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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Escape of Mr. Trimm, 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: The Escape of Mr. Trimm
+       His Plight and other Plights
+
+Author: Irvin S. Cobb
+
+Release Date: March 11, 2008 [EBook #24799]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Marcia Brooks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.--_Frontispiece_
+(_Page 18._)]
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE
+OF MR. TRIMM
+
+_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_
+
+BY
+
+IRVIN S. COBB
+
+AUTHOR OF
+OLD JUDGE PRIEST,
+BACK HOME, ETC.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913
+
+BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913
+
+BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913
+
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.]
+
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+
+     I.  THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM                      3
+
+    II.  THE BELLED BUZZARD                          54
+
+   III.  AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET              79
+
+    IV.  ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES       96
+
+     V.  SMOKE OF BATTLE                            142
+
+    VI.  THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE                   179
+
+   VII.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN                   202
+
+  VIII.  FISHHEAD                                   244
+
+    IX.  GUILTY AS CHARGED                          260
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.                   Frontispiece
+
+  "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."             Facing page 70
+
+  "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."      Facing Page 164
+
+  HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT
+    MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.                      Facing Page 193
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, was
+taking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he had
+ever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans and
+even luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rode
+with a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the second
+place, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm would
+have chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
+German-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the third
+place, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in a
+close and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
+Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to the
+Federal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,
+one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to govern
+national banks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, a
+certain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Through
+the seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been always
+at the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watch
+that never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into his
+thoughts and then go away, only to come back again.
+
+When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier who
+got off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him to
+be no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the Thirteenth
+National--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carried
+about Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give the
+young cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley was
+only a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
+Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal to
+the higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and as
+for Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.
+
+With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning he
+had held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in with
+their judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncing
+sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which
+he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to
+beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.
+Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as
+co-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have
+been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell
+had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical
+outpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man of
+Wall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the mark
+by a thousand miles or two.
+
+Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, for
+money and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even the
+corrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself in
+the airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer from
+outside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learned
+that a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by a
+good appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The warden
+and his underlings had been models of official kindliness; the
+newspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him whenever
+he felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers had
+done all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do.
+Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never been
+able to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who had
+been sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, that
+he, personally, was merely a spectator standing to one side watching the
+fight of another man to dodge the penitentiary.
+
+However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of every
+chance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thing
+had persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in the
+early fall and told him that the court of last possible resort had
+denied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with a
+shake of his head as the other began saying something about the chances
+of a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of letting
+men deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and he
+knew it.
+
+"Never mind that, Walling," he said steadily, when the lawyer offered to
+come to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "If
+you'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us,
+I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. I
+have a good many things to do tonight. Good night."
+
+"Such a man, such a man," said Walling to himself as he climbed into
+his car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock that
+brain up for twelve years. It's a crime," said Walling, and shook his
+head. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of his
+to prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of them
+there. Walling made as high as fifty thousand a year at criminal law.
+Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holes
+in the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and provide
+them and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he had
+lost in a good long time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had made
+as careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, and
+he had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting on
+his hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-gray
+middle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor and
+down the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed to
+the curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of many
+cells; his feet rang briskly on the flags.
+
+The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, a
+tall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache and the
+unmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knew
+without being told that this was the man who would take him to prison.
+The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers.
+
+"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm," said the warden with a nervous
+cordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy Marshal
+Meyers," he added.
+
+Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, but
+caught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neither
+interest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved over
+toward the door.
+
+"Mr. Trimm," he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty of
+calling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out front
+now. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot of
+other people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one of
+my men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway down
+at Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows."
+
+"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you," said Mr. Trimm in that crisp,
+businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all his
+life. He heard a door opening softly behind him, and when he turned to
+look he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassed
+fashion.
+
+"Well," said Meyers, "all ready?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise.
+
+"Wait one minute," said Meyers.
+
+He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of
+his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least
+little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those
+months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief
+the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face.
+
+He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as
+if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then,
+thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in
+his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little
+notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had
+ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of these
+steel things with their notched jaws.
+
+Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he had
+ever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.
+
+"I guess you're new at this kind of thing," said Meyers, grinning. "This
+here way--one at a time."
+
+He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settled
+one of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notched
+jaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automatically
+with a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth on
+Mr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and then
+bringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way.
+Then he stepped back.
+
+Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden.
+
+"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was husky
+and didn't seem to belong to him.
+
+"Yep," said Meyers. "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take no
+chances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pair
+there was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose."
+
+For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by a
+chalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands had
+fallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists a
+little chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled his
+brain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he had
+heard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was a
+headline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr.
+Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets and
+this bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with a
+strange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweat
+beaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.
+
+He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitched
+border and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttoned
+coat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly like
+crab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding it
+so, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell in
+upon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling the
+room with a smart little sound.
+
+He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raised
+the manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that brought
+it over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon his
+plump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him,
+squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to square
+his shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closely
+together. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimm
+had a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbones
+and his forehead.
+
+"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"
+
+He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffled
+together, one over, then under the other.
+
+"Here's a way," said Meyers. "This'll help."
+
+He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other,
+tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of his
+prisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come.
+
+"There's the notion," he said. "Just do that-a-way and them bracelets
+won't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then."
+
+But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steel
+rings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap of
+chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your body
+in a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man is
+coming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see the
+cuffs.
+
+Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out of
+the Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open by
+some one whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he and
+his companion were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward the
+subway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's
+hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs
+almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the
+warden's well-meant artifice would serve them.
+
+But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evade
+them. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted a
+warning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picket
+stationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs came
+pelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with a
+choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, not
+knowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen halted
+their teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. A
+man-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city like
+New York can offer its people.
+
+Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot down
+the winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremost
+pursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
+hand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the tickets, and another
+before a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered
+at, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he was
+stout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
+clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at the
+apex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as the
+scrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward the
+doors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisoner
+into the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with his
+body a barrier against those who came jamming in.
+
+It didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.
+The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, left
+their seats, overflowing the aisles.
+
+There is no crueler thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbid
+curiosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
+Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legs
+shutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What the
+eyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,
+seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on him
+some places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, his
+hat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleeves
+down over a pair of steel bracelets.
+
+Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought he
+had forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,
+shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras had
+been shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttled
+alongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions in
+his ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still ran
+down his face, so that when finally he raised his head in the
+comparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray under
+the jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.
+
+"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private place
+on the train," he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know."
+
+They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyers
+spoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car where
+they had halted.
+
+"No such reservation," said the conductor, running through his sheaf of
+slips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's hands
+and back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the more
+interesting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for some
+other train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes."
+
+"I reckon we better git on the smoker," said Meyers, "if there's room
+there."
+
+Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through a
+double row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps where
+they stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself up
+by the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist.
+Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyers
+headed him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He was
+confused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,
+too.
+
+The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necks
+and stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men came
+out into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them.
+
+"This here'll do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr.
+Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongside
+him on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plush
+seat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardest
+part of a not easy job.
+
+"Smoke?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it.
+
+"Them cuffs feel plenty easy?" was the deputy's next question. He lifted
+Mr. Trimm's hands as casually as if they had been his hands and not Mr.
+Trimm's, and looked at them.
+
+"Seem to be all right," he said as he let them fall back. "Don't pinch
+none, I reckon?" There was no answer.
+
+The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache, searching his arid mind. An
+idea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it out
+flat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained
+wrists. Almost instantly the train was in motion, moving through the
+yards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Be there in two hours more," volunteered Meyers. It was late afternoon.
+They were sliding through woodlands with occasional openings which
+showed meadows melting into wide, flat lands.
+
+"Want a drink?" said the deputy, next. "No? Well, I guess I'll have a
+drop myself. Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust." He got up,
+lurching to the motion of the flying train, and started forward to the
+water cooler behind the car door. He had gone perhaps two-thirds of the
+way when Mr. Trimm felt a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet; it
+was exactly as though the train were trying to go forward and back at
+the same time. Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward end of the
+car slued out of its straight course, at the same time tilting up. There
+was a grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before Mr. Trimm's eyes
+Meyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckled
+under his feet. Then, as everything--the train, the earth, the sky--all
+fused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm, plucked
+from his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar, shot forward
+through the air over the seatbacks, his chained hands aloft, clutching
+wildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the smoker had broken in
+two, flopped gently on the sloping side of the right-of-way and slid
+easily to the bottom, where he lay quiet and still on his back in a bed
+of weeds and wild grass, staring straight up.
+
+How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have been
+the shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought him
+out of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on his
+feet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-face
+into the crowning railroad horror of the year.
+
+There were numbers of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, but
+for the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror and
+shock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, were
+pecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribable
+jumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and from
+which, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides,
+jammed together like fighting bucks that had died with locked horns, a
+tall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of black
+smoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody
+paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. There
+wasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat was
+still on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a sudden
+impulse, he turned round and went running straight away from the
+railroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with his
+arms pumping up and down in front of him and his fingers interlaced. It
+was a grotesque gait, almost like a rabbit hopping on its hindlegs.
+
+Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing down to the edge of the
+fill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among the
+tree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over the
+irregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carry
+him another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leaned
+against a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No sound
+came to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. Trimm
+might judge he had come far into the depths of a considerable woodland.
+Already the shadows under the low limbs were growing thick and confused
+as the hurried twilight of early September came on.
+
+Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of thick green moss between two
+roots of an oak. The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented. For
+some little time he sat there motionless, in a sort of mental haze. Then
+his round body slowly slid down flat upon the moss, his head lolled to
+one side and, the reaction having come, Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxed
+and he went to sleep straightway.
+
+After a while, when the woods were black and still, the half-grown moon
+came up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above,
+shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouth
+open, and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlight
+struck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look like
+quicksilver.
+
+Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which had
+been a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and green
+in another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the sun
+came up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes between
+the tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing for
+the first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy of
+leaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he remembered
+everything; he haunched his shoulders against the tree roots and
+wriggled himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while,
+letting his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought him
+where he was and taking inventory of the situation.
+
+Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him before
+now; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be better
+for him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like an
+animal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought of
+enduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of being
+tagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with a
+nausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store for
+him could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knew
+that. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimm
+desperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hide
+his face and his chained hands.
+
+But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captors
+in some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to him
+before! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two hands
+apart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before.
+
+The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforced
+companionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost him
+some painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to
+get his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather case
+out of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose he
+subjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel band
+ran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the small
+lock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little rounded
+excrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was a
+small keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in a
+minute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid into
+themselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might be
+tightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blue
+veins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted to
+the cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, giving
+the hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. The
+cuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actual
+discomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.
+
+But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to be
+got off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase.
+All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain.
+The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of bone
+above the hands would catch and hold them.
+
+Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviously
+hopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fair
+gait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappled
+with lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life was
+stirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that green
+solitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at his
+sleeve ends.
+
+Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a
+locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite
+direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around
+and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and
+climbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in his
+night from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon the
+railroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. To
+the south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbroken
+woodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge against
+the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--which
+was still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had come
+out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration
+he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish small
+dots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew these
+dots must be men.
+
+A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. He
+faced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north,
+moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps.
+Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on the
+edges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time within
+twelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulses
+normally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcar
+flashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle.
+
+But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted his
+hastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to these
+overalled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slid
+out of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcar
+was a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big,
+wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising and
+falling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fade
+away and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against his
+judgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one of
+the blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and come
+fluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, starting
+doggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried it
+along died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front of
+him. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of that
+morning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:
+"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision."
+
+Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheet
+flat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring
+captions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a great
+bound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, he
+bounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there with
+the paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps while
+the chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running
+through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was his
+own name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken up
+into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trained
+reporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, but
+telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which his
+name recurred again and again. The body of the United States deputy
+marshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed, had been taken from the wreckage
+of the smoker--so the double-leaded story ran--and near to Meyers
+another body, with features burned beyond recognition, yet still
+retaining certain distinguishing marks of measurement and contour, had
+been found and identified as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convicted
+banker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen other mangled dead, had
+been removed to a town called Westfield, from which town of Westfield
+the account of the disaster had been telegraphed to the New York paper.
+In another column farther along was more about Banker Trimm; facts about
+his soiled, selfish, greedy, successful life, his great fortune, his
+trial, and a statement that, lacking any close kin to claim his body,
+his lawyers had been notified.
+
+Mr. Trimm read the account through to the end, and as he read the sense
+of dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He got
+up, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods,
+moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take hold
+of problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred,
+grisly thing in the improvised morgue at Westfield, wherever that might
+be, Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity. All his life he had used
+live men to work his will, with no thought of what might come to them
+afterward. The living had served him, why not the dead?
+
+He had other things to think of than this dead proxy of his. He was as
+good as free! There would be no hunt for him now; no alarm out, no
+posses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turned
+fugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get in
+secret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And he
+had the money--four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash that
+had ruined so many others.
+
+He would alter his personal appearance, change his name--he thought of
+Duvall, which was his mother's name--and with Walling's aid he would get
+out of the country and into some other country where a man might live
+like a prince on four millions or the fractional part of it. He thought
+of South America, of South Africa, of a private yacht swinging through
+the little frequented islands of the South Seas. All that the law had
+tried to take from him would be given back. Walling would work out the
+details of the escape--and make it safe and sure--trust Walling for
+those things. On one side was the prison, with its promise of twelve
+grinding years sliced out of the very heart of his life; on the other,
+freedom, ease, security, even power. Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbled
+thoughts of concessions, enterprises, privileges--the back corners of
+the globe were full of possibilities for the right man. And between this
+prospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing in the way, nothing but----
+
+Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands. Snug-fitting, shiny steel
+bands irked his wrists. The Grips of the Law were still upon him.
+
+But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous, unbelievable,
+altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted down
+and stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling with
+the big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luck
+had come to be a byword--and had not it held good even in this last
+emergency?--would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and a
+trumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the gold
+bands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at the
+opera. The chain that joined them was no larger and, probably, no
+stronger than the chains which Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around the
+tires of the touring car in winter to keep the wheels from skidding on
+the slush. There would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free himself
+from these things. There must be--that was all there was to it.
+
+Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes were not badly rumpled; his
+patent-leather boots were scarcely scratched. Without the handcuffs he
+could pass unnoticed anywhere. By night then he must be free of them and
+on his way to some small inland city, to stay quiet there until the
+guarded telegram that he would send in cipher had reached Walling. There
+in the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no longer felt the ignominy of his
+bonds; he felt only the temporary embarrassment of them and the need of
+added precaution until he should have mastered them.
+
+He was once more the unemotional man of affairs who had stood Wall
+Street on its esteemed head and caught the golden streams that trickled
+from its pockets. First making sure that he was in a well-screened
+covert of the woods he set about exploring all his pockets. The coat
+pockets were comparatively easy, now that he had got used to using two
+hands where one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting of
+his body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth the
+contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he
+groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form
+writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four
+cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a
+silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken
+feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks,
+a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimm
+ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker setting
+out his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated from
+his design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He kept
+for present employment the match safe, the cigar cutter and the watch.
+
+This place where he had halted would suit his present purpose well, he
+decided. It was where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving bank,
+made a snug little recess that was closed in on three sides. Spreading
+the newspaper on the turf to save his knees from soiling, he knelt and
+set to his task. For the time he felt neither hunger nor thirst. He had
+found out during his earlier experiments that the nails of his little
+fingers, which were trimmed to a point, could invade the keyholes in the
+little steel warts on the backs of his wrists and touch the locks. The
+mechanism had even twitched a little bit under the tickle of the nail
+ends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal match safe under his
+heel, Mr. Trimm selected a slender-pointed bit from among its fragments
+and got to work, the left hand drawn up under the right, the fingers of
+the right busy with the lock of the left, the chain tightening and
+slackening with subdued clinking sounds at each movement.
+
+Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money by
+a higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lock
+picking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had let
+other boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like,
+and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't given
+more heed to the mechanical side of things when he was growing up.
+
+He worked with a deliberate slowness, steadily. Nevertheless, it was hot
+work. The sun rose over the bank and shone on him through the limbs of
+the uprooted tree. His hat was on the ground alongside of him. The sweat
+ran down his face, streaking it and wilting his collar flat. The scrap
+of gun metal kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down would go the
+chained hands to scrabble in the grass for it, and then the picking
+would go on again. This happened a good many times. Birds, nervous with
+the spirit that presages the fall migration, flew back and forth along
+the creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes. A rain crow wove a brown
+thread in the green warp of the bushes above his head. A chattering red
+squirrel sat up on a tree limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly,
+came the cough of laboring trains, showing that the track must have been
+cleared. There were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt the lock
+giving. These times he would work harder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back against the bank, panting. His
+face was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of his
+forehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared tree
+frogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on the
+log; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metal
+match safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp of
+metal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago and
+the broken crystals powdered the earth where Mr. Trimm's toes had
+scraped a smooth patch. The nails of the two little fingers were worn to
+the quick and splintered down into the raw flesh. There were countless
+tiny scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs, and the steel
+wristbands were dulled with blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of new
+rust; but otherwise they were as stanch and strong a pair of Bean's
+Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware store
+anywhere.
+
+The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned things! With an acid oath
+Mr. Trimm raised his hands and brought them down on the log violently.
+There was a double click and the bonds tightened painfully, pressing the
+chafed red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his hands close to his
+near-sighted eyes and looked. One of the little notches on the under
+side of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living things
+that had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air.
+Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fetters
+his wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms.
+His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that he
+drank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. His
+undergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to him
+clammily. His middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called through every
+pore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insides
+called for food.
+
+After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conquered
+his instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness, gathering
+scraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that had
+been in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with its
+tiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughing
+when the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his arms
+in an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to him
+that if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands he
+would be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course.
+
+He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between his
+hunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burned
+almost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled to
+his feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against his
+blistered foot almost made him cry out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly traced
+footpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead of
+him. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell before
+either the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running,
+skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,
+swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm,
+imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheaded
+until he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on a
+shrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of them
+with his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally.
+Warned instantly by the acrid, burning taste, he spat the crushed
+berries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his best
+judgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic of
+him, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of the
+distinguishing marks of the timber.
+
+Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted some
+little time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacs
+and weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it was
+still. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been a
+shack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare head
+below the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty and
+gained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had once
+formed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncovered
+something. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, red
+fish with the crusted rust of years.
+
+Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old,
+broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crusted
+harrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it would
+go, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward with
+all his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. The
+link had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressure
+had almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowing
+that it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he had
+known all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wrists
+and thinking.
+
+He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion that
+fire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bits
+of the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slender
+and straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding
+his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to
+catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable
+too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only
+in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his
+wrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it.
+
+Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls he
+noticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held to
+half-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part of a
+pen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried the
+wire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaning
+with the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back and
+forth, back and forth along the strand of wire.
+
+Eventually the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shined
+spot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudged
+surface was all the mark that the chain showed.
+
+Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left
+the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the
+railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road winding
+downhill.
+
+To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm and
+a group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a cluster
+of dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two and
+a small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road that
+ran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boy
+came, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted across
+the wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boy
+put the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stone
+to throw at the squirrel.
+
+Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief,
+grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hiding
+the handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping as
+much of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of the
+little chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on his
+bare heel.
+
+"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began.
+
+The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling toward
+him in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr.
+Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legs
+could take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend.
+
+Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curious
+spectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a man
+worth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawing
+with chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then,
+when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which the
+pail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animal
+sounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin and
+splashed down his breast in little, spurting streams.
+
+But the boy didn't look back. He ran all the way home and told his
+mother he had seen a wild man on the road to the village; and later,
+when his father came in from the fields, he was soundly thrashed for
+letting the sight of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket and half a
+gallon of milk worth six cents a quart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm. He rested the better for
+it during the early part of that night in a haw thicket. Only the
+sharp, darting pains in his wrists kept rousing him to temporary
+wakefulness. In one of those intervals of waking the plan that had been
+sketchily forming in his mind from the time he had quit the clearing in
+the woods took on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he with safety to
+get the sort of aid he needed, and where?
+
+Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he dozed off again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith shop three yokels were
+languidly pitching horseshoes--"quaits" they called them--at a stake
+driven in the earth. Just beyond, the woods shredded out into a long,
+yellow and green peninsula which stretched up almost to the back door of
+the smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of the
+near-most trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme end
+of this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder,
+squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrod
+tops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had been
+there more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail the
+blacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of his
+shop, passing back and forth in front of a smudgy forge fire and
+rattling metal against metal in intermittent fits of professional
+activity.
+
+From where Mr. Trimm watched to where the horseshoe-pitching game went
+on was not more than sixty feet. He could hear what the players said and
+even see the little puffs of dust rise when one of them clapped his
+hands together after a pitch. He judged by the signs of slackening
+interest that they would be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clear
+away.
+
+But the smith loafed out of his shop and, after an exchange of bucolic
+banter with the three of them, he took a hand in their game himself. He
+wore no coat or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his first
+cast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap of
+his suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe,
+the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clump
+of undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. The
+near-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what the
+flat, silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behind
+the rock, holding his hands down between his knees, fearful that a gleam
+from his burnished wristlets might strike through the screen of weed
+growth and catch the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed, not
+daring to move, until a dinner horn sounded somewhere in the cluster of
+cottages beyond, and the smith, closing the doors of his shop, went away
+with the three yokels.
+
+Then Mr. Trimm, stooping low, stole back into the deep woods again. In
+his extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of a
+blacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith who
+wore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against the
+rough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation was
+comforting to the swollen skin. The cuffs, which kept catching on the
+bark and snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed to Mr. Trimm to
+have been a part and parcel of him for a long time--almost as long a
+time as he could remember. But the hands which they clasped so close
+seemed like the hands of somebody else. There was a numbness about them
+that made them feel as though they were a stranger's hands which never
+had belonged to him. As he looked at them with a sort of vague curiosity
+they seemed to swell and grow, these two strange, fettered hands, until
+they measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the thinness
+of piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the hands
+in turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into great, thick
+things as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A voice that Mr.
+Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something about four
+million dollars over and over again.
+
+Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbed
+his eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for him to be
+getting light-headed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which the
+railroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collision
+had occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking something
+in an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals.
+This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale,
+beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, so
+that it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless,
+unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangled
+grotesquely about his spare shanks.
+
+Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame at
+the prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whose
+help he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp of
+smoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air
+that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to
+climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in
+the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the
+washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out
+with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the
+halting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler
+and glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomer
+his eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin of
+comprehension.
+
+"Well, well, well," he said, leering offensively, "welcome to our city,
+little stranger."
+
+Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out of
+the wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from the
+tramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Then
+slowly: "I'm in trouble," he said, and held out his hands.
+
+"Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it," said the tramp coolly. "That
+purticular kind o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure."
+
+His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm's stooped
+figure down the slope of the hillock.
+
+"Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?" he demanded, his
+manner changing.
+
+"There is no one after me--no one that I know of," explained Mr. Trimm.
+"I am quite alone--I am certain of it."
+
+"Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?" the other persisted
+suspiciously.
+
+"I tell you I am all alone," protested Mr. Trimm. "I want your help in
+getting these--these things off and sending a message to a friend.
+You'll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than you
+ever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise----"
+
+He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stooped
+again to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of the
+washboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly,
+filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he could
+not speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left him
+shaking and gulping.
+
+"Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about yourself," said the freckled
+man. "Wot brings you roamin' round this here railroad cut with them
+bracelets on?"
+
+"I was in the wreck," obeyed Mr. Trimm. "The man with me--the
+officer--was killed. I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods. But
+they think I'm dead too--my name was among the list of dead."
+
+The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment.
+
+"Why, say," he began, "I read all about that there wreck--seen the list
+myself--say, you can't be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wot
+a streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer,
+sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all nice an' snug an' reg'lar!
+Mister Trimm--well, if this ain't rich!"
+
+"My name is Trimm," said the starving banker miserably. "I've been
+wandering about here a great many hours--several days, I think it must
+be--and I need rest and food very much indeed. I don't--don't feel very
+well," he added, his voice trailing off.
+
+At this his self-control gave way again and he began to quake violently
+as if with an ague. The smell of the cooking overcame him.
+
+"You don't look so well an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp,
+resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself at
+home, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bite
+together--you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two."
+
+He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made him appear even more repulsive
+than before.
+
+"But looky here, you wus sayin' somethin' about money," he said
+suddenly. "Le's take a look at all this here money."
+
+He came over to him and went through Mr. Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm said
+nothing and stood quietly, making no resistance. The tramp finished a
+workmanlike search of the banker's pockets. He looked at the result as
+it lay in his grimy palm--a moist little wad of bills and some
+chicken-feed change--and spat disgustedly with a nasty oath.
+
+"Well, Trimm," he said, "fur a Wall Street guy seems to me you travel
+purty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all this
+pile of wealth?"
+
+"You will be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend will
+see to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have there
+in your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cut
+these things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certain
+gentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get an
+answer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it."
+
+He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in the
+rusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through his
+red-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with his
+toe.
+
+"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm," he said.
+"'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat the
+cops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mighty
+kind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you never
+toted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's his
+name?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with you
+in yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over the
+road to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides," he added
+cunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I notice
+you ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by is
+yore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts."
+
+"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly," burst out Mr. Trimm, the
+words falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I've
+endured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now." He pleaded
+fast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as he
+stretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them.
+Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. His
+tormentor checked him with a gesture.
+
+"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his slack
+frame, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An',
+anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwise
+not on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow, I
+will."
+
+"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"
+
+"I mean this," said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under his
+loose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about his
+waist. "If I turn you over to the Government I know wot you'll be worth,
+purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an' besides, it'll maybe help to
+square me up fur one or two little matters. If I turn you loose I ain't
+got nothin' only your word--an' I've got an idea how much faith I kin
+put in that."
+
+Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There was no escape. He was fast in
+a trap which he himself had sprung. The thought of being led to jail,
+all foul of body and fettered as he was, by this filthy, smirking wretch
+made him crazy. He stumbled backward with some insane idea of running
+away.
+
+"No hurry, no hurry a-tall," gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture of
+this helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' to
+hurt you none--only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurt
+yourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself;
+you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'll
+just back you up agin one of these trees an' then we'll jest slip this
+here belt through yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at the back;
+an' I kinder guess you'll stay right there till I go down yonder to that
+station that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind of a bargain I kin
+strike up with the marshal. Come on, now," he threatened with a show of
+bluster, reading the resolution that was mounting in Mr. Trimm's face.
+"Come on peaceable, if you don't want to git hurt."
+
+Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive man. He was filled with those
+elemental emotions that make a man see in spatters of crimson. Gathering
+strength from passion out of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward at
+the tramp. He struck at him with his head, his shoulders, his knees, his
+manacled wrists, all at once. Not really hurt by the puny assault, but
+caught by surprise, the freckled man staggered back, clawing at the air,
+tripped on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell vanished below
+the smooth edge of the cut.
+
+Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over the bluff. Half-way down the
+cliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward,
+motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into his
+clothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoat
+in a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg looked
+flattened and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at him he saw a red stain
+spreading on the rock under the still, silent figure's head.
+
+Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the last
+of its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. He
+stared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliff
+edge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went.
+Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, then
+hard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he was
+soon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched along
+without sense of direction or, indeed, without any active realization of
+what he was doing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour.
+A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the
+house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for
+losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the
+figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up,
+painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He
+moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of
+the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that
+through the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen.
+
+The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were looming
+dead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a small
+terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward,
+kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out with
+short, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such motions as the
+terrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backing
+away, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh,
+Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of the
+breaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing and
+cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt the
+terrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, to
+where it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and a
+half-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled,
+half fell out of sight behind the woodpile.
+
+Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, with
+the whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners with
+the muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming had
+aroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the east
+Mr. Trimm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating down
+on him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting at
+the bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in the
+air. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat his
+arms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone and
+the force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that they
+pressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones.
+
+When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmer
+went shivering back indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the groveling
+figure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirring
+a little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morning
+following the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the day
+police force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place where
+the collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking at
+the front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The door
+was a Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half might
+be opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this top
+half back.
+
+A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterably
+weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble
+on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of
+its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows,
+hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps of
+broken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids as
+colorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthy
+with plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet.
+
+"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What do
+you want?"
+
+With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came up
+off the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from a
+dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, as
+big as a pigeon's egg.
+
+"I have come," said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which the
+chief could hardly hear--"I have come to surrender myself. I am Hobart
+W. Trimm."
+
+"I guess you got another thing comin'," said the chief, who was by way
+of being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W. Trimm was only
+fifty-two years old. Besides which, he's dead and buried. I guess maybe
+you'd better think agin, grandpap, and see if you ain't Methus'lah or
+the Wanderin' Jew."
+
+"I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker," whispered the stranger with a sort
+of wan stubbornness.
+
+"Go on and prove it," suggested the chief, more than willing to prolong
+the enjoyment of the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield that
+wandering lunatics came a-calling.
+
+"Got any way to prove it?" he repeated as the visitor stared at him.
+
+"Yes," came the creaking, rusted hinge of a voice, "I have."
+
+Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised his hands into the chief's
+sight. They were horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood where
+they were not black with the dried dirt; the fingers puffed up out of
+shape; the nails broken; they were like the skinned paws of a bear. And
+at the wrists, almost buried in the bloated folds of flesh, blackened,
+rusted, battered, yet still strong and whole, was a tightly-locked pair
+of Bean's Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs.
+
+"Great God!" cried the chief, transfixed at the sight. He drew the bolt
+and jerked open the lower half of the door.
+
+"Come in," he said, "and lemme get them irons off of you--they must hurt
+something terrible."
+
+"They can wait," said Mr. Trimm very feebly, very slowly and very
+humbly. "I have worn them a long, long while--I am used to them.
+Wouldn't you please get me some food first?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BELLED BUZZARD
+
+
+There was a swamp known as Little Niggerwool, to distinguish it from Big
+Niggerwool, which lay across the river. It was traversable only by those
+who knew it well--an oblong stretch of tawny mud and tawny water,
+measuring maybe four miles its longest way and two miles roughly at its
+widest; and it was full of cypress and stunted swamp oak, with edgings
+of canebrake and rank weeds; and in one place, where a ridge crossed it
+from side to side, it was snaggled like an old jaw with dead tree
+trunks, rising close-ranked and thick as teeth. It was untenanted of
+living things--except, down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes, and
+a few wading and swimming fowl; and up above, those big woodpeckers that
+the country people called logcocks--larger than pigeons, with flaming
+crests and spiky tails--swooping in their long, loping flight from snag
+to snag, always just out of gunshot of the chance invader, and uttering
+a strident cry which matched those surroundings so fitly that it might
+well have been the voice of the swamp itself.
