head slightly to the left and peered out through a
-smudged pane as if seeking visual confirmation of the statement before
-committing himself. A look seemed to satisfy him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is,” he agreed, and waited, boring his company with his geologic gaze.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ahem!” sparred Major Covington—“think I will take a chair.”
- </p>
-<p>
-As Mr. Betts said nothing to this, either one way or the other, the major
-took a chair, it being the only chair in sight, with the exception of the
-chair in which Mr. Betts was slumped down and from which Mr. Betts had not
-stirred. Doctor Lake perched himself upon a bookkeeper's tall stool that
-wabbled precariously. Three other anxious local capitalists stood where
-they could find room, which was on the far side of the stove.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very seasonable weather indeed,” ventured the old major, still fencing
-for his start.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So you remarked before, I believe,” said Mr. Betts dryly. “Did you wish
-to see me on business?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Inwardly 'the major was remarking to himself how astonishing it was that
-one section of the country—to wit, the North—could produce men
-of such widely differing types as this man and the man whose delightful
-presence they had just quitted; could produce a gentleman like J. Hayden
-Witherbee, with whom it was a positive pleasure to discuss affairs of
-moment, and a dour, sour, flinty person like this Betts, who was lacking
-absolutely in the smaller refinements that should govern intercourse
-between gentlemen—and wasn't willing to learn them either. Outwardly
-the major, visibly flustered, was saying: “Yes—in a measure. Yes, we
-came on a matter of business.” He pulled up somewhat lamely. Really the
-man's attitude was almost forbidding. It verged on the sinister.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What was the business?” pressed Mr. Betts in a colorless and entirely
-disinterested tone of voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, sir,” said Major Covington stiffly, and his rising temper and his
-sense of discretion were now wrestling together inside of him—“well,
-sir, to be brief and to put it in as few words as possible, which from
-your manner and conversation I take to be your desire, I—we—my
-associates here and myself—have called in to say that we are
-interested naturally in the development of our little city and its
-resources and its industries; and with these objects in view we have felt,
-and, in fact, we have agreed among ourselves, that we would like to enter
-into negotiations with you, if possible, touching, so to speak, on the
-transfer to us of the property which you control here. Or, in other words,
-we—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do you mean you want to buy these gasworks?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” confessed the major; “that—that is it. We would like to buy
-these gasworks.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Immediately!” blurted out Doctor Lake, teetering on his high perch. The
-major shot a chiding glance at his compatriot. Mr. Betts looked over the
-top of the stove at the major, and then beyond him at the doctor, and then
-beyond the doctor at the others. Then he looked out of the window again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They are not for sale,” he stated; and his voice indicated that he
-regarded the subject as being totally exhausted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, quite so; I see,” said Major Covington suavely; “but if we could
-agree on a price now—a price that would be satisfactory to you—and
-to us—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“We couldn't agree on a price,” said Mr. Betts, apparently studying
-something in connection with the bulging side of the gas tank without,
-“because there isn't any price to agree on. I bought these gasworks and I
-own them, and I am satisfied to go on owning them. Therefore they are not
-for sale. Did you have any other business with me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was something almost insulting in the way this man rolled his r's
-when he said “therefore.” Checking an inclination to speak on the part of
-Doctor Lake the major controlled himself with an effort and said:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nevertheless, we would appreciate it very much, sir, if you could and
-would go so far as to put a figure—any reasonable figure—on
-this property.. We would like very much to get an expression from you—a
-suggestion—or—or—something of that general nature,” he
-tailed off.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very well,” said Mr. Betts, biting the words off short and square, “very
-well. I will What you want to know is my price for these gasworks?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Exactly so,” said the major, brightening up.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very well,” repeated Mr. Betts. “Sixty thousand.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Doctor Lake gave such a violent start that he lost his hat out of his lap.
-Captain Woodward's jaw dropped.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Sixty thousand!” echoed Major Covington blankly. “Sixty thousand what?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sixty thousand dollars,” said Mr. Betts, “in cash.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Major Covington fairly sputtered surprise and chagrin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But, Mr. Betts, sir,” he protested, “I happen to know that less than four
-months ago you paid only about twenty-seven thousand dollars for this
-entire business!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Twenty-six thousand five hundred, to be exact,” corrected Mr. Betts.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And since that time you have not added a dollar's worth of improvement to
-it,” added the dismayed major.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Not one cent—let alone a dollar,” assented this most remarkable
-man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But surely you don't expect us to pay such a price as that?” pleaded tie
-major.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I do not,” said Mr. Betts.
-</p>
-<p>
-“We couldn't think of paying such a price as that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't expect you to,” said Mr. Betts. “I didn't ask you to. As I said
-before, these gasworks are not for sale. They suit me just as they are.
-They are not on the market; but you insist that I shall name a price and I
-name it—sixty thousand in cash. Take it or leave it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Having concluded this, for him, unusually long speech, Mr. Betts brought
-his fingertips together with great mathematical exactness, matching each
-finger and each thumb against its fellow as though they were all parts of
-a sum in addition that he was doing. With his fingers added up to his
-satisfaction and the total found correct, he again turned his gaze out of
-the smudgy window. This time it was something on the extreme top of the
-gas tank which seemed to engage his attention. Cassius Poindexter opened
-the street door and started in; but at the sight of so much company he
-checked himself on the threshold, combed back his side whiskers nervously,
-bowed dumbly and withdrew, closing the door softly behind him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If we could only reach some reasonable basis of figuring now,” said the
-major, addressing Mr. Betts' left ear and the back of Mr. Betts' head—“say,
-forty thousand, now?” Mr. Betts squinted his Stone Age eyes the better to
-see out of the dirty window.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Or even forty-five?” supplemented Doctor Lake, unable to hold in any
-longer. “Why, damn it, sir, forty-five thousand is a fabulous price to pay
-for this junkpile.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Sixty thousand—in cash!” The ultimatum seemed to issue from the
-rear of Mr. Betts' collar.
-</p>
-<p>
-Major Covington glanced about him, taking toll of the expressions of his
-associates. On their faces sorrowful capitulation was replacing chagrin.
-He nodded toward them and together they nodded back sadly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How much did you say you wanted down?” gulped the major weakly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“All down,” announced Mr. Betts in a tone of finality; “all in cash. Those
-are my terms.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But it isn't regular!” babbled Colonel Cope.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It isn't regular for a man to sell something he doesn't want to sell
-either,” gulped Mr. Betts. “I bought for cash and I sell for cash. I never
-do business any other way.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“How much time will you give us?” asked the major. The surrender was
-complete and unconditional.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Until this time tomorrow,” said Mr. Betts; “then the deal is off.” Doctor
-Lake slid off his stool, or else he fell off. At any rate, he descended
-from it hurriedly. His face was very red.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, of all the—” he began; but the major and the colonel had him
-by the arms and were dragging him outside. When they were gone—all
-of them—Mr. Betts indulged himself in the luxury of a still, small
-smile—a smile that curled his lips back just a trifle and died of
-frostbite before it reached his fossilized eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gentlemen,” Mr. Witherbee was saying in his room at the Richland House
-ten minutes later, “the man has you at his mercy and apparently he knows
-it. I wouldn't be surprised if he had not already been in communication
-with the Gatins crowd. His attitude is suspicious. As I view it, it is
-most certainly suspicious. Gentlemen, I would advise you to close with
-him. He is asking a figure far in excess of the real value of the works—but
-what can you do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And will you take the gasworks at sixty thousand?” inquired Major
-Covington hopefully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ah, gentlemen,” said Mr. Witherbee, and his smile was sympathetic and
-all-embracing, “that, I think, is asking too much; but, in view of the
-circumstances, I will do this—I will take them at”—he paused
-to consider—“I will take them, gentlemen, at fifty thousand. In time
-I think I can make them worth that much to me; but fifty thousand is as
-far as I can go—positively. You stand to lose ten thousand on your
-deal for the gasworks, but I presume you will make that back and more on
-your sale to me of the light and power plant. Can't I offer you fresh
-cigars, gentlemen?”
- </p>
-<p>
-If for any reason a run had started on any one of the three local banks
-the next day there would have been the devil and all to pay, because there
-was mighty little ready money in any one of them. Their vaults had been
-scraped clean of currency; and that currency, in a compact bundle, was
-rapidly traveling eastward in the company of a smallish iron-gray man
-answering to the name of Betts. At about the same moment Mr. Witherbee,
-with the assistance of the darky porter of the Richland House, was packing
-his wardrobe into an ornate traveling kit. As he packed he explained to
-Doctor Lake and Major Covington:
-</p>
-<p>
-“I am called to Memphis twenty-four hours sooner than I had expected.
-Tomorrow we close a deal there involving, I should say, half a million
-dollars. Let us see—this is Wednesday—isn't it? I will return
-here on Friday morning. Meanwhile you may have the papers drawn by your
-attorney and ready for submission to my lawyer, Mr. Sharkey, who should
-arrive tomorrow from Cincinnati. If he finds them all shipshape, as I have
-every reason to expect he will find them, then, on Friday morning,
-gentlemen, we will sign up and I will pay the binder, amounting to—how
-much?—ninety thousand, I believe, was the figure we agreed upon.
-Quite so. Gentlemen, you will find a box of my favorite cigars on that
-bureau yonder. Help yourselves.”
- </p>
-<p>
-No lawyer named Sharkey arrived from Cincinnati on Thursday; no J. Hayden
-Witherbee returned from Memphis on Friday,—nor was there word from
-him by wire or mail. The papers, drawn in Colonel Cope's best legal style,
-all fringed and trimmed with whereases and wherefores, waited—and
-waited. Telegrams which Major Covington sent to Memphis remained
-unanswered; in fact, undelivered. Major Covington suddenly developed a
-cold and sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach. In his associates he
-discerned signs of the same chilling manifestation. It seemed to occur to
-all of them at once that nobody had asked J. Hayden Witherbee for his
-credentials or had inquired into his antecedents. Glamoured by the
-grandeur of his person, they had gone along with him—had gone along
-until now blindly. Saturday, hour by hour, darkling suspicion grew in each
-mind and reared itself like a totem pole adorned with snake-headed,
-hawk-clawed figments of dread. And on Saturday, for the first time in a
-solid week the Daily Evening News carried no front-page account of the
-latest doings and sayings of J. Hayden Witherbee.
-</p>
-<p>
-Upon a distracted conference, taking place Saturday night in the
-directors' room of the bank, intruded the sad figure of Cassius
-Poindexter, combing back his side whiskers like a man eternally on the
-point of parting a pair of lace curtains and never coming through them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Excuse me,” he said, “but I've got something to say that I think you
-gentlemen oughter hear. If you thought those two—Witherbones, or
-whatever his name is, and my late employer, Henry Betts—if you all
-thought those two were strangers to one another you were mistaken—that's
-all. Two weeks ago I saw a letter on Betts' desk signed by this man
-Witherbee—if that's his name. And Tuesday when Betts told me he was
-goin' to sell out, I remembered it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The major was the first to get his voice back; and it was shaky with rage
-and—other emotions.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You—you saw us all there Tuesday morning,” he shouted, “didn't you?
-And when Betts told you he was going to sell and you remembered about
-Witherbee why didn't you have sense enough to put two and two together?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I did have sense enough to put two and two together,” answered Cassius
-Poindexter in hurt tones. “That's exactly what I did.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then why in the name of Heaven didn't you come to us—to me—and
-tell us?” demanded the major.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, sirs,” said the intruder, “I was figurin' on doin' that very thing,
-but it sort of slipped out of my mind. You see, I've been thinkin' right
-stiddy lately about an invention that I'm workin' on at odd times—I'm
-perfectin' a non-refillble bottle,” he explained—“and somehow or
-other this here other matter plum' escaped me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The door closed upon the inventor. Stunned into silence, they sat mute for
-a long, ghastly half minute. Doctor Lake was the first to speak:
-</p>
-<p>
-“If could afford it,” he said softly—“if at present I could afford
-it I'd put a dynamite bomb under that gashouse and blow it up! And I'd do
-it anyhow,” he went on, warming to his theme, “if I was only right certain
-of blowing up that idiot and his non-refillable bottle along with it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Malley, of the Sun, was doing the hotel run this night. He came up to the
-room clerk's wicket at the desk of the Royal.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Say, Mac,” he hailed, “what's the prospect? So far, all I've got is one
-rubber magnate from South America—a haughty hidalgo with an Irish
-name and a New England accent, who was willing to slip me a half-column
-interview providing I'd run in the name of his company eight or nine times—him,
-and an Oklahoma Congressman, with the makings of a bun, and one of
-Sandusky, Ohio's well-known and popular merchant princes, with a line of
-talk touching on the business revival in the Middle West. If that's not
-slim pickings I don't want a cent! Say, help an honest working lad out—can't
-you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-This appeal moved the room clerk.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Let's see now,” he said, and ran a highly polished fingernail down a long
-column of names. Halfway down the finger halted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here's copy for you, maybe,” he said. “The name is Priest—William
-Pitman Priest is the way he wrote it. He got in here this morning, an
-old-time Southerner; and already he's got every coon bellhop round the
-place fighting for a chance to wait on him. He's the real thing all right,
-I guess—looks it and talks it too. You ought to be able to have some
-fun with him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where's he registered from?” asked Malley hopefully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“From Kentucky—that's all; just Kentucky, with no town given,” said
-Mac, grinning.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There're still a few of those old Southerners left that'll register from
-a whole state at large. Why, there he goes now!” said the room clerk, and
-he pointed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Across the lobby, making slow headway against weaving tides of darting,
-hurrying figures, was moving a stoutish and elderly form clad in a fashion
-that made it look doubly and trebly strange among those marble and onyx
-precincts. A soft black hat of undoubted age and much shapelessness was
-jammed down upon the head, and from beneath its wide brim at the rear
-escaped wisps of thin white hair that curled over the upturned coat
-collar. The face the hat shaded was round and pink, chubby almost, and
-ended in a white chin beard which, as Malley subsequently said in his
-story, flowed down its owner's chest like a point-lace jabot. There was an
-ancient caped overcoat of a pattern that had been fashionable perhaps
-twenty years ago and would be fashionable again, no doubt, twenty years
-hence; there were gray trousers that had never been pressed apparently;
-and, to finish off with, there was a pair of box-toed, high-heeled boots
-of a kind now seen mostly in faded full-length photographs of gentlemen
-taken in the late seventies—boots with wrinkled tops that showed for
-four inches or more and shined clear up to the trouser-line with some sort
-of blacking that put a dull bluish iridescent blush upon the leather,
-almost like the colors on a dove's breast feathers.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thanks for the tip, Mac,” said Malley, and he made off after the old man,
-who by now had turned and was maneuvering down the corridor toward where a
-revolving door turned unceasingly, like a wheel in a squirrel's cage. “Oh,
-colonel!” called out Malley on a venture, jibing through the human
-currents and trying to overtake the stout, broad figure ahead of him. An
-exceedingly young, exceedingly important person, who looked as though he
-might be prominent in the national guard or on some governor's staff, half
-rose from a leather lounge and glanced about inquiringly, but the old man
-in the cape and boots kept on.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Major!” tried Malley vainly. “Major! Just a minute, please.” And then,
-“Judge! Oh, judge!” he called as a last resort, and at that his quarry
-swung about on his heels and stopped, eying him with whimsical, mild blue
-eyes under wrinkly lids.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” he said in a high, whiny voice which instantly appealed to Malley's
-sense of the picturesque, “was it me that you've been yellin' at?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Malley answered, telling his name and his business. A moment later he was
-surprised to find himself shaking hands warmly with the older man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Malley, did you say?” the judge was inquiring almost eagerly. “Well, now,
-son, I'm glad to meet up with you. Malley is a fairly familiar name and a
-highly honored one down in our part of the country. There was a captain in
-Forrest's command of your name—Captain Malley—a mighty gallant
-soldier and a splendid gentleman! You put me right sharply in mind of him
-too—seem to favor him considerable round the eyes. Are you closely
-related to the Southern branch of the family, suh?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Malley caught himself wishing that he could say Yes. The old judge showed
-almost a personal disappointment when Malley confessed that none of his
-kinspeople, so far as he knew, ever resided south of Scranton,
-Pennsylvania.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No doubt a distant connection,” amended the judge, as though consoling
-both himself and Malley; “the family resemblance is there shorely.” He
-laid a pudgy pink hand on Malley's arm. “You'll pardon me for presumin' on
-such short acquaintance, but down where I come from it is customary, when
-two gentlemen meet up together at about this hour of the evenin'”—it
-was then three o'clock p.m., Eastern time, as Malley noted—“it is
-customary for them to take a dram. Will you join me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Scenting his story, Malley fell into step by the old judge's side; but at
-the door of the café the judge halted him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” he said confidentially, “I like this tavern mightily—all but
-the grocery here. I must admit that I don't much care for the bottled
-goods they're carryin' in stock. I sampled 'em and I didn't enthuse over
-'em. They are doubtless excellent for cookin' purposes, but as beverages
-they sort of fall short.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I wish you'd go up to my chamber with me and give me the benefit of your
-best judgment on a small vial of liquor I brought with me in my valise.
-It's an eighteen-year-old sour mash, mellowed in the wood, and I feel that
-I can recommend it to your no doubt dis-criminatin' palate. Will you give
-me the pleasure of your company, suh?”
- </p>
-<p>
-As Malley, smiling to himself, went with the judge, it struck him with
-emphasis that, for a newly arrived transient, this old man seemed to have
-an astonishingly wide acquaintance among the house staff of the Hotel
-Royal. A page-boy, all buttons and self-importance, sidestepped them,
-smiling and ducking at the old judge's nod; and the elevator attendant, a
-little, middle-aged Irishman, showed unalloyed pleasure when the judge,
-after blinking slightly and catching his breath as the car started upward
-with a dart like a scared swallow, inquired whether he'd had any more news
-yet of the little girl who was in the hospital. Plainly the old judge and
-the elevator man had already been exchanging domestic confidences.
-</p>
-<p>
-Into his small room on the seventeenth floor Judge Priest ushered the
-reporter with the air of one dispensing the hospitalities of a private
-establishment to an honored guest, made him rest his hat and overcoat—“rest”
- was the word the judge used—and sit down in the easiest chair and
-make himself comfortable.
-</p>
-<p>
-In response to a conversation which the judge had over the telephone with
-some young person of the feminine gender, whom he insisted on addressing
-as Miss Exchange, there presently came knocking at the door a grinning
-negro boy bearing the cracked ice, the lump sugar and the glasses the old
-judge had ordered. Him the judge addressed direct.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Look here,” asked the judge, looking up from where he was rummaging out a
-flat quart flask from the depths of an ancient and much-seamed valise,
-“ain't you the same boy that I was talkin' to this momin'?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh,” said the boy, snickering, “Horace.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Where you came from they didn't call you Horace, did they?” inquired the
-old man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Naw, suh, that they didn't,” admitted Horace, showing all his teeth
-except the extremely rearmost ones.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What was it they called you—Smoke or Rabbit?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ginger,” owned up Horace delightedly, and vanished, still snickering.
-Malley noticed that the coin which the old man had extracted from the
-depths of a deep pocket and tossed to the darky was a much smaller coin
-than guests in a big New York hotel customarily bestowed upon bellboys for
-such services as this; yet Horace had accepted it with every outward
-evidence of a deep and abiding satisfaction.
-</p>
-<p>
-With infinite pains and a manner almost reverential, as though he were
-handling sacred vessels, the old judge compiled two dark reddish portions
-which he denominated toddies. Malley, sipping his, found it to be a most
-smooth and tasty mixture. And as he sipped, the old judge, smiling
-blandly, bestowed himself in a chair, which he widely overflowed, and
-balancing his own drink on the chair arm he crossed his booted feet and
-was ready, he said, to hear what his young friend might have to say.
-</p>
-<p>
-As it turned out, Malley didn't have much to say, except to put the
-questions by which a skilled reporter leads on the man he wants to talk.