+
+On one side little Niggerwool drained its saffron waters off into a
+sluggish creek, where summer ducks bred, and on the other it ended
+abruptly at a natural bank of high ground, along which the county
+turnpike ran. The swamp came right up to the road and thrust its fringe
+of reedy, weedy undergrowth forward as though in challenge to the good
+farm lands that were spread beyond the barrier. At the time I am
+speaking of it was mid-summer, and from these canes and weeds and
+waterplants there came a smell so rank as almost to be overpowering.
+They grew thick as a curtain, making a blank green wall taller than a
+man's head.
+
+Along the dusty stretch of road fronting the swamp nothing living had
+stirred for half an hour or more. And so at length the weed-stems
+rustled and parted, and out from among them a man came forth silently
+and cautiously. He was an old man--an old man who had once been fat, but
+with age had grown lean again, so that now his skin was by odds too
+large for him. It lay on the back of his neck in folds. Under the chin
+he was pouched like a pelican and about the jowls was wattled like a
+turkey gobbler.
+
+He came out upon the road slowly and stopped there, switching his legs
+absently with the stalk of a horseweed. He was in his shirtsleeves--a
+respectable, snuffy old figure; evidently a man deliberate in words and
+thoughts and actions. There was something about him suggestive of an old
+staid sheep that had been engaged in a clandestine transaction and was
+afraid of being found out.
+
+He had made amply sure no one was in sight before he came out of the
+swamp, but now, to be doubly certain, he watched the empty road--first
+up, then down--for a long half minute, and fetched a sighing breath of
+satisfaction. His eyes fell upon his feet, and, taken with an idea, he
+stepped back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped
+his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color and
+texture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathers
+had been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful on
+this summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settled
+his white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road,
+he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went plodding
+sedately across a weedfield and up a slight slope toward his house, half
+a mile away, upon the crest of the little hill.
+
+He felt perfectly natural--not like a man who had just taken a
+fellowman's life--but natural and safe, and well satisfied with himself
+and with his morning's work. And he was safe; that was the main
+thing--absolutely safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done the thing
+for which he had been planning and waiting and longing all these months.
+There had been no slip or mischance; the whole thing had worked out as
+plainly and simply as two and two make four. No living creature except
+himself knew of the meeting in the early morning at the head of Little
+Niggerwool, exactly where the squire had figured they should meet; none
+knew of the device by which the other man had been lured deeper and
+deeper in the swamp to the exact spot where the gun was hidden. No one
+had seen the two of them enter the swamp; no one had seen the squire
+emerge, three hours later, alone.
+
+The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden again, in a place no
+mortal eye would ever discover. Face downward, with a hole between his
+shoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscovered
+for months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried in
+the mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. He
+would never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihood
+that inquiry would ever be made for him--let alone a search. He was a
+stranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goings
+made no great stir in the neighborhood, and whose failure to come again
+would be taken as a matter of course--just one of those shiftless,
+wandering Dagoes, here today and gone tomorrow. That was one of the best
+things about it--these Dagoes never had any people in this country to
+worry about them or look for them when they disappeared. And so it was
+all over and done with, and nobody the wiser. The squire clapped his
+hands together briskly with the air of a man dismissing a subject from
+his mind for good, and mended his gait.
+
+He felt no stabbings of conscience. On the contrary, a glow of
+gratification filled him. His house was saved from scandal; his present
+wife would philander no more--before his very eyes--with these young
+Dagoes, who came from nobody knew where, with packs on their backs and
+persuasive, wheedling tongues in their heads. At this thought the squire
+raised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him--the
+small white cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives and flower
+beds about it; the tidy whitewashed fence; the sound outbuildings at the
+back, and the well-tilled acres roundabout.
+
+At the fence he halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, and
+looked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it should
+be--the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching along
+the crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it,
+massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was all
+right, but----The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowed
+and squinted. Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small black dot
+had resolved itself and was swinging to and fro, like a mote. A
+buzzard--hey? Well, there were always buzzards about on a clear day like
+this. Buzzards were nothing to worry about--almost any time you could
+see one buzzard, or a dozen buzzards if you were a mind to look for
+them.
+
+But this particular buzzard now--wasn't he making for Little Niggerwool?
+The squire did not like the idea of that. He had not thought of the
+buzzards until this minute. Sometimes when cattle strayed the owners had
+been known to follow the buzzards, knowing mighty well that if the
+buzzards led the way to where the stray was, the stray would be past the
+small salvage of hide and hoofs--but the owner's doubts would be set at
+rest for good and all.
+
+There was a grain of disquiet in this. The squire shook his head to
+drive the thought away--yet it persisted, coming back like a midge
+dancing before his face. Once at home, however, Squire Gathers deported
+himself in a perfectly normal manner. With the satisfied proprietorial
+eye of an elderly husband who has no rivals, he considered his young
+wife, busied about her household duties. He sat in an easy-chair upon
+his front gallery and read his yesterday's Courier-Journal which the
+rural carrier had brought him; but he kept stepping out into the yard
+to peer up into the sky and all about him. To the second Mrs. Gathers he
+explained that he was looking for weather signs. A day as hot and still
+as this one was a regular weather breeder; there ought to be rain before
+night.
+
+"Maybe so," she said; "but looking's not going to bring rain."
+
+Nevertheless the squire continued to look. There was really nothing to
+worry about; still at midday he did not eat much dinner, and before his
+wife was half through with hers he was back on the gallery. His paper
+was cast aside and he was watching. The original buzzard--or, anyhow, he
+judged it was the first one he had seen--was swinging back and forth in
+great pendulum swings, but closer down toward the swamp--closer and
+closer--until it looked from that distance as though the buzzard flew
+almost at the level of the tallest snags there. And on beyond this first
+buzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards. Were there four of
+them? No; there were five--five in all.
+
+Such is the way of the buzzard--that shifting black question mark which
+punctuates a Southern sky. In the woods a shoat or a sheep or a horse
+lies down to die. At once, coming seemingly out of nowhere, appears a
+black spot, up five hundred feet or a thousand in the air. In broad
+loops and swirls this dot swings round and round and round, coming a
+little closer to earth at every turn and always with one particular spot
+upon the earth for the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other moving
+spots emerge and grow larger as they tack and jib and drop nearer,
+coming in their leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There is no
+haste--the feast will wait. If it is a dumb creature that has fallen
+stricken the grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled about it
+and alongside it, scrouging ever closer and closer to the dying thing,
+with awkward out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raising
+flaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks high
+and stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are too
+tight--but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last
+tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To
+humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect--he hangs aloft longer;
+but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever
+chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big
+charnel bird. Such is the way of the buzzard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The squire missed his afternoon nap, a thing that had not happened in
+years. He stayed on the front gallery and kept count. Those moving
+distant black specks typified uneasiness for the squire--not fear
+exactly, or panic or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging kind
+of uneasiness. Time and again he said to himself that he would not think
+about them any more; but he did--unceasingly.
+
+By supper time there were seven of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He slept light and slept badly. It was not the thought of that dead man
+lying yonder in Little Niggerwool that made him toss and fume while his
+wife snored gently alongside him. It was something else altogether.
+Finally his stirrings roused her and she asked him drowsily what ailed
+him. Was he sick? Or bothered about anything?
+
+Irritated, he answered her snappishly. Certainly nothing was bothering
+him, he told her. It was a hot enough night--wasn't it? And when a man
+got a little along in life he was apt to be a light sleeper--wasn't that
+so? Well, then? She turned upon her side and slept again with her light,
+purring snore. The squire lay awake, thinking hard and waiting for day
+to come.
+
+At the first faint pink-and-gray glow he was up and out upon the
+gallery. He cut a comic figure standing there in his shirt in the half
+light, with the dewlap at his throat dangling grotesquely in the neck
+opening of the unbuttoned garment, and his bare bowed legs showing,
+splotched and varicose. He kept his eyes fixed on the skyline below, to
+the south. Buzzards are early risers too. Presently, as the heavens
+shimmered with the miracle of sunrise, he could make them out--six or
+seven, or maybe eight.
+
+An hour after breakfast the squire was on his way down through the
+weedfield to the county road. He went half eagerly, half unwillingly. He
+wanted to make sure about those buzzards. It might be that they were
+aiming for the old pasture at the head of the swamp. There were sheep
+grazing there--and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards were
+notoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for the
+swamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. He
+was at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road,
+drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field the
+man pulled up.
+
+"Hi, squire!" he saluted. "Goin' somewheres?"
+
+"No; jest knockin' about," the squire said--"jest sorter lookin' the
+place over."
+
+"Hot agin--ain't it?" said the other.
+
+The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces of
+gossip followed this--county politics and a neighbor's wife sick of
+breakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeeded
+inevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regretted
+it, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre,
+cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.
+
+"Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin' yonder, squire," he said,
+pointing upward with his whipstock.
+
+"Whut buzzards--where?" asked the squire with an elaborate note of
+carelessness in his voice.
+
+"Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool--see 'em there?"
+
+"Oh, yes," the squire made answer. "Now I see 'em. They ain't doin'
+nothin', I reckin--jest flyin' round same as they always do in clear
+weather."
+
+"Must be somethin' dead over there!" speculated the man in the buggy.
+
+"A hawg probably," said the squire promptly--almost too promptly.
+"There's likely to be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on the
+other side from here--he's got a big drove of hawgs."
+
+"Well, mebbe so," said the man; "but hawgs is a heap more apt to be
+feedin' on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin' along
+towards town. G'day, squire." And he slapped the lines down on the
+mare's flank and jogged off through the dust.
+
+He could not have suspected anything--that man couldn't. As the squire
+turned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulated
+himself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yet
+there remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzards
+flying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, made
+people curious--made them ask questions.
+
+He was half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life,
+above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to his
+ear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head to
+one side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was a
+thin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking--an eery
+ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer--tonk-tonk-tonk;
+then the tonks all running together briskly.
+
+A sheep bell or a cowbell--that was it; but why did it seem to come from
+overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly
+from one quarter to another--from left to right and back again to left?
+And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the
+breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a
+cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the
+sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny.
+He had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not anything that went on
+four legs.
+
+One of the loathly flock had left the others. The orbit of his swing had
+carried him across the road and over Squire Gathers' land. He was
+sailing right toward and over the squire now. Craning his flabby neck,
+the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. He
+could see the ragged black wings--a buzzard's wings are so often ragged
+and uneven--and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feet
+folded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too--an
+undersized cowbell--that dangled at the creature's breast and jangled
+incessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing about
+the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him.
+
+Once, years and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and
+before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a
+cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen
+a hundred times--and heard oftener--over an area as wide as half the
+continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now in
+North Carolina--now anywhere between the Ohio River and the Gulf.
+Crossroads correspondents take their pens in hand to write to the
+country papers that on such and such a date, at such a place, So-and-So
+saw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the Belled Buzzard, never a belled
+buzzard. The Belled Buzzard is an institution.
+
+There must be more than one of them. It seems hard to believe that one
+bird, even a buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in every
+Southern state and known to be a bird of great age, could live so long
+and range so far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time! Probably
+other jokers have emulated the original joker; probably if the truth
+were known there have been a dozen such; but the country people will
+have it that there is only one Belled Buzzard--a bird that bears a
+charmed life and on his neck a never silent bell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward thing that the Belled Buzzard
+should have come just at this time. The movements of ordinary, unmarked
+buzzards mainly concerned only those whose stock had strayed; but almost
+anybody with time to spare might follow this rare and famous visitor,
+this belled and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing now that some
+one followed it today--maybe followed it even to a certain thick clump
+of cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!
+
+But at this particular moment the Belled Buzzard was heading directly
+away from that quarter. Could it be following him? Of course not! It was
+just by chance that it flew along the course the squire was taking. But,
+to make sure, he veered off sharply, away from the footpath into the
+high weeds so that the startled grasshoppers sprayed up in front of him
+in fan-like flights.
+
+He was right; it was only a chance. The Belled Buzzard swung off too,
+but in the opposite direction, with a sharp tonking of its bell, and,
+flapping hard, was in a minute or two out of hearing and sight, past
+the trees to the westward.
+
+Again the squire skimped his dinner, and again he spent the long drowsy
+afternoon upon his front gallery. In all the sky there were now no
+buzzards visible, belled or unbelled--they had settled to earth
+somewhere; and this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pestered
+mind. This does not mean, though, that he was by any means easy in his
+thoughts. Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative judicial air
+befitting the oldest justice of the peace in the county; but, within
+him, a little something gnawed unceasingly at his nerves like one of
+those small white worms that are to be found in seemingly sound nuts.
+About once in so long a tiny spasm of the muscles would contract the
+dewlap under his chin. The squire had never heard of that play, made
+famous by a famous player, wherein the murdered victim was a pedler
+too, and a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable remorse in the
+murderer's ear. As a strict churchgoer the squire had no use for players
+or for play actors, and so was spared that added canker to his
+conscience. It was bad enough as it was.
+
+That night, as on the night before, the old man's sleep was broken and
+fitful and disturbed by dreaming, in which he heard a metal clapper
+striking against a brazen surface. This was one dream that came true.
+Just after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed, with a flop of his
+broad bare feet upon the floor, and stepped to the window and peered
+out. Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard flapped directly
+over his roof and flew due south, right toward the swamp--drawing a
+direct line through the air between the slayer and the victim--or,
+anyway, so it seemed to the watcher, grown suddenly tremulous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Knee deep in yellow swamp water the squire squatted, with his shotgun
+cocked and loaded and ready, waiting to kill the bird that now typified
+for him guilt and danger and an abiding great fear. Gnats plagued him
+and about him frogs croaked. Almost overhead a log-cock clung lengthwise
+to a snag, watching him. Snake doctors, limber, long insects with bronze
+bodies and filmy wings, went back and forth like small living shuttles.
+Other buzzards passed and repassed, but the squire waited, forgetting
+the cramps in his elderly limbs and the discomfort of the water in his
+shoes.
+
+At length he heard the bell. It came nearer and nearer, and the Belled
+Buzzard swung overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair target
+against the blue. He aimed and fired, both barrels bellowing at once and
+a fog of thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through the smoke he saw the
+bird careen and its bell jangled furiously; then the buzzard righted
+itself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the sound of its bell was
+hushed almost instantly. Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;
+torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green scraps of leaves descended
+about the squire in a little shower.
+
+He cast his empty gun from him so that it fell in the water and
+disappeared; and he hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky legs
+would take him, splashing himself with mire and water to his eyebrows.
+Mucked with mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a suspicious
+figure to any eye, he burst through the weed curtain and staggered into
+the open, his caution all gone and a vast desperation fairly choking
+him--but the gray road was empty and the field beyond the road was
+empty; and, except for him, the whole world seemed empty and silent.
+
+As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed himself. With plucked
+handfuls of grass he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire that
+coated him over; but the little white worm that gnawed at his nerves had
+become a cold snake that was coiled about his heart, squeezing it
+tighter and tighter!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."--_Page 70._]
+
+This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled Buzzard occurred in the
+afternoon of the third day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weather
+being still hot, with cloudless skies and no air stirring, there was a
+rattle of warped wheels in the squire's lane and a hail at his yard
+fence. Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost darkened room of his
+house, where he had been stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded his
+eyes from the glare and saw the constable of his own magisterial
+district sitting in a buggy at the gate waiting.
+
+The old man went down the dirtpath slowly, almost reluctantly, with his
+head twisted up side wise, listening, watching; but the constable sensed
+nothing strange about the other's gait and posture; the constable was
+full of the news he brought. He began to unload the burden of it without
+preamble.
+
+"Mornin', Squire Gathers. There's been a dead man found in Little
+Niggerwool--and you're wanted."
+
+He did not notice that the squire was holding on with both hands to the
+gate; but he did notice that the squire had a sick look out of his eyes
+and a dead, pasty color in his face; and he noticed--but attached no
+meaning to it--that when the squire spoke his voice seemed flat and
+hollow.
+
+"Wanted--fur--whut?" The squire forced the words out of his throat,
+pumped them out fairly.
+
+"Why, to hold the inquest," explained the constable. "The coroner's sick
+abed, and he said you bein' the nearest jestice of the peace you should
+serve."
+
+"Oh," said the squire with more ease. "Well, where is it--the body?"
+
+"They taken it to Bristow's place and put it in his stable for the
+present. They brought it out over on that side and his place was the
+nearest. If you'll hop in here with me, squire, I'll ride you right over
+there now. There's enough men already gathered to make up a jury, I
+reckin."
+
+"I--I ain't well," demurred the squire. "I've been sleepin' porely these
+last few nights. It's the heat," he added quickly.
+
+"Well, suh, you don't look very brash, and that's a fact," said the
+constable; "but this here job ain't goin' to keep you long. You see it's
+in such shape--the body is--that there ain't no way of makin' out who
+the feller was nor whut killed him. There ain't nobody reported missin'
+in this county as we know of, either; so I jedge a verdict of a unknown
+person dead from unknown causes would be about the correct thing. And we
+kin git it all over mighty quick and put him underground right away,
+suh--if you'll go along now."
+
+"I'll go," agreed the squire, almost quivering in his newborn eagerness.
+"I'll go right now." He did not wait to get his coat or to notify his
+wife of the errand that was taking him. In his shirtsleeves he climbed
+into the buggy, and the constable turned his horse and clucked him into
+a trot. And now the squire asked the question that knocked at his lips
+demanding to be asked--the question the answer to which he yearned for
+and yet dreaded.
+
+"How did they come to find--it?"
+
+"Well, suh, that's a funny thing," said the constable. "Early this
+mornin' Bristow's oldest boy--that one they call Buddy--he heared a
+cowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, as
+you know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin'
+after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part of
+them cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there he
+run acrost it--this body.
+
+"But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all. No, suh; it was a buzzard
+with a cowbell on his neck--that's whut it was. Yes, suh; that there
+same old Belled Buzzard he's come back agin and is hangin' round. They
+tell me he ain't been seen round here since the year of the yellow
+fever--I don't remember myself, but that's whut they tell me. The
+niggers over on the other side are right smartly worked up over it. They
+say--the niggers do--that when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign of
+bad luck for somebody, shore!"
+
+The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. The
+squire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only to
+those busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Even
+so, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels the
+far-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about half-way to Bristow's place
+then. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps half a minute before his
+companion heard it too.
+
+The constable jerked the horse to a standstill and craned his neck over
+his shoulder.
+
+"Well, by doctors!" he cried, "if there ain't the old scoundrel now,
+right here behind us! I kin see him plain as day--he's got an old
+cowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a couple of feathers out of
+one wing. By doctors, that's somethin' you won't see every day! In all
+my born days I ain't never seen the beat of that!"
+
+Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered back farther under the
+buggy top. In the pleasing excitement of the moment his companion took
+no heed, though, of anything except the Belled Buzzard.
+
+"Is he followin' us?" asked the squire in a curiously flat, weighted
+voice.
+
+"Which--him?" answered the constable, still stretching his neck. "No,
+he's gone now--gone off to the left--jest a-zoomin', like he'd done
+forgot somethin'."
+
+And Bristow's place was to the left! But there might still be time. To
+get the inquest over and the body underground--those were the main
+things. Ordinarily humane in his treatment of stock, Squire Gathers
+urged the constable to greater speed. The horse was lathered and his
+sides heaved wearily as they pounded across the bridge over the creek
+which was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from a patch of woods in
+sight of Bristow's farm buildings.
+
+The house was set on a little hill among cleared fields and was in other
+respects much like the squire's own house except that it was smaller and
+not so well painted. There was a wide yard in front with shade trees and
+a lye hopper and a well-box, and a paling fence with a stile in it
+instead of a gate. At the rear, behind a clutter of outbuildings--a
+barn, a smokehouse and a corncrib--was a little peach orchard, and
+flanking the house on the right there was a good-sized cowyard, empty of
+stock at this hour, with feedracks ranged in a row against the fence. A
+two-year-old negro child, bareheaded and barefooted and wearing but a
+single garment, was grubbing busily in the dirt under one of these
+feedracks.
+
+To the front fence a dozen or more riding horses were hitched, flicking
+their tails at the flies; and on the gallery men in their shirtsleeves
+were grouped. An old negro woman, with her head tied in a bandanna and a
+man's old slouch hat perched upon the bandanna, peeped out from behind a
+corner. There were gaunt hound dogs wandering about, sniffing uneasily.
+
+Before the constable had the horse hitched the squire was out of the
+buggy and on his way up the footpath, going at a brisker step than the
+squire usually traveled. The men on the porch hailed him gravely and
+ceremoniously, as befitting an occasion of solemnity. Afterward some of
+them recalled the look in his eye; but at the moment they noted it--if
+they noted it at all--subconsciously.
+
+For all his haste the squire, as was also remembered later, was almost
+the last to enter the door; and before he did enter he halted and
+searched the flawless sky as though for signs of rain. Then he hurried
+on after the others, who clumped single file along a narrow little hall,
+the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly under their heavy farm shoes,
+and entered a good-sized room that had in it, among other things, a
+high-piled feather bed and a cottage organ--Bristow's best room, now to
+be placed at the disposal of the law's representatives for the inquest.
+The squire took the largest chair and drew it to the very center of the
+room, in front of a fireplace, where the grate was banked with withering
+asparagus ferns. The constable took his place formally at one side of
+the presiding official. The others sat or stood about where they could
+find room--all but six of them, whom the squire picked for his coroner's
+jury, and who backed themselves against the wall.
+
+The squire showed haste. He drove the preliminaries forward with a sort
+of tremulous insistence. Bristow's wife brought a bucket of fresh
+drinking water and a gourd, and almost before she was out of the room
+and the door closed behind her the squire had sworn his jurors and was
+calling the first witness, who it seemed likely would also be the only
+witness--Bristow's oldest boy. The boy wriggled in confusion as he sat
+on a cane-bottomed chair facing the old magistrate. All there, barring
+one or two, had heard his story a dozen times already, but now it was to
+be repeated under oath; and so they bent their heads, listening as
+though it were a brand-new tale. All eyes were on him; none were
+fastened on the squire as he, too, gravely bent his head,
+listening--listening.
+
+The witness began--but had no more than started when the squire gave a
+great, screeching howl and sprang from his chair and staggered backward,
+his eyes popped and the pouch under his chin quivering as though it had
+a separate life all its own. Startled, the constable made toward him and
+they struck together heavily and went down--both on their all
+fours--right in front of the fireplace.
+
+The constable scrambled free and got upon his feet, in a squat of
+astonishment, with his head craned; but the squire stayed upon the
+floor, face downward, his feet flopping among the rustling asparagus
+greens--a picture of slavering animal fear. And now his gagging screech
+resolved itself into articulate speech.
+
+"I done it!" they made out his shrieked words. "I done it! I own up--I
+killed him! He aimed fur to break up my home and I tolled him off into
+Niggerwool and killed him! There's a hole in his back if you'll look
+fur it. I done it--oh, I done it--and I'll tell everything jest like it
+happened if you'll jest keep that thing away from me! Oh, my Lawdy!
+Don't you hear it? It's a-comin' clos'ter and clos'ter--it's a-comin'
+after me! Keep it away----" His voice gave out and he buried his head in
+his hands and rolled upon the gaudy carpet.
+
+And now they all heard what he had heard first--they heard the
+tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along
+the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was
+no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards--and the bell jangled
+faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to
+the door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the chair legs.
+
+The door swung open. In the doorway stood a negro child, barefooted and
+naked except for a single garment, eyeing them with serious, rolling
+eyes--and, with all the strength of his two puny arms, proudly but
+solemnly tolling a small rusty cowbell he had found in the cowyard.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET
+
+
+"See if he's still there, will you?" said the man listlessly, as if
+knowing in advance what the answer would be.
+
+The woman, who, like the man, was in her stocking feet, crossed the
+room, closing the door with all softness behind her. She felt her way
+silently through the darkness of a small hallway, putting first her ear
+and then her eye to a tiny cranny in some thick curtains at a front
+window.
+
+She looked downward and outward upon one of those New York side streets
+that is precisely like forty other New York side streets: two unbroken
+lines of high-shouldered, narrow-chested brick-and-stone houses, rising
+in abrupt, straight cliffs; at the bottom of the canyon a narrow river
+of roadway with manholes and conduit covers dotting its channel
+intermittently like scattered stepping stones; and on either side wide,
+flat pavements, as though the stream had fallen to low-water mark and
+left bare its shallow banks. Daylight would have shown most of the
+houses boarded up, with diamond-shaped vents, like leering eyes, cut in
+the painted planking of the windows and doors; but now it was night
+time--eleven o'clock of a wet, hot, humid night of the late summer--and
+the street was buttoned down its length in the double-breasted fashion
+of a bandmaster's coat with twin rows of gas lamps evenly spaced. Under
+each small circle of lighted space the dripping, black asphalt had a
+slimy, slick look like the sides of a newly caught catfish. Elsewhere
+the whole vista lay all in close shadow, black as a cave mouth under
+every stoop front and blacker still in the hooded basement areas. Only,
+half a mile to the eastward a dim, distant flicker showed where Broadway
+ran, a broad, yellow streak down the spine of the city, and high above
+the broken skyline of eaves and cornices there rolled in cloudy waves
+the sullen red radiance, born of a million electrics and the flares from
+gas tanks and chimneys, which is only to be seen on such nights as this,
+giving to the heaven above New York that same color tone you find in an
+artist's conception of Babylon falling or Rome burning.
+
+From where the woman stood at the window she could make out the round,
+white, mushroom top of a policeman's summer helmet as its wearer leaned
+back, half sheltered under the narrow portico of the stoop just below
+her; and she could see his uniform sleeve and his hand, covered with a
+white cotton glove, come up, carrying a handkerchief, and mop the hidden
+face under the helmet's brim. The squeak of his heavy shoes was plainly
+audible to her also. While she stayed there, watching and listening, two
+pedestrians--and only two--passed on her side of the street: a messenger
+boy in a glistening rubber poncho going west and a man under an umbrella
+going east. Each was hurrying along until he came just opposite her, and
+then, as though controlled by the same set of strings, each stopped
+short and looked up curiously at the blind, dark house and at the figure
+lounging in the doorway, then hurried on without a word, leaving the
+silent policeman fretfully mopping his moist face and tugging at the
+wilted collar about his neck.
+
+After a minute or two at her peephole behind the window curtains above,
+the woman passed back through the door to the inner, middle room where
+the man sat.
+
+"Still there," she said lifelessly in the half whisper that she had come
+to use almost altogether these last few days; "still there and sure to
+stay there until another one just like him comes to take his place. What
+else did you expect?"
+
+The man only nodded absently and went on peeling an overripe peach,
+striking out constantly, with the hand that held the knife, at the
+flies. They were green flies--huge, shiny-backed, buzzing, persistent
+vermin. There were a thousand of them; there seemed to be a million of
+them. They filled the shut-in room with their vile humming; they swarmed
+everywhere in the half light. They were thickest, though, in a corner at
+the back, where there was a closed, white door. Here a great knot of
+them, like an iridescent, shimmering jewel, was clustered about the
+keyhole. They scrolled the white enameled panels with intricate,
+shifting patterns, and in pairs and singly they promenaded busily on the
+white porcelain knob, giving it the appearance of being alive and having
+a motion of its own.
+
+It was stiflingly hot and sticky in the room. The sweat rolled down the
+man's face as he peeled his peach and pared some half-rotted spots out
+of it. He protected it with a cupped palm as he bit into it. One huge
+green fly flipped nimbly under the fending hand and lit on the peach.
+With a savage little snarl of disgust and loathing the man shook the
+clinging insect off and with the knife carved away the place where its
+feet had touched the soft fruit. Then he went on munching, meanwhile
+furtively watching the woman. She was on the opposite side of a small
+center-table from him, with her face in her hands, shaking her head with
+a little shuddering motion whenever one of the flies settled on her
+close-cropped hair or brushed her bare neck.
+
+He was a smallish man, with a suggestion of something dapper about him
+even in his present unkempt disorder; he might have been handsome, in a
+weakly effeminate way, had not Nature or some mishap given his face a
+twist that skewed it all to one side, drawing all of his features out of
+focus, like a reflection viewed in a flawed mirror. He was no heavier
+than the woman and hardly as tall. She, however, looked less than her
+real height, seeing that she was dressed, like a half-grown boy, in a
+soft-collared shirt open at the throat and a pair of loose trousers. She
+had large but rather regular features, pouting lips, a clear brown skin
+and full, prominent brown eyes; and one of them had a pronounced cast in
+it--an imperfection already made familiar by picture and printed
+description to sundry millions of newspaper readers. For this was Ella
+Gilmorris, the woman in the case of the Gilmorris murder, about which
+the continent of North America was now reading and talking. And the
+little man with the twisted face, who sat across from her, gnawing a
+peach stone clean, was the notorious "Doctor" Harris Devine, alias
+Vanderburg, her accomplice, and worth more now to society in his present
+untidy state than ever before at any one moment of his whole
+discreditable life, since for his capture the people of the state of New
+York stood willing to pay the sum of one thousand dollars, which tidy
+reward one of the afternoon papers had increased by another thousand.
+
+Everywhere detectives--amateurs and the kind who work for hire--were
+seeking the pair who at this precise moment faced each other across a
+little center-table in the last place any searcher would have suspected
+or expected them to be--on the second floor of the house in which the
+late Cassius Gilmorris had been killed. This, then, was the situation:
+inside, these two fugitives, watchful, silent, their eyes red-rimmed for
+lack of sleep, their nerves raw and tingling as though rasped with
+files, each busy with certain private plans, each fighting off
+constantly the touch of the nasty scavenger flies that flickered and
+flitted iridescently about them; outside, in the steamy, hot drizzle,
+with his back to the locked and double-locked door, a leg-weary
+policeman, believing that he guarded a house all empty except for such
+evidences as yet remained of the Gilmorris murder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of those small, chancy things that so often disarrange the
+best laid plots of murderers that had dished their hope of a clean
+getaway and brought them back, at the last, to the starting point. If
+the plumber's helper, who was sent to cure a bathtub of leaking in the
+house next door, had not made a mistake and come to the wrong number;
+and if they, in the haste of flight, had not left an area door
+unfastened; and if this young plumbing apprentice, stumbling his way
+upstairs on the hunt for the misbehaving drain, had not opened the white
+enameled door and found inside there what he did find--if this small
+sequence of incidents had not occurred as it did and when it did, or if
+only it had been delayed another twenty-four hours, or even twelve,
+everything might have turned out differently. But fate, to call it by
+its fancy name--coincidence, to use its garden one--interfered, as it
+usually does in cases such as this. And so here they were.