-And the old judge was willing enough to talk. It was his first visit to
-New York; he had come reluctantly, at the behest of certain friends, upon
-business of a more or less private nature; he had taken a walk and a ride
-already; he had seen a stretch of Broadway and some of Fifth Avenue, and
-he was full of impressions and observations that tickled Malley dear down
-to the core of his reportorial soul.
-</p>
-<p>
-So Malley, like the wise newspaper man he was, threw away his notes on the
-Brazilian rubber magnate and the merchant prince of Sandusky; and at dark
-he went back to the office and wrote the story of old Judge Priest, of
-Kentucky, for a full column and a quarter. Boss Clark, the night city
-editor, saw the humor value of the story before he had run through the
-first paragraph; and he played it up hard on the second page of the Sun,
-with a regular Sun head over it.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was by way of being a dull time of news in New York. None of the
-wealthiest families was marrying or giving in marriage; more remarkable
-still, none of them was divorcing or giving in divorce. No subway scandal
-was emerging drippingly from the bowels of the earth; no aviator was
-descending abruptly from aloft with a dull and lethal thud. Malley's
-story, with the personality of the old judge deftly set forward as a foil
-for his homely simplicity and small-town philosophy, arched across the
-purview of divers saddened city editors like a rainbow spanning a leadish
-sky. The craft, in the vernacular of the craft, saw the story and went to
-it. Inside of twenty-four hours Judge Priest, of Kentucky, was Broadway's
-reigning favorite, for publicity purposes anyhow. The free advertising he
-got could not have been measured in dollars and cents if a prima donna had
-been getting it.
-</p>
-<p>
-The judge kept open house all that next day in his room at the Hotel
-Royal, receiving regular and special members of various city staffs.
-Margaret Movine, the star lady writer of the Evening Journal, had a
-full-page interview, in which the judge, using the Southern accent as it
-is spoken in New York exclusively, was made to discuss, among other
-things, the suffragette movement, women smoking in public, Fifth Avenue,
-hobble skirts, Morgan's raid, and the iniquity of putting sugar in corn
-bread. The dialect was the talented Miss Margaret Movine's, but the
-thoughts and the words were the judge's, faithfully set forth. The Times
-gave him a set of jingles on its editorial page and the Evening Mail
-followed up with a couple of humorous paragraphs; but it was the Sunday
-World that scored heaviest.
-</p>
-<p>
-McCartwell, of the Sunday, went up and secured from the judge his own
-private recipe for mint juleps—a recipe which the judge said had
-been in his family for three generations—and he thought possibly
-longer, it having been brought over the mountains and through the Gap from
-Virginia by a grandsire who didn't bring much of anything else of great
-value; and the World, printing this recipe and using it as a starter,
-conducted through its correspondents southward a telegraphic symposium of
-mint-julep recipes. Private John Allen, of Mississippi; Colonel Bill
-Sterritt, of Texas; Marse Henry Watterson and General Simon Bolivar
-Buckner, of Kentucky; Senator Bob Taylor, of Tennessee, and others,
-contributed. A dispute at once arose in the South concerning the relative
-merits oi mint bruised and mint crushed. An old gentleman in Virginia
-wrote an indignant letter to the Richmond Times-Dispatch—he said it
-should be bruised only—and a personal misunderstanding between two
-veteran members oi the Pendennis Club, of Louisville, was with difficulty
-averted by bystanders. For the American, Tom Powers drew a cartoon showing
-the old judge, with a julep in his hand, marching through the Prohibition
-belt of the South, accompanied by a procession of jubilant Joys, while
-hordes of disconcerted Glooms fled ahead oi them across the map.
-</p>
-<p>
-In short, for the better part of a week Judge Priest was a celebrity,
-holding the limelight to the virtual exclusion of grand opera stars,
-favorite sons, white hopes, debutantes and contributing editors of the
-Outlook Magazine. And on the fourth day the judge, sitting in the privacy
-of his chamber and contemplating his sudden prominence, had an idea—and
-this idea was the answer to a question he had been asking himself many
-times since he left home. He spent half an hour and seventy cents
-telephoning to various newspaper offices. When finally he hung up the
-receiver and wriggled into his caped overcoat a benevolent smile illumined
-his broad, pink face. The smile still lingered there as he climbed into a
-cab at the curb and gave the driver a certain Wall Street address, which
-was the address ci one J. Hayden Witherbee.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-J. Hayden Witherbee, composing the firm of Witherbee & Company,
-bankers, had a cozy flytrap or office suite in one of the tallest and most
-ornate of the office buildings or spider-webs in the downtown financial
-district. This location was but a natural one, seeing that Mr. J. Hayden
-Witherbee's interests were widely scattered and diversified, including as
-they did the formation and construction—on paper and with paper—of
-trolley lines; the floating of various enterprises, which floated the more
-easily by reason of the fact that water was their native element; and the
-sale of what are known in the West as holes in the ground and in the East
-as permanent mining investments. He rode to and from business in a
-splendid touring car trained to stop automatically at at least three cafés
-on the way up town of an evening; and he had in his employ a competent
-staff, including a grayish gentle-man of a grim and stolid aspect, named
-Betts.
-</p>
-<p>
-Being a man of affairs, and many of them, Mr. Witherbee had but small time
-for general newspaper reading, save and except only the market quotations,
-the baseball scores in season and the notices of new shows for tired
-business men, though keeping a weather eye ever out for stories touching
-on the pernicious activities of the Federal Grand Jury, with its
-indictments and summonses and warrants, and of the United States
-Post-Office Department, with its nasty habit of issuing fraud orders and
-tying up valuable personal mail. Nevertheless, on a certain wintry
-afternoon about two o'clock or half-past two, when his office boy brought
-to him a small card, engraved—no, not engraved; printed—smudgily
-printed with the name of William Pitman Priest and the general address of
-Kentucky, the sight of the card seemed to awaken within him certain
-amusing stories which had lately fallen under his attention in the printed
-columns; and, since he never overlooked any bets—even the small ones—he
-told the boy to show the gentleman in.
-</p>
-<p>
-The reader, I take it, being already acquainted with the widely varying
-conversational characteristics of Judge Priest and Mr. J. Hayden
-Witherbee, it would be but a waste of space and time for me to undertake
-to describe in detail the manner of their meeting on this occasion.
-Suffice it to say that the judge was shown into Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee's
-private office; that he introduced himself, shook hands with Mr.
-Witherbee, and in response to an invitation took a seat; after which he
-complimented Mr. Witherbee upon the luxury and good taste of his
-surroundings, and remarked that it was seasonable weather, considering the
-Northern climate and the time of the year. And then, being requested to
-state the nature of his business, he told Mr. Witherbee he had called in
-the hope of interesting him in an industrial property located in the
-South. It was at this juncture that Mr. Witherbee pressed a large, dark
-cigar upon his visitor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said Mr. Witherbee, “we have been operating somewhat extensively in
-the South of late, and we are always on the lookout for desirable
-properties of almost any character. Er—where is this particular
-property you speak of located and what is its nature?”
- </p>
-<p>
-When Judge Priest named the town Mr. Witherbee gave a perceptible start,
-and when Judge Priest followed up this disclosure by stating that the
-property in question was a gasworks plant which he, holding power of
-attorney and full authority to act, desired to sell to Mr. Witherbee,
-complete with equipment, accounts, franchise and good will, Mr. Witherbee
-showed a degree of heat and excitement entirely out of keeping with the
-calmness and deliberation of Judge Priest's remarks. He asked Judge Priest
-what he—the judge—took him—Witherbee—for anyhow?
-Judge Priest, still speaking slowly and choosing his words with care, then
-told him—and that only seemed to add to Mr. Witherbee's state of
-warmth. However, Judge Priest drawled right on.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh,” he continued placidly, “accordin' to the best of my knowledge
-and belief, you are in the business of buyin' and sellin' such things as
-gasworks, and so I've come to you to sell you this here one. You have
-personal knowledge of the plant, I believe, havin' been on the ground
-recently.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Say,” demanded Mr. Witherbee with a forced grin—a grin that would
-have reminded you of a man drawing a knife—“say, what do you think
-you're trying to slip over on me? I did go to your measly little one-horse
-town and I spent more than a week there; and I did look over your
-broken-down little old gashouse, and I concluded that I didn't want it;
-and then I came away. That's the kind of a man I am—when I'm through
-with a thing I'm through with it! Huh! What would I do with those gasworks
-if I bought 'em?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That, suh, is a most pertinent point,” said Judge Priest, “and I'm glad
-you brought it up early. In case, after buyin' this property, you do not
-seem to care greatly for it, I am empowered to buy it back from you at a
-suitable figure. For example, I am willin' to sell it to you for sixty
-thousand dollars; and then, providin' you should want to sell it back to
-me, I stand prepared to take it off your hands at twenty-six thousand five
-hundred. I name those figures, suh, because those are the figures that
-were lately employed in connection with the proposition.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Blackmail—huh!” sneered Mr. Witherbee. “Cheap blackmail and nothing
-else. Well, I took you for a doddering old pappy guy; but you're a bigger
-rube even than I thought. Now you get out of here before you get thrown
-out—see?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Now there you go, son—fixin' to lose your temper already,”
- counseled the old judge reprovingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-But Mr. Witherbee had already lost it—completely lost it. He jumped
-up from his desk as though contemplating acts of violence upon the limbs
-and body of the broad, stoutish old man sitting in front of him; but he
-sheered off. Though old Judge Priest's lips kept right on smiling, his
-eyelids puckered down into a disconcerting little squint; and between them
-little menacing blue gleams flickered. Anyway, personal brawls, even in
-the sanctity of one's office, were very bad form and sometimes led to that
-publicity which is so distasteful to one engaged in large private
-enterprises. Mr. Witherbee had known the truth of this when his name had
-been Watkins and when it had been the Bland. Brothers' Investment Company,
-limited; and he knew it now when he was Witherbee & Company. So, as
-aforesaid, he sheered off. Retreating to his desk, he felt for a button. A
-buzzer whirred dimly in the wall like a rattlesnake's tail. An officeboy
-poked his head in instantly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Herman,” ordered Mr. Witherbee, trembling with his passion, “you go down
-to the superintendent's office and tell him to send a special building
-officer here to me right away!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The boy's head vanished, and Mr. Witherbee swung back again on the judge,
-wagging a threatening forefinger at him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you know what I'm going to do?” he asked. “Well, I'll tell you what
-I'm going to do—I'm going to have you chucked out of here bodily—that's
-what!”
- </p>
-<p>
-But he couldn't keep the quaver out of the threat. Somehow he was
-developing a growing fear of this imperturbable old man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, son,” said Judge Priest, who hadn't moved, “I wouldn't do that if I
-was you. It might not be so healthy for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you needn't be trying any of your cheap Southern gunplays round
-here,” warned Mr. Witherbee; but, in spite of his best efforts at control,
-his voice rose quivering at the suggestion.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Bless your heart, son!” said the judge soothingly, “I wouldn't think of
-usin' a gun on you any more'n I'd think of takin' a Winchester rifle to
-kill one of these here cockroaches! Son,” he said, rising now for the
-first time, “you come along here with me a minute—I want to show you
-something you ain't seen yet.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He walked to the door and opened it part way. Witherbee, wondering and
-apprehensive, followed him and looked over the old judge's shoulder into
-the anteroom.
-</p>
-<p>
-For J. Hayden Witherbee, one quick glance was enough. Four—no, five—five
-alert-looking young men, all plainly marked with the signs of a craft
-abhorrent to Mr. Witherbee, sat in a row of chairs beyond a railing; and
-beyond them was a sixth person, a young woman with a tiptilted nose and a
-pair of inquisitive, expectant gray eyes. Mr. Witherbee would have known
-them anywhere by their backs—jackals of the press, muckrakers, sworn
-enemies to Mr. Witherbee and all his kith and kind!
-</p>
-<p>
-It was Mr. Witherbee who slammed the door shut, drawing Judge Priest back
-into the shelter of the closed room; and it was Mr. Witherbee who made
-inquiry, tremulously, almost humbly:
-</p>
-<p>
-“What does this mean? What are these people doing there? What game is
-this?” He sputtered out the words, one question overlapping the next.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” said Judge Priest, “you seem flustered. Ca'm yourself. This is no
-game as I know of. These are merely friends of mine—representatives
-of the daily press of your city.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But how did they come to be here?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” said the judge. “Why, I tele-phoned 'em. I telephoned 'em that I was
-comin' down here on a matter of business, and that maybe there might be a
-sort of an item for them if they'd come too. I've been makin' what they
-call copy for them, and we're all mighty sociable and friendly; and so
-they came right along. To tell you the truth, we all arrived practically
-together. You see, if I was sort of shoved out of here against my will and
-maybe mussed up a little those boys and that there young lady there—her
-name Is Miss Margaret Movine—they'd be sure to put pieces in their
-papers about it; and if it should come out incidentally that the cause of
-the row was a certain gasworks transaction, in a certain town down in
-Kentucky, they'd probably print that too. Why, those young fellows would
-print anything almost if I wanted them to. You'd be surprised!
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, suh, you'd be surprised to see how much they'd print for me,” he
-went on, tapping J. Hayden Witherbee upon his agitated chest with a blunt
-forefinger. “I'll bet you they'd go into the full details.”
- </p>
-<p>
-As Mr. Witherbee listened, Mr. Witherbee perspired freely. At this very
-moment there were certain transactions pending throughout the country—he
-had a telegram in his desk now from Betts, sent from a small town in
-Alabama—and newspaper publicity of an unpleasant and intimate nature
-might be fatal in the extreme. Mr. Witherbee had a mind trained to act
-quickly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Wait a minute!” he said, mopping his brow and wetting his lips, they
-being the only dry things about him. “Wait a minute, please. If we could
-settle this—this matter—just between ourselves, quietly—and
-peaceably—-there wouldn't be anything to print—would there?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“As I understand the ethics of your Eastern journalism, there wouldn't be
-anything to print,” said Judge Priest. “The price of them gasworks,
-accordin' to the latest quotations, was sixty thousand—but liable to
-advance without notice.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And what—what did you say you'd buy 'em back at?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Twenty-six thousand five hundred was the last price,” said the judge,
-“but subject to further shrinkage almost any minute.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll trade,” said Mr. Witherbee.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Much obliged to you, son,” said Judge Priest gratefully, and he began
-fumbling in his breast pocket. “I've got the papers all made out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Witherbee regained his desk and reached for a checkbook just as the
-officeboy poked his head in again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Special officer's cornin' right away, sir,” he said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tell him to go away and keep away,” snarled the flurried Mr. Witherbee;
-“and you keep that door shut—tight! Shall I make the check out to
-you?” he asked the judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, now, I wouldn't care to bother with checks,” said the judge. “All
-the recent transactions involvin' this here gashouse property was by the
-medium of the common currency of the country, and I wouldn't care to
-undertake on my own responsibility to interfere with a system that has
-worked heretofore with such satisfaction. I'll take the difference in cash—if
-you don't mind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But I can't raise that much cash now,” whined Witherbee. “I haven't that
-much in my safe. I doubt if I could get it at my bank on such short
-notice.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I know of a larger sum bein' gathered together in a much smaller
-community than this—oncet!” said the judge reminiscently. “I would
-suggest that you try.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll try,” said Mr. Witherbee desperately. “I'll send out for it—on
-second thought, I guess I can raise it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'll wait,” said the judge; and he took his seat again, but immediately
-got up and started for the door. “I'll ask the boys and Miss Margaret
-Movine to wait too,” he explained. “You see, I'm leavin' for my home
-tomorrow and we're all goin' to have a little farewell blowout together
-tonight.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Upon Malley, who in confidence had heard enough from the judge to put two
-and two together and guess something of the rest, there was beginning to
-dawn a conviction that behind Judge William Pitman Priest's dovelike
-simplicity there lurked some part of the wisdom that has been commonly
-attributed to the serpent of old. His reporter's instinct sensed out a
-good story in it, too, but his pleadings with the old judge to stay over
-for one more day, anyhow, were not altogether based on a professional
-foundation. They were in large part personal.
-</p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest, caressing a certificate of deposit in a New York bank doing
-a large Southern business, insisted that he had to go. So Malley went with
-him to the ferry and together they stood on the deck of the ferryboat,
-saying good-by. For the twentieth time Malley was promising the old man
-that in the spring he would surely come to Kentucky and visit him. And at
-the time he meant it.
-</p>
-<p>
-In front of them as they faced the shore loomed up the tall buildings,
-rising jaggedly like long dog teeth in Manhattan's lower jaw. There were
-pennons of white steam curling from their eaves. The Judge's puckered eyes
-took in the picture, from the crowded streets below to the wintry blue sky
-above, where mackerel-shaped white clouds drifted by, all aiming the same
-way, like a school of silver fish.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Son,” he was saying, “I don't know when I've enjoyed anything more than
-this here little visit, and I'm beholden to you boys for a lot. It's been
-pleasant and it's been profitable, and I'm proud that I met up with all of
-you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“When will you be coming back, judge?” asked Malley.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, that I don't know,” admitted the old judge. “You see, son, I'm
-gettin' on in years, considerably; and it's sort of a hard trip from away
-down where I live plum' up here to New York. As a matter of fact,” he went
-on, “this was the third time in my life that I started for this section of
-the country. The first time I started was with General Albert Sidney
-Johnston and a lot of others; but, owin' to meetin' up with your General
-Grant at a place called Pittsburg Landing by your people and Shiloh by
-ours, we sort of altered our plans. Later on I started again, bein' then
-temporarily in the company of General John Morgan, of my own state; and
-that time we got as far as the southern part of the state of Ohio before
-we run into certain insurmountable obstacles; but this time I managed to
-git through. I was forty-odd years doin' it—but I done it! And,
-son,” he called out as the ferryboat began to quiver and Malley stepped
-ashore, “I don't mind tellin' you in strict confidence that while the
-third Confederate invasion of the North was a long time gittin' under way,
-it proved a most complete success in every particular when it did. Give my
-best reguards to Miss Margaret Movine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-VIII. THE MOB FROM MASSAC
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>OU might call it a tragedy—this thing that came to pass down in our
-country here a few years back. For that was exactly what it was—a
-tragedy, and in its way a big one. Yet at the time nobody thought of
-calling it by any name at all. It was just one of those shifts that are
-inevitably bound to occur in the local politics of a county or a district;
-and when it did come, and was through and over with, most people accepted
-it as a matter of course.
-</p>
-<p>
-There were some, however, it left jarred and dazed and bewildered—yes,
-and helpless too; men too old to readjust their altered fortunes to their
-altered conditions even if they had the spirit to try, which they hadn't.
-Take old Major J. Q. A. Pickett now. Attaching himself firmly to a certain
-spot at the far end of Sherrill's bar, with one leg hooked up over the
-brass bar-rail—a leg providentially foreshortened by a Minie ball at
-Shiloh, as if for that very purpose—the major expeditiously drank
-himself to death in a little less than four years, which was an
-exceedingly short time for the job, seeing he had always been a most hale
-and hearty old person, though grown a bit gnarly and skewed with the
-coming on of age. The major had been county clerk ever since
-Reconstruction; he was a gentleman and a scholar and could quote Latin and
-Sir Walter Scott's poetry by the running yard. Toward the last he quoted
-them with hiccups and a stutter.
-</p>
-<p>
-Also there was Captain Andy J. Redcliffe, who was sheriff three terms
-handrunning and, before that, chief of police. Going out of office he went
-into the livery-stable business; but he didn't seem to make much headway
-against the Farrell Brothers, who 'owned the other livery stable and were
-younger men and spry and alert to get trade. He spent a few months sitting
-at the front door of his yawning, half-empty stables, nursing a grudge
-against nearly everything and plaintively garrulous on the subject of the
-ingratitude of republics in general and this republic in particular; and
-presently he sickened of one of those mysterious diseases that seem to
-attack elderly men of a full habit of life and to rob them of their health
-without denuding them of their flesh. His fat sagged on his bones in
-unwholesome, bloated folds and he wallowed unsteadily when he walked. One
-morning one of his stable hands found him dead in his office, and the
-Gideon K. Irons Camp turned out and gave him a comrade's funeral, with
-full military honors.
-</p>
-<p>
-Also there were two or three others, including ex-County Treasurer
-Whitford, who shot himself through the head when a busy and conscientious
-successor found in his accounts a seeming shortage of four hundred and
-eighty dollars, which afterward turned out to be more a mistake in
-bookkeeping than anything else. Yet these men—all of them—might
-have seen what was coming had they watched. The storm that wrecked them
-was a long time making up—four years before it had threatened them.
-</p>
-<p>
-There had grown up a younger generation of men who complained—and
-perhaps they had reason for the complaint—that they did nearly all
-the work of organizing and campaigning and furnished most of the votes to
-carry the elections, while a close combine of aging, fussy, autocratic old
-men held all the good county offices and fatted themselves on the spoils
-of county politics. These mutterings of discontent found shape in a sort
-of semi-organized revolt against the county ring, as the young fellows
-took to calling it, and for the county primary they made up a strong
-ticket among themselves—a ticket that included two smart young
-lawyers who could talk on their feet, and a popular young farmer for
-sheriff, and a live young harnessmaker as a representative of union labor,
-which was beginning to be a recognized force in the community with the
-coming of the two big tanneries. They made a hard fight of it, too,
-campaigning at every fork in the big road and every country store and
-blacksmith shop, and spouting arguments and oratory like so many inspired
-human spigots. Their elderly opponents took things easier. They rode about
-in top buggies and democrat wagons from barbecue to rally and from rally
-to schoolhouse meeting, steadfastly refusing the challenges of the younger
-men for a series of joint debates and contenting themselves with talking
-over old days with fading, grizzled men of their own generation. These
-elders, in turn, talked with their sons and sons-in-law and their nephews
-and neighbors; and so, when the primaries came, the young men's ticket
-stood beaten—but not by any big margin. It was close enough to be
-very close.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, they've licked us this time!” said Dabney Prentiss, who afterward
-went to Congress from the district and made a brilliant record there.
-Dabney Prentiss had been the younger element's candidate for circuit-court
-judge against old Judge Priest. “They've licked us and the Lord only knows
-how they did it. Here we thought we had 'em out-organized, outgeneraled
-and outnumbered. All they did was to go out in the back districts and beat
-the bushes, and out crawled a lot of old men that everybody else thought
-were dead twenty years ago. I think they must hide under logs in the woods
-and only come out to vote. But, fellows”—he was addressing some of
-his companions in disappointment—“but, fellows, we can afford to
-wait and they can't. The day is going to come when it'll take something
-more than shaking an empty sleeve or waving a crippled old leg to carry an
-election in this county. Young men keep growing up all the time, but all
-that old men can do is to die off. Four years from now we'll win sure!”
- The four years went by, creakingly slow of passage to some and rolling
-fast to others; and in the summer of the fourth year another campaign
-started up and grew hot and hotter to match the weather, which was blazing
-hot. The August drought came, an arid and a blistering visitation. Except
-at dusk and at dawn the birds quit singing and hung about in the thick
-treetops, silent and nervous, with their bills agape and their throat
-feathers panting up and down. The roasting ears burned to death on the
-stalk and the wide fodder blades slowly cooked from sappy greenness to a
-brittle dead brown. The clods in the cornrows wore dry as powder and gave
-no nourishment for growing, ripening things. The dust powdered the
-blackberry vines until they lost their original color altogether, and at
-the roadside the medicinal mullein drooped its wilted long leaves, like
-lolling tongues that were all furred and roiled, as though the mullein
-suffered from the very fevers that its steeped juices are presumed to
-cure. At its full the moon shone hot and red, with two rings round it; and
-the two rings always used to mean water in our country—two rings for
-drinking water at the hotel, and for rainwater two rings round the moon—but
-week after week no rain fell and the face of the earth just seemed to dry
-up and blow away. Yet the campaign neither lost its edge nor abated any of
-its fervor by reason of the weather. Politics was the chief diversion and
-the main excitement in our county in those days—and still is.
-</p>
-<p>
-One morning near the end of the month a dust-covered man on a sorely spent
-horse galloped in from Massac Creek, down in the far edge of the county;
-and when he had changed horses at Farrell Brothers' and started back again
-there went with him the sheriff, both of his deputies and two of the town
-policemen, the sheriff taking with him in his buckboard a pair of
-preternaturally grave dogs of a reddish-brown aspect, with long, drooping
-ears, and long, sad, stupid faces and eyes like the chief mourners' at a
-funeral. They were bloodhounds, imported at some cost from a kennel in
-Tennessee and reputed to be marvelously wise in the tracking down of
-criminals. By the time the posse was a mile away and headed for Massac a
-story had spread through the town that made men grit their teeth and sent
-certain armed and mounted volunteers hurrying out to join the manhunt.
-</p>
-<p>
-Late that same afternoon a team of blown horses, wet as though they had
-wallowed in the river and drawing a top buggy, panted up to the little
-red-brick jail, which stood on the county square alongside the old wooden
-white courthouse, and halted there. Two men—a constable and a deputy
-sheriff—sat back under the overhanging top of the buggy, and between
-them something small was crushed, huddled down on the seat and almost
-hidden by their broad figures. They were both yellowed with the dust of a
-hard drive. It lay On their shoulders like powdered sulphur and was gummed
-to their eyelashes, so that when they batted their eyelids to clear their
-sight it gave them a grotesque, clownish look. They climbed laboriously
-out and stretched their limbs.
-</p>
-<p>
-The constable hurried stiffly up the short gravel path to the jail and
-rapped on the door and called out something. The deputy sheriff reached in
-under the buggy top and hauled out a little negro, skinny and slight and
-seemingly not over eighteen years old. He hauled him out as though he was
-handling a sack of grits, and the negro came out like a sack of grits and
-fell upon his face on the pavement, almost between the buggy wheels. His
-wrists were held together by a pair of iron handcuffs heavy enough to
-fetter a bear, and for further precaution his legs had been hobbled with a
-plowline, and his arms were tied back with another length of the plowline
-that passed through his elbows and was knotted behind. The deputy stooped,
-took a grip on the rope across the prisoner's back and heaved him up to
-his feet. He was ragged, barefooted and bareheaded and his face was
-covered with a streaky clayish-yellow caking, where the sweat had run down
-and wetted the dust layers. Through this muddy mask his pop-eyes stared
-with a dulled animal terror.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thus yanked upright the little negro swayed on his feet, shrinking up his
-shoulders and lurching in his tethers. Then his glazed stare fell on the
-barred windows and the hooded door of the jail, and he realized where he
-had been brought and hurried toward it as toward a welcome haven,
-stretching his legs as far as the ropes sawing on his naked ankles would
-let him. Willing as he was, however, he collapsed altogether as he reached
-the door and lay on his face kinking and twisting up in his bonds like a
-stricken thing. The deputy and the constable dragged him up roughly, one
-lifting him by his arm bindings and the other by the ropes on his legs,
-and they pitched him in flat on the floor of the little jail office. He
-wriggled himself under a table and lay there, sniffling out his fear and
-relief. His tongue hung out of his mouth like the tongue of a tied calf,
-and he panted with choky, slobbering sounds.
-</p>
-<p>
-The deputy sheriff and the constable left him lying and went to a water
-bucket in the corner and drank down brimming dippers, turn and turn about,
-as though their thirst was unslakable. It was Dink Bynum, the deputy
-jailer, who had admitted them and in the absence of his superior he was in
-charge solely. He waited until the two had lowered the water line in the
-cedar bucket by a matter of inches.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Purty quick work, boys,” he said professionally, “if this is the right
-nigger.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I guess there ain't much doubt about him bein' the right one,” said the
-constable, whose name was Quarles. “Is there, Gus?” he added.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No doubt at all in my mind,” said the deputy. He wiped his mouth on his
-sleeve, which smeared the dust across his face in a sort of pattern.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How'd you fellers come to git him?” asked Bynum.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well,” said the deputy, “we got out to the Hampton place about dinner
-time I reckin it was. Every man along the creek and every boy that was big
-enough to tote a gun was out scourin' the woods and there wasn't nobody
-round the place exceptin' a passel of the womenfolks. Just over the fence
-where the nigger was s'posed to have crossed we found his old wool hat
-layin' right where he'd run out from under it and we let the dogs smell of
-it, and inside of five minutes they'd picked up a trail and was openin'
-out on it. It was monstrous hot going through them thick bottoms afoot,
-and me and Quarles here outrun the sheriff and the others. Four miles back
-of Florence Station, and not more'n a mile from the river, we found this
-nigger treed up a hackberry with the dogs bayin' under him. I figure he'd
-been hidin' out in the woods all night and was makin' for the river,
-aimin' to cross, when the dogs fetched up behind him and made him take to
-a tree.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did you carry him back for the girl to see?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,” said the deputy sheriff. “Me and Quarles we talked it over after
-we'd got him down and had him roped up. In the first place she wasn't in
-no condition to take a look at him, and besides we knowed that them Massac
-people jest natchelly wouldn't listen to nothin' oncet they laid eyes on
-him. They'd 'a' tore him apart bodily.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The bound figure on the floor began moaning in a steady, dead monotone,
-with his lips against the planking.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So, bein' as me and Quarles wanted the credit for bringin' him in, not to
-mention the reward,” went on the deputy, without a glance at the moaning
-negro, “we decided not to take no chances. I kept him out of sight until
-Quarles could go over to the river and borrow a rig, and we driv in with
-him by the lower road, acrost the iron bridge, without goin' anywhere near
-Massac.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What does the nigger say for himself?” asked Bynum, greedy for all the
-details.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Huh!” said the deputy. “He's been too scared to say much of anything.
-Says he'd tramped up here from below the state line and was makin' for
-Ballard County, lookin' for a job of work. He's a strange nigger all
-right. And he as good as admits he was right near the Hampton place
-yistiddy evenin' at milkin' time, when the girl was laywaid, and says he
-only run because the dogs took out after him and scared him. But here he
-is. We've done our duty and delivered him, and now if the boys out yonder
-on Massac want to come in and take him out that's their lookout and yourn,
-Dink.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I reckon you ain't made no mistake,” said Bynum. Cursing softly under his
-breath he walked over and spurned the prisoner with his heavy foot. The
-negro writhed under the pressure like a crushed insect. The under jailer
-looked down at him with a curious tautening of his heavy features.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The papers call 'em burly black brutes,” he said, “and I never seen one
-of 'em yit that was more'n twenty years old or run over a hundred and
-thirty pound.” He raised his voice: “Jim—oh, Jim!”
- </p>
-<p>
-An inner door of sheet-iron opened with a suspicious instantaneousness,
-and in the opening appeared a black jail trusty, a confirmed chicken
-thief. He ducked his head in turn toward each of the white men, carefully
-keeping his uneasy gaze away from the little negro lying between the table
-legs in the corner.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh, boss—right here, suh,” said the trusty.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here, Jim”—the deputy jailer was opening his pocketknife and
-passing it over—“take and cut them ropes off that nigger's arms and
-laigs.”
- </p>
-<p>
-With a ludicrous alacrity the trusty obeyed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now pull him up on his feet!” commanded Bynum. “I guess we might as well
-leave them cuffs on him—eh?” he said to the deputy sheriff. The
-deputy nodded. Bynum took down from a peg over the jailer's desk a ring
-bearing many jingling keys of handwrought iron. “Bring him in here, Jim,”
- he bade the trusty.
-</p>
-<p>
-He stepped through the inner door and the negro Jim followed him, steering
-the manacled little negro. Quarles, the constable, and the deputy sheriff
-tagged behind to see their catch properly caged. They went along a short
-corridor, filled with a stifling, baked heat and heavy with the smell of
-penned-up creatures. There were faces at the barred doors of the cells
-that lined one side of this corridor—all black or yellow faces
-except one white one; and from these cells came no sound at all as the
-three white men and the two negroes passed. Only the lone white prisoner
-spoke out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who is he, Dink?” he called eagerly. “What's he done?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Shut up!” ordered his keeper briefly, and that was the only answer he
-made. At the far end of the passage Bynum turned a key in a creaky lock
-and threw back the barred door of an inner cell, sheathed with iron and
-lacking a window. The trusty shoved in the little handcuffed negro and the
-negro groveled on the wooden floor upon all fours. Bynum locked the door
-and the three white men tramped back through the silent corridor, followed
-by the sets of white eyes that stared out unwinkingly at them through the
-iron-latticed grills. It was significant that from the time of the arrival
-at the jail not one of the whites had laid his hands actually upon the
-prisoner. “Well, boys,” said Bynum to the others by way of a farewell,
-“there he is and there he'll stay—unless than Massac Creek folks
-come and git him. You've done your sworn duty and I've done mine. I locked
-him up and I won't be responsible for what happens now. I know this much—I
-ain't goin' to git myself crippled up savin' that nigger. If a mob wants
-to come let 'em come on!”
- </p>
-<p>
-No mob came from Massac that night or the next night either; and on the
-second day there was a big basket picnic and rally under a brush arbor at
-the Shady Grove schoolhouse—the biggest meeting of the whole
-campaign it was to be, with speaking, and the silver cornet band out from
-town to make music, and the oldest living Democrat in the county sitting
-on the platform, and all that. Braving the piled-on layers of heat that
-rode the parched country like witch-hags half the town went to Shady
-Grove. Nearly everybody went that could travel. All the morning wagons and
-buggies were clattering out of town, headed toward the west. And in the
-cooking dead calm of the midaftemoon the mob from Massac came.
-</p>
-<p>
-They came by roundabout ways, avoiding those main traveled roads over
-which the crowds were gathering in toward the common focus of the Shady
-Grove schoolhouse; and coming so, on horseback by twos and threes, and
-leaving their horses in a thicket half a mile out, they were able to reach
-the edge of the town unnoticed and unsuspected. The rest, their leader
-figured, would be easy. A mistake in judgment by the town fathers in an
-earlier day had put the public square near the northern boundary, and the
-town, instead of growing up to it, grew away from it in the opposite
-direction, so that the square stood well beyond the thickly settled
-district.
-</p>
-<p>
-All things had worked out well for their purpose. The sheriff and the
-jailer, both candidates for renomination, were at Shady Grove, and the
-sheriff had all his deputies with him, electioneering for their own jobs
-and his. Legal Row, the little street of lawyers' offices back of the
-square, might have been a byroad in old Pompeii for all the life that
-showed along its short and simmering length. No idlers lay under the water
-maples and the red oaks in the square. The jail baked in the sunlight,
-silent as a brick tomb, which indeed it somewhat resembled; and on the
-wide portico of the courthouse a loafer dog of remote hound antecedents
-alternately napped and roused to snap at the buzzing flies. The door of
-the clerk's office stood agape and through the opening came musty, snuffy
-smells of old leather and dry-rotted deeds. The wide hallway that ran from
-end to end of the old building was empty and echoed like a cave to the
-frequent thump of the loafer dog's leg joints upon the planking.
-</p>
-<p>
-Indeed, the whole place had but a single occupant. In his office back of
-the circuit-court room Judge Priest was asleep, tilted back in a swivel
-chair, with his short, plump legs propped on a table and his pudgy hands
-locked across his stomach, which gently rose and fell with his breathing.
-His straw hat was on the table, and in a corner leaned his inevitable
-traveling companion in summer weather—a vast and cavernous umbrella
-of a pattern that is probably obsolete now, an unkempt old drab slattern
-of an umbrella with a cracked wooden handle and a crippled rib that
-dangled away from its fellows as though shamed by its afflicted state. The
-campaigning had been hard on the old judge. The Monday before, at a rally
-at Temple's Mills, he had fainted, and this day he hadn't felt equal to
-going to Shady Grove. Instead he had come to his office alter dinner to
-write some letters and had fallen asleep. He slept on for an hour, a
-picture of pink and cherubic old age, with little headings of sweat
-popping out thickly on his high bald head and a gentle little snoring
-sound, of first a drone and then a whistle, pouring steadily from his
-pursed lips.
-</p>
-<p>
-Outside a dry-fly rasped the brooding silence up and down with its
-fret-saw refrain. In the open spaces the little heat waves danced like so
-many stress marks, accenting the warmth and giving emphasis to it; and far
-down the street, which ran past the courthouse and the jail and melted
-into a country road so imperceptibly that none knew exactly where the
-street left off and the road began, there appeared a straggling, irregular
-company of men marching, their shapes more than half hid in a dust column
-of their own raising. The Massac men were coming.
-</p>
-<p>
-I believe there is a popular conception to the effect that an oncoming mob
-invariably utters a certain indescribable, sinister, muttering sound that
-is peculiar to mobs. For all I know that may be true of some mobs, but
-certain it was that this mob gave vent to no such sounds. This mob came on
-steadily, making no more noise than any similar group of seventy-five or
-eighty men tramping over a dusty road might be expected to make.
-</p>
-<p>
-For the most part they were silent and barren of speech. One youngish man
-kept repeating to himself a set phrase as he marched along. This phrase
-never varied in word or expression. It was: “Goin' to git that nigger!
-Goin' to git that nigger!”—that was all—said over and over
-again in a dull, steady monotone. By its constant reiteration he was
-working himself up, just as a rat-terrier may be worked up by constant
-hissed references to purely imaginary rats.
-</p>
-<p>
-Their number was obscured by the dust their feet lifted. It was as if each
-man at every step crushed with his toe a puffball that discharged its
-powdery particles upward into his face. Some of them carried arms openly—shotguns
-and rifles. The others showed no weapons, but had them. It seemed that
-every fourth man, nearly, had coiled upon his arm or swung over his
-shoulder a rope taken from a plow or a well-bucket. They had enough rope
-to hang ten men or a dozen—yes, with stinting, to hang twenty. One
-man labored under the weight of a three-gallon can of coal-oil, so heavy
-that he had to shift it frequently from one tired arm to the other. In
-that weather the added burden made the sour sweat run down in streaks,
-furrowing the grime on his face. The Massac Creek blacksmith had a
-sledge-hammer over his shoulder and was in the front rank. Not one was
-masked or carried his face averted. Nearly all were grown men and not one
-was under twenty. A certain definite purpose showed in their gait. It
-showed, also, in the way they closed up and became a more compact
-formation as they came within sight of the trees fringing the square.
-</p>
-<p>
-Down through the drowsing town edge they stepped, giving alarm only to the
-chickens that scratched languidly where scrub-oaks cast a skimpy shade
-across the road; but as they reached the town line they passed a clutter
-of negro cabins clustering about a little doggery. A negro woman stepped
-to a door and saw them. Distractedly, fluttering like a hen, she ran into
-the bare, grassless yard, setting up a hysterical outcry. A negro man came
-quickly from the cabin, clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her
-back inside, slamming the door to behind him with a kick of his bare foot.
-Unseen hands shut the other cabin doors and the woman's half-smothered
-cries came dimly through the clapboarded wall; but a slim black darky
-darted southward from the doggery, worming his way under a broken,
-snaggled fence and keeping the straggling line of houses and stables
-between him and the marchers. This fleeing figure was Jeff, Judge Priest's
-negro bodyservant, who had a most amazing faculty for always being
-wherever things happened.
-</p>
-<p>
-Jeff was short and slim and he could run fast. He ran fast now, snatching
-off his hat and carrying it in his hand—the surest of all signs that
-a negro is traveling at his top gait. A good eighth of a mile in advance
-of the mob, he shot in at the back door of the courthouse and flung
-himself into his employer's room.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge! Jedge!” he panted tensely. “Jedge Priest, please, suh, wake up—the
-mobbers is comin'!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest came out of his nap with a jerk that uprighted him in his
-chair.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's that, boy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The w'ite folks is conin' after that there little nigger over in the
-jail. I outrun 'em to git yere and tell you, suh.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah!” said Judge Priest, which was what Judge Priest generally said
-first of all when something struck him forcibly. He reared himself up
-briskly and reached for his hat and umbrella.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Which way are they comin' from?” he asked as he made for the hall and the
-front door.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Comin' down the planin'-mill road into Jefferson Street,” explained Jeff,
-gasping out the words.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the old judge, with Jeff in his wake, emerged from the shadows of the
-tall hallway into the blinding glare of the portico they met Dink Bynum,
-the deputy jailer, just diving in. Dink was shirtsleeved. His face was
-curiously checkered with red-and-white blotches. He cast a backward
-glance, bumped into the judge's greater bulk and caromed off, snatching at
-the air to recover himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Are you desertin' your post, Dink?” demanded the judge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge, there wasn't no manner of use in my stayin',” babbled Bynum. “I'm
-all alone and there's a whole big crowd of 'em comin' yonder. There'll git
-that nigger anyhow—and he deserves it!” he burst out.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dink Bynum, where are the keys to that jail?” said Judge Priest, speaking
-unusually fast for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I clean forgot'em!” he quavered. “I left 'em hangin' in the jail office.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And also I note you left the outside door of the jail standin' wide
-open,” said the judge, glancing to the left. “Where's your pistol?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“In my pocket—in my pocket, here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Git it out!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest, I wouldn't dare make no resistance single-handed—I
-got a family—I—” faltered the unhappy deputy jailer.