+
+The man had been on his way to the steamship office to get the tickets
+when an eruption of newsboys boiled out of Mail Street into Broadway,
+with extras on their arms, all shouting out certain words that sent him
+scurrying back in a panic to the small, obscure family hotel in the
+lower thirties where the woman waited. From that moment it was she,
+really, who took the initiative in all the efforts to break through the
+doubled and tripled lines that the police machinery looped about the
+five boroughs of the city.
+
+At dark that evening "Mr. and Mrs. A. Thompson, of Jersey City," a quiet
+couple who went closely muffled up, considering that it was August, and
+carrying heavy valises, took quarters at a dingy furnished room house on
+a miscalled avenue of Brooklyn not far from the Wall Street ferries and
+overlooking the East River waterfront from its bleary back windows. Two
+hours later a very different-looking pair issued quietly from a side
+entrance of this place and vanished swiftly down toward the docks. The
+thing was well devised and carried out well too; yet by morning the
+detectives, already ranging and quartering the town as bird-dogs quarter
+a brier-field, had caught up again and pieced together the broken ends
+of the trail; and, thanks to them and the newspapers, a good many
+thousand wide awake persons were on the lookout for a plump,
+brown-skinned young woman with a cast in her right eye, wearing a boy's
+disguise and accompanied by a slender little man carrying his head
+slightly to one side, who when last seen wore smoked glasses and had his
+face extensively bandaged, as though suffering from a toothache.
+
+Then had followed days and nights of blind twisting and dodging and
+hiding, with the hunt growing warmer behind them all the time. Through
+this they were guided and at times aided by things printed in the very
+papers that worked the hardest to run them down. Once they ventured as
+far as the outer entrance of the great, new uptown terminal, and turned
+away, too far gone and sick with fear to dare run the gauntlet of the
+waiting room and the train-shed. Once--because they saw a made-up
+Central Office man in every lounging long-shoreman, and were not so far
+wrong either--they halted at the street end of one of the smaller piers
+and from there watched a grimy little foreign boat that carried no
+wireless masts and that might have taken them to any one of half a dozen
+obscure banana ports of South America--watched her while she hiccoughed
+out into midstream and straightened down the river for the open
+bay--watched her out of sight and then fled again to their newest hiding
+place in the lower East Side in a cold sweat, with the feeling that
+every casual eye glance from every chance passer-by carried suspicion
+and recognition in its flash, that every briskening footstep on the
+pavement behind them meant pursuit.
+
+Once in that tormented journey there was a sudden jingle of metal, like
+rattling handcuffs, in the man's ear and a heavy hand fell detainingly
+on his shoulder--and he squeaked like a caught shore-bird and shrunk
+away from under the rough grips of a truckman who had yanked him clear
+of a lurching truck horse tangled in its own traces. Then, finally, had
+come a growing distrust for their latest landlord, a stolid Russian Jew
+who read no papers and knew no English, and saw in his pale pair of
+guests only an American lady and gentleman who kept much to their room
+and paid well in advance for everything; and after that, in the hot
+rainy night, the flight afoot across weary miles of soaking cross
+streets and up through ill-lighted, shabby avenues to the one place of
+refuge left open to them. They had learned from the newspapers, at once
+a guide and a bane, a friend and a dogging enemy, that the place was
+locked up, now that the police had got through searching it, and that
+the coroner's people held the keys. And the woman knew of a faulty catch
+on a rear cellar window, and so, in a fit of stark desperation bordering
+on lunacy, back they ran, like a pair of spent foxes circling to a
+burrow from which they have been smoked out.
+
+Again it was the woman who picked for her companion the easiest path
+through the inky-black alley, and with her own hands she pulled down
+noiselessly the broken slats of the rotting wooden wall at the back of
+the house. And then, soon, they were inside, with the reeking heat of
+the boxed-up house and the knowledge that at any moment discovery might
+come bursting in upon them--inside with their busy thoughts and the busy
+green flies. How persistent the things were--shake them off a hundred
+times and back they came buzzing! And where had they all come from?
+There had been none of them about before, surely, and now their
+maddening, everlasting droning filled the ear. And what nasty creatures
+they were, forever cleaning their shiny wings and rubbing the ends of
+their forelegs together with the loathsome suggestion of little
+grave-diggers anointing their palms. To the woman, at least, these flies
+almost made bearable the realization that, at best, this stopping point
+could be only a temporary one, and that within a few hours a fresh start
+must somehow be made, with fresh dangers to face at every turning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was during this last hideous day of flight and terror that the thing
+which had been growing in the back part of the brain of each of them
+began to assume shape and a definite aspect. The man had the craftier
+mind, but the woman had a woman's intuition, and she already had read
+his thoughts while yet he had no clue to hers. For the primal instinct
+of self-preservation, blazing up high, had burned away the bond of bogus
+love that held them together while they were putting her drunkard of a
+husband out of the way, and now there only remained to tie them fast
+this partnership of a common guilt.
+
+In these last few hours they had both come to know that together there
+was no chance of ultimate escape; traveling together the very disparity
+of their compared appearances marked them with a fatal and unmistakable
+conspicuousness, as though they were daubed with red paint from the same
+paint brush; staying together meant ruin--certain, sure. Now, then,
+separated and going singly, there might be a thin strand of hope. Yet
+the man felt that, parted a single hour from the woman, and she still
+alive, his wofully small prospect would diminish and shrink to the
+vanishing point--New York juries being most notoriously easy upon women
+murderers who give themselves up and turn state's evidence; and, by the
+same mistaken processes of judgment, notoriously hard upon their male
+accomplices--half a dozen such instances had been playing in flashes
+across his memory already.
+
+Neither had so much as hinted at separating. The man didn't speak,
+because of a certain idea that had worked itself all out hours before
+within his side-flattened skull. The woman likewise had refrained from
+putting in words the suggestion that had been uppermost in her brain
+from the time they broke into the locked house. Some darting look of
+quick, malignant suspicion from him, some inner warning sense, held her
+mute at first; and later, as the newborn hate and dread of him grew and
+mastered her and she began to canvass ways and means to a certain end,
+she stayed mute still.
+
+Whatever was to be done must be done quietly, without a struggle--the
+least sound might arouse the policeman at the door below. One thing was
+in her favor--she knew he was not armed; he had the contempt and the
+fear of a tried and proved poisoner for cruder lethal tools.
+
+It was characteristic also of the difference between these two that
+Devine should have had his plan stage-set and put to motion long before
+the woman dreamed of acting. It was all within his orderly scheme of the
+thing proposed that he, a shrinking coward, should have set his squirrel
+teeth hard and risked detection twice in that night: once to buy a
+basket of overripe fruit from a dripping Italian at a sidewalk stand,
+taking care to get some peaches--he just must have a peach, he had
+explained to her; and once again when he entered a dark little store on
+Second Avenue, where liquors were sold in their original packages, and
+bought from a sleepy, stupid clerk two bottles of a cheap domestic
+champagne--"to give us the strength for making a fresh start," he told
+her glibly, as an excuse for taking this second risk. So, then, with the
+third essential already resting at the bottom of an inner waistcoat
+pocket, he was prepared; and he had been waiting for his opportunity
+from the moment when they crept in through the basement window and felt
+their way along, she resolutely leading, to the windowless, shrouded
+middle room here on the second floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How she hated him, feared him too! He could munch his peaches and uncork
+his warm, cheap wine in this very room, with that bathroom just yonder
+and these flies all about. From under her fingers, interlaced over her
+forehead, her eyes roved past him, searching the littered room for the
+twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking--and suddenly they fell on
+something--a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's
+masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a
+couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round
+black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown.
+She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin--a
+steel hatpin--that was ten inches long and maybe longer.
+
+She looked and looked at the round, dull knob, like a mystic held by a
+hypnotist's crystal ball, and she began to breathe a little faster; she
+could feel her resolution tighten within her like a turning screw.
+
+Beneath her brows, heavy and thick for a woman's, her eyes flitted back
+to the man. With the careful affectation of doing nothing at all, a
+theatricalism that she detected instantly, but for which she could guess
+no reason, he was cutting away at the damp, close-gnawed seed of the
+peach, trying apparently to fashion some little trinket--a toy basket,
+possibly--from it. His fingers moved deftly over its slick, wet surface.
+He had already poured out some of the champagne. One of the pint bottles
+stood empty, with the distorted button-headed cork lying beside it, and
+in two glasses the yellow wine was fast going flat and dead in that
+stifling heat. It still spat up a few little bubbles to the surface, as
+though minute creatures were drowning in it down below. The man was
+sweating more than ever, so that, under the single, low-turned gas jet,
+his crooked face had a greasy shine to it. A church clock down in the
+next block struck twelve slowly. The sleepless flies buzzed evilly.
+
+"Look out again, won't you?" he said for perhaps the tenth time in two
+hours. "There's a chance, you know, that he might be gone--just a bare
+chance. And be sure you close the door into the hall behind you," he
+added as if by an afterthought. "You left it ajar once--this light might
+show through the window draperies."
+
+At his bidding she rose more willingly than at any time before. To reach
+the door she passed within a foot of the end of the couch, and watching
+over her shoulder at his hunched-up back she paused there for the
+smallest fraction of time. The damaged picture hat slid off on the floor
+with a soft little thud, but he never turned around.
+
+The instant, though, that the hall door closed behind her the man's
+hands became briskly active. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his
+unbuttoned waistcoat; then his right hand, holding a small cylindrical
+vial of a colorless liquid, passed swiftly over one of the two glasses
+of slaking champagne and hovered there a second. A few tiny globules
+fell dimpling into the top of the yellow wine, then vanished; a heavy
+reek, like the smell of crushed peach kernels, spread through the whole
+room. In the same motion almost he recorked the little bottle, stowed it
+out of sight, and with a quick, wrenching thrust that bent the small
+blade of his penknife in its socket he split the peach seed in two
+lengthwise and with his thumb-nail bruised the small brown kernel lying
+snugly within. He dropped the knife and the halved seed and began
+sipping at the undoctored glass of champagne, not forgetting even then
+to wave his fingers above it to keep the winged green tormentors out.
+
+The door at the front reopened and the woman came in. Her thoughts were
+not upon smells, but instinctively she sniffed at the thick scent on the
+poisoned air.
+
+"I accidentally split this peach seed open," he said quickly, with an
+elaborate explanatory air. "Stenches up the whole place, don't it? Come,
+take that other glass of champagne--it will do you good to----"
+
+Perhaps it was some subtle sixth sense that warned him; perhaps the
+lightning-quick realization that she had moved right alongside him,
+poised and set to strike. At any rate he started to fling up his
+head--too late! The needle point of the jet-headed hatpin entered
+exactly at the outer corner of his right eye and passed backward for
+nearly its full length into his brain--smoothly, painlessly, swiftly. He
+gave a little surprised gasp, almost like a sob, and lolled his head
+back against the chair rest, like a man who has grown suddenly tired.
+The hand that held the champagne glass relaxed naturally and the glass
+turned over on its side with a small tinkling sound and spilled its thin
+contents on the table.
+
+It had been easier than she had thought it would be. She stepped back,
+still holding the hatpin. She moved around from behind him, and then she
+saw his face, half upturned, almost directly beneath the low light.
+There was no blood, no sign even of the wound, but his jaw had dropped
+down unpleasantly, showing the ends of his lower front teeth, and his
+eyes stared up unwinkingly with a puzzled, almost a disappointed, look
+in them. A green fly lit at the outer corner of his right eye; more
+green flies were coming. And he didn't put up his hand to brush it away.
+He let it stay--he let it stay there.
+
+With her eyes still fixed on his face, the woman reached out, feeling
+for her glass of the champagne. She felt that she needed it now, and at
+a gulp she took a good half of it down her throat.
+
+She put the glass down steadily enough on the table; but into her eyes
+came the same puzzled, baffled look that his wore, and almost gently she
+slipped down into the chair facing him.
+
+Then her jaw lolled a little too, and some of the other flies came
+buzzing toward her.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES
+
+
+The first time I saw Major Putnam Stone I didn't see him first. To be
+exact, I heard him first, and then I walked round the end of a
+seven-foot partition and saw him.
+
+I had just gone to work for the Evening Press. As I recall now it was my
+second day, and I hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and probably
+was more sensitive to outside sights and noises than I would ever again
+be in that place. Generally speaking, when a reporter settles down to
+his knitting, which in his case is his writing, he becomes impervious to
+all disturbances excepting those that occur inside his own brainpan. If
+he couldn't, he wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good,
+live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nine
+minutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines,
+and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a couple
+of copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. He
+may not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of being
+distracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of the
+shop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and efficiency. I've
+often thought that, when I was handling a good, bloody murder story,
+say, it would tone up my style to have a phonograph about ten feet away
+grinding out The Last Ravings of John McCullough. Anyway, I am sure it
+wouldn't do any harm. A brass band playing a John Philip Sousa march
+makes fine accompaniment to write copy to. I've done it before now,
+covering parades and conventions, and I know.
+
+But on this particular occasion I was, as I say, new to the job and
+maybe a little nervous to boot, and as I sat there, trying to frame a
+snappy opening paragraph for the interview I had just brought back with
+me from one of the hotels, I became aware of a voice somewhere in the
+immediate vicinity, a voice that didn't jibe in with my thoughts. At the
+moment I stopped to listen it was saying: "As for me, sir, I have always
+contended that the ultimate fate of the cause was due in great measure
+to the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh on the evening of the
+first day's fight. Now then, what would have been the final result if
+Albert Sidney Johnston had lived? I ask you, gentlemen, what would have
+been the final result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?"
+
+Across the room from me I heard Devore give a hollow groan. His desk was
+backed right up against the cross partition, and the partition was built
+of thin pine boards and was like a sounding board in his ear. Devore was
+city editor.
+
+"Oh, thunder!" he said, half under his breath, "I'll be the goat! What
+would have been the result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?" He
+looked at me and gave a wink of serio-comic despair, and then he ran his
+blue pencil up through his hair and left a blue streak like a scar on
+his scalp. Devore was one of the few city editors I have ever seen who
+used that tool which all of them are popularly supposed to handle so
+murderously--a blue pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was flustered
+or annoyed--and that was most of the time--of scratching his head with
+the point end of it, his forehead under the hair roots was usually
+streaked with purplish-blue tracings, like a fly-catcher's egg.
+
+The voice, which had a deep and space-filling quality to it, continued
+to come through and over the partition that divided off our cubby-hole
+of a workroom--called a city room by courtesy--from the space where
+certain other members of the staff had their desks. I got up from my
+place and stepped over to where the thin wall ended in a doorway, being
+minded to have a look at the speaker. The voice sounded as though it
+must belong to a big man with a barrel-organ chest. I was surprised to
+find that it didn't.
+
+Its owner was sitting in a chair in the middle of a little space
+cluttered up with discarded exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather a
+small man, short but compact. He had his hat off and his hair, which was
+thin but fine as silk floss, was combed back over his ears and sprayed
+out behind in a sort of mane effect. It had been red hair once, but was
+now so thickly streaked with white that it had become a faded brindle
+color. I took notice of this first because his back was toward me; in a
+second or two he turned his head sideways and I saw that he had exactly
+the face to match the hair. It was a round, plump, elderly face, with a
+short nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and
+just under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-red
+goatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a
+sandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, I
+took note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chest
+and ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolled
+majestically and Byronically clear up under his ears. Under the collar
+was loosely knotted a black-silk tie such as sailors wear. His vest was
+unbuttoned, all except the two lowermost buttons, and the sleeves of
+his coat were turned back neatly off his wrists. This, though, could
+not have been on account of the heat, because the weather wasn't very
+hot yet. I learned later that, winter or summer, he always kept his coat
+sleeves turned back and the upper buttons of his vest unfastened. His
+hands were small and plump, and his feet were small too and daintily
+shod in low, square-toed shoes. About the whole man there was an air
+somehow of full-bloomed foppishness gone to tassel--as though having
+been a dandy once, he was now merely neat and precise in his way of
+dress.
+
+He was talking along with the death of Albert Sidney Johnston for his
+subject, not seeming to notice that his audience wasn't deeply
+interested. He had, it seemed, a way of stating a proposition as a fact,
+as an indisputable, everlasting, eternal fact, an immutable thing. It
+became immutable through his way of stating it. Then he would frame it
+in the form of a question and ask it. Then he would answer it himself
+and go right ahead.
+
+Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled up at his desk, wearing a look
+of patient endurance on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor, was
+trying to do his work--trying, I say, because the orator was booming
+away like a bittern within three feet of him and Harty plainly was
+pestered and fretful. Really the only person in sight who seemed
+entertained was Sidley, the exchange editor, a young man with hair that
+had turned white before its time and in his eye the devil-driven look of
+a man who drinks hard, not because he wants to drink but because he
+can't help drinking. Sidley, as I was to find out later, had less cause
+to care for the old man than anybody about the shop, for he used to
+disarrange Sidley's neatly piled exchanges, pawing through them for his
+favorite papers. But Sidley could forget his own grievances in watchful
+enjoyment of the dumb sufferings of Harty, whom he hated, as I came to
+know, with the blind hate a dipsomaniac often has for any mild and
+perfectly harmless individual.
+
+As I stood there taking in the picture, the speaker, sensing a
+stranger's presence, faced clear about and saw me. He nodded with a
+grave courtesy, and then paused a moment as though expecting that one of
+the others would introduce us. None of the others did introduce us
+though, so he went ahead talking about Albert Sidney Johnston's death,
+and I turned away. I stopped by Devore's desk.
+
+"Who is he?" I asked.
+
+"That," he said, with a kind of leashed and restrained ferocity in his
+voice, "is Major Putnam P. Stone--and the P stands for Pest, which is
+his middle name--late of the Southern Confederacy."
+
+"Picturesque-looking old fellow, isn't he?" I said.
+
+"Picturesque old nuisance," he said, and jabbed at his scalp with his
+pencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've been
+here a few weeks and you'll have another name for him."
+
+"Well, anyway, he's got a good carrying voice," I said, rather at a loss
+to understand Devore's bitterness.
+
+"Great," he mocked venomously; "you can hear it a mile. I hear it in my
+sleep. So will you when you get to know him, the old bore!"
+
+In due time I did get to know Major Stone well. He was dignified,
+tiresome, conversational, gentle mannered and, I think, rather lonely.
+By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap there, I learned something about
+his private life. He came from the extreme eastern end of the state. He
+belonged to an old family. His grandfather--or maybe it was his
+great-grand-uncle--had been one of the first United States senators that
+went to Washington after our state was admitted into the Union. He had
+never married. He had no business or profession. From some property or
+other he drew an income, small, but enough to keep him in a sort of
+simple and genteel poverty. He belonged to the best club in town and the
+most exclusive, the Shawnee Club, and he had served four years in the
+Confederate army. That last was the one big thing in his life. To the
+major's conceptions everything that happened before 1861 had been of a
+preparatory nature, leading up to and paving the way for the main
+event; and what had happened since 1865 was of no consequence, except in
+so far as it reflected the effects of the Civil War.
+
+Daily, as methodically as a milkwagon horse, he covered the same route.
+First he sat in the reading room of the old Gaunt House, where by an
+open fire in winter or by an open window in summer he discussed the
+blunders of Braxton Bragg and similar congenial topics with a little
+group of aging, fading, testy veterans. On his way to the Shawnee Club
+he would come by the Evening Press office and stay an hour, or two
+hours, or three hours, to go away finally with a couple of favored
+exchanges tucked under his arm, and leave us with our ears still dinned
+and tingling. Once in a while of a night, passing the Gaunt House on my
+way to the boarding house where I lived--for four dollars a week--I
+would see him through the windows, sometimes sitting alone, sometimes
+with one of his cronies.
+
+Round the office he sometimes bothered us and sometimes he interfered
+with our work; but mainly all the men on the staff liked him, I think,
+or at least we put up with him. In our home town each of us had known
+somebody very much like him--there used to be at least one Major Stone
+in every community in the South, although most of them are dead now, I
+guess--so we all could understand him. When I say all I mean all but
+Devore. The major's mere presence would poison Devore's whole day for
+him. The major's blaring notes would cross-cut Devore's nerves as with a
+dull and haggling saw. He--Devore I mean--disliked the major with a
+dislike almost too deep for words. It had got to be an obsession with
+him.
+
+"You fellows that were born down here have to stand for him," he said
+once, when the major had stumped out on his short legs after an
+unusually long visit. "It's part of the penalty you pay for belonging in
+this country. But I don't have to venerate him and fuss over him and
+listen to him. I'm a Yankee, thank the Lord!" Devore came from Michigan
+and had worked on papers in Cleveland and Detroit before he drifted
+South. "Oh, we've got his counterpart up my way," he went on. "Up there
+he'd be a pension-grabbing old kicker, ready to have a fit any time
+anybody wearing a gray uniform got within ninety miles of him, and
+writing red-hot letters of protest to the newspapers every time the
+state authorities sent a captured battle flag back down South. Down here
+he's a pompous, noisy old fraud, too proud to work for a living--or too
+lazy--and too poor to count for anything in this world. The difference
+is that up in my country we've squelched the breed--we got good and
+tired of these professional Bloody Shirt wavers a good while ago; but
+here you fuss over this man, and you'll sit round and pretend to listen
+while he drools away about things that happened before any one of you
+was born. Do you fellows know what I've found out about your Major
+Putnam Stone? He's a life member of the Shawnee Club--a life member,
+mind you! And here I've been living in this town over a year, and nobody
+ever so much as invited me inside its front door!"
+
+All of which was, perhaps, true, even though Devore had an unnecessarily
+harsh way of stating the case; the part about the Shawnee Club was true,
+at any rate, and I used to think it possibly had something to do with
+Devore's feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore gave open utterance
+to his feelings to the major's face. To the major he was always silently
+polite, with a little edging of ice on his politeness; he saved up his
+spleen to spew it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther than that he
+couldn't well afford to go anyhow. The Chief, owner of the paper and its
+editor, was the major's friend. As for the major himself, he seemed
+never to notice Devore's attitude. For a fact, I believe he actually
+felt a sort of pity for Devore, seeing that Devore had been born in the
+North. Not to have been born in the South was, from the major's way of
+looking at the thing, a great and regrettable misfortune for which the
+victim could not be held responsible, since the fault lay with his
+parents and not with him. By way of a suitable return for this, Devore
+spent many a spare moment thinking up grotesque yet wickedly
+appropriate nicknames for the major. He called him Old First and Second
+Manassas and Old Hardee's Tactics and Old Valley of Virginia. He called
+him an old bluffer too.
+
+He was wrong there, though, certainly. Though the major talked pretty
+exclusively about the war, I took notice that he rarely talked about the
+part he himself had played in it. Indeed, he rarely discussed anybody
+below the rank of brigadier. The errors of Hood's campaign concerned him
+more deeply than the personal performances of any individual. Campaigns
+you might say were his specialty, campaigns and strategy. About such
+things as these he could talk for hours--and he did.
+
+I've known other men--plenty of them--not nearly so well educated as the
+major, who could tell you tales of the war that would make you see
+it--yes, and smell it too--the smoke of the campfires, the unutterable
+fatigue of forced marches when the men, with their tongues lolling out
+of their mouths like dogs, staggered along, panting like dogs; the
+bloody prints of unshod feet on flinty, frozen clods; the shock and
+fearful joy of the fighting; the shamed numbness of retreats; artillery
+horses, their hides all blood-boltered and their tails clubbed and
+clotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns;
+dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics--all of it. But
+when the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, in
+whiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring over
+maps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud of
+the vanished past it certainly was mighty dry chewing.
+
+There came a day, a few weeks after I went to work for the Evening
+Press, when for once anyway the major didn't seem to have anything to
+say. It was in the middle of a blistering, smothering hot forenoon in
+early June, muggy and still and close, when a fellow breathing felt as
+though he had his nose buried in layers of damp cotton waste. The city
+room was a place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing room at the
+back the stenches of melting metals and stale machine oils came rolling
+in to us in nasty waves. With his face glistening through the trickling
+sweat, the major came in about ten o'clock, fanning himself with his
+hat, and when he spoke his greeting the booming note seemed all melted
+and gone out of his voice. He went through the city room into the room
+behind the partition, and passing through a minute later I saw him
+sitting there with one of Sidley's exchanges unfolded across his knee,
+but he wasn't reading it. Presently I saw him climbing laboriously up
+the stairs to the second floor where the chief had his office. At
+quitting time that afternoon I dropped into the place on the corner for
+a beer, and I was drinking it, as close to an electric fan as I could
+get, when Devore came in and made for where I was standing. I asked him
+to have something.
+
+"I'll take the same," he said to the man behind the bar, and then to me
+with a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resign
+this rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the business
+long enough to know that the average newspaper man is forever
+threatening to resign. Most of them--to hear them talk--are always just
+on the point of throwing up their jobs and buying a good-paying country
+weekly somewhere and taking things easy for the rest of their lives, or
+else they're going into magazine work. Only they hardly ever do it. So
+Devore's threat didn't jar me much. I'd heard it too often.
+
+"What's the trouble?" I asked. "Heat getting on your nerves?"
+
+"No, it's not the heat," he said peevishly; "it's worse than the heat.
+Do you know what's happened? The chief has saddled Old Signal Corps on
+me. Yes, sir, I've got to take his old pet, the major, on the city
+staff. It seems he's succeeded in losing what little property he
+had--the chief told me some rigmarole about sudden financial
+reverses--and now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've got to take
+him on as a reporter--a cub reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, who
+hasn't heard of anything worth while since Robert E. Lee surrendered!"
+
+The pathos of the situation--if you could call it that--hit me with a
+jolt; but it hadn't hit Devore, that was plain. He saw only the annoying
+part of it.
+
+"What's he going to do?" I asked--"assignments, or cover a route like
+the district men?"
+
+"Lord knows," said Devore. "Because the old bore knows a lot of big
+people in this town and is friendly with all the old-timers in the
+state, the chief has a wild delusion that he can pick up a lot of stuff
+that an ordinary reporter wouldn't get. Rats!
+
+"Come on, let's take another beer," he said, and then he added: "Well,
+I'll just make you two predictions. He'll be a total loss as a
+reporter--that's one prediction; and the other is that he'll have a hard
+time buying his provender and his toddies over at the Shawnee Club on
+the salary he'll draw down from the Evening Press."
+
+Devore was not such a very great city editor, as I know now in the light
+of fuller experience, but I must say that as a prophet he was fairly
+accurate. The major did have a hard time living on his salary--it was
+twelve a week, I learned--and as a reporter he certainly was not what
+you would call a dazzling success. He came on for duty at eight the next
+morning, the same as the rest of us, and sorry as I felt for him I had
+to laugh. He had bought himself a leather-backed notebook as big as a
+young ledger, just as a green kid just out of high school would have
+done, and he had a long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencil
+sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat. He tried to come in
+smartly with a businesslike air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blind
+man, because he was as nervous as a debutante. It struck me as one of
+the funniest things--and one of the most pathetic--I had ever seen.
+
+I'll say this for Devore--he tried out the major on nearly every kind of
+job; and surely it wasn't Devore's fault that the major failed on every
+single one of them. His first attempt was as typical a failure as any of
+them. That first morning Devore assigned him to cover a wedding at high
+noon, high noon being the phrase we always used for a wedding that took
+place round twelve o'clock in the day. The daughter of one of the
+wealthiest merchants in the town, and also one of our largest
+advertisers, was going to be married to the first deputy cotillion
+leader of the German Club, or something of that nature. Anyhow the groom
+was what is known as prominent in society, and the chief wanted a spread
+made of it. Devore sent the major out to cover the wedding, and when he
+came back told him to write about half a column.
+
+He wrote half a column before he mentioned the bride's name. He started
+off with an eight-line quotation from Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake,
+and then he went into a long, flowery dissertation on the sacred rite or
+ceremony of matrimony, proving conclusively and beyond the peradventure
+of a doubt that it was handed down to us from remote antiquity. And he
+forgot altogether to tell the minister's name, and he got the groom's
+middle initial wrong--he was the kind of groom who would make a fuss
+over a wrong middle initial, too--and along toward the end of his story
+he devoted about three closely-written pages to the military history of
+the young woman's father. It seems that her parent had served with
+distinction as colonel of a North Carolina regiment. And he wound up
+with a fancy flourish and handed it in. I know all these details of his
+story, because it fell to me to rewrite it.
+
+Devore didn't say a word when the old major reverently laid that armload
+of copy down in front of him. He just sat and waited in silence until
+the major had gone out to get a bite to eat, and then he undertook to
+edit it. But there wasn't any way to edit it, except to throw it away. I
+suppose that kind of literature went very well indeed back along about
+1850; I remember having read such accounts in the back files of old
+weeklies, printed before the war. But we were getting out a live, snappy
+paper. Devore tried to pattern the local side after the New York and
+Chicago models. As yet we hadn't reached the point where we spoke of any
+white woman without the prefix Mrs. or Miss before her name, but we were
+up-to-date in a good many other particulars. Why, it was even against
+the office rule to run "beauty and chivalry" into a story when
+describing a mixed assemblage of men and women; and when a Southern
+newspaper bars out that ancient and honorable standby among phrases it
+is a sign that the old order has changed.
+
+For ten minutes or so Devore, cursing softly to himself, cut and chopped
+and gutted his way through the major's introduction, and between
+slashing strokes made a war map of the Balkans in his scalp with his
+blue pencil. Then he lost patience altogether.
+
+"Here," he said to me, "you're not doing anything, are you? Well, take
+this awful bunch of mushy slush and read it through, and then try to
+make a decent half-column story out of it. And rush it over a page at a
+time, will you? We've got to hustle to catch the three o'clock edition
+with it."
+
+Long before three o'clock the major was back in the shop, waiting for
+the first run of papers to come off the press. Furtively I watched him
+as he hunted through the sticky pages to find his first story. I guess
+he had the budding pride of authorship in him, just as all the rest of
+us have it in us. But he didn't find his story, he found mine. He didn't
+say anything, but he looked crushed and forlorn as he got up and went
+away. It was like him not to ask for any explanations, and it was like
+Devore not to offer him any.
+
+So it went. Even if he had grown up in the business I doubt whether
+Major Putnam Stone would ever have made a newspaper man; and now he was
+too far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. He
+didn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the most
+amazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he could
+always be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequential
+detail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point lace
+adjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig up
+a long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a story
+without a quotation from one of the poets. It never was a modern poet
+either. Excepting for Sidney Lanier and Father Ryan, apparently he
+hadn't heard of any poet worth while since Edgar Allan Poe died. And
+everything that happened seemed to remind him--at great length--of
+something else that had happened between 1861 and 1865. When it came to
+lugging the Civil War into a tale, he was as bad as that character in
+one of Dickens' novels who couldn't keep the head of King Charles the
+First out of his literary productions. With that reared-back,
+flat-heeled, stiff-spined gait of his, he would go rummaging round the
+hotels and the Shawnee Club, meeting all sorts of people and hearing all
+sorts of things that a real reporter would have snatched at like a
+hungry dog snatching at a T-bone, and then he would remember that it
+was the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain, or
+something, and, forgetting everything else, would come bulging and
+bustling back to the office, all worked up over the prospect of writing
+two or three columns about that. He just simply couldn't get the
+viewpoint; yet I think he tried hard enough. I guess the man who said
+you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks had particular reference to an
+old war dog.
+
+I remember mighty well one incident that illustrates the point I am
+trying to make. We had a Sunday edition. We were rather vain of our
+Sunday edition. It carried a colored comic supplement and a section full
+of special features, and we all took a more or less righteous pride in
+it and tried hard to make it alive and attractive. We didn't always
+succeed, but we tried all right. One Saturday night we put the Sunday to
+bed, and about one o'clock, when the last form was locked, three or four
+of us dropped into Tony's place at the corner for a bite to eat and a
+drink. We hadn't been there very long when in came the old major, and at
+my invitation he joined us at one of Tony's little round tables at the
+back of the place. As a general thing the major didn't patronize Tony's.
+I had never heard him say so--probably he wouldn't have said it for fear
+of hurting our feelings--but I somehow had gathered the impression that
+the major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all, should drink at his
+club. But it was long after midnight now and the Shawnee Club would be
+closed. Ike Webb spoke up presently.
+
+"It's a pity we couldn't dig up the governor tonight," he said.
+
+The governor had come down from the state capital about noon, and all
+the afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to
+find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb
+could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his
+toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent an
+hour with the governor tonight--at my club. In fact, I supped with him
+in one of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but the
+major went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to know
+that every time I see our worthy governor I am struck more and more by
+his resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that gallant soldier and
+gentleman looked when I last saw him----"
+
+Devore, who had been sitting next to the major, with his shoulder half
+turned from the old man, swung round sharply and interrupted him.
+
+"Major," he said, with a thin icy stream of sarcasm trickling through
+his words, "did you and the governor by any remote chance discuss
+anything so brutally new and fresh as the present political
+complications in this state?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the major blandly. "We discussed them quite at some
+length--or at least the governor did. Personally I do not take a great
+interest in these matters, not so great an interest as I should,
+perhaps, take. However, I did feel impelled to take issue with him on
+one point. Our governor is an honest gentleman--more than that, he was a
+brave soldier--but I fear he is mistaken in some of his attitudes. I
+regard him as being badly advised. For example, he told me that no
+longer ago than this afternoon he affixed his official signature to a
+veto of Senator Stickney's measure in regard to the warehouses of our
+state----"
+
+As Devore jumped up he overturned the major's toddy right in the major's
+lap. He didn't stop to beg pardon, though; in fact, none of us stopped.
+But at the door I threw one glance backward over my shoulder. The major
+was still sitting reared back in his chair, with his wasted toddy
+seeping all down the front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishing
+figures with amazement and a mild reproof in his eyes. In the one quick
+glance that I took I translated his expression to mean something like
+this:
+
+"Good Heavens, is this any way for a party of gentlemen to break up!
+This could never happen at a gentlemen's club."
+
+It was a foot-race back to the office, and Devore, who had the start,
+won by a short length. Luckily the distance was short, not quite half a
+block, and the presses hadn't started yet. Working like the crew of a
+sinking ship, we snatched the first page form back off the steam table
+and pried it open and gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of the
+last column--Devore blistered his fingers doing it. A couple of linotype
+operators who were on the late trick threw together the stick or two of
+copy that Webb and I scribbled off a line at a time. And while we were
+doing this Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head. So we missed
+only one mail.
+
+The first page had a ragged, sloppy look, but anyway we were saved from
+being scooped to death on the most important story of the year. The
+vetoing of the Stickney Bill vitally affected the tobacco interests, and
+they were the biggest interests in the state, and half the people of the
+state had been thinking about nothing else and talking about nothing
+else for two months--ever since the extra session of the legislature
+started. It was well for us too that we did save our faces, because the
+opposition sheet had managed to find the governor--he was stopping for
+the night at the house of a friend out in the suburbs--and over the
+telephone at a late hour he had announced his decision to them. But by
+Monday morning the major seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. I
+think he had even forgiven Devore for spilling his toddy and not
+stopping to apologize.
+
+As for Devore, he didn't say a word to the major--what would have been
+the use? To Devore's credit also I will say that he didn't run to the
+chief, bearing complaints of the major's hopeless incompetency. He kept
+his tongue between his teeth and his teeth locked; and that must have
+been hard on Devore, for he was a flickery, high-tempered man, and
+nervous as a cat besides. To my knowledge, the only time he ever broke
+out was when we teetotally missed the Castleton divorce story. So far as
+the major's part in it was concerned, it was the Stickney veto story all
+over again, with variations. The Castletons were almost the richest
+people in town, and socially they stood way up. That made the scandal
+that had been brewing and steeping and simmering for months all the
+bigger when finally it came to a boil. When young Buford Castleton got
+his eyes open and became aware of what everybody else had known for a
+year or more, and when the rival evening paper came out in its last
+edition with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening Press shop,
+were plastered with shame, for we didn't have a line of it.
+
+A stranger dropping in just about that time would have been justified in
+thinking there was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere, and that
+all the members of the city staff were sitting up with the remains. As
+luck would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped in on our grand
+lodge of sorrow. It was Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the door
+he caught the tag end of what one of us was saying.
+
+"I gather," he said in that large round voice of his, "that you young
+gentlemen are discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is mentioned
+with such signally poor taste in the columns of our sensational
+contemporary. I may state that I knew of this contemplated divorce
+action yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton, Senior, was my informant."
+
+"What!" Devore almost yelled it. He had the love of a true city editor
+for his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for his
+gold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about this
+thing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of a
+tuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You knew it
+yesterday?"
+
+"Certainly," said the major. "The elder Mr. Castleton bared the truly
+distressing details to me at the Shawnee Club."
+
+"In confidence though--he told you about it in confidence, didn't he,
+major?" said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow.
+
+But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.
+
+"Absolutely not," he said. "There were several of us present, at least
+three other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castleton
+made the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among his
+friends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that he
+was entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law."
+
+Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat on
+himself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voice
+ran up and down the scales quiveringly.
+
+"Major," he said, "don't you think it would be a good idea if you would
+admit that the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned your
+attention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn't
+you write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it?
+Why didn't----Oh, what's the use!"
+
+The major straightened himself up.
+
+"Sir," he said, "allow me to correct you in regard to a plain
+misstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated.
+It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted--because our
+devastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed upon
+this paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. I
+would be the last to give circulation in the public prints to another
+gentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that a
+gentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under any
+circumstances."
+
+And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leaving
+Devore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to hold
+himself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for my
+boarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped one
+of his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes.
+
+"Our city editor means well, no doubt," he said, "but he doesn't
+understand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. He
+was born on the other side of the river, you know," he said as though
+that explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept into
+it. "Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return to
+him and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner of
+speech I used just now?"
+
+I told him no--I didn't know what might happen if he went back in there
+then--and I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect any apology; and
+with that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood there
+watching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away from
+me, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant,
+cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. And
+right then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understanding
+of a thing that had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I had
+wondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided in
+my own mind that he must be blind to it, else he would have shown
+resentment. But now I knew the answer. The major wasn't blind, he was
+afraid; as the saying goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it; he
+needed the little scrap of money it brought him every Saturday night.
+That was it, I knew now.
+
+Knowing it made me sorrier than ever for the old man. Dimly I began to
+realize, I think, what his own mental attitude toward his position must
+be. Here he was, a mere cub reporter--and a remarkably bad one, a proven
+failure--skirmishing round for small, inconsequential items, running
+errands really, at an age when most of the men he knew were getting
+ready to retire from business. Yet he didn't dare quit. He didn't dare
+even to rebel against the slights of the man over him, because he needed
+that twelve dollars a week. It was all, no doubt, that stood between him
+and actual want. His pride was bleeding to death internally. On top of
+all that he was being forced into a readjustment of his whole scheme of
+things, at a time of life when its ordered routine was almost as much a
+part of him as his hands and feet. As I figured it, he had long before
+adjusted his life to his income, cunningly fitting in certain small
+luxuries and all the small comforts; and now this income was cut to a
+third or a quarter perhaps of its former dimensions. It seemed a pretty
+hard thing for the major. It was fierce.
+
+Perhaps my vision was clouded by my sympathy, but I thought Major Stone
+aged visibly that summer. Maybe you have noticed how it is with men who
+have gone along, hale and stanch, until they reach a certain age. When
+they do start to break they break fast. He lost some of his flesh and
+most of his rosiness. The skin on his face loosened a little and became
+a tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like a winter-killed apple.
+
+His wardrobe suffered. One day one of his short little shoes was split
+across the top just back of the toe cap, and the next morning it was
+patched. Pretty soon the other shoe followed suit--first a crack in the
+leather, then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore his black slouch
+hat until it was as green in spots as a gage plum; and late in August he
+supplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished brown-straw hats that
+cost about thirty-five cents apiece and look it.
+
+His linen must have been one of his small extravagances. Those
+majestically collared garments with the tremendous plaited bosoms and
+the hand worked eyelets, where the three big flat gold studs went in,
+never came ready made from any shop. They must have been built to his
+measure and his order. Now he wore them until there were gaped places
+between the plaits where the fine, fragile linen had ripped lengthwise,
+and the collars were frayed down and broken across and caved in limply.
+Finally he gave them up too, and one morning came to work wearing a
+flimsy, sleazy, negligee shirt. I reckon you know the kind of shirt I
+mean--always it fits badly, and the sleeves are always short and the
+bosom is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper. After his
+old full-bosomed grandeur this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned on
+to it and overriding the neckband, and gaping away in the front so that
+the major's throat showed, seemed to typify more than anything else the
+days upon which he had fallen. About this time I thought his voice took
+on a changed tone permanently. It was still hollow, but it no longer
+rang.
+
+A good many men similarly placed would have taken to drink, but Major
+Putnam Stone plainly was never born to be a drunkard and hard times
+couldn't make one of him. With a sort of gentle, stupid persistence he
+hung fast to his poor job, blundering through some way, struggling
+constantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade--the a, b, c's of
+it--and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the
+war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore
+maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to
+accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better
+footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the
+old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room,
+and he would chew on his under lip and viciously lance his scalp with
+his pencil point.
+
+Well, aside from the major, Devore had his troubles that summer. That
+was the summer of the biggest, bitterest campaign that the state had
+seen, so old-timers said, since Breckinridge ran against Douglas and
+both of them against Lincoln. If you have ever lived in the South,
+probably you know something of political fights that will divide a state
+into two armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until old slumbering
+animosities come crawling out into the open, like poison snakes from
+under a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the shell every hour or so
+in a multiplying adder brood.
+
+This was like that, only worse. Stripped of a lot of embroidery in the
+shape of side issues and local complications, it resolved itself in a
+last-ditch, last-stand, back-to-the-wall fight of the old régime of the
+party against the new. On one side were the oldsters, bearers of famous
+names some of them, who had learned politics as a trade and followed it
+as a profession. Almost to a man they were professional office holders,
+professional handshakers, professional silver tongues. And against them
+were pitted a greedy, hungry group of younger men, less showy perhaps in
+their persons, less picturesque in their manner of speech, but filled
+each one with a great yearning for office and power; and they brought to
+the aid of their vaulting ambitions a new and a faultlessly running
+machine. From the outset the Evening Press had championed the cause of
+the old crowd--the state-house ring as the enemy called it, when they
+didn't call it something worse. We championed it not as a Northern or an
+Eastern paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but fiercely and
+wholly and blindly--so blindly that we could see nothing in our own
+faction but what was good and high and pure, nothing in the other but
+what was smutted with evil intent. In daily double-leaded editorial
+columns the chief preached a Holy War, and in the local pages we fought
+the foe tooth and nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they gouged
+and clawed back at us like catamounts. That was where the hard work fell
+upon Devore. He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politics
+while the other half tried to cover the run of the news.
+
+If I live to be a thousand years old I am not going to forget the state
+convention that began at two o'clock that muggy September afternoon at
+Lyric Hall up on Washington Street in the old part of the town. Once
+upon a time, twenty or thirty years before, Lyric Hall had been the
+biggest theater in town. The stage was still there and the boxes, and at
+the back there were miles--they seemed miles anyway--of ancient,
+crumbling, dauby scenery stacked up and smelling of age and decay. Booth
+and Barrett had played there, and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence.
+Now, having fallen from its high estate, it served altered
+purposes--conventions were held at Lyric Hall and cheap masquerade balls
+and the like.
+
+The press tables that had been provided were not, strictly speaking,
+press tables at all. They were ordinary unpainted kitchen tables, ranged
+two on one side and two on the other side at the front of the stage,
+close up to the old gas-tipped footlights; and when we came in by the
+back way that afternoon and found our appointed places I was struck by
+certain sinister facts. Usually women flocked to a state convention. By
+rights there should have been ladies in the boxes and in the balcony.
+Now there wasn't a woman in sight anywhere, only men, row after row of
+them. And there wasn't any cheering, or mighty little of it. When I tell
+you the band played Dixie all the way through with only a stray whoop
+now and then, you will understand better the temper of that crowd.
+
+The situation, you see, was like this: One side had carried the mountain
+end of the state; the other had carried the lowlands. One side had swept
+the city; that meant a solid block of more than a hundred delegates. The
+other side had won the small towns and the inland counties. So it stood
+lowlander against highlander, city man against country man, and the
+bitter waters of those ancient feuds have their wellsprings back a
+thousand years in history, they tell me. One side led slenderly on
+instructed vote. The other side had enough contesting delegations on
+hand to upset the result if these contestants or any considerable
+proportion of them should be recognized in the preliminary organization.
+
+One side held a majority of the delegates who sat upon the floor; the
+other side had packed the balcony and the aisles and the corners with
+its armed partizans. One side was in the saddle and determined; the
+other afoot and grimly desperate. And it was our side, as I shall call
+it, meaning by that the state-house ring, that for the moment had the
+whiphand; and it was the other side, led in person by State Senator
+Stickney, god of the new machine, that stood ready to wade hip deep
+through trouble to unhorse us.
+
+Just below me, stretching across the hall from side to side in favored
+front places, sat the city delegates--Stickney men all of them. And as
+my eye swept the curved double row of faces it seemed to me I saw there
+every man in town with a reputation as a gun-fighter or a knife-fighter
+or a fist-fighter; and every one of them wore, pinning his delegate's
+badge to his breast, a Stickney button that was round and bright red,
+like a clot of blood on his shirt front.
+
+They made a contrast, these half-moon lines of blocky men, to the lank,
+slouch-hatted, low-collared country delegates--farmers, school
+teachers, country doctors and country lawyers--who filled the seats
+behind them and on beyond them. To the one group politics was a business
+in which there was money to be made and excitement to be had; to the
+other group it was a passion, veritably a sacredly high and serious
+thing, which they took as they did their religion, with a solemn,
+intolerant, Calvinistic sincerity. There was one thing, though, they all
+shared in common. Whether a man's coat was of black alpaca or striped
+flannel, the right-hand pocket sagged under the weight of unseen
+ironmongery; or if the coat pocket didn't sag there was a bulging clump
+back under the skirts on the right hip. For all the heat, hardly a man
+there was in his shirtsleeves; and it would have been funny to watch how
+carefully this man or that eased himself down into his seat, favoring
+his flanks against the pressure of his hardware--that is to say, it
+would have been funny if it all hadn't been so deadly earnest.
+
+You could fairly smell trouble cooking in that hall. In any corner
+almost there were the potential makings of half a dozen prominent
+funerals. There was scarce a man, I judged, but nursed a private grudge
+against some other man; and then besides these there was the big issue
+itself, which had split the state apart lengthwise as a butcher's
+cleaver splits a joint. Looking out over that convention, you could
+read danger spelled out everywhere, in everything, as plain as print.
+
+I was where I could read it with particular and uncomfortable
+distinctness, too, for I had the second place at the table that had been
+assigned to the Evening Press crew. There were four of us in
+all--Devore, who had elected to be in direct charge of the detail; Ike
+Webb, our star man, who was to handle the main story; I who was to write
+the running account--and, fourthly and lastly, Major Putnam Stone. The
+major hadn't been included in the assignment originally, but little
+Pinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning, and the chief decided the
+major should come along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief had a
+deluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission and
+pick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was a
+convention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be picked
+up--curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but not
+gossip--everything focused and was summed up in the one main point:
+Should the majority rule the machine or should the machine rule the
+majority? So the major sat there at the far inside corner of the table
+doing nothing at all--Devore saw to that--and was rather in the way. For
+the time I forgot all about him.
+
+The clash wasn't long in coming. It came on the first roll call of the
+counties. Later we found out that the Stickney forces had been
+counting, all along, on throwing the convention into a disorder of such
+proportions as to force an adjournment, trusting then to their
+acknowledged superiority at organization to win some strong strategic
+advantage in the intervening gap of time. Failing there they meant to
+raise a cry of unfairness and walk out. That then was their
+program--first the riot and then, as a last resort, the bolt. But they
+had men in their ranks, high-tempered men who, like so many skittish
+colts, wouldn't stand without hitching. The signals crossed and the
+thunder cracked across that calm-before-the-storm situation before there
+was proper color of excuse either for attack or for retreat.
+
+It came with scarcely any warning at all. Old Judge Marcellus Barbee,
+the state chairman, called the convention to order, he standing at a
+little table in the center of the stage. Although counted as our man,
+the judge was of such uncertain fiber as to render it doubtful whose man
+he really was. He was a kindly, wind-blown old gentleman, who very much
+against his will had been drawn unawares, as it were, into the middle of
+this fight, and he was bewildered by it all--and not only bewildered but
+unhappy and frightened. His gavel seemed to quaver its raps out
+timorously.
+
+A pastor of one of the churches, a reverend man with a bleak, worried
+face, prayed the Good Lord that peace and good-will and wise counsel
+might rule these deliberations, and then fled away as though fearing the
+mocking echoes of his own Amen. Summoning his skulking voice out of his
+lower throat, Judge Barbee bade the secretary of the state committee
+call the counties. The secretary got as far as Blanton, the third county
+alphabetically down the list. And Blanton was one of the contested
+counties. So up rose two rival chairmen of delegations, each waving
+aloft his credentials, each demanding the right to cast the vote of free
+and sovereign Blanton, each shaking a clenched fist at the other. Up got
+the rival delegations from Blanton. Up got everybody. Judge Barbee, with
+a gesture, recognized the rights of the anti-Stickney delegation. Jeers
+and yells broke out, spattering forth like a skirmish fire, then almost
+instantly were merged into a vast, ominous roar. Chairs began to
+overturn. Not twenty feet from me the clattering of the chairman's
+gavel, as he vainly beat for order, sounded like the clicking of a
+telegraph instrument in a cyclone.
+
+I saw the sergeant-at-arms--who was our man too--start down the middle
+aisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and I
+saw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to the
+floor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under my
+feet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeous
+blue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, a little round German, put
+his foot through the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge Barbee
+overturn the white china pitcher of ice water that sweated on the table
+at his elbow, and as the cold stream of its contents spattered down the
+legs of his trousers saw him staring downward, contemplating his
+drenched limbs as though that mattered greatly.
+
+All in a flash I saw these things, and in that same flash I saw, taking
+shape and impulse, a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons,
+rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad men of the city wards for
+its crest; and out of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out from
+the rear of the stage, a small, compact wedge of men wearing those same
+red buttons; and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave Dancy, the
+official bad man of a bad county, a man who packed a gun on each hip and
+carried a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man who would shoot
+you at the drop of a hat and provide the hat himself--or at least so it
+was said of him.
+
+And I realized that the enemy, coming by concerted agreement from front
+and rear at once, had nipped those of us who were upon the stage as
+between two closing walls, and I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. I
+ducked my head low, waiting for the shooting to begin. Afterward we
+figured it out that nobody fired the first shot because everybody knew
+the first shot would mean a massacre, where likely enough a man would
+kill more friends than foes.
+
+What happened now in the space of the next few seconds I saw with
+particular clarity of vision, because it happened right alongside me and
+in part right over me. I recall in especial Mink Satterlee. Mink
+Satterlee was one of the worst men in town, and he ran the worst saloon
+and prevailed mightily in ward politics. He had been sitting just below
+our table in the front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man,
+fat-necked, but this day he showed himself quick on his feet as any
+toe-dancer. Leading his own forces by a length, he vaulted the orchestra
+rail and lit lightly where a scared oboe player had been squatted a
+moment before; Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of the footlights and
+leaped upward, teetering a moment in space. One of his hands grabbed out
+for a purchase and closed on the leg of our table and jerked it almost
+from under us.
+
+At that Devore either lost his head or else indignation made him
+reckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at his
+feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was a
+puny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from where
+he clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and,
+before any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the throat with his left
+hand and jammed him back, face upward, on the table until I thought
+Devore's spine would crack. His right hand shot into his coat pocket,
+then, quick as a snake, came out again, showing the fat fist armed with
+a set of murderously heavy brass knucks, and he bent his arm in a
+crooked sickle-like stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple. I've always
+been satisfied--and so has Devore--that if the blow had landed true his
+skull would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it never landed.
+
+Above me a shadow of something hung for the hundredth part of a second,
+something white flashed over me and by me, moving downward whizzingly;
+something cracked on something; and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentle
+little grunt right in Devore's face and then relaxed and slid down on
+the floor, lying half under the table and half in the tin trough where
+the stubby gas jets of the footlights stood up, with his legs protruding
+stiffly out over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously I noted
+that his socks were not mates, one of them being blue and one black;
+also that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split place in it just between
+and above his half-closed eyes. All this, though, couldn't have taken
+one-fifth of the time it has required for me to tell it. It couldn't
+have taken more than a brace of seconds, but even so it was time enough
+for other things to happen; and I looked back again toward the center of
+the stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized startled old Judge Barbee
+by the middle from behind and flung him aside so roughly that the old
+man spun round twice, clutching at nothing, and then sat down very hard,
+yards away from where he started spinning.
+
+Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had fallen from the judge's hand,
+being minded, I think, to run the convention awhile in the interest of
+his own crowd. But his greedy fingers never closed over its black-walnut
+handle, because, facing him, he saw just then what made him freeze solid
+where he was.
+
+Out from behind the Evening Press table and through a scattering huddle
+of newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as
+a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off
+his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that
+the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a
+little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright,
+glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry
+revolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivory
+handle, and as I saw that ivory handle I knew what the white thing was
+that had flashed by me only a moment before to fell Mink Satterlee so
+expeditiously.
+
+Writing this, I've been trying to think of the one word that would best
+describe how Major Putnam Stone looked to me as he advanced on Dave
+Dancy. I think now that the proper word is competent, for indeed the old
+major did look most competent--the tremendous efficiency he radiated
+filled him out and made him seem sundry sizes larger than he really was.
+A great emergency acts upon different men as chemical processes act upon
+different metals. Some it melts like lead, so that their resolution
+softens and runs away from them; and some it hardens to tempered steel.
+There was the old major now. Always before this he had seemed to me to
+be but pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert, ready--a
+wire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus blade of a man--all changed and
+transformed and glorified, he was coming down on Dave Dancy, finger on
+trigger, thumb on hammer, eye on target, dominating the whole scene.
+
+Ten feet from him he halted and there was nobody between them. Somehow
+everybody else halted too, some even giving back a little. Over the edge
+of the stage a ring of staring faces, like a high-water mark, showed
+where the onward rushing swell of the Stickney city delegates had
+checked itself. Seemingly to all at once came the realization that the
+destinies of the fight had by the chances of the fight been entrusted to
+these two men--to Dancy and the major--and that between them the issue
+would be settled one way or the other.
+
+Still at a half crouch, Dancy's right hand began to steal back under the
+skirt of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle of
+his weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at his
+side in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of dueling scenes of
+olden times.
+
+"I am waiting, sir, for you to draw," said the major quite briskly. "I
+will shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall control
+this convention." And his heels clicked together like castanets.
+
+Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and farther back. And then you
+could mark by the change of his skin and by the look out of his eyes how
+his courage was clabbering to whey inside him, making his face a milky,
+curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred emulsion, and then he
+quit--he quit cold--his hand came out again from under his coat tails
+and it was an empty hand and wide open. It was from that moment on that
+throughout our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to be Fighting Dave and
+became instead Yaller Dave.
+
+"Then, sir," said the major, "as you do not seem to care to shoot it out
+with me, man to man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw from this
+stage and allow the business of this convention to proceed in an orderly
+manner."
+
+And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody laughed. In another second we
+were all laughing and the danger was over. When an American crowd
+begins laughing the danger is always over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Newspaper men down in that town still talk about the story that Ike Webb
+wrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was a
+great story, as Ike Webb told it--how, still sitting on the floor, old
+Judge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned the
+major a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men to
+close and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn't
+get out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how the
+convention, catching the spirit of the moment, elected the major its
+temporary chairman, and how even after that, for quite a spell, until
+some of his friends bethought to remove him, Mink Satterlee slept
+peacefully under our press table with his mismated legs bridged across
+the tin trough of the footlights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In rapid succession a number of unusual events occurred in the Evening
+Press shop the next morning. To begin with, the chief came down early.
+He had a few words in private with Devore and went upstairs. When the
+major came at eight as usual, Devore was waiting for him at the door of
+the city room; and as they went upstairs together, side by side, I saw
+Devore's arm steal timidly out and rest a moment on the major's
+shoulder.
+
+The major was the first to descend. Walking unusually erect, even for
+him, he bustled into the telephone booth. Jessie, our operator, told us
+afterward that he called up a haberdasher, and in a voice that boomed
+like a bell ordered fourteen of those plaited-bosom shirts of his, the
+same to be made up and delivered as soon as possible. Then he stalked
+out. And in a minute or two more Devore came down looking happy and
+unhappy and embarrassed and exalted, all of them at once. On his way to
+his desk he halted midway of the floor.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said huskily--"fellows, I mean--I've got an announcement
+to make, or rather two announcements. One is this: Right here before you
+fellows who heard most of them I want to take back all the mean things I
+ever said about him--about Major Stone--and I want to say I'm sorry for
+all the mean things I've done to him. I've tried to beg his pardon, but
+he wouldn't listen--he wouldn't let me beg his pardon--he--he said
+everything was all right. That's one announcement. Here's the other: The
+major is going to have a new job with this paper. He's going to leave
+the city staff. Hereafter he's going to be upstairs in the room next to
+the chief. He's gone out now to pick out his own desk. He's going to
+write specials for the Sunday--specials about the war. And he's going
+to do it on a decent salary too."
+
+I judge by my own feelings that we all wanted to cheer, but didn't
+because we thought it might sound theatrical and foolish. Anyhow, I know
+that was how I felt. So there was a little awkward pause.
+
+"What's his new title going to be?" asked somebody then.
+
+"The title is appropriate--I suggested it myself," said Devore. "Major
+Stone is going to be war editor."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SMOKE OF BATTLE
+
+
+This befell during the period that Major Putnam Stone, at the age of
+sixty-two, held a job as cub reporter on the Evening Press and worked at
+it until his supply of fine linen and the patience of City Editor
+Wilbert Devore frazzled out practically together. The episode to which I
+would here direct attention came to pass in the middle of a particularly
+hot week in the middle of that particularly hot and grubby summer, at a
+time when the major was still wearing the last limp survivor of his once
+adequate stock of frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when Devore's
+scanty stock of endurance had already worn perilously near the snapping
+point.
+
+As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a life of comparative leisure from
+the day he came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned veteran, until
+the day he joined the staff of the Evening Press, a rank beginner; and
+of these two employments one lay a matter of four decades back in a
+half-forgotten past, while the other was of pressing moment, having to
+do with Major Stone's enjoyment of his daily bread and other elements of
+nutrition regarded as essential to the sustenance of human life. In his
+military career he might have been more or less of a success. Certainly
+he must have acquitted himself with some measure of personal credit; the
+rank he had attained in the service and the standing he had subsequently
+enjoyed among his comrades abundantly testified to that.
+
+As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth
+in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and
+speech--hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing;
+and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the
+things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very
+naturally--and very frequently--forgot that to a newspaper reporter
+every day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday always is
+or always should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnished
+yesterdays of forty-odd years ago. Indeed I doubt whether the major ever
+comprehended that first commandment of the prentice reporter's
+catechism.
+
+Devore, himself no grand and glittering success as a newspaper man,
+nevertheless had mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous old
+major. Devore did not believe that bricks could be made without straw.
+He considered it a waste of time and raw material to try. Through that
+summer he kept the major on the payroll solely because the chief so
+willed it. But, though he might not discharge the major, at least he
+could bait him--and bait him Devore did--not, mind you, with words, but
+with a silent, sublimated contempt more bitter and more biting than any
+words.
+
+So there, on the occasion in question, the situation stood--the major
+hanging on tooth and nail to his small job, because he needed most
+desperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editor
+regarding him and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission,
+commission and remission with a corrosive, speechless venom; and the
+rest of us in the city room divided in our sympathies as between those
+two. We sympathized with Devore for having to carry so woful an
+incompetent upon his small and overworked crew; we sympathized with the
+kindly, gentle, tiresome old major for his bungling, vain attempts to
+creditably cover the small and piddling assignments that came his way.
+
+I remember the date mighty well--the third of July. For three days now
+the Democratic party, in national convention assembled at Chicago, had
+been in the throes of labor. It had been expected--in fact had been as
+good as promised--that by ten o'clock that evening the deadlock would
+melt before a sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and the head of
+the presidential ticket would be named, wherefore in the Evening Press
+shop a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an extra. Back in the
+press-room the press was dressed. A front page form was made up and
+ready, all but the space where the name of the nominee would be inserted
+when the flash came; and in the alley outside a picked squad of
+newsboys, renowned for speed of the leg and carrying quality of the
+voice, awaited their wares, meanwhile skylarking under the eye of a
+circulation manager.