-</p>
-<p>
-The moving dustcloud, with legs and arms showing through its swirling
-front, was no more than a hundred yards away. You could make out details—hot,
-red, resolute faces; the glint of the sun on a gunbarrel; the polished
-nose of the blacksmith's sledge; the round curve of a greasy oilcan.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dink Bynum,” said Judge Priest, “git that gun out and give it to me—quick!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jedge, listen to reason!” begged Bynum. “You're candidate yourse'f.
-Sentiment is aginst that nigger—strong. You'll hurt your own chances
-if you interfere.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The judge didn't answer. His eyes were on the dustcloud and his hand was
-extended. His pudgy fingers closed round the heavy handful of blued steel
-that Dink Bynum passed over and he shoved it out of sight. Laboring
-heavily down the steps he opened his umbrella and put it over his
-shoulder, and as he waddled down the short gravel path his shadow had the
-grotesque semblance of a big crawling land terrapin following him. One
-look Judge Priest sent over his shoulder. Dink Bynum and Jeff had both
-vanished. Except for the men from Massac there was no living being to be
-seen.
-</p>
-<p>
-They didn't see him, either, until they were right upon him. He came out
-across the narrow sidewalk of the square and halted directly in their
-path, with his right hand raised and his umbrella tilted far back, so that
-its shade cut across the top of his straw hat, making a distinct line.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Boys,” he said familiarly, almost paternally—“Boys, I want to have
-a word with you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Most of the Massac men knew him—some of them knew him very well.
-They had served on juries under him; he had eaten Sunday dinners under
-their rooftrees. They stopped, the rear rows crowding up closer until they
-were a solid mass facing him. Beyond him they could see the outer door of
-the jail gaping hospitably and the sight gave an edge to their purpose
-that was like the gnawing of physical hunger. Above all things they were
-sharp-set to hurry forward the thing they had it in their minds to do.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Boys,” said the judge, “most of you are friends of mine—and I want
-to tell you something. You mustn't do the thing you're purposin' to do—you
-mustn't do it!”
- </p>
-<p>
-A snorted outburst, as of incredulity, came from the sweating clump of
-countrymen confronting him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The hell we mustn't!” drawled one of them derisively, and a snicker
-started.
-</p>
-<p>
-The snicker grew to a laugh—a laugh with a thread of grim menace in
-it, and a tinge of mounting man-hysteria. Even to these men, whose eyes
-were used to resting on ungainly and awkward old men, the figure of Judge
-Priest, standing in their way alone, had a grotesque emphasis. The judge's
-broad stomach stuck far out in front and was balanced by the rearward
-bulge of his umbrella. His white chin-beard was streaked with tobacco
-stains. The legs of his white linen trousers were caught up on his shins
-and bagged dropsically at the knees. His righthand pocket of his black
-alpaca coat was sagged away down by some heavy unseen weight.
-</p>
-<p>
-None of the men in the front rank joined in the snickering however; they
-only looked at the judge with a sort of respectful obstinacy.
-</p>
-<p>
-There was nothing said for maybe twenty seconds.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest,” said a spokesman, a tall, spare, bony man with a sandy
-drooping mustache and a nose that beaked over like a butcherbird's bill—“Jedge
-Priest, we've come after a nigger boy that's locked up in that jail yonder
-and we're goin' to have him! Speaking personally, most of us here know you
-and we all like you, suh; but I'll have to ask you to stand aside and let
-us go ahead about our business.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Gentlemen,” said Judge Priest, without altering his tone, “the law of
-this state provides a proper——”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The law provides—eh?” mimicked the man who had laughed first. “The
-law provides, does it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“——provides a fittin' and an orderly way of attendin' to these
-matters,” went on the judge. “In the absence of the other sworn officials
-of this county I represent in my own humble person the majesty of the law,
-and I say to you——”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest,” cut in the beaky-nosed man, “you are an old man and you
-stand mighty high in this community—none higher. We don't none of us
-want to do nothin' or say nothin' to you that mout be regretted afterward;
-but we air goin' to have that nigger out of that jail and stretch his neck
-for him. He's one nigger that's lived too long already. You'd better step
-back!” he went on. “You're just wastin' your time and ourn.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A growling assent to this sentiment ran through the mob. It was a growl
-that carried a snarl. There was a surging forward movement from the rear
-and a restless rustle of limbs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Wait a minute, boys!” said the leader. “Wait a minute. There's no hurry—we'll
-git him! Jedge Priest,” he went on, changing his tone to one of regardful
-admonition, “you've got a race on for reëlection and you'll need every
-vote you kin git. I hope you ain't goin' to do nothin' that'll maybe hurt
-your chances among us Massac Creekers.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's the second time that's been throwed up to me inside of five
-minutes,” said Judge Priest. “My chances for election have nothin' to do
-with the matter now in hand—remember that!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“All right—all right!” assented the other. “Then I'll tell you
-somethin' else. Us men have come in broad daylight, not hidin' our faces
-from the noonday sun. We air open and aboveboard about this thing. Every
-able-bodied, self-respectin' white man in our precinct is right here with
-me today. We've talked it over and we know what we air doin'. If you want
-to take down our names and prosecute us in the cotes you kin go ahead.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Somebody else spoke up.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'd admire to see the jury in this county that would pop the law to any
-one of us for swingin' up this nigger!” he said, chuckling at the naked
-folly of the notion.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You're right, my son,” said the judge, singling out the speaker with his
-aimed forefinger. “I ain't tryin' to scare grown men I like you with such
-talk as that. I know how you feel. I can understand how you feel—every
-man with white blood in his veins knows just what your feelin's are. I'm
-not trying to threaten you. I only want to reason with you and talk sense
-with you. This here boy ain't been identified yet—remember that!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“We know he's guilty!” said the leader. “I'll admit that circumstances may
-be against him,” pleaded the judge, “but his guilt remains to be proved.
-You can't hang any man—you can't hang even this poor, miserable
-little darky—jest on suspicion.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The dogs trailed him, didn't they?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A dog's judgment is mighty nigh as poor as a man's sometimes,” he
-answered back fighting hard for every shade of favor. “It's my experience
-that a bloodhound is about the biggest fool dog there is. Now listen here
-to me, boys, a minute. That boy in the jail is goin' to be tried just as
-soon as I can convene a special grand jury to indict him and a special
-term of court to try him, and if he's guilty I promise you he'll hang
-inside of thirty days.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And drag that pore little thing—my own first cousin—into a
-cotehouse to be shamed before a lot of these town people—no!” the
-voice of the leader rose high. “Cotes and juries may do for some cases,
-but not for this. That nigger is goin' to die right now!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He glanced back at his followers; they were ready—and more than
-ready. On his right a man had uncoiled a well-rope and was tying a
-slipknot in it. He tested the knot with both hands and his teeth, then
-spat to free his lips of the gritty dust and swung the rope out in long
-doubled coils to reeve the noose in it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge Priest, for the last time, stand aside!” warned the beaky-nosed
-man. His voice carried the accent of finality and ultimate decision in it.
-“You've done wore our patience plum' out. Boys, if you're ready come on!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“One minute!” The judge's shrill blare of command held them against their
-wills. He was lowering his umbrella. “One minute and one word more!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Shuffling their impatient feet they watched him backing with a sort of
-ungainly alertness over from right to left, dragging the battered brass
-ferrule of his umbrella after him, so that it made a line from one curb of
-the narrow street to the other. Doing this his eyes never left their
-startled faces. At the far side he halted and stepped over so that they
-faced this line from one side and he from the other. The line lay between
-them, furrowed in the deep dust.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Men,” he said, and his lifelong affectation of deliberately ungrammatical
-speech was all gone from him, “I have said to you all I can say. I will
-now kill the first man who puts his foot across that line!”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was nothing Homeric, nothing heroic about it. Even the line he had
-made in the dust waggled, and was skewed and crooked like the trail of a
-blind worm. His old figure was still as grotesquely plump and misshapen as
-ever—the broken rib of his umbrella slanted askew like the crippled
-wing of a fat bat; but the pudgy hand that brought the big blue gun out of
-the right pocket of the alpaca coat and swung it out and up, muzzle
-lifted, was steady and sure. His thumb drew the hammer back and the double
-click broke on the amazed dumb silence that had fallen like two clangs
-upon an anvil. The wrinkles in his face all set into fixed, hard lines.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was about six feet from them to where the line crossed the road.
-Heavily, slowly, diffidently, as though their feet were weighted with the
-leaden boots of a deep sea diver, yet pushed on by one common spirit, they
-moved a foot at a time right up to the line. And there they halted, their
-eyes shifting from him to the dustmark and back again, rubbing their
-shoulders up against one another and shuffling on their legs like cattle
-startled by a snake in the path.
-</p>
-<p>
-The beaky-nosed man fumbled in the breast of his unbuttoned vest,
-loosening a revolver in a shoulder holster. A twenty-year-old boy, his
-face under its coating of dust as white as flour dough, made as if to push
-past him and break across the line; but the Massac blacksmith caught him
-and plucked him back. The leader, still fumbling inside his vest,
-addressed the judge hoarsely:
-</p>
-<p>
-“I certainly don't want to have to kill you Jedge Priest!” he said
-doggedly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't want to have to kill anybody,” answered back Judge Priest; “but,
-as God is my judge, I'm going to kill the first one of you that crosses
-that line. If it was my own brother I'd kill him. I don't know which one
-of you will kill me, but I know which one I'm going to kill—the
-first man across!”
- </p>
-<p>
-They swayed their bodies from side to side—not forward but from side
-to side. They fingered their weapons, and some of them swore in a
-disappointed, irritated sort of way. This lasted perhaps half a minute,
-perhaps a whole minute—anyway it lasted for some such measurable
-period of time—before the crumbling crust of their resolution was
-broken through. The break came from the front and the center. Their
-leader, the lank, tall man with the down-tilted nose, was the first to
-give ground visibly. He turned about and without a word he began pushing a
-passage for himself through the scrouging pack of them. Breathing hard,
-like men who had run a hard race, they followed him, going away with
-scarcely a backward glance toward the man who—alone—had
-daunted them. They followed after their leader as mules follow after a
-bell-mare, wiping their grimy shirtsleeves across their sweaty, grimier
-faces and glancing toward each other with puzzled, questioning looks. One
-of them left a heavy can of coal-oil behind him upright in the middle of
-the road.
-</p>
-<p>
-The old judge stood still until they were a hundred yards away. He
-uncocked the revolver and put the deadly thing back in his pocket.
-Mechanically he raised his umbrella, fumbling a little with the stubborn
-catch, and tilted it over his left shoulder; his turtlelike shadow sprang
-out again, but this time it was in front of him. Very slowly, like a man
-who was dead tired, he made his way back up the gravel path toward the
-courthouse. Jeff magically materialized himself out of nowhere, but of
-Dink Bynum there was no sign.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is them w'ite gen'l'men gone?” inquired Jeff, his eyes popping with the
-aftershock of what he had just witnessed—had witnessed from under
-the courthouse steps.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the judge wearily, his shoulders drooping. “They're gone.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Jedge, ain't they liable to come back?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No; they won't come back.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You kinder skeered 'em off, jedge!” An increasing admiration for his
-master percolated sweetly through Jeff's remarks like dripping honey.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No; I didn't scare 'em off exactly,” answered the judge. “They are not
-the kind of men who can be scared off. I merely invoked the individual
-equation, if you know what that means?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yas, suh—that's whut I thought it wuz,” assented Jeff eagerly—the
-more eagerly because he had no idea what the judge meant.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jeff,” the old man said, “help me into my office and get me a dipper of
-drinkin' water. I reckin maybe I've got a tech of the sun.” He tottered a
-little and groped outward with one hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-Guided to the room, he sank inertly into his chair and feebly fought off
-the blackness that kept blanking his sight. Jeff fanned him with his hat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I guess maybe this here campaignin' has been too much for me,” said the
-judge slowly. “It must be the weather. I reckin from now on, Jeff, I'll
-have to set back sort of easy and let these young fellows run things.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He sat there until the couching sun brought long, thin shadows and a false
-promise of coolness. Dink Bynum returned unobtrusively to his abandoned
-post of duty; the crowds began coming back from the Shady Grove
-schoolhouse; and Jeff found time to slip out and confiscate to private
-purposes a coal-oil can that still stood in the roadway. He knew of a
-market for such commodities. The telephone bell rang and the old judge,
-raising his sagged frame with an effort, went to the instrument and took
-down the receiver. Longdistance lines were beginning to creep out through
-the county and this was a call from Florence Station, seven miles away.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That you, Jedge Priest?” said the voice over the wire. “This is Brack
-Rodgers. I've been tryin' to raise the sheriff's office, but they don't
-seem to answer. Well, suh, they got the nigger what done that devil-mint
-over at the Hampton place on Massac this evenin'. Yes, suh—about two
-hours ago. He was a nigger named Moore that worked on the adjoinin' place
-to Hampton's—a tobacco hand. Nobody suspected him until this
-mornin', when some of the other darkies got to talkin' round; and Buddy
-Quarles heared the talk and went after him. The nigger he fit back and
-Buddy had to shoot him a couple of times. Oh, yes, he died—died
-about an hour afterward; but before he died he owned up to ever'thing. I
-reckin, on the whole, he got off light by bein' killed. Which, Jedge?—the
-nigger that's there in the jail? No, suh; he didn't have nothin' a-tall to
-do with it—the other nigger said so while he was dyin'. I jedge it
-was what you mout call another case of mistaken identity on the part of
-them fool hounds.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-To be sure of getting the full party vote out and to save the cost of
-separate staffs of precinct officers, the committee ordained that the
-Democratic primaries should be held on the regular election day. The rains
-of November turned the dusts of August to high-edged ridges of sticky
-ooze. Election day came, wet and windy and bleak. Men cutting across the
-yellow-brown pastures, on their way to the polling places, scared up
-flocks of little grayish birds that tumbled through the air like
-wind-driven leaves and dropped again into the bushes with small tweaking
-sounds, like the slicing together of shears; and as if to help out this
-illusion, they showed in their tails barrings of white feathers which
-opened and closed like scissor-blades. The night came on; and it matched
-the day, being raw and gusty, with clouds like clotted whey whipping over
-and round a full moon that resembled a chum-dasher covered with yellow
-clabber. Then it started raining.
-</p>
-<p>
-The returns—county, state and national—were received at the
-office of the Daily Evening News; by seven o'clock the place was packed.
-Candidates and prominent citizens were crowded inside the railing that
-marked off the business department and the editorial department; while
-outside the railing and stretching on outdoors, into the street, the male
-populace of the town herded together in an almost solid mass. Inside, the
-air was streaky with layers of tobacco smoke and rich with the various
-smells of a small printing shop on a damp night. Behind a glass partition,
-hallway back toward the end of the building, a small press was turning out
-the weekly edition, smacking its metal lips over the taste of the raw ink.
-Its rumbling clatter, with the slobbery sputter of the arclights in the
-ceiling overhead, made an accompaniment to the voices of the crowd.
-Election night was always the biggest night of the year in our town—bigger
-than Christmas Eve even.
-</p>
-<p>
-The returns at large came by telegraph, but the returns of the primaries
-were sent in from the various precincts of town and county by telephone;
-or, in cases where there was no telephone, they were brought in by
-hard-riding messengers. At intervals, from the telegraph office two doors
-away, a boy would dash out and worm his way in through the eager multitude
-that packed and overflowed the narrow sidewalk; and through a wicket he
-would fling crumpled yellow tissue sheets at the editor of the paper. Then
-the editor would read out:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Seventeen election districts in the Ninth Assembly District of New York
-City give Schwartz, for coroner—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah, shuckin's! Fooled again!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“St. Louis—At this hour—nine-thirty—the Republicans
-concede that the entire Democratic state ticket has won by substantial
-majorities—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Course it has! What did they expect Missouri to do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Buffalo—Doran—for mayor, has been elected. The rest of the
-reform ticket is——”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, dad blame it! Henry, throw that stuff away and see if there ain't
-some way to get something definite from Lang's Store or Clark's River on
-the race for state senator!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, or for sheriff—that's the kind of thing we're all honin' to
-know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The telephone bell rang.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here you are, Mr. Tompkins—complete returns from Gum Spring
-Precinct.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Now—quiet, boys, please, so we can all hear.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was on this night that there befell the tragedy I made mention of in
-the first paragraph of this chapter. The old County Ring was smashing up.
-One by one the veterans were going under. A stripling youth not two years
-out of the law school had beaten old Captain Daniel Boone Calkins for
-representative; and old Captain Calkins had been representative so many
-years he thought the job belonged to him. Not much longer was the race for
-sheriff in doubt, or the race for state senator. Younger men snatched both
-jobs away from the old men who held them.
-</p>
-<p>
-In a far corner, behind a barricade of backs and shoulders, sat Major J.
-Q. A. Pickett, a spare and knotty old man, and Judge Priest, a chubby and
-rounded one. Of all the old men, the judge seemingly had run the strongest
-race, and Major Pickett, who had been county clerk for twenty years or
-better, had run close behind him; but as the tally grew nearer its
-completion the major's chances faded to nothing at all and the judge's
-grew dimmed and dimmer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'What do you think, judge?” inquired Major Pickett for perhaps the
-twentieth time, dinging forlornly to a hope that was as good as gone
-already.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I think, major, that you and me are about to be notified that our fellow
-citizens have returned us onc't more to private pursoots,” said the old
-judge, and there was a game smile on his face. For, so far back that he
-hated to remember how long it was, he had had his office—holding it
-as a trust of honor. He was too old actively to reënter the practice of
-law, and he had saved mighty little out of his salary as judge. He would
-be an idle man and a poor one—perhaps actually needy; and the look
-out of his eyes by no means matched the smile on his face.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I can't seem to understand it,” said the major, crushed. “Always before,
-the old boys could be depended upon to turn out for us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Major,” said Judge Priest, letting his wrinkled old hand fall on the
-major's sound leg, “did you ever stop to think that there ain't so many of
-the old boys left any more? There used to be a hundred and seventy-five
-members of the camp in good standin'. How many are there now? And how many
-of the boys did we bury this past year?”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a yell from up front and a scrooging forward of bodies.
-</p>
-<p>
-Editor Tompkins was calling off something. The returns from Clark's River
-and from Lang's Store had arrived together. He read out the figures. These
-two old men, sitting side by side, at the back, listened with hands cupped
-behind ears that were growing a bit faulty of hearing. They heard.
-</p>
-<p>
-Major J. Q. A. Pickett got up very painfully and very slowly. He hooked
-his cane up under him and limped out unnoticed. That was the night when
-the major established his right of squatter sovereignty over that one
-particular spot at the far end of Billy Sherrill's bar-rail.
-</p>
-<p>
-Thus deserted, the judge sat alone for a minute. The bowl of his corncob
-pipe had lost its spark of life and he sucked absently at the cold,
-bitterish stem. Then he, too, got on his feet and made his way round the
-end of a cluttered-up writing desk into the middle of the room. It took an
-effort, but he bore himself proudly erect.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Henry,” he called out to the editor, in his homely whine—“Henry,
-would you mind tellin' me—jest for curiosity—how my race
-stands?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Judge,” said the editor, “by the latest count you are forty-eight votes
-behind Mr. Prentiss.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And how many more precincts are there to hear from, my son?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Just one—Massac!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah-hah! Massac!” said the old judge. “Well, gentlemen,” he went on,
-addressing the company generally, “I reckin I'll be goin' on home and
-turnin' in. This is the latest I've been up at night in a good while. I
-won't wait round no longer—I reckin everything is the same as
-settled. I wisht one of you boys would convey my congratulations to Mr.
-Prentiss and tell him for me that——”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a bustle at the door and a newcomer broke in through the press
-of men's bodies. He was dripping with rain and spattered over the front
-with blobs of yellow mud. He was a tall man, with a drooping mustache and
-a nose that beaked at the tip like a butcher-bird's mandible. With a moist
-splash he slammed a pair of wet saddlebags down on the narrow shelf at the
-wicket and, fishing with his fingers under one of the flaps, he produced a
-scrawled sheet of paper. The editor of the Daily Evening News grabbed it
-from him and smoothed it out and ran a pencil down the irregular, weaving
-column of figures.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Complete returns on all the county races are now in,” he announced
-loudly, and every face turned toward him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The returns from Massac Precinct make no changes in any of the races——”
- </p>
-<p>
-The cheering started in full volume; but the editor raised his hand and
-stilled it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“——make no change in any of the races—except one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-All sounds died and the crowd froze to silence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Massac Precinct has eighty-four registered Democratic votes,” went on
-Tompkins, prolonging the suspense. For a country editor, he had the
-dramatic instinct most highly developed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And of these eighty-four, all eighty-four voted.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes; go on! Go on, Henry!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And all eighty-four of 'em—every mother's son of 'em—voted
-for the Honorable William Pitman Priest,” finished Tompkins. “Judge you
-win by——”
- </p>
-<p>
-Really, that sentence was not finished until Editor Tompkins got his next
-day's paper out. The old judge felt blindly for a chair, sat down and put
-his face in his two hands. Eight or ten old men pressed in toward him from
-all directions; and, huddling about him, they raised their several cracked
-and quavery voices in a yell that ripped its way up and through and above
-and beyond the mixed and indiscriminate whoopings of the crowd.
-</p>
-<p>
-This yell, which is shrill and very penetrating, has been described in
-print technically as the Rebel yell..
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-IX. A DOGGED UNDER DOG
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>NE or two nights a week my uncle used to take me with him when he went to
-spend the evening with old Judge Priest. There were pretty sure to be a
-half dozen or more gray heads there; and if it were good out-door weather,
-they would sit in a row on the wide low veranda, smoking their pipes and
-their cigars; and of these the cigars kept off the mosquitos even better
-than the pipes did, our country being notorious, then, as now, for the
-excellence of its domestic red liquor and the amazing potency of its
-domestic black cigars. Every little while, conceding the night to be hot,
-Judge Priest's Jeff would come bringing a tray with drinks—toddies
-or else mint juleps, that were as fragrant as the perfumed fountains of a
-fairy tale and crowned with bristling sprays of the gracious herbage. And
-they would sit and smoke and talk, and I would perch on the top step of
-the porch, hugging my bare knees together and listening.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was on just such a night as this that I heard the story of Singin'
-Sandy Riggs, the Under Dog. I think it must have been in July—or
-maybe it was August. To the northward the sheet lightning played back and
-forth like a great winking lens, burning the day heat out of the air and
-from the dried up bed of the creek, a quarter of a mile away, came the
-notes of big bassooning bull frogs, baying at the night. Every now and
-then a black bird or a tree martin in the maple over head would have a bad
-dream and talk out in its sleep; and hundreds upon hundreds of birds
-roosting up there would rouse and utter querulous, drowsy bird-sounds, and
-bestir themselves until the whole top of the tree rustled and moved as
-though from a sudden breeze. In lulls of the talk, thin-shredded snatches
-of winging was borne to us from the little church beyond the old Enders
-orchard where the negroes were holding one of their frequent revivals.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was worth any boy's while to listen to the company that assembled on
-Judge Priest's front porch. For one, Squire Rufus Buckley was pretty
-certain to be there. Possibly by reason of his holding a judicial office
-and possibly because he was of a conservative habit of mind, Squire
-Buckley was never known to give a direct answer to any question. For their
-own amusement, people used to try him. Catching him on a flawless morning,
-someone would remark in a tone of questioning that it was a fine day.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well now,” the Squire would say, “It tis and it taint. It's clear now but
-you can't never tell when it'll cloud up.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He owned a little grocery store out in the edge of town and had his
-magistrate's office in a back room behind it. On a crowded Saturday when
-the country rigs were standing three deep outside and the two clerks were
-flying about measuring and weighing and counting up and drawing off, a
-waiting customer might be moved to say:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Business pretty good, ain't it Squire?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It's good,” the Squire would say, licking off the corn-cob stopper of a
-molasses jug and driving it with a sticky <i>plop</i> into its appointed
-orifice, “And then agin it's bad. Some things air sellin' off very well
-and some things ain't hardly sellin' off a'tall.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Squire was no great shakes of a talker, but as a listener he was
-magnificent. He would sit silently hour after hour with his hands laced
-over his paunch, only occasionally spitting over the banisters with a
-strident tearing sound.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nor was the assemblage complete without Captain Shelby Woodward. Captain
-Shelby Woodward's specialty in conversation was the Big War. From him I
-first heard the story of how Lieutenant Gracey of the County Battery
-floated down the river on a saw log and single handed, captured the Yankee
-gunboat and its sleepy-headed crew. From him I learned the why and
-wherefore of how our town although located right on the border of North
-and South, came in '61 to be called the Little Charleston, and from him
-also I got the tale of that lost legion of Illinois men, a full battalion
-of them, who crossing out of their own State by stealth were joyously
-welcomed into ours, and were mustered into the service and thereafter for
-four years fought their own kinspeople and neighbors—the only
-organized command, so Captain Shelby Woodward said, that came to the army
-from the outside. Frequently he used to tell about Miss Em. Garrett, who
-when Grant came up from Cairo on his gunboats, alone remembered what all
-the rest of the frightened town forgot—that the silken flag which
-the women had made with loving hands, was still floating from its flag
-pole in front of the engine house; and she drove her old rock-away down to
-the engine house and made her little negro house boy shin up the pole and
-bring the flag down to her, he greatly fearing the shells from the
-gunboats that whistled past his head, but fearing much more his mistress,
-standing down below and looking up at his bare legs with her buggy whip.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So then,” Captain Woodward would go on, “she put the flag under her dress
-and drove on home. But some Union sympathizer told on her when the troops
-landed and a crowd of them broke away and went out to her place and called
-on her to give it up. She was all alone except for the darkeys, but she
-wasn't scared, that old woman. They sassed her and she sassed 'em back,
-and they were swearing they'd burn the house down over her head, and she
-was daring 'em to do it, when an officer came up and drove 'em off. And
-afterwards when the warehouses and the churches and the Young Ladies'
-Seminary were chuck full of sick and wounded, brought down from Donaldson
-and Shiloh, she turned in and nursed them all alike, not caring which side
-they'd fought on. And so, some of the very men that had threatened her,
-used to salute when she passed them on the street.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And sir, she wore that flag under her skirts for four years, and she kept
-it always and when she died it was her shroud. You remember, Billy,—you
-were one of the pall bearers?” he would say, turning to Judge Priest.
-</p>
-<p>
-And Judge Priest would say he remembered mighty well and the talk would go
-swinging back and forth, but generally back, being concerned mainly with
-people that were dead and things that were done years and years before I
-was born.
-</p>
-<p>
-Major J. Q. A. Pickett was apt to be of the company, dapper and as jaunty
-as his game leg would let him be, always in black with a white tube rose
-in his buttonhole. The Major was a born boulevaidier without a boulevard,
-a natural man about town without the right kind of a town to be about in,
-and a clubman by instinct, yet with no club except the awnings under
-Soule's drug store, and the screening of dishrag vines and balsam apples
-on Priest's front porch. Also in a far corner somewhere, little Mr. Herman
-Felsburg of Felsburg Brothers, our leading clothiers, might often be
-found. Mr. Felsburg's twisted sentences used to tickle me. I was nearly
-grown before I learned, by chance, what Mr. Felsburg himself never
-mentioned—that he, a newly landed immigrant, enlisted at the first
-call and had fought in half a dozen hard battles before he properly knew
-the English for the commands of his captain. But my favorite story-teller
-of them all, was old Cap'n Jasper Lawson, and he was old—old even to
-these other old men, older by a full twenty years than the oldest of them,
-a patriarch of the early times, a Forty-niner, and a veteran of two wars
-and an Indian Campaign. For me he linked the faded past to the present and
-made it glow again in vivid colors. Wherever he was, was an Arabian Nights
-Entertainment for me.
-</p>
-<p>
-He lives as a memory now in the town—his lean shaven jowl, and his
-high heeled boots and the crimson blanket that he wore winters, draped
-over his shoulders and held at the throat with a pin made of a big crusty
-nugget of virgin California gold. Wearing this blanket was no theatrical
-affectation of Cap'n Jasper's—it was a part of him; he was raised in
-the days when men, white and red both, wore blankets for overcoats. He
-could remember when the Chickasaws still held our end of the State and
-General Jackson and Governor Shelby came down and bought it away from them
-and so gave to it its name of The Purchase. He could remember plenty of
-things like that—and what was better, could tell them so that you
-could see before your eyes the burnished backs of the naked bucks sitting
-in solemn conclave and those two old Indian fighters chaffering with them
-for their tribal lands. He was tall and sparse and straight like one of
-those old hillside pines, that I have seen since growing on the red clay
-slopes of the cotton country south of us; and he stayed so until he died,
-which was when he was away up in the nineties. It was Cap'n Jasper this
-night who told the story of Singin' Sandy Biggs.
-</p>
-<p>
-Somehow or other, the talk had flowed and eddied by winding ways to the
-subject of cowardice, and Judge Priest had said that every brave man was a
-coward and every coward was a brave man—it all depended on the time
-and the place—and this had moved Captain Shelby Woodward to repeat
-one of his staple chronicles—when the occasion suited he always told
-it. It concerned that epic last year of the Orphan Brigade—his
-brigade he always called it, as though he'd owned it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“More than five thousand of us in that brigade of mine, when we went out
-in '61,” he said, “and not quite twelve hundred of us left on that morning
-in May of '64 when we marched out of Dalton—Joe Johnston's rear
-guard, holding Sherman back. Holding him back? Hah, feeding ourselves to
-him; that was it, sir—just feeding ourselves to him a bite at a
-time, so as to give the rest of the army a chance for its life. And what
-does that man Shaler say—what does he say and prove it by the
-figures? One hundred and twenty solid days of fighting and marching and
-retreating—one hundred and forty days that were like a hot red slice
-carved out of hell—fighting every day and mighty near every hour,
-hanging on Sherman's flanks and stinging at him like gadflies and being
-wiped out and swallowed in mouthfuls. A total, sir, of more than 1800
-deadly, or disabling wounds for us in those hundred and twenty days, or
-more than a wound apiece if every man had been wounded, and there were
-less than fifty of the boys that weren't wounded at that. And in
-September, at the end of those hundred and twenty days, just 240 of us
-left out of what had been five thousand three years before—240 out
-of what had been nearly twelve hundred in May—240 out of a whole
-brigade, infantry, and artillery—but still fighting and still ready
-to keep right on fighting. Those are Shaler's figures, and he was a
-Federal officer himself, and a most gallant gentleman. And it is true, sir—every
-word of it is true.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now was that bravery? Or was it just pure doggedness? And when you come
-right down to it, what is the difference between the two? This one thing I
-do know, though—if it was bravery we were no braver than the men who
-fought us and chased us and killed us off on that campaign to Atlanta and
-then on down to the Sea and if it was doggedness, they'd have been just as
-dogged as we were with the conditions reversed—them losing and us
-winning. When you're the underdog you just naturally have to fight—there's
-nothing else for you to do—isn't that true in your experience,
-Billy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said Judge Priest, “that's true as Gospel Writ. After all, boys,”
- he added, “I reckin the bravest man that lives is the coward that wants to
-run and yit don't do it. And anyway, when all's said and done, the bravest
-fighters in every war have always been the women and not the men. I know
-'twas so in that war of ours—the men could go and git what joy there
-was out of the fightin'; it was the women that stayed behind and suffered
-and waited and prayed. Boys, if you've all got a taste of your toddies
-left, s'posen we drink to our women before Jeff brings you your fresh
-glasses.”
- </p>
-<p>
-They drank with those little clucking sipping sounds that old men make
-when they drink, and for a bit there was a silence. The shifting shuttle
-play of the lightning made stage effects in yellow and black against the
-back-drop of the sky. From the shadows of the dishrag vine where he sat in
-a hickory arm chair, his pipe bowl making a glowing red smudge in the
-darkness, old Cap'n Jasper Lawson spoke.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Speaking of under dogs and things, I reckon none of you young fellows”—he
-chuckled a little down in his throat—“can remember when this wasn't
-a gun-toting country down here? But I do.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It was before your day, but I remember it. First off, there was the time
-when my daddy and the granddaddies of some of you gentlemen came out over
-the Wilderness trail with a squirrel rifle in one hand and an ax in the
-other, swapping shots with the Indians every step of the way. And that was
-the beginning of everything here. Then, years later on, the feuds started,
-up in the mountains—although I'm not denying but we had our share of
-them down here too—and some broken down aristocrats moved out from
-Virginia and Maryland and brought the Code and a few pairs of those old
-long barreled dueling pistols along with them, which was really the only
-baggage some of them had; and awhile after that the Big War came on; and
-so what with one thing and another, men took to toting guns regularly—a
-mighty bad habit too, and one which we've never been entirely cured of
-yet, as Billy's next court docket will show, eh, Billy?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Judge Priest made an inarticulate sound of regretful assent and Squire
-Buckley spat out into the darkness with a long-drawn syrupy swish.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But in between, back in the twenties and the thirties, there was a period
-when gun toting wasn't so highly popular. Maybe it was because pistols
-hadn't got common yet and squirrel rifles were too heavy to tote around,
-and maybe it was because people were just tired of trouble. I won't
-pretend to say exactly what the cause of it was, but so it was—men
-settled their differences with their fists and their feet—with their
-teeth too, sometimes. And if there were more gouged eyes and more teeth
-knocked out, there were fewer widows and not so many orphans either.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I notice some of you younger fellows have taken here lately to calling
-this town a city, but when I first came here, it wasn't even a town—just
-an overgrown wood landing, in the river bottom, with the shacks and houses
-stuck up on piles to keep 'em out of the river mud. There were still
-Indians a plenty too—-Chickasaws and Creeks and some Shawnees—-and
-some white folks who were mighty near as ignorant as the Indians. Why it
-hadn't been but a few years before—three or four at most, I reckon—since
-they'd tried to burn the widow woman Simmons as a witch. As boys, some of
-you must have heard tell of old Marm Simmons. Well, I can remember her and
-that's better. She lived alone with an old black cat for company, and she
-was poor and friendless and sort of peculiar in her ways and that started
-it. And one spring, when the high-water went down, the children got sickly
-and begun dying off of this here spotted fever. And somebody started the
-tale that old Marm Simmons was witching 'em to make 'em die—that
-she'd look at a child and then the child would take down sick and die. It
-was Salem, Massachusetts, moved up a couple of hundred years, but they
-believed it—some of them did. And one night a dozen men went to her
-cabin and dragged her out along with her cat—both of them spitting
-and yowling and scratching like blood sisters—and they had her flung
-up onto a burning brush pile and her apron strings had burnt in two when
-three or four men who were still sane came running up and broke in and
-kicked the fire apart and saved her. But her old cat went tearing off
-through the woods like a Jack-mer-lantern with his fur all afire.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He paused a moment to suck deliberately at his pipe, and I sat and thought
-about old Marm Simmons and her blazing tom cat, and was glad clear down to
-my wriggling toes that I didn't have to go home alone. In a minute or so
-Cap'n Jasper was droning on again:
-</p>
-<p>
-“So you can tell by that, that this here city of yours was a pretty
-tolerable rough place In its infancy, and full of rough people as most all
-new settlements are. You've got to remember that this was the frontier in
-those days. But the roughest of them all, as I recollect, rougher even
-than the keel-boaters and the trappers and even the Indian traders—was
-Harve Allen. He set himself up to be the bully of this river country.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, he was. He was more than six feet tall and built like a catamount,
-and all the whiskey he'd drunk—you could get a gallon then for what
-a dram'll cost you now—hadn't burnt him out yet. He fought seemingly
-just for the pure love of fighting. Come a muster or a barn raising or an
-election or anything, Harve Allen fought somebody—and licked him.
-Before he had been here a year he had beat up half the men in this
-settlement, and the other half were pretty careful to leave him alone,
-even those that weren't afraid of him. He never used anything though
-except his fists, and his feet and his teeth—he never needed
-anything else. So far as was known, he'd never been licked in his whole
-life.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You see, there was nobody to stop him. The sheriff lived away down at the
-other end of the county, and the county was five times as big as it is
-now. There were some town trustees—three of them—and they'd
-appointed a long, gangling, jimpy-jawed fellow named Catlett to be the
-first town constable, but even half grown boys laughed at Catlett, let
-alone Harve Allen. Harve would just look at Catlett sort of contemptously
-and Catlett would slide off backwards like a crawfish. And when Harve got
-a few drams aboard and began churning up his war medicine, Catlett would
-hurry right straight home, and be taken down sick in bed and stay there
-until Harve had eased himself, beating up people.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So Harve Allen ran a wood yard for the river people and had things pretty
-much his own way. Mainly people gave him the whole road. There was a story
-out that he'd belonged to the Ford's Ferry gang before they broke up the
-gang. That's a yarn I'll have to tell this boy here some of these days
-when I get the time—how they caught the gang hiding in Cave-In-Rock
-and shot some of them and drowned the rest, all but the two head devils—Big
-Harp and Little Harp who were brothers—and how they got back across
-the river in a dug out and were run down with dogs and killed too; and the
-men that killed them cut off their heads and salted them and packed them
-in a piggin of brine and sent the piggin by a man on horseback up to
-Frankfort to collect the reward. Yes, that's what they did, and it makes a
-tale that ought to be written out some time.”