+
+Besides, there was no telling when an arrest might be made in the
+Bullard murder case--that just by itself would provide ample excuse for
+an extra. Two days had passed and two nights since the killing of
+Attorney-at-Law Rodney G. Bullard, and still the killing, to quote a
+favorite line of the local descriptive writers, "remained shrouded in
+impenetrable mystery." If the police force, now busily engaged in
+running clues into theories and theories into the ground, should by any
+blind chance of fortune be lucky enough to ascertain the identity and
+lay hands upon the person of Bullard's assassin, the whole town,
+regardless of the hour, would rise up out of bed to read the news of it.
+It was the biggest crime story that town had known for ten years; one of
+the biggest crime stories it had ever known.
+
+In the end our waiting all went for nothing. There were no developments
+at Central Station or elsewhere in the Bullard case, and at Chicago
+there was no nomination. At nine-thirty a bulletin came over our leased
+wire saying that Tammany, having been beaten before the Resolutions
+Committee, was still battling on the floor for its candidate; so that
+finally the convention had adjourned until morning, and now the
+delegates were streaming out of the hall, too tired to cheer and almost
+too tired to jeer--all of which was sad news to us, because it meant
+that, instead of taking a holiday on the Fourth, we must work until noon
+at least, and very likely until later. Down that way the Fourth was not
+observed with quite the firecrackery and skyrockety enthusiasm that
+marked its celebration in most of the states to the north of us;
+nevertheless, a day off was a day off and we were deeply disgusted at
+the turn affairs had taken. It was almost enough to make a fellow feel
+friendly toward the Republicans.
+
+Following the tension there was a snapback; a feeling of languor and
+disappointment possessed us. Devore slammed down the lid of his desk and
+departed, cursing the luck as he went. Harty, the telegraph editor, and
+Wilbur, the telegraph operator, rolled down their shirtsleeves and,
+taking their coats over their arms, departed in company for Tony's place
+up at the corner, where cool beers were to be found and electric fans,
+and a business men's lunch served at all hours.
+
+That left in the city room four or five men. Sprawled upon battered
+chairs and draped over battered desks, they inhaled the smells of rancid
+greases that floated in to them from the back of the building; they
+coddled their disappointment to keep it warm and they talked shop. When
+it comes to talking shop in season and out of season, neither stock
+actors nor hospital surgeons are worse offenders than newspaper
+reporters--especially young newspaper reporters, as all these men were
+except only Major Stone.
+
+It was inevitable that the talk should turn upon the Bullard murder, and
+that the failure of the police force to find the killer or even to find
+a likely suspect should be the hinge for its turning. For the moment Ike
+Webb had the floor, expounding his own pet theories. Ike was a good
+talker--a mighty good reporter too, let me tell you. Across the room
+from Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall, sat the major,
+looking shabby and a bit forlorn. For a month now shabbiness had been
+seizing on the major, spreading over him like a mildew. It started first
+with his shoes, which turned brown and then cracked across the toes, it
+extended to his hat, which sagged in its brim and became a moldy green
+in its crown, and now it had touched his coat lapels, his waistcoat
+front, his collar--his rolling Lord Byron collar--and his sleeve ends.
+
+The major's harmlessly pompous manner was all gone from him that night.
+Of late his self-assurance had seemed to be fraying and frazzling away,
+along with those old-timey, full-bosomed shirts of which he had in times
+gone by been so tremendously proud. It was as though the passing of the
+one marked the passing of the other--symbolic as you might say.
+Formerly, too, the major had also excelled mightily in miscellaneous
+conversation, dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness. Now he sat
+silent while these youngsters with their unthatched lips--born, most of
+them, after he reached middle age--babbled the jargon of their trade. He
+considered a little ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously.
+
+Ike Webb was saying this--that the biggest thing in the whole created
+world was a big scoop--an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up scoop of
+a scoop. Nothing that could possibly come into a reporter's life was
+one-half so big and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to his theme:
+
+"Gee! fellows, but wouldn't it be great to get a scoop on a thing like
+this Bullard murder! Just suppose now that one of us, all by himself,
+found the person who did the shooting and got a full confession from
+him, whoever he was; and got the gun that it was done with--got the
+whole thing--and then turned it loose all over the front page before
+that big stiff of a Chief Gotlieb down at Central Station knew a thing
+about it. Beating the police to it would be the best part of that job.
+That's the way they do things in New York. In New York it's the
+newspapers that do the real work on big murder mysteries, and the police
+take their tips from them. Why, some of the best detectives in New York
+are reporters. Look what they did in that Guldensuppe case! Look at what
+they've done in half a dozen other big cases! Down here we just follow
+along, like sheep, behind a bunch of fat-necked cops, taking their
+leavings. Up there a paper turns a man loose, with an unlimited expense
+account and all the time he needs, and tells him to go to it. That's the
+right way too!"
+
+By that the others knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had told
+him. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from the
+metropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do--unawares--two
+weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty
+right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and
+then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change he
+could and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown,
+leaving us dazzled by the careless, somewhat patronizing brilliance of
+his manner, and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of the splendid,
+adventurous, bohemian lives that newspaper men in New York lived.
+
+"Well, I know this," put in little Pinky Gilfoil, who was red-headed,
+red-freckled and red-tempered: "I'd give my right leg to pull off that
+Bullard story as a scoop. No, not my right leg--a reporter needs all the
+legs he's got; but I'd give my right arm and throw in an eye for good
+measure. It would be the making of a reporter in this town--he'd have
+'em all eating out of his hand after that." He licked his lips. Even the
+bare thought of the thing tasted pretty good to Pinky.
+
+"Now you're whistling!" chimed Ike Webb. "The fellow who single-handed
+got that tale would have a job on this paper as long as he lived. The
+chief would just naturally have to hand him more money. In New York,
+though, he'd get a big cash bonus besides, an award they call it up
+there. I'd go anywhere and do anything and take any kind of a chance to
+land that story as an exclusive--yes, or any other big story."
+
+To all this the major, it appeared, had been listening, for now he spoke
+up in a pretty fair imitation of his old impressive manner:
+
+"But, young gentlemen--pardon me--do you seriously think--any of
+you--that any honorarium, however large, should or could be sufficient
+temptation to induce one in your--in our profession--to give utterance
+in print to a matter that he had learned, let us say, in confidence?
+And suppose also that by printing it he brought suffering or disgrace
+upon innocent parties. Unless one felt that he was serving the best ends
+of society--unless one, in short, were actuated by the highest of human
+motives--could one afford to do such a thing? And, under any
+circumstances, could one violate a trust--could one violate the common
+obligation of a gentleman's rules of deportment----"
+
+"Major," broke in Ike Webb earnestly, "the way I look at it, a reporter
+can't afford too many of the luxuries you're mentioning. His duty, it
+seems to me, is to his paper first and the rest of the world afterward.
+His paper ought to be his mother and his father and all his family. If
+he gets a big scoop--no matter how he gets it or where he gets it--he
+ought to be able to figure out some way of getting it into print. It's
+not alone what he owes his paper--it's what he owes himself. Personally
+I wouldn't be interested for a minute in bringing the person that killed
+Rod Bullard to justice--that's not the point. He was a pretty shady
+person--Rod Bullard. By all accounts he got what was coming to him. It's
+the story itself that I'd want."
+
+"Say, listen here, major," put in Pinky Gilfoil, suddenly possessed of a
+strengthening argument; "I reckon back yonder in the Civil War, when you
+all got the smoke of battle in your noses, you didn't stop to consider
+that you were about to make a large crop of widows and orphans and
+cause suffering to a whole slue of innocent people that'd never done you
+any harm! You didn't stop then, did you? I'll bet you didn't--you just
+sailed in! It was your duty--the right thing to do--and you just went
+and did it. 'War is hell!' Sherman said. Well, so is newspaper work
+hell--in a way. And smelling out a big story ought to be the same to a
+reporter that the smoke of battle is to a soldier. That's right--I'll
+leave it to any fellow here if that ain't right!" he wound up,
+forgetting in his enthusiasm to be grammatical.
+
+It was an unfortunate simile to be making and Pinky should have known
+better, for at Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye widened and,
+expanding himself, he brought his chair legs down to the floor with a
+thump.
+
+"Ah, yes!" he said, and his voice took on still more of its old ringing
+quality. "Speaking of battles, I am just reminded, young gentlemen, that
+tomorrow is the anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg. Though
+Northern-born, General Pemberton was a gallant officer--none of our own
+Southern leaders was more gallant--but it has always seemed to me that
+his defense of Vicksburg was marked by a series of the most lamentable
+and disastrous mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain further."
+And he squared himself forward, with one short, plump hand raised, ready
+to tick off his points against Pemberton upon his fingers.
+
+By experience dearly bought at the expense of our ear-drums, the members
+of the Evening Press staff knew what that meant; for as you already
+know, the major's conversational specialty was the Civil War--it and its
+campaigns. Describing it, he made even war a commonplace and a tiresome
+topic. In his hands an account of the hardest fought battle became a
+tremendously uninteresting thing. He weeded out all the thrills and in
+their places planted hedges of dusty, deadly dry statistics. When the
+major started on the war it was time to be going. One by one the
+youngsters got up and slipped out. Presently the major, booming away
+like a bell buoy, became aware that his audience had dwindled. Only Ike
+Webb remained, and Ike was getting upon his feet and reaching for the
+peg where his coat swung.
+
+"I'm sorry to leave you right in the middle of your story, major; but,
+honestly, I've got to be going," apologized Ike. "Good night, and don't
+forget this, major"--Ike had halted at the door--"when a big story comes
+your way freeze to it with both hands and slam it across the plate as a
+scoop. Do that and you can give 'em all the laugh. Good night again--see
+you in the morning, major!"
+
+He grinned to himself as he turned away. The major was a mighty decent,
+tender-hearted little old scout, a gentleman by birth and breeding,
+even if he was down and out and dog-poor. It was a shame that Devore
+kept him skittering round on little picayunish jobs--running errands,
+that was really what it was. Still, at that, the old major was no
+reporter and never would be. He wouldn't know a big story if he ran into
+it on the big road--it would have to burst right in his face before he
+recognized it. And even then the chances were that he wouldn't know what
+to do with it. It was enough to make a fellow grin.
+
+Deserted by the last of his youthful compatriots--which was what he
+himself generally called them--the major lingered a moment in heavy
+thought. He glanced about the cluttered city room, now suddenly grown
+large and empty. This was the theater where his own little drama of
+unfitness and failure and private mortification had been staged and
+acted. It had run nearly a month now, and a month is a long run for a
+small tragedy in a newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook his head.
+He shook it as though he were trying to shake it clear of a job lot of
+old-fashioned, antiquated ideals--as though he were trying to make room
+for newer, more useful, more modern conceptions. Then he settled his
+aged and infirm slouch hat more firmly upon his round-domed skull,
+straightened his shoulders and stumped out.
+
+At the second turning up the street from the office an observant
+onlooker might have noticed a small, an almost imperceptible change in
+the old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky bone in the major's
+body--he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; but
+before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in
+a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a
+trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait.
+It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod.
+
+The street he had now entered was a badly lighted street, with long
+stretches of murkiness between small patches of gas-lamped brilliance.
+By day the houses that walled it would have showed themselves as shabby
+and gone to seed--the sort of houses that second cousins move into after
+first families have moved out. Two-thirds of the way along the block the
+major turned in at a sagged gate. He traversed a short walk of seamed
+and decrepit flagging, where tufts of rank grass sprouted between the
+fractures in the limestone slabs, and mounted the front porch of a house
+that had cheap boarding house written all over it.
+
+When the major opened the front door the tepid smell that gushed out to
+greet him was the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you know what
+I mean--a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage, dust-in-the-corners smell.
+Once upon a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry way had
+exhibited a vivid and violent pattern of green octagons upon a red and
+yellow background, but that had been in some far distant day of its
+youth and freshness. Now it was worn to a scaly, crumbly color of
+nothing at all, and it was frayed into fringes at the door and in places
+scuffed clear through, so that the knot-holes of the naked planking
+showed like staring eyes.
+
+Standing just inside the hall, the major glanced down first at the floor
+and then up to where in a pendent nub a pinprick of light like a captive
+lightning-bug flickered up and down feebly as the air pumped through the
+pipe; and out of his chest the major fetched a small sigh. It was a sigh
+of resignation, but it had loneliness in it too. Well, it was a
+come-down, after all these peaceful and congenial years spent among the
+marble-columned, red-plushed glories of the old Gaunt House, to be
+living in this place.
+
+The major had been here now almost a month. Very quietly, almost
+secretly, he had come hither when he found that by no amount of
+stretching could his pay as a reporter on the Evening Press be made to
+cover the cost of living as he had been accustomed to live prior to that
+disastrous day when the major waked up in the morning to find that all
+his inherited investments had vanished over night--and, vanishing so,
+had taken with them the small but sufficient income that had always been
+ample for his needs.
+
+In that month the major had seen but one or two of his fellow lodgers,
+slouching forms that passed him by in the gloom of the half-lighted
+hallways or on the creaky stairs. His landlady he saw but once a
+week--on Saturday, which was settlement day. She was a forlorn, gray
+creature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droop
+in her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered from
+holding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that she
+had been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took to
+keeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent old
+major knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quiet
+by-street, and for his purposes that was sufficient.
+
+He heaved another small sigh and passed slowly up the worn steps of the
+stairwell until he came to the top of the house. His room was on the
+attic floor, the middle room of the three that lined the bare hall on
+one side. The door-knob was broken off; only its iron center remained.
+His fingers slipped as he fumbled for a purchase upon the metal core;
+but finally, after two attempts, he gripped it and it turned, admitting
+him into the darkness of a stuffy interior. The major made haste to open
+the one small window before he lit the single gas jet. Its guttery flare
+exposed a bed, with a thin mattress and a skimpy cover, shoved close up
+under the sloping wall; a sprained chair on its last legs; an old
+horsehide trunk; a shaky washstand of cheap yellow pine, garnished forth
+with an ewer and a basin; a limp, frayed towel; and a minute segment of
+pale pink soap.
+
+Major Stone was in the act of removing his coat when he became aware of
+a certain sound, occurring at quick intervals. In the posture of a plump
+and mature robin he cocked his head on one side to listen; and now he
+remembered that he had heard the same sound the night before, and the
+night before that. These times, though, he had heard it intermittently
+and dimly, as he tossed about half awake and half asleep, trying to
+accommodate his elderly bones to the irregularities of his hot and
+uncomfortable bed. But now he heard it more plainly, and at once he
+recognized it for what it was--the sound of a woman crying; a wrenching
+succession of deep, racking gulps, and in between them little moaning,
+panting breaths, as of utter exhaustion--a sound such as might be
+distilled from the very dregs of a grief too great to be borne.
+
+He looked about him, his eyes and ears searching for further explanation
+of this. He had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall of his
+room--a door bolted and nailed up. It had a transom over it and against
+the dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected, and through the
+door and the transom the sound came. The person in trouble, whoever it
+might be, was in that next room--and that person was a woman and she was
+in dire distress. There was a compelling note in her sobbing.
+
+Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a
+small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He
+slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray
+hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately
+with a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was no
+answer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itself
+and broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within a
+voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice--flat and uncultivated.
+
+"Who's there?" The major cleared his throat. "Is it a woman--or a man?"
+demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the first
+question.
+
+"It is a gentleman," began the major--"a gentleman who----"
+
+"Come on in!" she bade him--"the door ain't latched."
+
+And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that was
+practically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, a
+cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sides
+bulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed,
+was stretched a woman--or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from
+the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended,
+stared full into his.
+
+What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous,
+gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his
+linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons and
+buttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps
+twenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard to
+guess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a
+streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp.
+
+It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the
+drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the
+professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking from
+the characterless mouth, yet the major--sweet-minded, clean-living old
+man though he was--knew at a glance what manner of woman he had found
+here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never
+intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any
+good--a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a
+line of least resistance.
+
+That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a moment
+across the intervening space. It was the girl who took the initiative.
+
+"Are you one of the police?" Then instantly on the heels of the query:
+"No; I know better'n that--you ain't no police!"
+
+Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically,
+though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp that
+clicked down in her throat.
+
+"No, ma'am," said Major Stone, with a grave and respectful courtesy, "I
+am not connected with the police department. I am a professional
+man--associated at this time with the practice of journalism. I have the
+apartment or chamber adjoining yours and, accidentally overhearing a
+member of the opposite sex in seeming distress, I took it upon myself to
+offer any assistance that might lie within my power. If I am intruding I
+will withdraw."
+
+"No," she said; "it ain't no intrusion. I wisht, please, sir, you'd come
+in jest a minute anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to somebody a
+minute. I'm sorry, though, if I disturbed you by my cryin'--but I jest
+couldn't help it. Last night and the night before--that was the first
+night I come here--I cried all night purty near; but I kept my head in
+the bedclothes. But tonight, after it got dark up here and me layin'
+here all alone, I felt as if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest, I
+like to died! Right this minute I'm almost plum' distracted."
+
+The major advanced a step.
+
+"I assure you I deeply regret to learn of your unhappiness," he said.
+"If you desire it I will be only too glad to summon our worthy landlady,
+Miss--Miss----" he paused.
+
+"Miss La Mode," she said, divining--"Blanche La Mode--that's my name. I
+come from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please, mister, don't call that
+there woman. I don't want to see her. For a while I didn't think I
+wanted to see nobody, and yit I've known all along, from the very first,
+that sooner or later I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody. I knew
+I'd jest have to!" she repeated with a kind of weak intensity. "And it
+might jest as well be you as anybody, I guess."
+
+She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her feet, and subconsciously
+the major took in fuller details of her attire--the cheap white slippers
+with rickety, worn-down high heels; the sleazy stockings; the
+over-decorated skirt of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled waist
+of coarse lace, gaping away from the scrawny neck, where the fastenings
+had pulled awry. Looped about her throat and dangling down on her flat
+breast, where they heaved up and down with her breathing, was a double
+string of pearls that would have been worth ten thousand dollars had
+they been genuine pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and thin held a
+small, moist wad of handkerchief. About her there was something
+unmistakably bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too, flesh and
+soul. Major Stone bowed with the ceremonious detail that was a part of
+him.
+
+"My name, ma'am, is Stone--Major Putnam Stone, at your service," he told
+her.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said, seeming not to catch either his name or his title.
+"Well, mister, I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe surprise
+you. I ain't goin' to ast you not to tell anybody, 'cause I guess you
+will anyhow, sooner or later; and it don't make much difference if you
+do. But seems's if I can't hold in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feel
+easier in my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that door--jest close
+it--the lock is broke--and set down in that chair, please, sir."
+
+The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. The
+girl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feet
+dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-cornered
+break in the dirty-gray plastering.
+
+"You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don't you?--about him
+bein' found shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth of that
+alley?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Though I was not personally acquainted with the
+man himself, I am familiar with the circumstances you mention."
+
+"Well," she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, "it was me that
+done it!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, half doubting whether he had heard
+aright, "but what was it you said you did?"
+
+"Shot him!" she answered--"I was the one that shot him--with this thing
+here." She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out a
+short-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically he
+took it, and thereafter for a space he held it in his hands. The girl
+went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate
+eagerness.
+
+"I didn't mean to do it, though--God knows I didn't mean to do it! He
+treated me mighty sorry--it was lowdown and mean all the way through,
+the way he done me--but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was only
+aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It was
+accidental-like--it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't never
+intentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody's
+forever and a day imposin' on me!" She quavered with the puny passion of
+her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with
+rods.
+
+Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds
+in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think of
+the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."
+--_Page 164._]
+
+"I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was," she went on
+in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a
+long way off. "That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin'
+shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in a
+political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was
+workin' in a hotel there--one of the dinin' room help. That was two
+years ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, he
+got me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked him
+some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me;
+so I come with him. He told me that I could be his----" She hesitated.
+
+"His amanuensis, perhaps," suggested the old man.
+
+"Which?" she said. "No; it wasn't that way--he didn't say nothin' about
+marryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be his
+girl--that was all; but he didn't keep his word--no, sir; right from the
+very first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I got
+here before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a
+spell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to another
+house--Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?"
+
+The major half nodded, half shook his head.
+
+"By reputation only I know the person in question," he answered a bit
+stiffly.
+
+"Well," she went on, "there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sick
+lately--I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all back yit.
+I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jest
+barely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me that
+I'd have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for my
+board. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn't have but nine
+dollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it all
+or nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I was
+mighty weak and discouraged--I was so! I didn't know what to do.
+
+"I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on more than a year, but he was the
+only one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrost
+the street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and I
+called him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. It
+wasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he was
+responsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him in
+the first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talked
+with him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin'
+for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring
+it round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kept
+on doggin' after me for her board money.
+
+"I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'n
+two words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and he
+rung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic
+Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about six
+o'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't have
+nowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left--I'd spent a
+dime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard a
+note, and when I got outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents to
+take it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, without
+nowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and do
+somethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him to
+meet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That give
+me two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage.
+
+"Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, and
+I went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The pawnstore man
+he throwed in the shells. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard--jest
+to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walked
+round some more till I was plum' wore out.
+
+"When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon he
+come along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulged
+up to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said I
+didn't have no claims on him--a whole lot more like that--and said he
+didn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notes
+and callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he made
+like he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in my
+hand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I
+pointed it like I was goin' to shoot--jest to skeer him, though, and
+make him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it at
+him--that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without you
+pulled the hammer back first!
+
+"Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Now
+you've done it!'--jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet,
+and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smack
+on his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry
+about him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since--ain't that
+funny? But I was awful skeered!"
+
+Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up to
+her face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy of
+confused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of his
+utter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that very
+moment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him--and it
+came then with a sudden jolt--that here he had one of those monumental
+news stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing to
+barter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was a
+scoop, as those young fellows had called it--an exclusive confession of
+a big crime--a thing that would mean much to any paper and to any
+reporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure into
+a conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. And
+he had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into his
+lap.
+
+Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it to
+him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep
+her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to
+other strangers--or else somebody would betray her. And surely this
+sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the
+strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would
+convict her of murder--the thought was incredible. She would be kindly
+dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these would
+have been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious young
+men at the office. He bent forward.
+
+"What did you do then, ma'am?" he asked.
+
+"I didn't know what to do," she said, dropping her hands into her lap.
+"I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked and
+walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jest
+about to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on the
+porch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it said
+Lodgers Taken.
+
+"So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'd
+jest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me two
+dollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down--and she
+showed me the way up here.
+
+"I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy me
+somethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At first
+I figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't--there
+wasn't nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered Vic
+Magner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of
+gittin' in trouble herself--that Captain Brennan, of the Second
+Precinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first good
+chance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there that
+knowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit.
+
+"Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, I
+made up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that there
+pistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all I
+had to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurt
+me but a secont--and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it,
+mister--I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die,
+and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way--first
+thinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin'
+either one of 'em.
+
+"Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tell
+somebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And
+right that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed it
+was a sign--I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I've
+done it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. And
+so that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol away
+with you when you go--I don't never want to see it again as long as I
+live."
+
+She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's short
+arm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase.
+
+"I observe," he said, "that your portmanteau is packed as if for a
+journey. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?"
+
+"My which?" she said. "Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't never
+unpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home--I got
+a stepsister livin' there and she might take me in--only after payin'
+for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now I
+don't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back I
+might stay on here--I kind of like city life. Or I might go up to
+Cincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and she
+wrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address--it was backed on
+the envelope. Still, I ain't sure--my plans ain't all made yit.
+Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think I
+won't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another,
+because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what I
+had."
+
+She sank her head in the pillow wearily, with her face turned away from
+him. The major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he slipped the
+revolver that had snuffed out the late and unsavory Rodney Bullard's
+light of life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly drew forth his
+supply of ready money. He had three silver dollars, one quarter, one
+dime, and a nickel--three-forty in all. Contemplating the disks of metal
+in the palm of his hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. This
+was Thursday night now. Saturday afternoon at two he would draw a pay
+envelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime he must eat. Well, if he
+stinted himself closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge the gap
+until Saturday. The major had learned a good deal about the noble art of
+stinting these last few weeks.
+
+On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly piled two of the silver
+dollars and the forty cents in change. Then, after a momentary
+hesitation, he put down the third silver dollar, gathered up the forty
+cents, slid it gently into his pocket and started for the door, the
+loose planks creaking under his tread. At the threshold he halted.
+
+"Good night, Miss La Mode," he said. "I trust your night's repose may be
+restful and refreshing to you, ma'am."
+
+She lifted her face from the pillow and spoke, without turning to look
+at him.
+
+"Mister," she said, "I've told you the whole truth about that thing and
+I ain't goin' to lie to you about anythin' else. I didn't come from
+Indianapolis, Indiana, like I told you. My home is in Swainboro', this
+state--a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain't
+La Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book--the La Mode part--and I
+always did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my real
+name is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you fer
+listenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if I
+kin help it."
+
+As the major gently closed her door behind him he heard her give a long,
+sleepy sigh, like a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced about
+him, meanwhile feeling himself over for writing material. He found in
+his pockets a pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he knew he
+needed a big sheaf of copy paper for the story he had to write. Anyway,
+there was no place here to do an extended piece of writing--no desk and
+no comfortable chair. The office would be a much better place.
+
+The office was only a matter of two or three blocks away. The negro
+watchman would be there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the corner
+of his washstand for a desk, the major set down his notes--names,
+places, details, dates--upon the backs of his two letters. This done, he
+settled his ancient hat on his head, picked up his cane, and in another
+minute was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the front doorway. Once
+outside, his tread took on the brisk emphasis of one set upon an
+important task and in a hurry to do it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his desk in the empty city room of
+the Evening Press. Except for Henry, the old black night watchman, there
+was no other person in the building anywhere. Just over his head an
+incandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong relief the major's
+intent old face, mullioned with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newly
+sharpened, was in his fingers; under his right hand was a block of clean
+copy paper. His notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed pistol
+serving as a paper weight to hold the two wrinkled envelopes flat.
+Through the loop of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer, alias
+Blanche La Mode, showed. Everything was ready.
+
+The major hesitated, though. He readjusted his paper and fidgeted his
+pencil. He scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft of goatee
+under his lower lip. Like many a more experienced author, Major Stone
+was having trouble getting under way. He had his own ideas about a
+fitting introductory paragraph. Coming along, he had thought up a full
+sonorous one, with a biblical injunction touching on the wages of sin
+embodied in it; but, on the other hand, there was to be borne in mind
+the daily-dinned injunction of Devore that every important news item
+should begin with a sentence in which the whole story was summed up.
+Finally Major Stone made a beginning. He covered nearly a sheet of
+paper.
+
+Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with it, he tore up what he had
+written and started all over again, only to repeat the same operation.
+Two salty drops rolled down his face and fell upon the paper, and
+instantly little twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared on its
+clear surface. They were not tears, though--they were drops of sweat
+wrung from the major's brow by the pains of creation. Again he poised
+his pencil and again he halted it in the air--he needed inspiration. His
+gaze rested absently upon the pistol; absently he picked it up and began
+examining it.
+
+It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing, poorly made, but no doubt
+deadly enough at close range. He unbreeched it and spun the cylinder
+with his thumb and spilled the contents into his palm--four loaded
+shells, suety and slick with grease, and one that had been recently
+fired; and it was discolored and flattened a trifle. Each of the four
+loaded shells had a small cap like a little round staring eye set in the
+exact center of its flanged butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell was
+punched in. He turned the empty weapon in his hands, steadying its
+mechanism, and as he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and dead,
+came to him out of the fouled muzzle. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed
+at it.
+
+It had been many a long day since the major had had that smell in his
+nostrils--many a long, long day. But there had been a time when it was
+familiar enough to him. Even now it brought the clamoring memories of
+that far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid. It stimulated his
+imagination, quickening his mind with big thoughts. It recalled those
+four years when he had fought for a principle, and had kept on fighting
+even when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and there
+remained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless months
+when the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the forty
+cents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when the
+sorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when,
+without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk upon
+risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borne
+it all without whimper or complaint--fighting the good fight like a
+soldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!
+
+The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what he
+would write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistol
+and the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For two
+hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word,
+stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a
+machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script.
+Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter.
+
+Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each page
+of the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile before
+him. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breast
+pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptied
+revolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the
+drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squares
+into smaller squares--and so on until the fragments would tear no finer,
+but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stage
+snow.
+
+He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore's
+desk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when he
+came to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt of
+satisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen
+shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, from
+collarband almost to waistline.
+
+He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gaping
+tear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully.
+Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred
+his heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a man
+who has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied with
+the way he has done it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under a large black head the major's story was printed in the Fourth of
+July edition of the Evening Press. It ran full two columns and lapped
+over into a third column. It was an exhaustive--and exhausting--account
+of the Fall of Vicksburg.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EXIT OF ANSE DUGMORE
+
+
+When a Kentucky mountaineer goes to the penitentiary the chances are
+that he gets sore eyes from the white walls that enclose him, or quick
+consumption from the thick air that he breathes. It was entirely in
+accordance with the run of his luck that Anse Dugmore should get them
+both, the sore eyes first and then the consumption.
+
+There is seldom anything that is picturesque about the man-killer of the
+mountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and the
+delightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fiction
+has invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of belted
+accouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equally
+deadly gun-play. He does his killing in an unemotional, unattractive
+kind of way, with absolutely no regard for costume or setting. Rarely is
+he a fine figure of a man.
+
+Take Anse Dugmore now. He had a short-waisted, thin body and abnormally
+long, thin legs, like the shadow a man casts at sunup. He didn't have
+that steel-gray eye of which we so often read. His eyes weren't of any
+particular color, and he had a straggly mustache of sandy red and no
+chin worth mentioning; but he could shoot off a squirrel's head, or a
+man's, at the distance of a considerable number of yards.
+
+Until he was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in the
+tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its
+principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He
+was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise
+when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his
+immediate clan and the upholder of his family's honor.
+
+"Yore paw an' yore two brothers was laywaid this mawnin' comin' 'long
+Yaller Banks togither," was the message brought by a breathless bearer
+of news. "The wimmenfolks air totin' 'em home now. Talt, he ain't dead
+yit."
+
+From a dry spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over the
+ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats
+up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he
+sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his
+crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of
+this one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled when
+he practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim had
+become as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; for
+this he had been schooled still more when he rode, armed and watchful,
+to church or court or election. Its coming found him ready.