- </p>
-<p>
-That was old Cap'n Jasper's way. His mind was laden like Aladdin's
-sumter-mule, with treasures uncountable, and often he would drop some such
-glittering jewel as this and leave it and go on. I mind now how many times
-he started to tell me the full story of the two dissolute Virginians,
-nephews of one of the first Presidents, who in a fit of drunken temper
-killed their slave boy George, on the very night that the great Earthquake
-of 1811 came—and taking the agues and the crackings of the earth for
-a judgment of God upon their heads, went half mad with terror and ran to
-give themselves up. But I never did find out, and I don't know yet what
-happened to them after that. Nor was I ever to hear from Cap'n Jasper the
-fuller and gory details of the timely taking-off of Big Harp and little
-Harp. He just gave me this one taste of the delightful horror of it and
-went on.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Some of them said that Harve Allen had belonged to the Ford's Ferry gang
-and that he'd got away when the others were trapped. For a fact he did
-come down the river right after the massacre at the cave, and maybe that
-was how the story started. But as for myself, I never believed that part
-of it at all. Spite of his meanness, Harve Allen wasn't the murdering kind
-and it must have taken a mighty seasoned murderer to keep steady company
-with Big Harp and Little Harp.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But he looked mean enough for anything—just the way he would look
-at a man won half his fights for him. It's rising of sixty years since I
-saw him, but I can shut my eyes and the picture of him comes back to me
-plain as a painted portrait on a wall. I can see him now, rising of six
-feet-three, as I told you, and long-legged and raw-boned. He didn't have
-any beard on his face—he'd pulled it out the same as the Indian
-bucks used to do, only they'd use mussel shells, and he used tweezers, but
-there were a few hairs left in his chin that were black and stiff and
-stood out like the bristles on a hog's jowl. And his under lip lolled down
-as though it'd been sagged out of plumb by the weight of all the
-cuss-words that Harve had sworn in his time, and his eyes were as cold and
-mean as a catfish's eyes. He used to wear an old deer skin hunting vest,
-and it was gormed and smeared with grease until it was as slick as an
-otter-slide; and most of the time he went bare foot. The bottoms of his
-feet were like horn.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That was the way he looked the day he licked Singin' Sandy the first time—and
-likewise the way he looked all the other times too, for the matter of
-that. But the first time was the day they hanged Tallow Dave, the hall
-breed, for killing the little Cartright girl. It was the first hanging we
-ever had in this country—the first legal hanging I mean—and
-from all over the county, up and down the river, and from away back in the
-oak barrens, the people came to see it. They came afoot and ahorseback,
-the men bringing their rifles and even old swords and old war hatchets
-with them, with the women and children riding on behind them. It made the
-biggest crowd that'd ever been here up to then. Away down by the willows
-stood the old white house that washed away in the rise of '54, where old
-Madame La Farge, the old French woman, used to gamble with the steamboat
-captains, and up where the Market Square is now, was the jail, which was
-built of logs; and in between stretched a row of houses and cabins, mainly
-of logs too, all facing the river. There was a road in front, running
-along the top of the bank, and in summer it was knee deep in dust, fit to
-choke a horse, and in winter it was just one slough of mud that caked and
-balled on your feet until it would pull your shoes off. I've seen teams
-mired down many a time there, right where the Richland House is now. But
-on this day the mud was no more than shoe-throat deep, which nobody
-minded; and the whole river front was just crawling with people and
-horses.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They brought Tallow Dave out of the jail with his arms tied back, and put
-him in a wagon, him sitting on his coffin, and drove him under a tree and
-noosed him round the neck, and then the wagon pulled out and left him
-swinging and kicking there with the people scrooging up so close to him
-they almost touched his legs. I was there where I could see it all, and
-that's another thing in my life I'm never going to forget. It was pretty
-soon after they'd cut him down that Harve Allen ran across Singin' Sandy.
-This Sandy Biggs was a little stumpy man with sandy hair and big gray eyes
-that would put you in mind of a couple of these here mossy agates, and he
-was as freckled as a turkey egg, in the face. He hadn't been here very
-long and people had just begun calling him Singin' Sandy on account of him
-going along always humming a little tune without any words to it and
-really not much tune, more like a big blue bottle fly droning than
-anything else. He lived in a little clearing that he'd made about three
-miles out, back of the Grundy Hill, where that new summer park, as they
-call it, stands now. But then it was all deep timber—oak barrens in
-the high ground and cypress slashes in the low—with a trail where
-the gravel road runs, and the timber was full of razor back hogs stropping
-themselves against the tree boles and up above there were squirrels as
-thick as these English sparrows are today. He had a cub of a boy that
-looked just like him, freckles and sandy head and all; and this boy—he
-was about fourteen, I reckon—had come in with him on this day of the
-Tallow Dave hanging.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, some way or other, Singin' Sandy gave offense to Harve Allen—which
-as I have told you, was no hard thing to do—bumped into him by
-accident maybe or didn't get out of the road brisk enough to suit Harve.
-And Harve without a word, up and hauled off and smacked him down as flat
-as a flinder. He laid there on the ground a minute, sort of stunned, and
-then up he got and surprised everybody by making a rush for Harve. He
-mixed it with him but it was too onesided to be much fun, even for those
-who'd had the same dose themselves and so enjoyed seeing Harve taking it
-out of somebody else's hide. In a second Harve had him tripped and thrown
-and was down on him bashing in his face for him. At that, Singin' Sandy's
-cub of a boy ran in and tried to pull Harve off his dad, and Harve stopped
-pounding Sandy just long enough to rear up and fetch the cub a back handed
-lick with the broad of his hand that landed the chap ten feet away. The
-cub bounced right up and made as if to come back and try it again, but
-some men grabbed him and held him, not wanting to see such a little shaver
-hurt. The boy was sniveling too, but I took notice it wasn't a scared
-snivel—it was a mad snivel, if you all know what I mean. They held
-him, a couple of them, until it was over.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That wasn't long—it was over in a minute or two. Harve Allen got up
-and stood off grinning, just as he always grinned when he'd mauled
-somebody to his own satisfaction, and two or three went up to Singin'
-Sandy and upended him on his feet. Somebody fetched a gourd of water from
-the public well and sluiced it over his head and face. He was all blood
-where he wasn't mud—streaked and sopped with it, and mud was caked
-in his hair thick, like yellow mortar, with the water dripping down off of
-it. He didn't say a word at first. He got his breath back and wiped some
-of the blood out of his eyes and off his face onto his sleeve, and I
-handed him his old skin cap where it had fallen off his head. The cub
-broke loose and came running to him and he shook himself together and
-straightened up and looked round him. He looked at Harve Allen standing
-ten feet away grinning, and he said slow, just as slow and quiet:
-</p>
-<p>
-“'I'll be back agin Mister, one month frum today. Wait fur me.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That was all—just that 'I'll be back in a month' and 'wait fur me.'
-And then as he turned around and went away, staggering a little on his
-pins, with his cub trotting alongside him, I'm blessed if he didn't start
-up that little humming song of his; only it sounded pretty thick coming
-through a pair of lips that were battered up and one of them, the upper
-one, was split open on his front teeth.
-</p>
-<p>
-“We didn't then know what he'd meant, but we knew in a month. For that day
-month, on the hour pretty nigh, here came Singin' Sandy tramping in by
-himself. Harve Allen was standing in front of a doggery that a man named
-Whitis ran—he died of the cholera I remember years and years after—and
-Singin' Sandy walked right up to him and said: 'Well, here I am' and hit
-out at Harve with his fist. He hit out quick, like a cat striking, but he
-was short armed and under sized. He didn't much more than come up to
-Harve's shoulder and even if the lick had landed, it wouldn't have dented
-Harve hardly. His intentions were good though, and he swung out quick and
-fast. But Harve was quicker still. Singin' Sandy hit like a cat, but Harve
-could strike like a moccasin snake biting you. It was all over again
-almost before it started.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Harve Allen bellowed once, like a bull, and downed him and jumped on him
-and stomped him in the chest with his knees and pounded and clouted him in
-the face until the little man stretched out on the ground still and quiet.
-Then, Harve climbed off of him and swaggered off. Even now, looking back
-on it all, it seems like a shameful thing to admit, but nobody dared touch
-a hand to Singin' Sandy until Harve was plumb gone. As soon, though, as
-Harve was out of sight behind a cabin, some of them went to the little man
-and picked him up and worked over him until he came to. If his face had
-been dog's meat before, it was calf's liver now—just pounded out of
-shape. He couldn't get but one eye open. I still remember how it looked.
-It looked like a piece of cold gray quartz—like the tip of one these
-here gray flint Indian darts. He held one hand to his side—two of
-his ribs were caved in, it turned out—and he braced himself against
-the wall of the doggery and looked around him. He was looking for Harve
-Allen.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Tell him for me,' he said slow and thick, 'that I'll be back agin in a
-month, the same as usual.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“And then he went back out the road into the oak barrens, falling down and
-getting up and falling some more, but keeping right on. And by everything
-that's holy, he was trying to sing as he went and making a bubbling noise
-through the blood that was in his throat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They all stood staring at him until he was away off amongst the trees,
-and then they recalled that that was what he had said before—that
-he'd be back in a month; and two or three of them went and hunted up Harve
-Allen and gave him the message. He swore and laughed that laugh of his,
-and looked hard at them and said:
-</p>
-<p>
-“'The runty varmint must love a beatin' a sight better than some other
-folks I could name,' and at that they sidled off, scenting trouble for
-themselves if Harve should happen to take it into his head that they'd
-sided with Singin' Sandy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cap'n Jasper stopped to taste of his toddy, and the other older men
-stirred slightly, impatient for him to go on. Sitting there on the top
-step of the porch, I hugged my knees in my arms and waited breathless, and
-Singin' Sandy and Harve Allen visualized themselves for me there before my
-eyes. In the still I could hear the darkies singing their Sweet Chariot
-hymn at their little white church beyond the orchard. That was the fourth
-time that night they had sung that same song, and when they switched to
-“Old Ark A'Movin'” we would know that the mourners were beginning to “come
-through” and seek the mourners' bench.
-</p>
-<p>
-Cap'n Jasper cleared his throat briskly, as a man might rap with a gavel
-for attention and talked on:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, so it went. So it went for five enduring months and each one of
-these fights was so much like the fight before it, that it's not worth my
-while trying to describe 'em for you boys. Every month, on the day, here
-would come Singin' Sandy Riggs, humming to himself. Once he came through
-the slush of a thaw, squattering along in the cold mud up to his knees,
-and once 'twas in a driving snow storm, but no matter what the weather was
-or how bad the road was, he came and was properly beaten, and went back
-home again still a-humming or trying to. Once Harve cut loose and crippled
-him up so he laid in a shack under the bank for two days before he could
-travel back to his little clearing on the Grundy Fork. It came mighty near
-being Kittie, Bar the Door with the little man that time. But he was tough
-as swamp hickory, and presently he was up and going, and the last thing he
-said as he limped away was fur somebody to give the word to Harve Allen
-that he'd be back that day month. I never have been able to decide yet in
-my own mind, whether he always made his trips a month apart because he had
-one of those orderly minds and believed in doing things regularly, or
-because he figured it would take him a month to get cured up from the last
-beating Harve gave him. But anyhow, so it was. He never hurt Harve to
-speak of, and he never failed to get pretty badly hurt himself. There was
-another thing—whilst they were fighting, he never made a sound,
-except to grunt and pant, but Harve would be cursing and swearing all the
-time.
-</p>
-<p>
-“People took to waiting and watching for the day—Singin' Sandy's
-day, they began calling it. The word spread all up and down the river and
-into the back settlements, and folks would come from out of the barrens to
-see it. But nobody felt the call to interfere. Some were afraid of Harve
-Allen and some thought Singin' Sandy would get his belly-full of beatings
-after awhile and quit. But on the morning of the day when Singin' Sandy
-was due for the eighth time—if he kept his promise, which as I'm
-telling you he always had—Captain Braxton Montjoy, the militia
-captain, who'd fought in the war of 1812 and afterwards came to be the
-first mayor of this town, walked up to Harve Allen where he was lounging
-in front of one of the doggeries. I still remember his swallowfork coat
-and his white neckerchief and the little walking stick he was carrying. It
-was one of these little shiny black walking sticks made out of some kind
-of a limber wood, and it had a white handle on it, of ivory, carved like a
-woman's leg. His pants were strapped down tight under his boots, just so.
-Captain Braxton Mont-joy was fine old stock and he was the best dressed
-man between the mouth of the Cumberland and the Mississippi. And he wasn't
-afraid of anything that wore hair or hide.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Harvey Allen,' he says, picking out his words, 'Harvey Allen, I am of
-the opinion that you have been maltreating this man Riggs long enough.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“Harve Allen was big enough to eat Captain Braxton Montjoy up in two
-bites, but he didn't start biting. He twitched back his lips like a fice
-dog and blustered up.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'What is it to you?' says Harve.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'It is a good deal to me and to every other man who believes in fair
-play,' says Captain Braxton Montjoy. 'I tell you that I want it stopped.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“'The man don't walk in leather that kin dictate to me what I shall and
-shall not do,' says Harve, trying to work himself up, 'I'm a leetle the
-best two handed man that lives in these here settlemints, and the man that
-tries to walk my log had better be heeled for bear. I'm half hoss and half
-alligator and,—'
-</p>
-<p>
-“Captain Braxton Montjoy stepped up right close to him and began tapping
-Harve on the breast of his old deer skin vest with the handle of his
-little walking stick. At every word he tapped him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'I do not care to hear the intimate details of your ancestry,' he says.
-'Your family secrets do not concern me, Harvey Allen. What does concern
-me,' he says, 'is that you shall hereafter desist from maltreating a man
-half your size. Do I make my meaning sufficiently plain to your
-understanding, Harvey Allen?'
-</p>
-<p>
-“At that Harve changed his tune. Actually it seemed like a whine came into
-his voice. It did, actually.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Well, why don't he keep away from me then?' he says. 'Why don't he leave
-me be and not come round here every month pesterin' fur a fresh beatin'?
-Why don't he take his quittances and quit? There's plenty other men I'd
-rather chaw up and spit out than this here Riggs—and some of 'em
-ain't so fur away now,' he says, scowling round him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Captain Braxton Montjoy started to say something more but just then
-somebody spoke behind him and he swung round and there was Singin' Sandy,
-wet to the flanks where he'd waded through a spring branch.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Excuse me, Esquire,' he says to Captain Montjoy, 'and I'm much obliged
-to you, but this here is a private matter that's got to be settled between
-me and that man yonder—and it can't be settled only jist one way.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Well sir, how long do you expect to keep this up, may I inquire?' says
-Captain Braxton Montjoy, who never forgot his manners and never let
-anybody else forget them either.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Ontil I lick him,' says Singin' Sandy, 'ontil I lick him good and proper
-and make him yell 'nuff!'
-</p>
-<p>
-“'Why you little spindley, runty strippit, you ain't never goin' to be
-able to lick me,' snorts out Harve over Captain Braxton Montjoy's
-shoulder, and he cursed at Sandy. But I noticed he hadn't rushed him as he
-usually did. Maybe, though, that was because of Captain Montjoy standing
-in the way.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'You ain't never goin' to be big enough or strong enough or man enough to
-lick me,' says Harve.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'I 'low to keep on tryin', says Singin' Sandy. 'And ef I don't make out
-to do it, there's my buddy growin' up and comin' along. And some day he'll
-do it,' he says, not boasting and not arguing, but cheerfully and
-confidently as though he was telling of a thing that was already the same
-as settled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Captain Braxton Montjoy reared away back on his high heels—he wore
-high heels to make him look taller, I reckon—and he looked straight
-at Singin' Sandy standing there so little and insignificant and raggedy,
-and all gormed over with mud and wet with branch water, and smelling of
-the woods and the new ground. There was a purple mark still under one of
-Sandy's eyes and a scabbed place on top of one of his ears where Harve
-Allen had pretty nigh torn it off the side of his head.
-</p>
-<p>
-“'By Godfrey,' says Captain Braxton Montjoy, 'by Godfrey, sir,' and he
-began pulling off his glove which was dainty and elegant, like everything
-else about him. 'Sir,' he says to Singin' Sandy, 'I desire to shake your
-hand.'
-</p>
-<p>
-“So they shook hands and Captain Braxton Montjoy stepped one side and
-bowed with ceremony to Singin' Sandy, and Singin' Sandy stepped in toward
-Harve Allen humming to himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“For this once, anyhow, Harve wasn't for charging right into the mix-up at
-the first go-off. It almost seemed like he wanted to back away. But
-Singin' Sandy lunged out and hit him in the face and stung him, and then
-Harve's brute fighting instinct must have come back into his body, and he
-flailed out with both fists and staggered Singin' Sandy back. Harve ran in
-on him and they locked and there was a whirl of bodies and down they went,
-in the dirt, with Harve on top as per usual. He licked Singin' Sandy, but
-he didn't lick him nigh as hard as he'd always done it up till then. When
-he got through, Singin' Sandy could get up off the ground by himself and
-that was the first time he had been able to do so. He stood there a minute
-swaying a little on his legs and wiping the blood out of his eyes where it
-ran down from a little cut right in the edge of his hair. He spit and we
-saw that two of his front teeth were gone, broken short off up in the
-gums; and Singin' Sandy felt with the tip of his tongue at the place where
-they'd been. 'In a month,' he says, and away he goes, singing his tuneless
-song.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, I watched Harve Allen close that next month—and I think
-nearly all the other people did too. It was a strange thing too, but he
-went through the whole month without beating up anybody. Before that he'd
-never let a month pass without one fight anyhow. Yet he drank more whiskey
-than was common even with him. Once I ran up on him sitting on a drift log
-down in the willows by himself, seemingly studying over something in his
-mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-“When the month was past and Singin' Sandy's day rolled round again for
-the ninth time, it was spring time, and the river was bankfull from the
-spring rise and yellow as paint with mud and full of drift and brush. Out
-from shore a piece, in the current, floating snags were going down, thick
-as harrow teeth, all pointing the same way like big black fish going to
-spawn. Early that morning, the river had bitten out a chunk of crumbly
-clay bank and took a cabin in along with it, and there was a hard job
-saving a couple of women and a whole shoal of young ones. For the time
-being that made everybody forget about Singin' Sandy being due, and so
-nobody, I think, saw him coming. I know I didn't see him at all until he
-stood on the river bank humming to himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He stood there on the bank swelling himself out and humming his little
-song louder and clearer than ever he had before—and fifty yards out
-from shore in a dugout that belonged to somebody else, was Bully Harve
-Allen, fighting the current and dodging the drift logs as he paddled
-straight for the other side that was two miles and better away. He never
-looked back once; but Singin' Sandy stood and watched him until he was no
-more than a moving spot on the face of those angry, roily waters. Singin'
-Sandy lived out his life and died here—he's got grandchildren
-scattered all over this county now, but from that day forth Harve Allen
-never showed his face in this country.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Cap'n Jasper got up slowly, and shook himself, as a sign that his story
-was finished, and the others rose, shuffling stiffly. It was getting late—time
-to be getting home. The services in the darky church had ended and we
-could hear the unseen worshippers trooping by, still chanting snatches of
-their revival tunes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, boys, that's all there is to tell of that tale,” said Cap'n Jasper,
-“all that I now remember anyhow. And now what would you say it was that
-made Harve Allen run away from the man he'd already licked eight times
-hand running. Would you call it cowardice?”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was Squire Buckley, the non committal, who made answer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well,” said Squire Buckley slowly, “p'raps I would—and then agin,
-on the other hand, p'raps I wouldn't.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-X. BLACK AND WHITE
-</h2>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>VER night, it almost seems, a town will undergo radical and startling
-changes. The transition covers a period of years really, but to those who
-have lived in the midst of it, the realization comes sometimes with the
-abruptness of a physical shock; while the returning prodigal finds himself
-lost amongst surroundings which by rights should wear shapes as familiar
-as the back of his own hand. It is as though an elderly person of settled
-habits and a confirmed manner of life had suddenly fared forth in new and
-amazing apparel—as though he had swapped his crutch for a niblick
-and his clay pipe for a gold tipped cigarette.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was so with our town. From the snoreful profundities of a Rip Van
-Winkle sleep it woke up one morning to find itself made over; whether for
-better or worse I will not presume to say, but nevertheless, made over.
-Before this the natural boundaries to the north had been a gravel bluff
-which chopped off sharply above a shallow flat sloping away to the willows
-and the river beyond. Now this saucer-expanse was dotted over with mounds
-of made ground rising like pimples in a sunken cheek; and spreading like a
-red brick rash across the face of it, was a tin roofed, flat-topped
-irritation of structures—a cotton mill, a brewery, and a small
-packing plant dominating a clutter of lesser industries. Above these on
-the edge of the hollow, the old warehouse still stood, but the warehouse
-had lost its character while keeping its outward shape. Fifty years it
-resounded to a skirmish fire clamor of many hammers as the negro hands
-knocked the hoops off the hogsheads and the auctioneer bellowed for his
-bids; where now, brisk young women, standing in rows, pasted labels and
-drove corks into bottles of Dr. Bozeman's Infallible Cough Cure. Nothing
-remained to tell the past glories of the old days, except that, in wet
-weather, a faint smell of tobacco would steam out of the cracks in the
-floor; and on the rotted rafters over head, lettered in the sprawling
-chirography of some dead and gone shipping clerk, were the names and the
-dates and the times of record-breaking steamboat runs—<i>Idlewild</i>,
-Louisville to Memphis, so many hours and so many minutes; <i>Pat Cleburne</i>,
-Nashville to Paducah, so many hours and so many minutes.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nobody ever entered up the records of steamboat runs any more; there
-weren't any to be entered up. Where once wide side-wheelers and long,
-limber stern-wheelers had lain three deep at the wharf, was only a thin
-and unimpressive fleet of small fry-harbor tugs and a ferry or two, and
-shabby little steamers plying precariously in the short local trades.