+
+Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his chance. The Tranthams were
+hard to find. They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds, well
+guarded in anticipation of expected reprisals, and prepared in due
+season to come forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two dozen if so
+many should be needed to establish the alibi, that they had no hand in
+the massacre of the Dugmores.
+
+But two days and nights of still-hunting, of patiently lying in wait
+behind brush fences, of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likely
+places, brought the survivor of the decimated Dugmores his chance. He
+caught Pegleg Trantham riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule. Pegleg
+was only a distant connection of the main strain of the enemy. It was
+probable that he had no part in the latest murdering; perhaps doubtful
+that he had any prior knowledge of the plot. But by his name and his
+blood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough.
+
+A writer of the Western school would have found little in this encounter
+that was really worth while to write about. Above the place of the
+meeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantily
+clothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed through
+like the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rains
+and ran bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg came cantering
+along with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule,
+for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for a
+mountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short arms
+encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with
+a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband
+together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing
+his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn
+brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down
+straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a
+soiled white-yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top of
+an ancient congress gaiter.
+
+From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore, bareheaded, crusted to his
+knees with dried mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping down
+since daybreak. A purpose showed in all the lines of his slouchy frame.
+
+Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered by the boy's arms about
+his middle and by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the slab-sided
+mule. The man afoot fired before the mounted enemy could swing his
+gunbarrel into line. The bullet ripped away the lower part of Pegleg's
+face and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. The
+white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule and
+instantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped
+out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck,
+grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two paces
+forward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from his
+gunmuzzle into his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule was bouncing
+up and down, sideways, in a mild panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inert
+as a sack of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with his arms wide
+outspread on the mud. The mule galloped off in a restrained and
+dignified style until she was a hundred yards away, and then, having
+snorted the smells of burnt powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils,
+she fell to cropping the young leaves off the wayside bushes, mouthing
+the tender green shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly.
+
+For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in the narrow footpath, listening.
+Then he slid three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down the bank
+he crossed the creek on a jam of driftwood and, avoiding the roads that
+followed the little watercourse, made over the shoulder of the mountain
+for his cabin, two miles down on the opposite side. When he was gone
+from sight the nephew of the dead Trantham rolled out of his hiding
+place and fled up the road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek and
+whimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild boar pig, with his spine arched
+like the mountains, came sniffing slowly down the hill, pausing
+frequently to cock his wedge-shaped head aloft and fix a hostile eye on
+two turkey buzzards that began to swing in narrowing circles over one
+particular spot on the bank of the creek.
+
+The following day Anse sent word to the sheriff that he would be coming
+in to give himself up. It would not have been etiquette for the sheriff
+to come for him. He came in, well guarded on the way by certain of his
+clan, pleaded self-defense before a friendly county judge and was locked
+up in a one-cell log jail. His own cousin was the jailer and ministered
+to him kindly. He avoided passing the single barred window of the jail
+in the daytime or at night when there was a light behind him, and he
+expected to "come clear" shortly, as was customary.
+
+But the Tranthams broke the rules of the game. The circuit judge lived
+half-way across the mountains in a county on the Virginia line; he was
+not an active partizan of either side in the feud. These Tranthams,
+disregarding all the ethics, went before this circuit judge and asked
+him for a change of venue, and got it, which was more; so that instead
+of being tried in Clayton County--and promptly acquitted--Anse Dugmore
+was taken to Woodbine County and there lodged in a shiny new brick jail.
+Things were in process of change in Woodbine. A spur of the railroad had
+nosed its way up from the lowlands and on through the Gap, and had made
+Loudon, the county-seat, a division terminal. Strangers from the North
+had come in, opening up the mountains to mines and sawmills and bringing
+with them many swarthy foreign laborers. A young man of large hopes and
+an Eastern college education had started a weekly newspaper and was
+talking big, in his editorial columns, of a new order of things. The
+foundation had even been laid for a graded school. Plainly Woodbine
+County was falling out of touch with the century-old traditions of her
+sisters to the north and west of her.
+
+In due season, then, Anse Dugmore was brought up on a charge of
+homicide. The trial lasted less than a day. A jury of strangers heard
+the stories of Anse himself and of the dead Pegleg's white-eyed nephew.
+In the early afternoon they came back, a wooden toothpick in each mouth,
+from the new hotel where they had just had a most satisfying fifty-cent
+dinner at the expense of the commonwealth, and sentenced the defendant,
+Anderson Dugmore, to state prison at hard labor for the balance of his
+natural life.
+
+The sheriff of Woodbine padlocked on Anse's ankles a set of leg irons
+that had been made by a mountain blacksmith out of log chains and led
+him to the new depot. It was Anse Dugmore's first ride on a railroad
+train; also it was the first ride on any train for Wyatt Trantham, head
+of the other clan, who, having been elected to the legislature while
+Anse lay in jail, had come over from Clayton, bound for the state
+capital, to draw his mileage and be a statesman.
+
+It was not in the breed for the victorious Trantham to taunt his hobbled
+enemy or even to look his way, but he sat just across the aisle from the
+prisoner so that his ear might catch the jangle of the heavy irons when
+Dugmore moved in his seat. They all left the train together at the
+little blue-painted Frankfort station, Trantham turning off at the first
+crossroads to go where the round dome of the old capitol showed above
+the water-maple trees, and Dugmore clanking straight ahead, with a
+string of negroes and boys and the sheriff following along behind
+him. Under the shadow of a quarried-out hillside a gate opened
+in a high stone wall to admit him into life membership with a
+white-and-black-striped brotherhood of shame.
+
+Four years there did the work for the gangling, silent mountaineer. One
+day, just before the Christmas holidays, the new governor of the state
+paid a visit to the prison. Only his private secretary came with him.
+The warden showed them through the cell houses, the workshops, the
+dining hall and the walled yards. It was a Sunday afternoon; the white
+prisoners loafed in their stockade, the blacks in theirs. In a corner on
+the white side, where the thin and skimpy winter sunshine slanted over
+the stockade wall, Anse Dugmore was squatted; merely a rack of bones
+enclosed in a shapeless covering of black-and-white stripes. On his
+close-cropped head and over his cheekbones the skin was stretched so
+tight it seemed nearly ready to split. His eyes, glassy and bleared with
+pain, stared ahead of him with a sick man's fixed stare. Inside his
+convict's cotton shirt his chest was caved away almost to nothing, and
+from the collarless neckband his neck rose as bony as a plucked fowl's,
+with great, blue cords in it. Lacking a coverlet to pick, his fingers
+picked at the skin on his retreating chin.
+
+As the governor stood in an arched doorway watching, the lengthening
+afternoon shadow edged along and covered the hunkered-down figure by the
+wall. Anse tottered to his feet, moved a few inches so that he might
+still be in the sunshine, and settled down again. This small exertion
+started a cough that threatened to tear him apart. He drew his hand
+across his mouth and a red stain came away on the knotty knuckles. The
+warden was a kindly enough man in the ordinary relations of life, but
+nine years as a tamer of man-beasts in a great stone cage had overlaid
+his sympathies with a thickening callus.
+
+"One of our lifers that we won't have with us much longer," he said
+casually, noting that the governor's eyes followed the sick convict.
+"When the con gets one of these hill billies he goes mighty fast."
+
+"A mountaineer, then?" said the governor. "What's his name?"
+
+"Dugmore," answered the warden; "sent from Clayton County. One of those
+Clayton County feud fighters."
+
+The governor nodded understandingly. "What sort of a record has he made
+here?"
+
+"Oh, fair enough!" said the warden. "Those man-killers from the
+mountains generally make good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow,
+though. All the time he's been here he never, so far as I know, had a
+message or a visitor or a line of writing from the outside. Nor wrote a
+letter out himself. Nor made friends with anybody, convict or guard."
+
+"Has he applied for a pardon?" asked the governor.
+
+"Lord, no!" said the warden. "When he was well he just took what was
+coming to him, the same as he's taking it now. I can look up his record,
+though, if you'd care to see it, sir."
+
+"I believe I should," said the governor quietly.
+
+A spectacled young wife-murderer, who worked in the prison office on
+the prison books, got down a book and looked through it until he came to
+a certain entry on a certain page. The warden was right--so far as the
+black marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless convict's
+record showed fair.
+
+"I think," said the young governor to the warden and his secretary when
+they had moved out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper--"I think I'll
+give that poor devil a pardon for a Christmas gift. It's no more than a
+mercy to let him die at home, if he has any home to go to."
+
+"I could have him brought in and let you tell him yourself, sir,"
+volunteered the warden.
+
+"No, no," said the governor quickly. "I don't want to hear that cough
+again. Nor look on such a wreck," he added.
+
+Two days before Christmas the warden sent to the hospital ward for No.
+874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kept
+himself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The warden
+sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands a
+folded-up, blue-backed document.
+
+"Dugmore," he said in his best official manner, "when His Excellency,
+Governor Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice that your general
+health was not good. So, of his own accord, he has sent you an
+unconditional pardon for a Christmas gift, and here it is."
+
+The sick convict's eyes, between their festering lids, fixed on the
+warden's face and a sudden light flickered in their pale, glazed
+shallows; but he didn't speak. There was a little pause.
+
+"I said the governor has given you a pardon," repeated the warden,
+staring hard at him.
+
+"I heered you the fust time," croaked the prisoner in his eaten-out
+voice. "When kin I go?"
+
+"Is that all you've got to say?" demanded the warden, bristling up.
+
+"I said, when kin I go?" repeated No. 874.
+
+"Go!--you can go now. You can't go too soon to suit me!"
+
+The warden swung his chair around and showed him the broad of his
+indignant back. When he had filled out certain forms at his desk he
+shoved a pen into the silent consumptive's fingers and showed him
+crossly where to make his mark. At a signal from his bent forefinger a
+negro trusty came forward and took the pardoned man away and helped him
+put his shrunken limbs into a suit of the prison-made slops, of cheap,
+black shoddy, with the taint of a jail thick and heavy on it. A deputy
+warden thrust into Dugmore's hands a railroad ticket and the five
+dollars that the law requires shall be given to a freed felon. He took
+them without a word and, still without a word, stepped out of the gate
+that swung open for him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With the
+inbred instinct of the hillsman he swung about and headed for the
+little, light-blue station at the head of the crooked street. He went
+slowly, coughing often as the cold air struck into his wasted lungs, and
+sometimes staggering up against the fences. Through a barred window the
+wondering warden sourly watched the crawling, tottery figure.
+
+"Damned savage!" he said to himself. "Didn't even say thank you. I'll
+bet he never had any more feelings or sentiments in his life than a
+moccasin snake."
+
+Something to the same general effect was expressed a few minutes later
+by a brakeman who had just helped a wofully feeble passenger aboard the
+eastbound train and had steered him, staggering and gasping from
+weakness, to a seat at the forward end of an odorous red-plush day
+coach.
+
+"Just a bundle of bones held together by a skin," the brakeman was
+saying to the conductor, "and the smell of the pen all over him. Never
+said a word to me--just looked at me sort of dumb. Bound for plumb up at
+the far end of the division, accordin' to the way his ticket reads. I
+doubt if he lives to get there."
+
+The warden and the brakeman both were wrong. The freed man did live to
+get there. And it was an emotion which the warden had never suspected
+that held life in him all that afternoon and through the comfortless
+night in the packed and noisome day coach, while the fussy,
+self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring
+worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the
+foothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into a
+bleak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two bad
+hemorrhages on the way, but he lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the full moon of a white and flawless night before Christmas, Shem
+Dugmore's squatty log cabin made a blot on the thin blanket of snow, and
+inside the one room of the cabin Shem Dugmore sat alone by the
+daubed-clay hearth, glooming. Hours passed and he hardly moved except to
+stir the red coals or kick back some ambitious ember of hickory that
+leaped out upon the uneven floor. Suddenly something heavy fell limply
+against the locked door, and instantly, all alertness, the shock-headed
+mountaineer was backed up against the farther wall, out of range of the
+two windows, with his weapons drawn, silent, ready for what might come.
+After a minute there was a feeble, faint pecking sound--half knock, half
+scratch--at the lower part of the door. It might have been a wornout dog
+or any spent wild creature, but no line of Shem Dugmore's figure
+relaxed, and under his thick, sandy brows his eyes, in the flickering
+light, had the greenish shine of an angry cat-animal's.
+
+"Whut is it?" he called. "And whut do you want? Speak out peartly!"
+
+[Illustration: HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADE
+A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.--_Page 197._]
+
+The answer came through the thick planking thinly, in a sort of gasping
+whine that ended in a chattering cough; but even after Shem's ear caught
+the words, and even after he recognized the changed but still familiar
+cadence of the voice, he abated none of his caution. Carefully he
+unbolted the door, and, drawing it inch by inch slowly ajar, he reached
+out, exposing only his hand and arm, and drew bodily inside the shell of
+a man that was fallen, huddled up, against the log door jamb. He dropped
+the wooden crossbar back into its sockets before he looked a second time
+at the intruder, who had crawled across the floor and now lay before the
+wide mouth of the hearth in a choking spell. Shem Dugmore made no move
+until the fit was over and the sufferer lay quiet.
+
+"How did you git out, Anse?" were the first words he spoke.
+
+The consumptive rolled his head weakly from side to side and swallowed
+desperately. "Pardoned out--in writin'--yistiddy."
+
+"You air in purty bad shape," said Shem.
+
+"Yes,"--the words came very slowly--"my lungs give out on me--and my
+eyes. But--but I got here."
+
+"You come jist in time," said his cousin; "this time tomorrer and you
+wouldn't a' never found me here. I'd 'a' been gone."
+
+"Gone!--gone whar?"
+
+"Well," said Shem slowly, "after you was sent away it seemed like them
+Tranthams got the upper hand complete. All of our side whut ain't
+dead--and that's powerful few--is moved off out of the mountings to
+Winchester, down in the settlemints. I'm 'bout the last, and I'm
+a-purposin' to slip out tomorrer night while the Tranthams is at their
+Christmas rackets--they'd layway me too ef----"
+
+"But my wife--did she----"
+
+"I thought maybe you'd heered tell about that whilst you was down yon,"
+said Shem in a dulled wonder. "The fall after you was took away yore
+woman she went over to the Tranthams. Yes, sir; she took up with the
+head devil of 'em all--old Wyatt Trantham hisself--and she went to live
+at his house up on the Yaller Banks."
+
+"Is she----Did she----"
+
+The ex-convict was struggling to his knees. His groping skeletons of
+hands were right in the hot ashes. The heat cooked the moisture from his
+sodden garments in little films of vapor and filled the cabin with the
+reek of the prison dye.
+
+"Did she--did she----"
+
+"Oh, she's been dead quite a spell now," stated Shem. "I would have
+s'posed you'd 'a' heered that, too, somewhars. She had a kind of a
+risin' in the breast."
+
+"But my young uns--little Anderson and--and Elviry?"
+
+The sick man was clear up on his knees now, his long arms hanging and
+his eyes, behind their matted lids, fixed on Shem's impassive face.
+Could the warden have seen him now, and marked his attitude and his
+words, he would have known what it was that had brought this dying man
+back to _his_ own mountain valley with the breath of life still in him.
+A dumb, unuttered love for the two shock-headed babies he had left
+behind in the split-board cabin was the one big thing in Anse Dugmore's
+whole being--bigger even than his sense of allegiance to the feud.
+
+"My young uns, Shem?"
+
+"Wyatt Trantham took 'em and he kep' 'em--he's got 'em both now."
+
+"Does he--does he use 'em kindly?"
+
+"I ain't never heered," said Shem simply. "He never had no young uns of
+his own, and it mout be he uses 'em well. He's the high sheriff now."
+
+"I was countin' on gittin' to see 'em agin--an buyin 'em some little
+Chrismus fixin's," the father wheezed. Hopelessness was coming into his
+rasping whisper. "I reckon it ain't no use to--to be thinkin'--of that
+there now?"
+
+"No 'arthly use at all," said Shem, with brutal directness. "Ef you had
+the strength to git thar, the Tranthams would shoot you down like a fice
+dog."
+
+Anse nodded weakly. He sank down again on the floor, face to the boards,
+coughing hard. It was the droning voice of his cousin that brought him
+back from the borders of the coma he had been fighting off for hours.
+
+For, to Shem, the best hater and the poorest fighter of all his
+cleaned-out clan, had come a great thought. He shook the drowsing man
+and roused him, and plied him with sips from a dipper of the unhallowed
+white corn whisky of a mountain still-house. And as he worked over him
+he told off the tally of the last four years: of the uneven, unmerciful
+war, ticking off on his blunt finger ends the grim totals of this one
+ambushed and that one killed in the open, overpowered and beaten under
+by weight of odds. He told such details as he knew of the theft of the
+young wife and the young ones, Elvira and little Anderson.
+
+"Anse, did ary Trantham see you a-gittin' here tonight?"
+
+"Nobody--that knowed me--seed me."
+
+"Old Wyatt Trantham, he rid into Manchester this evenin' 'bout fo'
+o'clock--I seed him passin' over the ridge," went on Shem. "He'll be
+ridin' back 'long Pigeon Roost some time before mawnin'. He done you a
+heap o' dirt, Anse."
+
+The prostrate man was listening hard.
+
+"Anse, I got yore old rifle right here in the house. Ef you could git up
+thar on the mounting, somewhar's alongside the Pigeon Roost trail, you
+could git him shore. He'll be full of licker comin' back."
+
+And now a seeming marvel was coming to pass, for the caved-in trunk was
+rising on the pipestem legs and the shaking fingers were outstretched,
+reaching for something.
+
+Shem stepped lightly to a corner of the cabin and brought forth a rifle
+and began reloading it afresh from a box of shells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A wavering figure crept across the small stump-dotted "dead'ning"--Anse
+Dugmore was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so that
+its butt made a crooked, broken furrow in the new snow like the trail of
+a crippled snake. He fell and got up, and fell and rose again. He
+coughed and up the ridge a ranging dog-fox barked back an answer to his
+cough.
+
+From out of the slitted door Shem watched him until the scrub oaks at
+the edge of the clearing swallowed him up. Then Shem fastened himself in
+and made ready to start his flight to the lowlands that very night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just below the forks of Pigeon Roost Creek the trail that followed its
+banks widened into a track wide enough for wagon wheels. On one side lay
+the diminished creek, now filmed over with a glaze of young ice. On the
+other the mountain rose steeply. Fifteen feet up the bluff side a fallen
+dead tree projected its rotted, broken roots, like snaggled teeth, from
+the clayey bank. Behind this tree's trunk, in the snow and half-frozen,
+half-melted yellow mire, Anse Dugmore was stretched on his face. The
+barrel of the rifle barely showed itself through the interlacing root
+ends. It pointed downward and northward toward the broad, moonlit place
+in the road. Its stock was pressed tightly against Anse Dugmore's
+fallen-in cheek; the trigger finger of his right hand, fleshless as a
+joint of cane, was crooked about the trigger guard. A thin stream of
+blood ran from his mouth and dribbled down his chin and coagulated in a
+sticky smear upon the gun stock. His lungs, what was left of them, were
+draining away.
+
+He lay without motion, saving up the last ounce of his life. The cold
+had crawled up his legs to his hips; he was dead already from the waist
+down. He no longer coughed, only gasped thickly. He knew that he was
+about gone; but he knew, too, that he would last, clear-minded and
+clear-eyed, until High Sheriff Wyatt Trantham came. His brain would
+last--and his trigger finger.
+
+Then he heard him coming. Up the trail sounded the muffled music of a
+pacer's hoofs single-footing through the snow, and after that, almost
+instantly Trantham rode out into sight and loomed larger and larger as
+he drew steadily near the open place under the bank. He was wavering in
+the saddle. He drew nearer and nearer, and as he came out on the wide
+patch of moonlit snow, he pulled the single-footer down to a walk and
+halted him and began fumbling in the right-hand side of the saddlebags
+that draped his horse's shoulder.
+
+Up in its covert the rifle barrel moved an inch or two, then steadied
+and stopped, the bone-sight at its tip resting full on the broad of the
+drunken rider's breast. The boney finger moved inward from the trigger
+guard and closed ever so gently about the touchy, hair-filed
+trigger--then waited.
+
+For the uncertain hand of Trantham, every movement showing plain in the
+crystal, hard, white moon, was slowly bringing from under the flap of
+the right-side saddlebag something that was round and smooth and shone
+with a yellowish glassy light, like a fat flask filled with spirits. And
+Anse Dugmore waited, being minded now to shoot him as he put the bottle
+to his lips, and so cheat Trantham of his last drink on earth, as
+Trantham had cheated him of his liberty and his babies--as Trantham had
+cheated those babies of the Christmas fixings which the state's five
+dollars might have bought.
+
+He waited, waited----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This was not the first time the high sheriff had stopped that night on
+his homeward ride from the tiny county seat, as his befuddlement
+proclaimed; but halting there in the open, just past the forks of the
+Pigeon Roost, he was moved by a new idea. He fumbled in the right-hand
+flap of his saddlebags and brought out a toy drum, round and smooth,
+with shiny yellow sides. A cheap china doll with painted black ringlets
+and painted blue eyes followed the drum, and then a torn paper bag, from
+which small pieces of cheap red-and-green dyed candy sifted out between
+the sheriff's fumbling fingers and fell into the snow.
+
+Thirty feet away, in the dead leaves matted under the roots of an uptorn
+dead tree, something moved--something moved; and then there was a sound
+like a long, deep, gurgling sigh, and another sound like some heavy,
+lengthy object settling itself down flat upon the snow and the leaves.
+
+The first faint rustle cleared Trantham's brain of the liquor fumes. He
+jammed the toys and the candy back into the saddlebags and jerked his
+horse sidewise into the protecting shadow of the bluff, reaching at the
+same time to the shoulder holster buckled about his body under the
+unbuttoned overcoat. For a long minute he listened keenly, the drawn
+pistol in his hand. There was nothing to hear except his own breathing
+and the breathing of his horse.
+
+"Sho! Some old hawg turnin' over in her bed," he said to the horse, and
+holstering the pistol he went racking on down Pigeon Roost Creek, with
+Christmas for Elviry and little Anderson in his saddlebags.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they found Anse Dugmore in his ambush another snow had fallen on
+his back and he was slightly more of a skeleton than ever; but the bony
+finger was still crooked about the trigger, the rusted hammer was back
+at full cock and there was a dried brownish stain on the gun stock. So,
+from these facts, his finders were moved to conclude that the freed
+convict must have bled to death from his lungs before the sheriff ever
+passed, which they held to be a good thing all round and a lucky thing
+for the sheriff.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN
+
+
+There was a sound, heard in the early hours of a Sunday morning, that
+used to bother strangers in our town until they got used to it. It
+started usually along about half past five or six o'clock and it kept up
+interminably--so it seemed to them--a monotonous, jarring thump-thump,
+thump-thump that was like the far-off beating of African tomtoms; but at
+breakfast, when the beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing off a
+steamy hot halo of their own goodness, these aliens knew what it was
+that had roused them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by nature, felt
+amply recompensed for the lost hours of their beauty sleep.
+
+In these degenerate latter days I believe there is a machine that
+accomplishes the same purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling and
+crushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems somehow to take
+the poetry out of the operation. Old Judge Priest, our circuit judge,
+and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, would
+have naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good right
+arm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for the
+judge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn or
+a little later, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittled
+wood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was as
+plastic as sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown, full of
+tiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spread
+and burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then,
+with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small round
+disks and delicately pink each one with a fork--and then, if you were
+listening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of an
+iron lip.
+
+On a certain Sunday I have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the first
+premonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in his
+white linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day was
+young and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow,
+like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abed
+blackbirds were still talking over family matters in the maples that
+clustered round the house, and in the back yard Judge Priest's big red
+rooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to a certain little brown
+hen, first crowing out the news loudly and then listening, with his head
+on one side, while the rooster in the next yard took it up and repeated
+it to a rooster living farther down the road, as is the custom among
+male scandalizers the world over. Upon the lawn the little gossamer
+hammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight were
+spangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glittering
+rosary and the center of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket.
+Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood trees
+were shedding down their podded product so thickly that across open
+spaces the slanting lines of the drifting fiber looked like snow. It
+would be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet and
+fresh and washed clean.
+
+It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered his bulk into a rustic chair
+made of hickory withes that gave to his weight, and put his thoughts
+upon breakfast and the goodness of the day; but presently, as he sat
+there, he saw something that set a frown between his faded blue eyes.
+
+He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the opposite side, an old man--a
+very feeble old man--who was tall and thin and dressed in somber black.
+The man was lame--he dragged one leg along with the hitching gait of the
+paralytic. Traveling with painful slowness, he came on until he reached
+the corner above. Then automatically he turned at right angles and left
+the narrow wooden sidewalk and crossed the dusty road. He passed Judge
+Priest's, looking neither to the right nor the left, and so kept on
+until he reached the corner below. Still following an invisible path in
+the deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to the other side. Just as he
+got there his halt leg seemed to give out altogether and for a minute or
+two he stood holding himself up by a fumbling grip upon the slats of a
+tree box before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain and weakness in
+the early sunshine that was now beginning to slant across his path and
+dapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light.
+
+This maneuver was inexplicable--a stranger would have puzzled to make it
+out. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon the
+other; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother
+over the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles and
+balsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the opposite
+side of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home,
+had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to this
+lone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. A
+stranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understood
+it--he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the years
+that stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but on
+this particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toiling
+grim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old.
+
+Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With an
+effort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair and
+stood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink bald dome of forehead
+as though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter,
+resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door.
+
+"Breakfus' served, suh!" he said, giving to an announcement touching on
+food that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys the
+splendid secret.
+
+"Hey?" asked the judge absently.
+
+"Breakfus'--hit's on the table waitin', suh," stated Jeff. "Mizz Polks
+sent over her houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yore
+breakfus'; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses'
+compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden--specially fur you."
+
+The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, but
+in speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always,
+wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on that
+final s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implying
+that the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralization.
+
+Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priest
+ate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads of
+sweetness; the young fried chicken was a poem in delicate and flaky
+browns; the spoon bread could not have been any better if it had tried;
+and the beaten biscuits were as light as snowflakes and as ready to melt
+on the tongue; but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through the
+meal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for the last course, said to Aunt
+Dilsey:
+
+"Ole boss-man seem lak he's got somethin' on his mind worryin' him this
+mawnin'."
+
+When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp waffles in one hand and a
+pitcher of cane sirup in the other, he stared in surprise, for the
+dining room was empty and he could hear his employer creaking down the
+hall. Jeff just naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to waste.
+He ate them himself, standing up; and they gave him a zest for his
+regular breakfast, which followed in due course of time.
+
+From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped knobs that stood just
+inside the front door, Judge Priest picked up a palmleaf fan; and he
+held the fan slantwise as a shield for his eyes and his bare head
+against the sun's glare as he went down the porch steps and passed out
+of his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborn
+gate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-looking
+little house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings--as if
+poverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest's yard, now, the
+grass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in this
+small yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through the
+grass--as though the soil itself was out at elbows and the nap worn off
+its green-velvet coat; but the vines about the porch were thick enough
+for an ambuscade and from behind their green screen came a voice in
+hospitable recognition.
+
+"Is that you, judge? Well sir, I'm glad to see you! Come right in; take
+a seat and sit down and rest yourself."
+
+The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier--an
+old man--not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in his
+shirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes had
+been newly shined, but the job was poorly done; the leather showed a
+dulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and
+heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down--the voice of a deaf person
+who cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in a
+false key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean and
+slightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear.
+
+The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the step
+of the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers that
+stood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or
+two he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborly
+calls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy the
+communion of silence together without embarrassment.
+
+The town clocks struck--first the one on the city hall struck eight
+times sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the county
+courthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment,
+struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once with
+a big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could cure
+the courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept it
+according to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased the
+bell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells,
+began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had died
+away.
+
+"Goin' to be good and hot after while," he said, raising his voice.
+
+"What say?"
+
+"I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,"
+repeated Judge Priest.
+
+"Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there," assented the host. "Just a
+minute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find it
+middlin' close in church this morning. She's going, though--runaway
+horses wouldn't keep her away from church! I'm not going myself--seems
+as though I'm getting more and more out of the church habit here
+lately."
+
+Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of this
+admission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of his
+second wife, had been a regular attendant at services--going twice on
+Sundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wife
+had been dead going on four years now--or was it five? Time sped so!
+
+The deaf man spoke on:
+
+"So I just thought I'd sit here and try to keep cool and wait for that
+Ledbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read last
+Sunday's paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty fine
+piece on those Northern money devils. It's round here somewhere--I cut
+it out to keep it. I'd like to have you read it and pass your opinion on
+it. These young fellows do pretty well, but there's none of them can
+write like the colonel, in my judgment."
+
+Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.
+
+"Ed Tilghman," he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemed
+absurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, "you and me have
+lived neighbors together a good while, haven't we? We've been right
+acros't the street from one another all this time. It kind of jolts me
+sometimes when I git to thinkin' how many years it's really been;
+because we're gittin' along right smartly in years--all us old fellows
+are. Ten years from now, say, there won't be so many of us left." He
+glanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. "You're
+younger than some of us; but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call a
+young man yourself."
+
+Avoiding the direct, questioning gaze that his companion turned on him
+at this, the judge reached forward and touched a ripe balsam apple that
+dangled in front of him. Instantly it split, showing the gummed red
+seeds clinging to the inner walls of the sensitive pod.
+
+"I'm listening to you, judge," said the deaf man.
+
+For a moment the old judge waited. There was about him almost an air of
+embarrassment. Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple, he spoke,
+and it was with a sort of hurried anxiety, as though he feared he might
+be checked before he could say what he had to say.
+
+"Ed," he said, "I was settin' on my porch a while ago waitin' for
+breakfast, and your brother came by." He shot a quick, apprehensive
+glance at his silent auditor. Except for a tautened flickering of the
+muscles about the mouth, there was no sign that the other had heard him.
+"Your brother Abner came by," repeated the judge, "and I set over there
+on my porch and watched him pass. Ed, Abner's gittin' mighty feeble! He
+jest about kin drag himself along--he's had another stroke lately, they
+tell me. He had to hold on to that there treebox down yonder, steadyin'
+himself after he crossed back over to this side. Lord knows what he was
+doin' draggin' down-town on a Sunday mornin'--force of habit, I reckin.
+Anyway he certainly did look older and more poorly than ever I saw him
+before. He's a failin' man if I'm any judge. Do you hear me plain?" he
+asked.