-Along the bank ran the tracks of the railroad that had taken away the
-river business and the switch engines tooted derisively as if crowing over
-a vanquished and a vanished rival, while they shoved the box cars back and
-forth. Erecting themselves on high trestles like straddle bugs, three more
-railroads had come in across the bottoms to a common junction point, and
-still another was reliably reported to be on its way. Wherefore, the Daily
-Evening News frequently referred to itself as the Leading Paper of the
-Future Gateway of the New South. It also took the Associated Press
-dispatches and carried a column devoted to the activities of the Women's
-Club, including suffrage and domestic science.
-</p>
-<p>
-So it went. There was a Board of Trade with two hundred names of members,
-and half of them, at least, were new names, and the president was a spry
-new comer from Ohio. A Republican mayor had actually been elected—and
-that, if you knew the early politics of our town, was the most
-revolutionary thing of all. Apartment houses—regular flat buildings,
-with elevator service and all that—shoved their aggressive stone and
-brick faces up to the pavement line of a street where before old white
-houses with green shutters and fluted porch pillars had snuggled back
-among hack berries and maples like a row of broody old hens under a hedge.
-The churches had caught the spirit too; there were new churches to replace
-the old ones. Only that stronghold of the ultra conservatives, the
-Independent Presbyterian, stood fast on its original site, and even the
-Independent Presbyterian had felt the quickening finger of progress. Under
-its gray pillared front were set ornate stone steps, like new false teeth
-in the mouth of a stem old maid, and the new stained glass memorial
-windows at either side were as paste earrings for her ancient virginal
-ears. The spinster had traded her blue stockings for doctrinal half hose
-of a livelier pattern, and these were the outward symbols of the change.
-</p>
-<p>
-But there was one institution among us that remained as it was—Eighth
-of August, 'Mancipation Day, celebrated not only by all the black
-proportion of our population—thirty-six per cent by the last census—but
-by the darkies from all the lesser tributary towns for seventy-five miles
-around. It was not their own emancipation that they really celebrated;
-Lincoln's Proclamation I believe was issued of a January morning, but
-January is no fit time for the holidaying of a race to whom heat means
-comfort and the more heat the greater the comfort. So away back, a
-selection had been made of the anniversary of the freeing of the slaves in
-Hayti or San Domingo or somewhere and indeed it was a most happy
-selection. By the Eighth of August the watermelons are at their juiciest
-and ripest, the frying size pullet of the spring has attained just the
-rightful proportions for filling one skillit all by itself, and the sun
-may be reliably counted upon to offer up a satisfactory temperature of
-anywhere from ninety in the shade to one hundred and two. Once it went to
-one hundred and four and a pleasant time was had by all.
-</p>
-<p>
-Right after one Eighth the celebrants began laying by their savings
-against the coming of the next Eighth. It was Christmas, Thanksgiving, and
-the Fourth of July crowded into the compass of one day—a whole year
-of anticipation packed in and tamped down into twenty-four hours of joyous
-realization. There never were enough excursion trains to bring all those
-from a distance who wanted to come in for the Eighth. Some, travelers, the
-luckier ones, rode in state on packed day coaches and the others, as often
-as not, came from clear down below the Tennessee line, on flat cars,
-shrieking with nervous joy as the engine jerked them around the sharp
-curves, they being meantime oblivious alike to the sun shining with
-midsummer fervor upon their unprotected heads, and the coal cinders, as
-big as buttons, that rained down in gritty showers. There was some
-consolation then in having a complexion that neither sun could tan nor
-cinders blacken.
-</p>
-<p>
-For that one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five and a fourth, the
-town was a town of dark joy. The city authorities made special provision
-for the comfort and the accommodation of the invading swarms and the
-merchants wore pleased looks for days beforehand and for weeks afterward—to
-them one good Eighth of August was worth as much as six Court Mondays and
-a couple of circus days. White people kept indoors as closely as possible,
-not for fear of possible race clashes, because we didn't have such things;
-but there wasn't room, really, for anybody except the celebrants. The
-Eighth was one day when the average white family ate a cold snack for
-dinner and when family buggies went undrivered and family washing went
-unwashed.
-</p>
-<p>
-On a certain Eighth of August which I have in mind, Judge Priest spent the
-simmering day alone in his empty house and in the evening when he came out
-of Clay Street into Jefferson, he revealed himself as the sole pedestrian
-of his color in sight. Darkies, though, were everywhere—town darkies
-with handkerchiefs tucked in at their necks in the vain hope of saving
-linen collars from the wilting-down process; cornfield darkies whose feet
-were cramped, cabin'd, cribb'd and confined, as the saying goes, inside of
-stiff new shoes and sore besides from much pelting over unwontedly hard
-footing; darkies perspiry and rumpled; darkies gorged and leg weary, but
-still bent on draining the cup of their yearly joy to its delectable
-dregs. Rivers of red pop had already flowed, Niagaras of lager beer and
-stick gin had been swallowed up, breast works of parched goobers had been
-shelled flat, and blade forests of five cent cigars had burned to the
-water's edge; and yet here was the big night just getting fairly started.
-Full voiced bursts of laughter and yells of sheer delight assaulted the
-old Judge's ears. Through the yellowish dusk one hired livery stable rig
-after another went streaking by, each containing an unbleached Romeo and
-his pastel-shaded Juliet.
-</p>
-<p>
-A corner down town, where the two branches of the car lines fused into
-one, was the noisiest spot yet. Here Ben Boyd and Bud Dobson, acknowledged
-to be the two loudest mouthed darkies in town, contended as business
-rivals. Each wore over his shoulder the sash of eminence and bore on his
-breast the badge of much honor. Ben Boyd had a shade the stronger voice,
-perhaps, but Bud Dobson excelled in native eloquence. On opposite
-sidewalks they stood, sweating like brown stone china ice pitchers, wide
-mouthed as two bull-alligators.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come on, you niggers, dis way to de-real show,” Ben Boyd would bellow
-unendingly, “Remember de grand free balloom ascension teks place at eight
-o'clock,” and Ben would wave his long arms like a flutter mill.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't pay no 'tention, friends, to dat cheap nigger,” Bud Dobson would
-vociferously plead, “an' don't furgit de grand fire works display at mah
-park! Ladies admitted free, widout charge! Dis is de only place to go! Tek
-de green car fur de grand annual outin' an' ball of de Sisters of the
-Mysterious Ten!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Back it would come in a roar from across the way:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Tek de red car—dat's de one, dat's de one, folks! Dis way fur de
-big gas balloom!” Both of them were lying—there was no balloon to go
-up, no intention of admitting anybody free to anything. The pair expanded
-their fictions, giving to their work the spontaneous brilliancy of the
-born romancer. Like straws caught in opposing cross currents, their
-victims were pulled two ways at once. A flustered group would succumb to
-Bud's blandishments and he would shoo them aboard a green car. But the car
-had to be starting mighty quick, else Bud Dobson's siren song would win
-them over and trailing after their leader, who was usually a woman, like
-blade sheep behind a bell wether they would pile off and stampede over to
-where the red car waited. Some changed their minds half a dozen times
-before they were finally borne away.
-</p>
-<p>
-These were the country darkies, though—the town bred celebrants knew
-exactly where they were going and what they would do when they got there.
-They moved with the assured bearing of cosmopolitans, stirred and
-exhilarated by the clamor but not confused by it. Grand in white dresses,
-with pink sashes and green headgear, the Imperial Daughters of the Golden
-Star rolled by in a furniture van. The Judge thought he caught a
-chocolate-colored glimpse of Aunt Dilsey, his cook, enthroned on a front
-seat, as befitting the Senior Grand Potentate of the lodge; anyhow, he
-knew she must be up front there somewhere. If any cataclysm of Providence
-had descended upon that furniture van that night many a kitchen beside his
-would have mourned a biscuit maker par excellence. Sundry local
-aristocrats of the race—notably the leading town barber, a high
-school teacher and a shiny black undertaker in a shiny high hat—passed
-in an automobile, especially loaned for the occasion by a white friend and
-customer of the leading barber. It was the first time an automobile had
-figured in an Eighth of August outing; its occupants bore themselves
-accordingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-Further along, in the centre of the business district, the Judge had
-almost to shove a way for himself through crowds that were nine-tenths
-black. There was no actual disorder, but there was an atmosphere of
-unrestrained race exultation. You couldn't put your hand on it, nor
-express it in words perhaps, but it was there surely. Turning out from the
-lit-up and swarming main thoroughfare into the quieter reaches of a side
-street, Judge Priest was put to it to avoid a collision with an onward
-rush of half grown youths, black, brown, and yellow. Whooping, they
-clattered on by him and never looked back to see who it was they had
-almost run over.
-</p>
-<p>
-In this side street the Judge was able to make a better headway; the
-rutted sidewalk was almost untraveled and the small wholesale houses which
-mainly lined it, were untenanted and dark. Two-thirds of a block along, he
-came to a somewhat larger building where an open entry way framed the foot
-of a flight of stairs mounting up into a well of pitchy gloom. Looking up
-the stairs was like looking up to a sooty chimney, except that a chimney
-would have shown a dim opening at the top and this vista was walled in
-blankness and ended in blankness. Judge Priest turned in here and began
-climbing upward, feeling the way for his feet, cautiously.
-</p>
-<p>
-Once upon a time, a good many years before this, Kamleiter's Hall had been
-in the centre of things municipal. Nearly all the lodges and societies had
-it then for their common meeting place; but when the new and imposing
-Fraternity Building was put up, with its elevator, and its six stories and
-its electric lights, and all, the Masons and the Odd Fellows and the rest
-moved their belongings up there. Gideon K. Irons Camp alone remained
-faithful. The members of the Camp had held their first meeting in
-Kamleiter's Hall back in the days when they were just organizing and
-Kamleiter's was just built. They had used its assembly room when there
-were two hundred and more members in good standing, and with the feeble
-persistency of old men who will cling to the shells of past things, after
-the pith of the substance is gone, they still used it.
-</p>
-<p>
-So the Judge should have known those steps by the feel of them under his
-shoe soles, he had been climbing up and down them so long. Yet it seemed
-to him they had never before been so steep and so many and so hard to
-climb, certainly they had never been so dark. Before he reached the top he
-was helping himself along with the aid of a hand pressed against the
-plastered wall and he stopped twice to rest his legs and get his breath.
-He was panting hard when he came to the final landing on the third floor.
-He fumbled at a door until his fingers found the knob and turned it. He
-stood a moment, getting his bearings in the blackness. He scratched a
-match and by its flare located the rows of iron gas jets set in the wall,
-and he went from one to another, turning them on and touching the match
-flame to their stubbed rubber tips.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was a long bare room papered in a mournful gray paper, that was paneled
-off with stripings of a dirty white. There were yellow, wooden chairs
-ranged in rows and all facing a small platform that had desks and chairs
-on it, and an old fashioned piano. On the wall, framed uniformly in square
-black wooden frames and draped over by strips of faded red and white
-bunting, were many enlarged photographs and crayon portraits of men either
-elderly or downright aged. Everything spoke of age and hard usage. There
-were places where gussets of the wall paper had pulled away from the paste
-and hung now in loose triangles like slatted jib sails.
-</p>
-<p>
-In corners, up against the ceiling, cobwebs hung down in separate tendrils
-or else were netted up together in little gray hammocks to catch the dust.
-The place had been baking under a low roof all day and the air was curdled
-with smells of varnish and glue drawn from the chairs and the mould from
-old oil cloth, with a lingering savor of coal oil from somewhere below.
-The back end of the hall was in a gloom, and it only lifted its mask
-part-way even after the Judge had completed his round and lit all the jets
-and was reaching for his pocket handkerchief. Maybe it was the poor light
-with its flickery shadows and maybe it was the effect of the heat, but
-standing there mopping his forehead, the old Judge looked older than
-common. His plump figure seemed to have lost some of its rotundness and
-under his eyes the flesh was pouchy and sagged. Or at least, that was the
-impression which Ed Gafford got. Ed Gafford was the odd jobs man of
-Kamleiter's Hall and he came now, and was profuse with apologies for his
-tardiness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You'll have to excuse me, Judge Priest,” he began, “for bein' a little
-late about gettin' down here to light up and open up. You see, this bein'
-the Eighth of August and it so hot and ever'thing, I sort of jumped at the
-conclusion that maybe there wouldn't be none of your gentlemen show up
-here tonight.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I reckin there'll be quite a lot of the boys comin' along pretty
-soon, son,” said Judge Priest. “It's a regular monthly meetin', you know,
-and besides there's a vacancy to be filled—we've got a color bearer
-to elect tonight. I should say there ought to be a purty fair crowd,
-considerin'. You better make a light on them stairs,—they're as
-black as a pocket.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Right away, Judge,” said Gafford, and departed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Left alone, the Judge sat down in the place of the presiding officer on
-the little platform. Laboriously he crossed one fat leg on the other, and
-looked out over the rows of empty wooden chairs, peopling them with the
-images of the men who wouldn't sit in them ever again. The toll of the
-last few months had been a heavy one. The old Judge cast it up in his
-mind: There was old Colonel Horace Farrell, now, the Nestor of the county
-bar to whom the women and men of his own State had never been just plain
-women and men, but always noble womanhood and chivalric manhood, and who
-thought in rounded periods and even upon his last sick bed had dealt in
-well measured phrases and sonorous metaphor in his farewell to his
-assembled children and grandchildren. The Colonel had excelled at memorial
-services and monument unveilings. He would be missed—there was no
-doubt about that.
-</p>
-<p>
-Old Professor Lycurgus Reese was gone too; who was principal of the graded
-school for forty-odd years and was succeeded a mercifully short six months
-before his death by an abnormally intellectual and gifted young graduate
-of a normal college from somewhere up in Indiana, a man who never slurred
-his consonant r's nor dropped his final g's, a man who spoke of things as
-stimulating and forceful, and who had ideas about Boy Scout movements and
-Native Studies for the Young and all manner of new things, a remarkable
-man, truly, yet some had thought old Professor Reese might have been
-retained a little longer anyhow.
-</p>
-<p>
-And Father Minor, who was a winged devil of Morgan's cavalry by all
-accounts, but a most devoted shepherd of a struggling flock after he
-donned the cloth, and old Peter J. Galloway, the lame blacksmith, with his
-impartial Irish way of cursing all Republicans as Black Radicals—they
-were all gone. Yes, and a dozen others besides; but the latest to go was
-Corporal Jake Smedley, color bearer of the Camp from the time that there
-was a Camp.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge had helped bury him a week before. There had been only eight of
-the members who turned out in the dust and heat of mid-summer for the
-funeral, just enough to form the customary complement of honorary
-pallbearers, but the eight had not walked to the cemetery alongside the
-hearse. Because of the weather, they had ridden in hacks. It was a new
-departure for the Camp to ride in hacks behind a dead comrade, and that
-had been the excuse—the weather. It came to Judge Priest, as he sat
-there now, that it would be much easier hereafter to name offhand those
-who were left, than to remember those who were gone. He flinched mentally,
-his mind shying away from the thought.
-</p>
-<p>
-Ten minutes passed—fifteen. Judge Priest shuffled his feet and fumed
-a little. He hauled out an old silver watch, bulky as a turnip, with the
-flat silver key dangling from it by a black string and consulted its face.
-Then he heard steps on the stairs and he straightened himself in his chair
-and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby entered, alone. The Sergeant carried his coat
-over his arm and he patted himself affectionately on his left side and
-dragged his feet a little. As Commander of the Camp, the Judge greeted him
-with all due formality.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Don't know what's comin' over this here town,” complained the sergeant,
-when he had got his wind back. “Mob of these here crazy country niggers
-mighty near knocked me off the sidewalk into the gutter. Well, if they
-hadn't been movin' tolerable fast, I bet you I'd a lamed a couple of 'em,”
- he added, his imagination in retrospect magnifying the indignant swipe he
-made at unresisting space a good half minute after the collision occurred.
-The Sergeant soothed his ruffled feelings by ft series of little wheezing
-grunts and addressed the chair with more composure:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Seems like you and me are the first ones here, Judge.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” said the Judge soberly, “and I hope we ain't the last ones too—that's
-what I'm hopin'. What with the weather bein' so warm and darkies thick
-everywhere”—he broke off short. “It's purty near nine o'clock now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You don't say so?” said the Sergeant. “Then we shorely oughter be
-startin' purty soon. Was a time when I could set up half the night and not
-feel it scarcely. But here lately I notice I like to turn in sort of
-early. I reckin it must be the weather affectin' me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That must be it,” assented the Judge, “I feel it myself—a little;
-but look here, Sergeant, we never yet started off a regular meetin'
-without a little music. I reckin we might wait a little while on Herman to
-come and play Dixie for us. The audience will be small but appreciative,
-as the feller says.” A smile flickered across his face. “Herman manages to
-keep younger and spryer than a good many of the boys.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, that's so too,” said the Sergeant, “but jest yestiddy I heared he
-was fixin' to turn over his business to his son and that nephew of his and
-retire.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's no sign he's playin' out,” challenged Judge Priest rather quickly,
-“no sign at all. I reckin Herman jest wants to knock round amongst his
-friends more.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Sergeant Bagby nodded as if this theory was a perfectly satisfactory one
-to him. A little pause fell. The Sergeant reached backward to a remote and
-difficult hip pocket and after two unsuccessful efforts, he fished out
-what appeared to be a bit of warped planking.
-</p>
-<p>
-“They're tearing away the old Sanders place,” he confessed somewhat
-sheepishly, “and I stopped in by there as I come down and fetched away
-this here little piece of clapboard for a sort of keepsake. You recollect,
-Judge, that was where Forrest made his headquarters that day when we
-raided back into town here? Lawsy, what a surprise old Bedford did give
-them Yankees. But shucks, that was Bedford's specialty—surprises.”
- He stopped and cocked his whity-gray head toward the door hopefully.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Listen yonder, that must be Herman Felsburg comin' up the steps now.
-Maybe Doctor Lake is with him. Weather or no weather, niggers or no
-niggers, it's mighty hard to keep them two away from a regular meetin' of
-the Camp.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But the step outside was too light a step and too peart for Mr.
-Felsburg's. It was Ed Gafford who shoved his head in.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Judge Priest,” he stated, “you're wanted on the telephone right away.
-They said they had to speak to you in person.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Sergeant waited, with what patience he could, while the Judge stumped
-down the long flights, and after a little, stumped back again. His legs
-were quivering under him and it was quite a bit before he quit blowing and
-panting. When he did speak, there was a reluctant tone in his voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's from Herman's house,” he said. “He won't be with us tonight. He—he's
-had a kind of a stroke—fell right smack on the floor as he was
-puttin' on his hat to come down here. 'Twas his daughter had me on the
-telephone—the married one. They're afraid it's paralysis—seems
-like he can't move one side and only mumbles, sort of tongue tied, she
-says, when he tried to talk. But I reckin it ain't nowhere near as serious
-as they think for.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No suh,” agreed the Sergeant, “Herman's good for twenty year yit. I bet
-you he jest et something that didn't agree with him. He'll be up and goin'
-in a week—see if he ain't. But say, that means Doctor Lake won't be
-here neither, don't it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, that's a funny thing,” said the old Judge, “I pointedly asked her
-what he said about Herman, and she mumbled something about Doctor Lake's
-gittin' on so in life that she hated to call him out on a hot night like
-this. So they called in somebody else. She said, though, they aimed to
-have Lake up the first thing in the momin' unless Herman is better by
-then.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I'll say this,” put in Sergeant Bagby, “she better not let him
-ketch her sayin' he's too old to be answerin' a call after dark. Lew
-Lake's got a temper, and he certainly would give that young woman a
-dressin' down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old Judge moved to his place on the platform and mounted it heavily.
-As he sat down, he gave a little grunting sigh. An old man's tired sigh
-carries a lot of meaning sometimes; this one did.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jimmy,” he said, “if you will act as adjutant and take the desk, we'll
-open without music, for this onc't. This is about the smallest turn-out we
-ever had for a regular meetin', but we can go ahead, I reckin.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Sergeant Bagby came forward and took a smaller desk off at the side of the
-platform. Adjusting his spectacles, just so, he tugged a warped drawer
-open and produced a flat book showing signs of long wear and much
-antiquity. A sheet of heavy paper had been pasted across the cover of this
-book, but with much use it had frayed away so that the word “Ledger”
- showed through in faded gilt letters. The Sergeant opened at a place where
-a row of names ran down the blue lined sheet and continued over upon the
-next page. Most of the names had dates set opposite them in fresher
-writing than the original entries. Only now and then was there a name with
-no date written after it. He cleared his throat to begin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I presume,” the Commander was saying, “that we might dispense with the
-roll call for tonight.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“That's agreeable to me,” said the acting adjutant, and he shut up the
-book.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There is an election pendin' to fill a vacancy, but in view of the small
-attendance present this evenin'—”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Judge cut off his announcement to listen. Some one walking with the
-slow, uncertain gait of a very tired or a very feeble person was climbing
-up the stairs. The shuffling sound came on to the top and stopped, and an
-old negro man stood bareheaded in the door blinking his eyes at the light
-and winking his bushy white tufts of eyebrows up and down. The Judge
-shaded his own eyes the better to make out the new comer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, it's Uncle Ike Copeland,” he said heartily. “Come right in, Uncle
-Ike, and set down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, take a seat and make yourself comfortable,” added the Sergeant. In
-the tones of both the white men was a touch of kindly but none the less
-measurable condescension—that instinctive turn of inflection by
-which the difference held firmly to exist between the races was expressed
-and made plain, but in this case it was subtly warmed and tinctured with
-an essence of something else—an indefinable, evasive something that
-would probably not have been apparent in their greetings to a younger
-negro.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thanky, gen'l'men,” said the old man as he came in slowly. He was tall
-and thin, so thin that the stoop in his back seemed an inevitable
-inbending of a frame too long and too slight to support its burden. And he
-was very black. His skin must have been lustrous and shiny in his youth,
-but now was overlaid with a grayish aspect, like the mould upon withered
-fruit. His forehead, naturally high and narrow, was deeply indented at the
-temples and he had a long face with high cheek bones, and a well developed
-nose and thin lips. The face was Semitic in its suggestion rather than
-Ethiopian. The whites of his eyes showed a yellow tinge, but the brown
-pupils were blurred by a pronounced bluish cast. His clothes were old but
-spotlessly clean, and his shoes were slashed open along the toes and his
-bare feet showed through the slashed places. He made his way at a hobbling
-gait toward the back row of chairs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'll be plenty comfor'ble yere, suhs,” he said in a voice which sounded
-almost like an accentuated mimicry of Judge Priest's high notes. He eased
-his fragile rack of bones down into a chair and dropped his old hat on the
-matting of the aisle beside him, seemingly oblivious to the somewhat
-puzzled glances of the two veterans.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What's the reason you ain't out sashaying round on the Eighth with your
-own people?” asked the Judge. The old negro began a thin, hen-like
-chuckle, but his cackle ended midway in a snort of disgust.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Naw suh,” he answered, “naw suh, not fur me. It 'pears lak most of de ole
-residenters dat I knowed is died off, and mo' over I ain't gittin' so much
-pleasure projectin' round 'mongst all dese brash young free issue niggers
-dat's growed up round yere. They ain't got no fitten respec' fur dere
-elders and dat's a fac', boss. Jes' now seen a passel of 'em ridin' round
-in one of dese yere ortermobiles.” He put an ocean of surging contempt to
-the word: “Huh—ortermobiles!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And dis time dar wam't no place on de flatform fur me at de festibul out
-in dat Fisher's Gyarden as dey names it, do' it taint nothin' 'ceptin' a
-grove of trees. Always befoah dis I set up on de very fust and fo'most row—yas
-suh, always befoah dis hit wuz de rule. But dis yeah dey tek and give my
-place to dat 'bovish young nigger preacher dat calls hisse'f de Rev'rund
-J. Fontleroy Jones. His name is Buddy Jones—tha's whut it tis—and
-I 'members him when he wam't nothin' but jes' de same ez de mud onder yore
-feet. Tha's de one whut gits my place on de flatform, settin' there in a
-broadcloth suit, wid a collar on him mighty nigh tall nuff to saw his
-nappy haid off, which it wouldn't be no real loss to nobody ef it did.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But I reckin I still is got my pride lef ef I ain't got nothin' else. My
-grandmaw, she wuz a full blood Affikin queen and I got de royal Congo
-blood in my veins. So I jes' teks my foot in my hand and comes right on
-away and lef' dat trashy nigger dar, spreadin' hisse'f and puffin' out his
-mouf lak one of dese yere ole tree frogs.” There was a forlorn complaint
-creeping into his words; but he cast it out and cackled his derision for
-the new generation, and all its works.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dey ain't botherin' me none, wid dere airs, dat dey ain't. I kin git long
-widout 'em, and I wuz gwine on home 'bout my own business w'en I seen dese
-lights up yere, and I says to myse'f dat some of my own kind of w'ite
-folks is holdin' fo'th and I'll jess drap up dar and set a spell wid 'em,
-pervidin' I'se welcome, which I knows full well I is.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So you go right ahaid, boss, wid whutever it 'tis you's fixin' to do. I
-'low to jes' set yere and res' my frame.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Course you are welcome,” said Judge Priest, “and we'll be mighty glad to
-have you stay as long as you're a mind to. We feel like you sort of belong
-here with us anyway, Unde Ike, account of your record.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old negro grinned widely at the compliment, showing two or three
-yellowed snags planted in shrunken bluish gums. “Yas suh,” he assented
-briskly, “I reckin I do.” The heat which wilted down the white men and
-made their round old faces look almost peaked, appeared to have a
-briskening effect upon him. Now he got upon his feet. His lowliness was
-falling away, his sense of his own importance was coming back to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I reckin I is got a sorter right to be yere, tho' it warn't becomin' in
-me to mention it fust,” he said. “I been knowin' some of you all gen'l'men
-since 'way back befoah de war days. I wonder would you all lak to hear
-'bout me and whut I done in dem times?”
- </p>
-<p>
-They nodded, in friendly fashion, but the speaker was already going on as
-though sure of the answer:
-</p>
-<p>
-“I 'members monstrous well dat day w'en my young marster jined out wid de
-artillery and Ole Miss she send me 'long wid him to look after him, 'cause
-he warn't nothin' but jess a harum-scarum boy noway. Less see, boss—dat
-must be goin' on thutty or forty yeah ago, ain't it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was more than thirty years or forty either, but neither of them was
-moved to correct him. Again their heads conveyed an assent, and Uncle Ike,
-satisfied, went ahead, warming to his theme:
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I went 'long with him jess lak Ole Miss said. And purty soon, he git
-to be one of dese yere lieutenants, and he act mighty biggotty toward
-hisse'f wid dem straps sewed onto his cote collar, but I bound I keep him
-in order—I bound I do dat, suhs, ef I don't do nothin' else in dat
-whole war. I minds the time w'en we wuz in camp dat fust winter and yere
-one day he come ridin' in out of de rain, jess drippin' wet. Befoah 'em
-all I goes up to him and I says to him, I says, 'Marse Willie, you git
-right down off'en dat hoss and come yere and lemme put some dry clothes on
-you. What Ole Miss gwine say to me ef I lets you set round here, ketchin;
-yore death?
-</p>
-<p>
-“Some of dem y'other young gen'l'men laff den and he git red in de face
-and tell me to go 'way from dere and let him be. I says to him, I says, 'I
-promised yore maw faithful to 'tend you and look after you and I pintedly
-does aim to do so.' I says, 'Marse Willie,' I says, 'I hope I ain't gwine
-have to keep on tellin' you to git down off'en dat hoss.' Dem y'others
-laff louder'n ever den and he cuss and r'ar and call me a meddlin' black
-raskil. But I tek notice he got down off'en dat hoss—I lay to dat.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But I didn't have to 'tend him long. Naw suh, not very long. He git
-killed de very fust big battle we wuz in, which wuz Shiloh. Dat battery
-shore suffer dat day. 'Long tow'rds evenin' yere dey come failin' back,
-all scorified and burnt black wid de powder and I sees he ain't wid 'em no
-more and I ax 'bout him and dey tells me de Battery done los' two of its
-pieces and purty near all de hosses and dat young Marse Willie been killed
-right at de outset of de hard fightin'. I didn't wait to hear no mo'n dat—dat
-wuz 'nuff fur me. I puts right out to find him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Gen'l'men, dat warn't no fittin' place to be prowlin' 'bout in.
-Everywhahs you look you see daid men and crippled men. Some places dey is
-jess piled up; and de daid is beginnin' to swell up already and de wounded
-is wrigglin' round on de bare ground and some of 'em is beggin' for water
-and some is beggin' for somebody to come shoot 'em and put 'em out of dere
-miz'ry. And ever onc't in a wile you hear a hoss scream. It didn't sound
-like no hoss tho', it sound mo' lak a pusson or one of dese yere
-catamounts screamin'.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But I keep on goin' on 'count of my bein' under obligations to 'tend him
-and jess him alone. After while it begin to git good and dark and you
-could see lanterns bobbin' round whar dere wuz search parties out, I
-reckin. And jess befo' the last of de light fade 'way I come to de place
-whar de Battery wuz stationed in the aidge of a little saige-patch lak,
-and dar I find him—him and two y'others, right whar dey fell. Dey
-wuz all three layin' in a row on dere backs jes' lak somebody is done fix
-'em dat way. His chist wuz tore up, but scusin' de dust and dirt, dar
-wam't no mark of vilence on his face a t'all.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I knowed dey wam't gwine put Ole Miss's onliest dear son in no trench lak
-he wuz a daid hoss—naw suh, not wile I had my stren'th. I tek him up
-in my arms—I wuz mighty survig'rous dem times and he wam't nothin'
-but jes' a boy, ez I told you—so I tek him up and tote him 'bout a
-hundred yards 'way whar dar's a little grove of trees and de soil is sort
-of soft and loamy; and den and dere I dig his grave. I didn't have no
-reg'lar tools to dig wid, but I uses a pinted stick and one of dese yere
-bay-nets and fast ez I loosen de earth I cast it out wid my hands. And
-'long towo'ds daylight I gits it deep nuff and big nuff. So I fetch water
-frum a little branch and wash off his face and I wrop him in a blanket
-w'ich I pick up nearby and I compose his limbs and I bury him in de
-ground.”
- </p>
-<p>
-His voice had swelled, taking on the long, swinging cadences by which his
-race voices its deeper emotions whether of joy or sorrow or religious
-exaltation. Its rise and fall had almost a hypnotizing effect upon the two
-old men who were his auditors. The tale he was telling was no new one to
-them. It had been written a score of times in the county papers; it had
-been repeated a hundred times at reunions and Memorial Day services. But
-they listened, canting their heads to catch every word as though it were a
-new-told thing and not a narrative made familiar by nearly fifty years of
-reiteration and elaboration.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I put green branches on top of him and I bury him. And den w'en I'd done
-mark de place so I wouldn't never miss it w'en I come back fur him, I jes'
-teks my foot in my hand and I puts out fur home. I slip through de
-No'thern lines and I heads for ole Lyon County. I travels light and I
-travels fast and in two weeks I comes to it. It ain't been but jes' a
-little mo'n a year since we went 'way but Gar Almighty, gen'l'men, how dat
-war is done change ever'thing. My ole Miss is gone—she died de very
-day dat Marse Willie got killed, yas suh, dat very day she taken down sick
-and died—and her brother, ole Majah Machen is gone too—he's
-'way off down in Missippi somewhars refugeein' wid his folks—and de
-rest of de niggers is all scattered 'bout ever'whars. De Fed'ruls is in
-charge and de whole place seem lak, is plum' busted up and distracted.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So I jedge dat I is free. Leas'wise, dar ain't nobody fur me to repote
-myse'f to, an' dar ain't nobody to gimme no ordahs. So I starts in
-follerin' at my trade—I is a waggin maker by trade as you gen'l'men
-knows—and I meks money and saves it up, a little bit at a time, and
-I bury it onder de dirt flo' of my house.
-</p>
-<p>
-“After 'while shore-nuff freedom she come and de war end, soon after dat,
-and den it seem lak all de niggers in de world come flockin' in. Dey act
-jess ez scatter-brained as a drove of birds. It look lak freedom is
-affectin' 'em in de haid. At fust dey don't think 'bout settlin' down—dey
-say de gover'mint is gwine give 'em all forty acres and a mule apiece—and
-dey jess natchelly obleeged to wait fur dat. But I 'low to my own se'f dat
-by de time de gover'mint gits 'round to Lyon County my mule is gwine be so
-old I'll have to be doctorin' him 'stid of plowin' him. So I keeps right
-on, follerin' my trade and savin' a little yere and a little dar, 'tell
-purty soon I had money nuff laid by fur whut I need it fur.”
- </p>
-<p>
-There was a crude majesty in the old negro's pose and in the gesturing of
-his long arms. It was easy to conceive that his granddam had been an
-African Chieftainess. The spell of his story-telling filled the bare hall.
-The comb of white that ran up his scalp stood erect like carded wool and
-his jaundiced eyeballs rolled in his head with the exultation of his
-bygone achievement. In different settings a priest of ancient Egypt might
-have made such a figure.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I had money nuff fur whut I needs it fur,” he repeated sonorously, “and
-so I goes back to dat dere battle-field. I hires me a wite man and a
-waggin and two niggers to help and I goes dar and I digs up my young
-marster frum de place whar he been layin' all dis time, and I puts him in
-de coffin and I bring him back on de railroad cyars, payin' all de
-expenses, and actin' as de chief mourner. And I buries him in de buryin'
-ground at de home-place right 'longside his paw, which I knowed Ole Miss
-would a wanted it done jes' dat way, ef she had been spared to live and
-nothin' happened. W'en all dat is done I know den dat I is free in my own
-mind to come and to go; and I packs up my traps and my plunder and leave
-ole Lyon County and come down yere to dis town, whar I is been ever since.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But frum dat day fo'th dey calls me a wite folks' nigger, some of 'em
-does. Well, I reckin I is. De black folks is my people, but de wite folks
-is always been my frends, I know dat good and well. And it stands proven
-dis very night. De black people is de same ez cast me out, and dat fool
-Jones nigger he sets in my 'pinted place on de flatform,”—a lament
-came again into his chanting tone, and he took on the measured swing of an
-exhorter at an experience meeting—“Dey cast me out, but I come to my
-wite friends and dey mek me welcome.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He broke off to shake his wool-crowned head from side to side. Then in
-altogether different voice he began an apology:
-</p>
-<p>
-“Jedge, you and Mistah Bagby must please suh, s'cuse me fur ramblin' on
-lak dis. I reckin I done took up nuff of yore time—I spects I better
-be gittin' on towo'ds my own home.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But he made no move to start, because the old Judge was speaking; and the
-worn look was gone from the Judge's face, and the stress of some deep
-emotion made the muscles of his under jaws tighten beneath the dew-laps of
-loose flesh.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Some who never struck a blow in battle, nevertheless served our Cause
-truly and faithfully,” he said, as though he were addressing an audience
-of numbers. “Some of the bravest soldiers we had never wore a uniform and
-their skins were of a different color from our skins. I move that our
-comrade Isaac Copeland here present be admitted to membership in this
-Camp. If this motion is regular and accordin' to the rules of the
-organization, I make it. And if it ain't regular—I make it jest the
-same!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I second that motion,” said Sergeant Jimmy Bagby instantly and
-belligerently, as though defying an unseen host to deny the propriety of
-the step.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is moved and seconded,” said Judge Priest formally, “that Isaac
-Copeland be made a member of this Camp. All in favor of that motion will
-signify by saying Aye!”
- </p>
-<p>
-His own voice and the Sergeant's answered as one voice with a shrill Aye.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Contrary, no?” went on the Judge. “The Ayes have it and it is so
-ordered.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was now the Sergeant's turn to have an inspiration. Up he came to his
-feet, sputtering in his eagerness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And now, suh, I nominate Veteran Isaac Copeland for the vacant place of
-color bearer of this Camp—and I move you furthermore that the
-nominations be closed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The Judge seconded the motion and again these two voted as one, the old
-negro sitting and listening, but saying nothing at all. Judge Priest got
-up from his chair and crossing to a glass cabinet at the back of the
-platform, he opened the door and drew forth a seven foot staff of polished
-wood with a length of particolored silk wadded about its upper part and
-bound round with a silken cord.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Unde Ike,” he said, reverently, “You are our color-sergeant now in good
-and proper standin'—and here are your colors for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old negro came shuffling up. He took the flag in his hands. His bent
-back unkinked until he stood straight. His long fleshless fingers, knotted
-and gnarled and looking like fire-blackened faggots twitched at the silken
-square until its folds fell away and in the gas light it revealed itself,
-with its design of the starred St. Andrew's cross and its tarnished gold
-fringe.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I thanky suhs, kindly,” he said, addressing the two old white men,
-standing at stiff salute, “I suttinly does appreciate dis—and I'll
-tell you why. Dey done drap me out of de Cullid Odd Fellers, count of my
-not bein' able to meet de dues, and dis long time I been feared dat w'en
-my time come to go, I'd have to be buried by de co'pperation. But now I
-knows dat I'll be laid away in de big stylish cemetary—wid music and
-de quality wite gen'l'men along and ker'riges. And maybe dar'll be a band.
-Ain't dat so, gen'l'men—ain't dar goin' to be a band 'long too?”
- </p>
-<p>
-They nodded. They were of the same generation, these two old white men and
-this lone old black man, and between them there was a perfect
-understanding. That the high honor they had visited upon him meant to
-their minds one thing and to his mind another thing was understandable
-too. So they nodded to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-They came down the steep stairs, the Judge, and the Sergeant abreast in
-front, the new color bearer two steps behind them, and when they were
-outside on the street, the Judge fumbled in his pocket a moment, then
-slipped something shiny into the old negro's harsh, horny palm, and the
-recipient pulled his old hat off and thanked him, there being dignity in
-the manner of making the gift and in the manner of receiving it, both.
-</p>
-<p>
-The Judge and the Sergeant stood watching him as he shuffled away in the
-darkness, his loose slashed brogans clop-lopping up and down on his
-sockless feet. Probably they would have found it hard to explain why they
-stood so, but watch him they did until the old negro's gaunt black shadow
-merged into the black distance. When he was quite gone from sight, they
-faced about the other way and soberly and silently, side by side, trudged
-away, two stoutish, warm, weary old men.
-</p>
-<p>
-At the corner they parted. The Judge continued alone along Jefferson
-Street. A trolley car under charter for the Eighth whizzed by him, gay
-with electric lights. On the rear platform a string band played rag time
-of the newest and raggedest brand, and between the aisle and on the seats
-negro men and women were skylarking and yelling to friends and strangers
-along the sidewalk. The sawing bleat of the agonized bass fiddle cut
-through the onspeeding clamor, but the guitars could hardly be heard. A
-little further along, the old Judge had to skirt the curbing to find a
-clear way past a press of roystering darkies before a moving picture
-theatre where a horseshoe of incandescent glowed about a sign reading <i>Colored
-People's Night</i> and a painted canvas banner made enthusiastic mention
-of the historic accuracies of a film dealing with The Battle of San Juan
-Hill, on exhibition within. The last of the rented livery rigs passed him,
-the lathered horse barely able to pluck a jog out of his stiff legs. Good
-natured smiling faces, brown, black, and yellow showed everywhere from
-under the brims of straw hats and above the neckbands of rumpled frocks of
-many colors. The Eighth of August still had its last hours to live and it
-was living them both high and fast.
-</p>
-<p>
-When Judge Priest, proceeding steadily onward, came to where Clay Street
-was brooding, a dark narrow little thoroughfare, in the abundant covert of
-many trees, the tumult and the shouting were well dimmed in the distance
-behind him. He set his back to it all and turned into the bye-street, an
-old tired man with lagging legs, and the shadows swallowed him up.
-</p>
-<div style="height: 6em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Back Home, by Irvin S. Cobb
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