+
+"I hear you," said his neighbor in a curiously flat voice. It was
+Tilghman's turn to avoid the glances of his friend. He stared straight
+ahead of him through a rift in the vines.
+
+"Well, then," went on Judge Priest, "here's what I've got to say to you,
+Ed Tilghman. You know as well as I do that I've never pried into your
+private affairs, and it goes mightily against the grain for me to be
+doin' so now; but, Ed, when I think of how old we're all gittin' to be,
+and when the Camp meets and I see you settin' there side by side almost,
+and yet never seemin' to see each other--and this mornin' when I saw
+Abner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick--and it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin'
+too, and everything so quiet and peaceful----" He broke off and started
+anew. "I don't seem to know exactly how to put my thoughts into
+words--and puttin' things into words is supposed to be my trade too.
+Anyway I couldn't go to Abner. He's not my neighbor and you are; and
+besides, you're the youngest of the two. So--so I came over here to you.
+Ed, I'd like mightily to take some word from you to your brother Abner.
+I'd like to do it the best in the world! Can't I go to him with a
+message from you--today? Tomorrow might be too late!"
+
+He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony knee of the deaf man; but the
+hand slipped away as Tilghman stood up.
+
+"Judge Priest," said Tilghman, looking down at him, "I've listened to
+what you've had to say; and I didn't stop you, because you are my friend
+and I know you mean well by it. Besides, you're my guest, under my own
+roof." He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch.
+Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him,
+his face being still set and his voice flat. "What's between me and
+my--what's between me and that man you just named always will be between
+us. He's satisfied to let things go on as they are. I'm satisfied to let
+them go on. It's in our breed, I guess. Words--just words--wouldn't help
+mend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, and
+neither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we both
+live. I'd just as soon you never brought this--this subject up again. If
+you went to him I presume he'd tell you the same thing. Let it be, Judge
+Priest--it's past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty years
+nearly. We'll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, Judge
+Priest; but let it be--let it be!"
+
+There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. He
+checked his walk and called in at a shuttered window.
+
+"Liddie," he said in his natural up-and-down voice, "before you put off
+for church, couldn't you mix up a couple of lemonades or something?
+Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me."
+
+"No," said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, "I've got to be gittin' back
+before the sun's up too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile be
+shore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night,"
+he added.
+
+"I'll be there," said Tilghman. "And I'll try to find that piece of
+Colonel Watterson's and send it over to you. I'd like mightily for you
+to read it."
+
+He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied hand
+fumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walk
+and out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again.
+All those little muscles in his jowls were jumping.
+
+Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length from
+beneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and there
+groups of children--the little girls in prim and starchy white, the
+little boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; and
+all of them were moving toward a common center--Sunday school. Twice
+again that day would the street show life--a little later when grown-ups
+went their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, when
+young people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins,
+would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sunday
+interchange of special dainties between neighbors amounted in our town
+to a ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the cool of the
+evening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took Sunday
+naps.
+
+With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry sawing motion in the air, as
+though trying to fend off something disagreeable--a memory, perhaps, or
+it might have been only a persistent midge. There were plenty of gnats
+and midges about, for by now--even so soon--the dew was dried. The
+leaves of the silver poplars were turning their white under sides up
+like countless frog bellies, and the long, podded pendants of the
+Injun-cigar trees hung dangling and still. It would be a hot day, sure
+enough; already the judge felt wilted and worn out.
+
+In our town we had our tragedies that endured for years and, in the
+small-town way, finally became institutions. There was the case of the
+Burnleys. For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side of
+his house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossing
+an imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, having
+for their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter,
+in whose gray and barren life churchwork and these strange home duties
+took the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and by
+babies and grandbabies.
+
+There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, who
+was forever starting somewhere and never going there--because, as sure
+as he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up his
+mind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bank
+had failed on him, or a horse had kicked him in the head--or maybe it
+was all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow he
+went his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boys
+who were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, but
+when he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to be
+his volunteer pallbearers.
+
+There was Mr. H. Jackman--Brother Jackman to all the town--who had been
+our leading hatter once and rich besides, and in the days of his
+affluence had given the Baptist church its bells. In his old age, when
+he was dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not known by that
+word, which is at once the sweetest and bitterest word in our tongue;
+for Brother Jackman, always primped, always plump and well clad, would
+go through the market to take his pick of what was there, and to the
+Richland House bar for his toddies, and to Felsburg Brothers for new
+garments when his old ones wore shabby--and yet never paid a cent for
+anything; a kindly conspiracy on the part of the whole town enabling him
+to maintain his self-respect to the last. Strangers in our town used to
+take him for a retired banker--that's a fact!
+
+And there was old man Stackpole, who had killed his man--had killed him
+in fair fight and had been acquitted--and yet walked quiet back streets
+at all hours, a gray, silent shadow, and never slept except with a
+bright light burning in his room.
+
+The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman, though, and of Captain Abner G.
+Tilghman, his elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery--the
+biggest tragedy and the deepest mystery our town had ever known or ever
+would know probably. All that anybody knew for certain was that for
+upward of fifty years neither of them had spoken to the other, nor by
+deed or look had given heed to the other. As boys, back in sixty-one,
+they had gone out together. Side by side, each with his arm over the
+other's shoulder, they had stood up with a hundred others to be sworn
+into the service of the Confederate States of America; and on the
+morning they went away Miss Sally May Ghoulson had given the older
+brother her silk scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both the
+brothers had liked her; but by this public act she made it plain which
+of them was her choice.
+
+Then the company had marched off to the camp on the Tennessee border,
+where the new troops were drilling; and as they marched some watchers
+wept and others cheered--but the cheering predominated, for it was to be
+only a sort of picnic anyhow--so everybody agreed. As the orators--who
+mainly stayed behind--had pointed out, the Northern people would not
+fight. And even if they should fight could not one Southerner whip four
+Yankees? Certainly he could; any fool knew that much. In a month or two
+months, or at most three months, they would all be tramping home again,
+covered with glory and the spoils of war, and then--this by common
+report and understanding--Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman
+would be married, with a big church wedding.
+
+The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought, and it was not a ninety-day
+picnic after all. It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it was over,
+after four years and a month, Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman
+did not marry. It was just before the battle of Chickamauga when the
+other men in the company first noticed that the two Tilghmans had become
+as strangers, and worse than strangers, to each other. They quit
+speaking to each other then and there, and to any man's knowledge they
+never spoke again. They served the war out, Abner rising just before
+the end to a captaincy, Edward serving always as a private in the ranks.
+In a dour, grim silence they took the fortunes of those last hard,
+hopeless days and after the surrender down in Mississippi they came back
+with the limping handful that was left of the company; and in age they
+were all boys still--but in experience, men, and in suffering,
+grandsires.
+
+Two months after they got back Miss Sally May Ghoulson was married to
+Edward, the younger brother. Within a year she died, and after a decent
+period of mourning Edward married a second time--only to be widowed
+again after many years. His second wife bore him children and they
+died--all except one, a daughter, who grew up and married badly; and
+after her mother's death she came back to live with her deaf father and
+minister to him. As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never married--never,
+so far as the watching eyes of the town might tell, looked with favor
+upon another woman. And he never spoke to his brother or to any of his
+brother's family--or his brother to him.
+
+With years the wall of silence they had builded up between them turned
+to ice and the ice to stone. They lived on the same street, but never
+did Edward enter Captain Abner's bank, never did Captain Abner pass
+Edward's house--always he crossed over to the opposite side. They
+belonged to the same Veterans' Camp--indeed there was only the one for
+them to belong to; they voted the same ticket--straight Democratic; and
+in the same church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they worshiped the
+same God by the same creed, the older brother being an elder and the
+younger a plain member--and yet never crossed looks.
+
+The town had come to accept this dumb and bitter feud as unchangeable
+and eternal; in time people ceased even to wonder what its cause had
+been, and in all the long years only one man had tried, before now, to
+heal it up. When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young and ardent
+clergyman, fresh from the Virginia theological school, came out to take
+the vacant pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense of his holy
+calling, thought it shameful that such a thing should be in the
+congregation. He went to see Captain Tilghman about it. He never went
+but that once. Afterward it came out that Captain Tilghman had
+threatened to walk out of church and never darken its doors again if the
+minister ever dared to mention his brother's name in his presence. So
+the young minister sorrowed, but obeyed, for the captain was rich and a
+generous giver to the church.
+
+And he had grown richer with the years, and as he grew richer his
+brother grew poorer--another man owned the drug store where Edward
+Tilghman had failed. They had grown from young to middle-aged men and
+from middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first the grace of youth
+and then the solidness of maturity had gone out of them and the
+gnarliness of age had come upon them; one was halt of step and the other
+was dull of ear; and the town through half a century of schooling had
+accustomed itself to the situation and took it as a matter of course. So
+it was and so it always would be--a tragedy and a mystery. It had not
+been of any use when the minister interfered and it was of no use now.
+Judge Priest, with the gesture of a man who is beaten, dropped the fan
+on the porch floor, went into his darkened sitting room, stretched
+himself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa and called out to Jeff to
+make him a mild toddy--one with plenty of ice in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On this same Sunday--or, anyhow, I like to fancy it was on this same
+Sunday--at a point distant approximately nine hundred and seventy miles
+in a northeasterly direction from Judge Priest's town, Corporal Jacob
+Speck, late of Sigel's command, sat at the kitchen window of the
+combined Speck and Engel apartment on East Eighty-fifth Street in the
+Borough of Manhattan, New York. He was in his shirtsleeves; his tender
+feet were incased in a pair of red-and-green carpet slippers. In the
+angle of his left arm he held his youngest grandchild, aged one and a
+half years, while his right hand carefully poised a china pipe, with a
+bowl like an egg-cup and a stem like a fishpole. The corporal's blue
+Hanoverian eyes, behind their thick-lensed glasses, were fixed upon a
+comprehensive vista of East Eighty-fifth Street back yards and
+clothespoles and fire escapes; but his thoughts were very much
+elsewhere.
+
+Reared back there at seeming ease, the corporal none the less was not
+happy in his mind. It was not that he so much minded being left at home
+to mind the youngest baby while the rest of the family spent the
+afternoon amid the Teutonic splendors of Smeltzer's Harlem River Casino,
+with its acres of gravel walks and its whitewashed tree trunks, its
+straggly flower beds and its high-collared beers. He was used to that
+sort of thing. Since a plague of multiplying infirmities of the body
+had driven him out of his job in the tax office, the corporal had not
+done much except nurse the babies that occurred in the Speck-Engel
+establishment with such unerring regularity. Sometimes, it is true, he
+did slip down to the corner for maybe zwei glasses of beer and a game of
+pinocle; but then, likely as not, there would come inopportunely a
+towheaded descendant to tell him Mommer needed him back at the flat
+right away to mind the baby while she went marketing or to the movies.
+
+He could endure that--he had to. What riled Corporal Jacob Speck on this
+warm and sunny Sunday was a realization that he was not doing his share
+at making the history of the period. The week before had befallen the
+fiftieth anniversary of the marching away of his old regiment to the
+front; there had been articles in the daily papers about it. Also, in
+patriotic commemoration of the great event there had been a parade of
+the wrinkled survivors--ninety-odd of them--following their tattered and
+faded battle flag down Fifth Avenue past apathetic crowds, nine-tenths
+of whom had been born since the war--in foreign lands mainly; and at
+least half, if one might judge by their looks, did not know what the
+parading was all about, and did not particularly care either.
+
+The corporal had not participated in the march of the veterans; he had
+not even attended the banquet that followed it. True, the youngest
+grandchild was at the moment cutting one of her largest jaw teeth and so
+had required, for the time, an extraordinary and special amount of
+minding; but the young lady's dental difficulty was not the sole reason
+for his absence. Three weeks earlier the corporal had taken part in
+Decoration Day, and certainly one parade a month was ample strain upon a
+pair of legs such as he owned. He had returned home with his game leg
+behaving more gamely then usual and with his sound one full of new and
+painful kinks. Also, in honor of the occasion he had committed the error
+of wearing a pair of stiff and inflexible new shoes; wherefore he had
+worn his carpet slippers ever since.
+
+Missing the fiftieth anniversary was not the main point with the
+corporal--that was merely the fortune of war, to be accepted with
+fortitude and with no more than a proper and natural amount of grumbling
+by one who had been a good soldier and was now a good citizen; but for
+days before the event, and daily ever since, divers members of the old
+regiment had been writing pieces to the papers--the German papers and
+the English-printing papers too--long pieces, telling of the trip to
+Washington, and then on into Virginia and Tennessee, speaking of this
+campaign and that and this battle and that. And because there was just
+now a passing wave of interest in Civil War matters, the papers had
+printed these contributions, thereby reflecting much glory on the
+writers thereof. But Corporal Speck, reading these things, had marveled
+deeply that sane men should have such disgustingly bad memories; for his
+own recollection of these stirring and epochal events differed most
+widely from the reminiscent narration of each misguided chronicler.
+
+It was, indeed, a shameful thing that the most important occurrences of
+the whole war should be so shockingly mangled and mishandled in the
+retelling. They were so grievously wrong, those other veterans, and he
+was so absolutely right. He was always right in these matters. Only the
+night before, during a merciful respite from his nursing duties, he
+had, in Otto Wittenpen's back barroom, spoken across the rim of a tall
+stein with some bitterness of certain especially grievous misstatements
+of plain fact on the part of certain faulty-minded comrades. In reply
+Otto had said, in a rather sneering tone the corporal thought:
+
+"Say, then, Jacob, why don't you yourself write a piece to the paper
+telling about this regiment of yours--the way it was?"
+
+"I will. Tomorrow I will do so without fail," he had said, the ambition
+of authorship suddenly stirring within him. Now, however, as he sat at
+the kitchen window, he gloomed in his disappointment, for he had tried
+and he knew he had not the gift of the written line. A good soldier he
+had been--yes, none better--and a good citizen, and in his day a capable
+and painstaking doorkeeper in the tax office; but he could not write his
+own story. That morning, when the youngest grandchild slept and his
+daughter and his daughter's husband and the brood of his older
+grandchildren were all at the Lutheran church over in the next block, he
+sat himself down to compose his article to the paper; but the words
+would not come--or, at least, after the first line or two they would not
+come.
+
+The mental pictures of those stirring great days when he marched off on
+his two good legs--both good legs then--to fight for the country whose
+language he could not yet speak was there in bright and living colors;
+but the sorry part of it was he could not clothe them in language. In
+the trash box under the sink a dozen crumpled sheets of paper testified
+to his failure, and now, alone with the youngest Miss Engel, he brooded
+over it and got low in his mind and let his pipe go smack out. And right
+then and there, with absolutely no warning at all, there came to him, as
+you might say from the clear sky, a great idea--an idea so magnificent
+that he almost dropped the youngest Miss Engel off his lap at the
+splendid shock of it.
+
+With solicitude he glanced down at the small, moist, pink, lumpy bundle
+of prickly heat and sore gums. Despite the sudden jostle the young lady
+slept steadily on. Very carefully he laid his pipe aside and very
+carefully he got upon his feet, jouncing his charge soothingly up and
+down, and with deftness he committed her small person to the crib that
+stood handily by. She stirred fretfully, but did not wake. The corporal
+steered his gimpy leg and his rheumatic one out of the kitchen, which
+was white with scouring and as clean as a new pin, into the rearmost and
+smallest of the three sleeping rooms that mainly made up the Speck-Engel
+apartment.
+
+The bed, whereon of nights Corporal Speck reposed with a bucking bronco
+of an eight-year-old grandson for a bedmate, was jammed close against
+the plastering, under the one small window set diagonally in a jog in
+the wall, and opening out upon an airshaft, like a chimney. Time had
+been when the corporal had a room and a bed all his own; that was before
+the family began to grow so fast in its second generation and while he
+still held a place of lucrative employment at the tax office.
+
+As he got down upon his knees beside the bed the old man uttered a
+little groan of discomfort. He felt about in the space underneath and
+drew out a small tin trunk, rusted on its corners and dented in its
+sides. He made a laborious selection of keys from a key-ring he got out
+of his pocket, unlocked the trunk and lifted out a heavy top tray. The
+tray contained, among other things, such treasures as his naturalization
+papers, his pension papers, a photograph of his dead wife, and a small
+bethumbed passbook of the East Side Germania Savings Bank. Underneath
+was a black fatigue hat with a gold cord round its crown, a neatly
+folded blue uniform coat, with the G. A. R. bronze showing in its
+uppermost lapel, and below that, in turn, the suit of neat black the
+corporal wore on high state occasions and would one day wear to be
+buried in. Pawing and digging, he worked his hands to the very bottom,
+and then, with a little grunt, he heaved out the thing he wanted--the
+one trophy, except a stiffened kneecap and an honorable record, this old
+man had brought home from the South. It was a captured Confederate
+knapsack, flattened and flabby. Its leather was dry-rotted with age and
+the brass C. S. A. on the outer flap was gangrened and sunken in; the
+flap curled up stiffly, like an old shoe sole.
+
+The crooked old fingers undid a buckle fastening and from the musty and
+odorous interior of the knapsack withdrew a letter, in a queer-looking
+yellowed envelope, with a queer-looking stamp upon the upper right-hand
+corner and a faint superscription upon its face. The three sheets of
+paper he slid out of the envelope were too old even to rustle, but the
+close writing upon them in a brownish, faded ink was still plainly to be
+made out.
+
+Corporal Speck replaced the knapsack in its place at the very bottom,
+put the tray back in its place, closed the trunk and locked it and
+shoved it under the bed. The trunk resisted slightly and he lost one
+carpet slipper and considerable breath in the struggle. Limping back to
+the kitchen and seeing that little Miss Engel still slumbered, he eased
+his frame into a chair and composed himself to literary composition, not
+in the least disturbed by the shouts of roistering sidewalk comedians
+that filtered up to him from down below in front of the house, or by the
+distant clatter of intermittent traffic over the cobbly spine of Second
+Avenue, half a block away. For some time he wrote, with a most scratchy
+pen; and this is what he wrote:
+
+     "TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN, CITY.
+
+     "_Dear Sir:_ The undersigned would state that he served two years
+     and nine months--until wounded in action--in the Fighting Two
+     Hundred and Tenth New York Infantry, and has been much interested
+     to see what other comrades wrote for the papers regarding same in
+     connection with the Rebellion War of North and South respectively.
+     I would state that during the battle of Chickamauga I was for a
+     while lying near by to a Confederate soldier--name unknown--who
+     was dying on account of a wound in the chest. By his request I
+     gave him a drink of water from my canteen, he dying shortly
+     thereafter. Being myself wounded--right knee shattered by a
+     Minie ball--I was removed to a field hospital; but before doing
+     so I brought away this man's knapsack for a keepsake of the
+     occasion. Some years later I found in said knapsack a letter,
+     which previous to then was overlooked by me. I inclose herewith a
+     copy of said letter, which it may be interesting for reading
+     purposes by surviving comrades.
+
+     "Respectfully yours,
+
+              "JACOB SPECK,
+
+     "Late Corporal L Company,
+
+     "Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A."
+
+With deliberation and squeaky emphasis the pen progressed slowly across
+the paper, while the corporal, with his left hand, held flat the dead
+man's ancient letter before him, intent on copying it. Hard words
+puzzled him and long words daunted him, and he was making a long job of
+it when there were steps in the hall without. There entered breezily
+Miss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of all the multiplying Engels,
+pretty beyond question and every inch American, having the gift of
+wearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs in a way to make them seem
+Upper Fifth Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly flushed; she
+had just parted lingeringly from her steady company, whose name was Mr.
+Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower hallway, which is the trysting
+place and courting place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts, and now she
+had come to make ready the family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight of
+her the corporal had another inspiration--his second within the hour.
+His brow smoothed and he fetched a sigh of relief.
+
+"'Lo, grosspops!" she said. "How's every little thing? The kiddo all
+right?"
+
+She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed like a hearse and slipped on
+a long apron that covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem.
+
+"Girl," said her grandfather, "would you make tomorrow for me at the
+office a copy of this letter on the typewriter machine?"
+
+He spoke in German and she answered in New-Yorkese, while her nimble
+fingers wrestled with the task of back-buttoning her apron.
+
+"Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute to rattle that off.
+Funny-looking old thing!" she went on, taking up the creased and faded
+original. "Who wrote it? And whatcher goin' to do with it, grosspops?"
+
+"That," he told her, "is mine own business! It is for you, please, to
+make the copy and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and also the
+copy."
+
+So on Monday morning, when the rush of taking dictation at the office of
+the Great American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street, was well abated,
+the competent Miss Hortense copied the letter, and that same evening her
+grandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied by his own introduction.
+The Sun straightway printed it without change and--what was still
+better--with the sender's name spelled out in capital letters; and that
+night, at the place down by the corner, Corporal Jacob Speck was a
+prophet not without honor in his own country--much honor, in fact,
+accrued.
+
+If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that,
+upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip to
+New York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, a
+promoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during the
+course of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of one
+Malley, a Sun reporter. This had happened some years back, but Malley
+was still on the staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going through
+the paper to clip out and measure up his own space, Malley came upon the
+corporal's contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught the name,
+twice or thrice repeated, of the town where Judge Priest lived. So he
+bundled together a couple of copies and sent them South with a short
+letter; and therefore it came about in due season, through the good
+offices of the United States Post-office Department, that these
+enclosures reached the judge on a showery afternoon as he loafed upon
+his wide front porch, waiting for his supper.
+
+First, he read Malley's letter and was glad to hear from Malley. With a
+quickened interest he ran a plump thumb under the wrappings of the two
+close-rolled papers, opened out one of them at page ten and read the
+opening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck, for whom instantly the judge
+conceived a long-distance fondness. Next he came to the letter that Miss
+Hortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very first
+words of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified little
+grunt; for he had known them both--the writer of that letter and its
+recipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with a
+pert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a ragged
+gray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded the
+printed lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew--only now
+they were old men and old women--faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of a
+far-distant day.
+
+As he read the first words it came back to the judge, almost with the
+jolting emphasis of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days of his
+own youth he had never liked the girl who wrote that letter or the man
+who received it. But she was dead this many and many a year--why, she
+must have died soon after she wrote this very letter--the date proved
+that--and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga, taking his death in
+front like a soldier; and surely that settled everything and made all
+things right! But the letter--that was the main thing. His old blue eyes
+skipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled the tip of his plump pink
+nose, and the old judge read it--just such a letter as he himself had
+received many a time; just such a wartime letter as uncounted thousands
+of soldiers North and South received from their sweethearts and read and
+reread by the light of flickering campfires and carried afterward in
+their knapsacks through weary miles of marching.
+
+It was crammed with the small-town gossip of a small town that was but
+little more than a memory now--telling how, because he would not
+volunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid by a dozen high-spirited
+girls and overpowered, and dressed in a woman's shawl and a woman's
+poke bonnet, so that he left town with his shame between two suns;
+how, since the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females were
+friendly--actually friendly, this being underscored--with the more
+personable of the young Yankee officers; how half the town was in
+mourning for a son or brother dead or wounded; how a new and sweetly
+sentimental song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was being much
+sung at the time--and had it reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbs
+had been exiled to Canada for seditious acts and language and had
+departed northward between two files of bluecoats, reviling the Yankees
+with an unbitted tongue at every step; how So-and-So had died or married
+or gone refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely Southern
+territory; how this thing had happened and that thing had not.
+
+The old judge read on and on, catching gladly at names that kindled a
+tenderly warm glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul, until he came
+to the last paragraph of all; and then, as he comprehended the intent of
+it in all its barbed and venomed malice, he stood suddenly erect, with
+the outspread paper shaking in his hard grip. For now, coming back to
+him by so strange a way across fifty years of silence and
+misunderstanding, he read there the answer to the town's oldest, biggest
+tragedy and knew what it was that all this time had festered, like
+buried thorns, in the flesh of those two men, his comrades and friends.
+He dropped the paper, and up and down the wide, empty porch he stumped
+on his short stout legs, shaking with the shock of revelation and with
+indignation and pity for the blind and bitter uselessness of it all.
+
+"Ah hah!" he said to himself over and over again understandingly. "Ah
+hah!" And then: "Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the meanest thing
+in this whole created world, I reckin. I ain't sure but what she's the
+meanest of the two. And to think of what them two did between 'em--she
+writin' that hellish black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin' off
+hotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his mind with it and set him like a
+flint against his own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like Lon Pike
+to go and git himself killed the next day after he got that there
+letter! And wasn't it jest like her to up and die before the truth could
+be brought home to her! And wasn't it like them two stubborn, set,
+contrary, close-mouthed Tilghman boys to go 'long through all these
+years, without neither one of 'em ever offerin' to make or take an
+explanation!" His tone changed. "Oh, ain't it been a pitiful thing! And
+all so useless! But--oh, thank the Lord--it ain't too late to mend it
+part way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late for that!"
+
+Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with it
+crumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound for
+the little cottage snuggled in its vine ambush across Clay Street before
+a better and a bigger inspiration caught up with him and halted him
+midway of an onward stride.
+
+Was not this the second Friday in the month? It certainly was. And would
+not the Camp be meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session at
+Kamleiter's Hall? It certainly would. For just a moment Judge Priest
+considered the proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank gleefully,
+and his round old face, which had been knotted with resolution, broke up
+into a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his heel and hurried back into
+the house and to the telephone in the hall. For half an hour, more or
+less, Judge Priest was busy at that telephone, calling in a high,
+excited voice, first for one number and then for another. While he did
+this his supper grew cold on the table, and in the dining room Jeff, the
+white-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned,
+fumed--but, at Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge Priest's
+industry was in abundant fulness rewarded.
+
+Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp claimed a full two hundred
+members, but that had been when it was first organized. Now there were
+in good standing less than twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on the
+hard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped with his metal spectacle
+case for order, and that fifteen meant all who could travel out at
+nights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, the faithful
+and inevitable. It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had in a year.
+
+Far over on one side, cramped down in a chair, was Captain Abner
+Tilghman, feeble and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood hitched by the
+curb downstairs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him and
+on the plea of business of vital moment had made him come with him.
+Almost directly across the middle aisle on the other side sat Mr. Edward
+Tilghman. Nobody had to go for him. He always came to a regular meeting
+of the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings only in broken bits.
+
+The adjutant called the roll and those present answered, each one to his
+name; and mainly the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the bodies of
+their owners. A keen onlooker might have noticed a sort of tremulous,
+joyous impatience, which filled all save two of these old, gray men,
+pushing the preliminaries forward with uncommon speed. They fidgeted in
+their places.
+
+Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of a persistent huskiness and
+stood up.
+
+"Before we proceed to the regular routine," he piped, "I desire to
+present a certain matter to a couple of our members." He came down off
+the little platform, where the flags were draped, with a step that was
+almost light, and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he put a copy of a
+city paper, turned and folded at a certain place, where a column of
+printed matter was scored about with heavy pencil bracketings. "Cap'n,"
+he said, "as a personal favor to me, suh, would you please read this
+here article?--the one that's marked"--he pointed with his finger--"not
+aloud--read it to yourself, please."
+
+It was characteristic of the paralytic to say nothing. Without a word he
+adjusted his glasses and without a word he began to read. So instantly
+intent was he that he did not see what followed next--and that was Judge
+Priest crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side with another copy of
+a paper in his hand.
+
+"Ed," he bade him, "read this here article, won't you? Read it clear
+through to the end--it might interest you maybe." The deaf man looked up
+at him wonderingly, but took the paper in his slightly palsied hand and
+bent his head close above the printed sheet.
+
+Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making no move to go back to his
+own place. He watched the two silent readers. All the others watched
+them too. They read on, making slow progress, for the light was poor and
+their eyes were poor. And the watchers could hardly contain themselves;
+they could hardly wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing up and down
+like a pudgy jack-in-the-box that is slightly stiff in its joints. A
+small, restrained rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the folded
+newspapers held in shaky hands.
+
+Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers read on. Perhaps because he
+had started first--perhaps because his glasses were the more expensive
+and presumably therefore the more helpful--Captain Abner Tilghman came
+to the concluding paragraph first. He read it through--and then Judge
+Priest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he had
+chosen so public a place for this thing.
+
+He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet.
+Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floor
+to where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his side
+he halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there,
+trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column and
+read what was there--and lifted a face all glorified with a perfect
+understanding.
+
+"Eddie!" said the older man--"Eddie!" He uttered a name of boyhood
+affection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; and
+it was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb--as though out
+of the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. "Eddie!" he
+said a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving for
+forgiveness.
+
+"Brother Abner!" said the other man. "Oh, Brother Abner!" he said--and
+that was all he did say--all he had need to say, for he was on his feet
+now, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms.
+
+Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it come
+out of his throat--only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As a
+cheer it was a miserable failure.
+
+Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, the
+brothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and went
+away. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness of
+the stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were all
+up on their feet.
+
+"Mind that top step, Abner!" they heard the younger man say. "Wait! I'll
+help you down."
+
+That was all that was heard, except a scuffling sound of uncertainly
+placed feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed down
+the long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night--that was
+all, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorus
+such as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling in
+a large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps,
+that Judge Priest should speak first.
+
+"The trouble with this here Camp is jest this," he said: "it's got a lot
+of snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust out
+cryin' when they oughter be happy!" And then, as if to show how deeply
+he felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Priest
+blew his nose with great violence, and for a space of minutes
+industriously mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous pocket
+handkerchief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter waited up for his employer.
+Jeff expected him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was actually
+getting along toward ten-thirty before Jeff, who had been dozing lightly
+in the dim-lit hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some large
+mosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard the sound of a rambling but
+familiar step clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay Street. The
+latch on the front gate clicked, and as Jeff poked his nose out of the
+front door he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered the gravel
+walk, the voice of his master uplifted in solitary song.
+
+In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no difference
+what the words might be or the theme--he sang every song and all songs
+to a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment Judge
+Priest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. One
+second he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was all
+the way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of all
+who might care to hear these details, that they--presumably certain
+horses--were bound to run all night--bound to run all day; so you could
+bet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the bay. Nearer to the porch
+steps it boastingly transpired that somebody had jumped aboard the
+telegraf and steered her by the triggers, whereat the lightnin' flew and
+'lectrified and killed ten thousand niggers! But even so general a
+catastrophe could not weigh down the singer's spirits. As he put a
+fumbling foot upon the lowermost step of the porch, he threw his head
+far back and shrilly issued the following blanket invitation to ladies
+resident in a far-away district:
+
+    _Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight?
+    Won't you come out tonight?
+    Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight,
+    And dance by the light of the moon?
+    I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin';
+    And her heel it kep' a-rockin'--kep' a-rockin'!
+    She was the purtiest gal in the room!_
+
+Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The song stopped and Judge Priest
+stood in the opening, teetering a little on his heels. His face was all
+a blushing pinky glow.
+
+"Evenin', jedge!" greeted Jeff. "You're late, suh!"
+
+"Jeff," said Judge Priest slowly, "it's a beautiful evenin'."
+
+Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter of fact, the drizzle of the
+afternoon had changed, soon after dark, to a steady downpour. The
+judge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops and his shoulders were
+sopping wet, but Jeff had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict a
+prominent white citizen.
+
+"Yas, suh!" he said, half affirmatively, half questioningly. "Is it?"
+
+"It is so!" said Judge Priest. "Every star in the sky shines like a
+diamond! Jeff, it's the most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+FISHHEAD
+
+
+It goes past the powers of my pen to try to describe Reelfoot Lake for
+you so that you, reading this, will get the picture of it in your mind
+as I have it in mine. For Reelfoot Lake is like no other lake that I
+know anything about. It is an afterthought of Creation.
+
+The rest of this continent was made and had dried in the sun for
+thousands of years--for millions of years for all I know--before
+Reelfoot came to be. It's the newest big thing in nature on this
+hemisphere probably, for it was formed by the great earthquake of 1811,
+just a little more than a hundred years ago. That earthquake of 1811
+surely altered the face of the earth on the then far frontier of this
+country. It changed the course of rivers, it converted hills into what
+are now the sunk lands of three states, and it turned the solid ground
+to jelly and made it roll in waves like the sea. And in the midst of
+the retching of the land and the vomiting of the waters it depressed to
+varying depths a section of the earth crust sixty miles long, taking it
+down--trees, hills, hollows and all; and a crack broke through to the
+Mississippi River so that for three days the river ran up stream,
+filling the hole.
+
+The result was the largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly in
+Tennessee, but extending up across what is now the Kentucky line, and
+taking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay,
+reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so far away, may
+have got its name from the same man who christened Reelfoot; at least so
+it sounds.
+
+Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of mystery. In places it is
+bottomless. Other places the skeletons of the cypress trees that went
+down when the earth sank still stand upright, so that if the sun shines
+from the right quarter and the water is less muddy than common, a man
+peering face downward into its depths sees, or thinks he sees, down
+below him the bare top-limbs upstretching like drowned men's fingers,
+all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the green
+lake slime. In still other places the lake is shallow for long
+stretches, no deeper than breast deep to a man, but dangerous because of
+the weed growths and the sunken drifts which entangle a swimmer's limbs.
+Its banks are mainly mud, its waters are muddied too, being a rich
+coffee color in the spring and a copperish yellow in the summer, and the
+trees along its shore are mud colored clear up to their lower limbs
+after the spring floods, when the dried sediment covers their trunks
+with a thick, scrofulous-looking coat.
+
+There are stretches of unbroken woodland around it and slashes where the
+cypress knees rise countlessly like headstones and footstones for the
+dead snags that rot in the soft ooze. There are deadenings with the
+lowland corn growing high and rank below and the bleached,
+fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb.
+There are long, dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn
+clings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at night
+the turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white eggs
+with tough, rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off to
+nowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great, blind worms, to
+finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few
+miles to the westward.
+
+So Reelfoot lies there, flat in the bottoms, freezing lightly in the
+winter, steaming torridly in the summer, swollen in the spring when the
+woods have turned a vivid green and the buffalo gnats by the million and
+the billion fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential buzzing,
+and in the fall ringed about gloriously with all the colors which the
+first frost brings--gold of hickory, yellow-russet of sycamore, red of
+dogwood and ash and purple-black of sweet-gum.
+
+But the Reelfoot country has its uses. It is the best game and fish
+country, natural or artificial, that is left in the South today. In
+their appointed seasons the duck and the geese flock in, and even
+semi-tropical birds, like the brown pelican and the Florida snake-bird,
+have been known to come there to nest. Pigs, gone back to wildness,
+range the ridges, each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt, savage,
+slab-sided old boar. By night the bull frogs, inconceivably big and
+tremendously vocal, bellow under the banks.
+
+It is a wonderful place for fish--bass and crappie and perch and the
+snouted buffalo fish. How these edible sorts live to spawn and how their
+spawn in turn live to spawn again is a marvel, seeing how many of the
+big fish-eating cannibal fish there are in Reelfoot. Here, bigger than
+anywhere else, you find the garfish, all bones and appetite and horny
+plates, with a snout like an alligator, the nearest link, naturalists
+say, between the animal life of today and the animal life of the
+Reptilian Period. The shovel-nose cat, really a deformed kind of
+freshwater sturgeon, with a great fan-shaped membranous plate jutting
+out from his nose like a bowsprit, jumps all day in the quiet places
+with mighty splashing sounds, as though a horse had fallen into the
+water. On every stranded log the huge snapping turtles lie on sunny days
+in groups of four and six, baking their shells black in the sun, with
+their little snaky heads raised watchfully, ready to slip noiselessly
+off at the first sound of oars grating in the row-locks.
+
+But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous
+creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot--scaleless, slick things, with
+corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers
+dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet
+long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and they
+have mouths wide enough to take in a man's foot or a man's fist and
+strong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough to
+eat anything, living or dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master.
+Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell wicked tales of them down
+there. They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of their
+habits, to sharks.
+
+Fishhead was of a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn
+fits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the one
+place, at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there, of a
+negro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead, and
+the story was that before his birth his mother was frightened by one of
+the big fish, so that the child came into the world most hideously
+marked. Anyhow, Fishhead was a human monstrosity, the veritable
+embodiment of nightmare. He had the body of a man--a short, stocky,
+sinewy body--but his face was as near to being the face of a great fish
+as any face could be and yet retain some trace of human aspect. His
+skull sloped back so abruptly that he could hardly be said to have a
+forehead at all; his chin slanted off right into nothing. His eyes were
+small and round with shallow, glazed, pale-yellow pupils, and they were
+set wide apart in his head and they were unwinking and staring, like a
+fish's eyes. His nose was no more than a pair of tiny slits in the
+middle of the yellow mask. His mouth was the worst of all. It was the
+awful mouth of a catfish, lipless and almost inconceivably wide,
+stretching from side to side. Also when Fishhead became a man grown his
+likeness to a fish increased, for the hair upon his face grew out into
+two tightly kinked, slender pendants that drooped down either side of
+the mouth like the beards of a fish.
+
+If he had any other name than Fishhead, none excepting he knew it. As
+Fishhead he was known and as Fishhead he answered. Because he knew the
+waters and the woods of Reelfoot better than any other man there, he was
+valued as a guide by the city men who came every year to hunt or fish;
+but there were few such jobs that Fishhead would take. Mainly he kept
+to himself, tending his corn patch, netting the lake, trapping a little
+and in season pot hunting for the city markets. His neighbors,
+ague-bitten whites and malaria-proof negroes alike, left him to himself.
+Indeed for the most part they had a superstitious fear of him. So he
+lived alone, with no kith nor kin, nor even a friend, shunning his kind
+and shunned by them.
+
+His cabin stood just below the state line, where Mud Slough runs into
+the lake. It was a shack of logs, the only human habitation for four
+miles up or down. Behind it the thick timber came shouldering right up
+to the edge of Fishhead's small truck patch, enclosing it in thick shade
+except when the sun stood just overhead. He cooked his food in a
+primitive fashion, outdoors, over a hole in the soggy earth or upon the
+rusted red ruin of an old cook stove, and he drank the saffron water of
+the lake out of a dipper made of a gourd, faring and fending for
+himself, a master hand at skiff and net, competent with duck gun and
+fish spear, yet a creature of affliction and loneliness, part savage,
+almost amphibious, set apart from his fellows, silent and suspicious.
+
+In front of his cabin jutted out a long fallen cottonwood trunk, lying
+half in and half out of the water, its top side burnt by the sun and
+worn by the friction of Fishhead's bare feet until it showed countless
+patterns of tiny scrolled lines, its under side black and rotted and
+lapped at unceasingly by little waves like tiny licking tongues. Its
+farther end reached deep water. And it was a part of Fishhead, for no
+matter how far his fishing and trapping might take him in the daytime,
+sunset would find him back there, his boat drawn up on the bank and he
+on the outer end of this log. From a distance men had seen him there
+many times, sometimes squatted, motionless as the big turtles that would
+crawl upon its dipping tip in his absence, sometimes erect and vigilant
+like a creek crane, his misshapen yellow form outlined against the
+yellow sun, the yellow water, the yellow banks--all of them yellow
+together.
+
+If the Reelfooters shunned Fishhead by day they feared him by night and
+avoided him as a plague, dreading even the chance of a casual meeting.
+For there were ugly stories about Fishhead--stories which all the
+negroes and some of the whites believed. They said that a cry which had
+been heard just before dusk and just after, skittering across the
+darkened waters, was his calling cry to the big cats, and at his bidding
+they came trooping in, and that in their company he swam in the lake on
+moonlight nights, sporting with them, diving with them, even feeding
+with them on what manner of unclean things they fed. The cry had been
+heard many times, that much was certain, and it was certain also that
+the big fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of Fishhead's slough.
+No native Reelfooter, white or black, would willingly wet a leg or an
+arm there.
+
+Here Fishhead had lived and here he was going to die. The Baxters were
+going to kill him, and this day in mid-summer was to be the time of the
+killing. The two Baxters--Jake and Joel--were coming in their dugout to
+do it. This murder had been a long time in the making. The Baxters had
+to brew their hate over a slow fire for months before it reached the
+pitch of action. They were poor whites, poor in everything--repute and
+worldly goods and standing--a pair of fever-ridden squatters who lived
+on whisky and tobacco when they could get it, and on fish and cornbread
+when they couldn't.
+
+The feud itself was of months' standing. Meeting Fishhead one day in the
+spring on the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at Walnut Log,
+and being themselves far overtaken in liquor and vainglorious with a
+bogus alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers had accused him,
+wantonly and without proof, of running their trot-line and stripping it
+of the hooked catch--an unforgivable sin among the water dwellers and
+the shanty boaters of the South. Seeing that he bore this accusation in
+silence, only eyeing them steadfastly, they had been emboldened then to
+slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of
+their lives--bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard
+blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled and
+prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of the
+everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and
+allowed them--two freeborn, sovereign whites--to be licked by a nigger.
+
+Therefore, they were going to get the nigger. The whole thing had been
+planned out amply. They were going to kill him on his log at sundown.
+There would be no witnesses to see it, no retribution to follow after
+it. The very ease of the undertaking made them forget even their inborn
+fear of the place of Fishhead's habitation.
+
+For more than an hour now they had been coming from their shack across a
+deeply indented arm of the lake. Their dugout, fashioned by fire and adz
+and draw-knife from the bole of a gum tree, moved through the water as
+noiselessly as a swimming mallard, leaving behind it a long, wavy trail
+on the stilled waters. Jake, the better oarsman sat flat in the stern of
+the round-bottomed craft, paddling with quick, splashless strokes. Joel,
+the better shot, was squatted forward. There was a heavy, rusted duck
+gun between his knees.
+
+Though their spying upon the victim had made them certain sure he would
+not be about the shore for hours, a doubled sense of caution led them to
+hug closely the weedy banks. They slid along the shore like shadows,
+moving so swiftly and in such silence that the watchful mud turtles
+barely turned their snaky heads as they passed. So, a full hour before
+the time, they came slipping around the mouth of the slough and made for
+a natural ambuscade which the mixed breed had left within a stone's jerk
+of his cabin to his own undoing.
+
+Where the slough's flow joined deeper water a partly uprooted tree was
+stretched, prone from shore, at the top still thick and green with
+leaves that drew nourishment from the earth in which the half-uncovered
+roots yet held, and twined about with an exuberance of trumpet vines and
+wild fox-grapes. All about was a huddle of drift--last year's
+cornstalks, shreddy strips of bark, chunks of rotted weed, all the
+riffle and dunnage of a quiet eddy. Straight into this green clump
+glided the dugout and swung, broadside on, against the protecting trunk
+of the tree, hidden from the inner side by the intervening curtains of
+rank growth, just as the Baxters had intended it should be hidden, when
+days before in their scouting they marked this masked place of waiting
+and included it, then and there, in the scope of their plans.
+
+There had been no hitch or mishap. No one had been abroad in the late
+afternoon to mark their movements--and in a little while Fishhead ought
+to be due. Jake's woodman's eye followed the downward swing of the sun
+speculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward, lengthened and slithered
+on the small ripples. The small noises of the day died out; the small
+noises of the coming night began to multiply. The green-bodied flies
+went away and big mosquitoes, with speckled gray legs, came to take the
+places of the flies. The sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with small
+mouthing sounds as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A
+monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of
+his dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armored sentinel on
+the watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter back and forth above the tops
+of the trees. A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidle
+off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollen
+with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it
+moved along the surface of the water in a series of slow torpid s's.
+Directly above the head of either of the waiting assassins a compact
+little swarm of midges hung, holding to a sort of kite-shaped formation.
+
+A little more time passed and Fishhead came out of the woods at the
+back, walking swiftly, with a sack over his shoulder. For a few seconds
+his deformities showed in the clearing, then the black inside of the
+cabin swallowed him up. By now the sun was almost down. Only the red nub
+of it showed above the timber line across the lake, and the shadows lay
+inland a long way. Out beyond, the big cats were stirring, and the great
+smacking sounds as their twisting bodies leaped clear and fell back in
+the water came shoreward in a chorus.
+
+But the two brothers in their green covert gave heed to nothing except
+the one thing upon which their hearts were set and their nerves tensed.
+Joel gently shoved his gun-barrels across the log, cuddling the stock to
+his shoulder and slipping two fingers caressingly back and forth upon
+the triggers. Jake held the narrow dugout steady by a grip upon a
+fox-grape tendril.
+
+A little wait and then the finish came. Fishhead emerged from the cabin
+door and came down the narrow footpath to the water and out upon the
+water on his log. He was barefooted and bareheaded, his cotton shirt
+open down the front to show his yellow neck and breast, his dungaree
+trousers held about his waist by a twisted tow string. His broad splay
+feet, with the prehensile toes outspread, gripped the polished curve of
+the log as he moved along its swaying, dipping surface until he came to
+its outer end and stood there erect, his chest filling, his chinless
+face lifted up and something of mastership and dominion in his poise.
+And then--his eye caught what another's eyes might have missed--the
+round, twin ends of the gun barrels, the fixed gleams of Joel's eyes,
+aimed at him through the green tracery.
+
+In that swift passage of time, too swift almost to be measured by
+seconds, realization flashed all through him, and he threw his head
+still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and out
+across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his cry
+was the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bay
+of a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, too,
+was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duck
+gun came.
+
+At twenty yards the double charge tore the throat out of him. He came
+down, face forward, upon the log and clung there, his trunk twisting
+distortedly, his legs twitching and kicking like the legs of a speared
+frog, his shoulders hunching and lifting spasmodically as the life ran
+out of him all in one swift coursing flow. His head canted up between
+the heaving shoulders, his eyes looked full on the staring face of his
+murderer, and then the blood came out of his mouth and Fishhead, in
+death still as much fish as man, slid flopping, head first, off the end
+of the log and sank, face downward, slowly, his limbs all extended out.
+One after another a string of big bubbles came up to burst in the middle
+of a widening reddish stain on the coffee-colored water.
+
+The brothers watched this, held by the horror of the thing they had
+done, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun,
+took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a sudden
+stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they
+were in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, the trunk of the
+uprooted tree only five. Joel, still holding fast to his hot gun, made
+for the log, gaining it with one stroke. He threw his free arm over it
+and clung there, treading water, as he shook his eyes free. Something
+gripped him--some great, sinewy, unseen thing gripped him fast by the
+thigh, crushing down on his flesh.
+
+He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out and his mouth set in a square
+shape of agony, and his fingers gripped into the bark of the tree like
+grapples. He was pulled down and down, by steady jerks, not rapidly but
+steadily, so steadily, and as he went his fingernails tore four little
+white strips in the tree bark. His mouth went under, next his popping
+eyes, then his erect hair, and finally his clawing, clutching hand, and
+that was the end of him.
+
+Jake's fate was harder still, for he lived longer--long enough to see
+Joel's finish. He saw it through the water that ran down his face, and
+with a great surge of his whole body he literally flung himself across
+the log and jerked his legs up high into the air to save them. He flung
+himself too far, though, for his face and chest hit the water on the far
+side. And out of this water rose the head of a great fish, with the
+lake slime of years on its flat, black head, its whiskers bristling, its
+corpsy eyes alight. Its horny jaws closed and clamped in the front of
+Jake's flannel shirt. His hand struck out wildly and was speared on a
+poisoned fin, and unlike Joel, he went from sight with a great yell and
+a whirling and a churning of the water that made the cornstalks circle
+on the edges of a small whirlpool.
+
+But the whirlpool soon thinned away into widening rings of ripples and
+the cornstalks quit circling and became still again, and only the
+multiplying night noises sounded about the mouth of the slough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bodies of all three came ashore on the same day near the same place.
+Except for the gaping gunshot wound where the neck met the chest,
+Fishhead's body was unmarked. But the bodies of the two Baxters were so
+marred and mauled that the Reelfooters buried them together on the bank
+without ever knowing which might be Jake's and which might be Joel's.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+GUILTY AS CHARGED
+
+
+The Jew, I take it, is essentially temperamental, whereas the Irishman
+is by nature sentimental; so that in the long run both of them may reach
+the same results by varying mental routes. This, however, has nothing to
+do with the story I am telling here, except inferentially.
+
+It was trial day at headquarters. To be exact, it was the tail end of
+trial day at headquarters. The mills of the police gods, which grind not
+so slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with their
+grinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the last
+of the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at the
+west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits,
+patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior
+officer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a while
+an inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue bumblebee.
+In due turn each offender had made his defense; those who were lying
+about it did their lying, as a rule, glibly and easily and with a
+certain bogus frankness very pleasing to see. Contrary to a general
+opinion, the Father of Lies is often quite good to his children. But
+those who were telling the truth were frequently shamefaced and mumbling
+of speech, making poor impressions.
+
+In due turn, also, each man had been convicted or had been acquitted,
+yet all--the proven innocent and the adjudged guilty alike--had
+undergone punishment, since they all had to sit and listen to lectures
+on police discipline and police manners from the trial deputy. It was
+perhaps as well for the peace and good order of the community that the
+public did not attend these séances. Those classes now that are the most
+thoroughly and most personally governed--the pushcart pedlers, with the
+permanent cringing droops in their alien backs; the sinful small boys,
+who play baseball in the streets against the statutes made and provided;
+the broken old wrecks, who ambush the prosperous passer-by in the
+shadows of dark corners, begging for money with which to keep body and
+soul together--it was just as well perhaps that none of them was
+admitted there to see these large, firm, stern men in uniform wriggling
+on the punishment chair, fumbling at their buttons, explaining, whining,
+even begging for mercy under the lashing flail of Third Deputy
+Commissioner Donohue's sleety judgments.
+
+"The only time old Donny warms up is when he's got a grudge against
+you," a wit of headquarters--Larry Magee by name--had said once as he
+came forth from the ordeal, brushing imaginary hailstones off his
+shoulders. "It's always snowing hard in his soul!"
+
+Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third Deputy Commissioner Donohue
+was addicted to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound of his own
+voice. Give to Donohue a congenial topic, such as some one's official or
+personal shortcomings, and a congenial audience, and he excelled
+mightily in saw-edged oratory, rolling his r's until the tortured
+consonants fairly lay on their backs and begged for mercy.
+
+This, however, would have to be said for Deputy Commissioner Donohue--he
+was a hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, who
+had climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages,
+he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquent
+policeman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted
+of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration--his gray flints
+of eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearly
+always, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he would
+plaster on the penalty--and the lecture--twice as thick. Wherefore,
+because of all these things, the newspaper men at headquarters viewed
+this elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional emotions. Presiding
+over a trial day, he made abundant copy for them, which was very good;
+but if the case were an important one he often prolonged it until they
+missed getting the result into their final editions, which, if you know
+anything about final editions, was very, very bad.
+
+It was so on this particular afternoon. Here it was nearly dusk. The
+windows toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against a
+wall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had started
+in at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouched
+forward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down between
+his leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp,
+and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crested
+cormorant upon a barren rock.
+
+Except for one lone figure of misery, the anxious bench below him was by
+now empty. Most of the witnesses were gone and most of the spectators,
+and all the newspaper men but two. He whetted a lean and crooked
+forefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket book, turned the page
+and called the last case, being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan.
+Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon curried. For being on such
+and such a day, at such and such an hour, off his post, where he
+belonged, and in a saloon where he did not belong, sitting down, with
+his blouse unfastened and his belt unbuckled; and for having no better
+excuse, or no worse one, than the ancient tale of a sudden attack of
+faintness causing him to make his way into the nearest place where he
+might recover himself--that it happened to be a family liquor store was,
+he protested, a sheer accident--Patrolman Rogan was required to pay five
+days' pay and, moreover, to listen to divers remarks in which he heard
+himself likened to several things, none of them of a complimentary
+character.
+
+Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with his
+uniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the third
+deputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting,
+prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for the
+door, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total and
+final summary of old Donohue's bag of game.
+
+They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and late
+defendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled official
+accents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up from
+his desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrows
+in an effort to read what was written there.
+
+"Wan more case to be heard," he announced. "Keep order there, you men at
+the door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name out
+lingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about him
+for some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some of
+you! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications."
+
+Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing the
+shadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doing
+duty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice
+repeated.
+
+"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, the
+older of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that tickles
+me! I've been looking this long time for something like this to be
+coming off." Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had his
+deep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was a
+very deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutional
+infirmity with La Farge.
+
+"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a young
+reporter.
+
+"I don't know yet--the charge must be newly filed, I guess," said La
+Farge, answering the last question first. "But I hope they nail him! I
+don't like him--never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart--one of those
+self-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a court
+interpreter down at Essex Market--knows about steen languages. And
+he--here he comes now."
+
+Weil passed them, going into the trial room--a short, squarely built man
+with oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew him
+for one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of his
+outward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sight
+of him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy Commissioner
+Donohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hackles
+stiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits of
+frosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leather
+back of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebody
+when Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would have
+delighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon the
+accused.
+
+"Listen!" he said under his breath to Rogers. "I think they must have
+the goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's the cockiest person
+round this building. Now take a look at him."
+
+Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil
+as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words;
+yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him,
+as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit and
+assurance.
+
+"Rogers," said La Farge, "let's hustle out and 'phone in what we've got
+and then come back right away. If this fellow's going to get the harpoon
+stuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding."
+
+Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned back to hear the beginning of
+the case, whatever it might be, against the Jew. The rest scattered
+through the corridors, heading mainly for the exits, so that the two
+newspaper men had company as they hurried toward the main door, making
+for their offices across the street. When they came back the long cross
+halls were almost deserted; it had taken them a little longer to finish
+the job of telephoning than they had figured. At the door of the trial
+room stood one bulky blue figure. It was the acting bailiff.
+
+"How far along have they got?" asked La Farge as the policeman made way
+for them to pass in.
+
+"Captain Meagher is the first witness," said the policeman. "He's the
+one that's makin' the charge."
+
+"What is the charge?" put in Rogers.
+
+"At this distance I couldn't make out--Cap Meagher, he mumbles so,"
+confessed the doorkeeper. "Somethin' about misuse of police property, I
+take it to be."
+
+"Aha!" gloated La Farge in his gratification. "Come on, Rogers--I don't
+want to miss any of this."
+
+It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge by
+his attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. He
+still sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;
+but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher was
+known in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievably
+dull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had a
+long, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and heavy black eyebrows that
+curved high in the middle and arched downward at each end--circumflexes
+accenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustache
+drooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. Larry
+Magee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape of
+the captain's mustache.
+
+"No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears his
+horseshoe upside down on his face!"
+
+Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trial
+deputy spoke.
+
+"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously.
+
+"That's all," said Meagher.
+
+"I note," went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused does
+not appear to be represented by counsel."
+
+A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defend
+him.
+
+"No, sir," spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner."
+His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the
+self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the
+racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian
+purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my own
+case myself."
+
+Donohue merely grunted.
+
+"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher any
+questions?" he demanded.
+
+Weil shook his oily head of hair.
+
+"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything."
+
+"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next.
+
+There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses.
+
+"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your own
+behalf?" queried the deputy commissioner.
+
+"I think I'd like to," answered Weil.
+
+He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing the
+room, appearing--so La Farge thought--more shamefaced and abashed than
+ever.
+
+"Now, then," commanded Donohue impressively, "what statement, if any,
+have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here charge
+preferred by your superior officer?"
+
+Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment;
+but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there was
+something falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat.
+
+"Once a grandstander always a grandstander!" he muttered derisively.
+
+"What did you say?" whispered Rogers.
+
+"Nothing," replied La Farge--"just thinking out loud. Listen to what
+Foxy Issy has to say for himself."
+
+"Well, sir, commissioner," began the accused, "this here thing happens
+last Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you." He had slipped
+already into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in the
+present tense.
+
+"It's late in the afternoon--round five o'clock I guess--and I'm
+downstairs in the Detective Bureau alone."
+
+"Alone, you say?" broke in Donohue, emphasizing the word as though the
+admission scored a point against the man on trial.
+
+"Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that everybody else is out and I'm in
+temporary charge, as you might say. It's getting along toward dark when
+Patrolman Morgan, who's on duty out in the hall, comes in and says to me
+there's a woman outside who can't talk English and he can't make out
+what she wants. So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in. Right
+away I see she's a Ginney--an Italian," he corrected himself hurriedly.
+"She's got a child with her--a little boy about two years old."
+
+"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag in
+details at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselves
+as to show his skill as a cross-examiner.
+
+"Well, sir," complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five years
+old. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she's
+about twenty-five--or maybe twenty-six. She's got no figure at all and
+she's dressed poor. But she's got a pretty face--big brown eyes and----"
+
+"That will do," interrupted the deputy commissioner--"that will do for
+that. I take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty expert,
+Lieutenant Weil!" he added with elaborate sarcasm.
+
+"You asked me about her looks, sir," parried Weil defensively, "and I'm
+just trying to tell you."
+
+"Proceed! Proceed!" bade Donohue, rumbling his consonants.
+
+"Yes, sir. Well, in regard to this woman: She's talking so fast I can't
+figure out at first what she's trying to tell me. It's Italian she's
+talking--or I should say the kind of Italian they talk in parts of
+Sicily. After a little I begin to see what she's driving at. It seems
+she's the wife of one Antonio Terranova and her name is Maria
+Terranova. And after I get her straightened out and going slow she tells
+me her story."
+
+"Is this here story got a bearin' on the charges pendin'?"
+
+"I think it has. Yes, sir; it helps to explain what happens. As near as
+I can make out she comes from some small town down round Messina
+somewhere, and the way she tells it to me, her husband leaves there not
+long after they're married and comes over here to New York to get work,
+and when he gets enough money saved up ahead he's going to send back for
+her. That's near about three years ago. So she stays behind waiting for
+him, and in about four months after he leaves the baby is born--the same
+baby that she brings in here to headquarters with her last Thursday. She
+says neither one of them thinks it'll be long before he can save up
+money for her passage, but it seems like he has the bad luck. He's sick
+for a while after he lands, and then when he gets a job in a
+construction gang the padrone takes the most of what he makes. And just
+about the time he gets a little saved up some other Ginney--Italian--in
+the construction camp steals it off of him.
+
+"So he's up against it, and after a while he gets desperate. So he joins
+in with a Black Hander gang--amateurs operating up in the Bronx--and the
+very first trick he helps turn he does well by it. His share is near
+about a hundred dollars, and he sends her the best part of it to bring
+her and the baby over. She don't know at the time, though, how he raises
+all this money--so she tells me. And I think, at that, she's telling the
+truth--she ain't got sense enough to lie, I think. Anyway it sounds
+truthful to me--the way she tells it to me here last Thursday night."
+
+"Proceed!" prompted Donohue testily.
+
+"So she takes this here money and buys herself a steerage ticket and
+comes over here with the baby. That, as near as I can figure out, is
+about three months ago. She's not seen this husband of hers for going on
+three years--of course the baby's never seen him. And she figures he'll
+be at the dock to meet her. But he's not there. But his cousin is
+there--another Italian from the same town. He gets her through Ellis
+Island somehow and he takes her up to where he's living--up in the
+Bronx--and tells her the reason her husband ain't there to meet her. The
+reason is, he's at Sing Sing, doing four years.
+
+"It seems that after he's sent her this passage money the husband gets
+to thinking Black Handing is a pretty soft way to make a living,
+especially compared to day laboring, and he tries to raise a stake
+single-handed. He writes a Black Hand letter to an Italian grocer he
+knows has got money laid by, only the grocer is foxy and goes to the
+Tremont Avenue Station and shows the letter. They rig up a plant and
+this here Antonio Terranova walks into it. He's caught with the marked
+bills on him. So just the week before she lands he takes a plea in
+General Sessions and the judge gives him four years. When she gets to
+where she's telling me that part of it she starts crying.
+
+"Well, anyway, that's the situation--him up there at Sing Sing doing his
+four years and her down here in New York with the kid on her hands. And
+she don't ever see him again, either, because in about three or four
+weeks--something like that--he's working with a gang in the rock quarry
+across the river, where they're building the new cell house, and a chunk
+of slate falls down and kills him and two others."
+
+"Right here and now," interrupted the third deputy commissioner, "I want
+to know what's all this here stuff got to do with these here charges and
+specifications?"
+
+"Just a minute, please. I'm coming to that right away, commissioner,"
+protested the accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous agility;
+yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before he
+continued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening La
+Farge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, that
+somehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of his acrid antagonism
+for Weil; that, by mental processes which as yet he could not exactly
+resolve into their proper constituents, it was beginning to dribble
+away from him. And realization came to him, almost with a shock, that
+the man on the stand was telling the truth. Truth or not, though, the
+narrative thus far had been commonplace enough--people at headquarters
+hear the like of it often; and as a seasoned police reporter La Farge's
+emotions by now should be coated over with a calloused shell inches deep
+and hard as horn. Trying with half his mind to figure out what it was
+that had quickened these emotions, he listened all the harder as Weil
+went on.
+
+"So this here big chunk of rock or slate or whatever it was falls on him
+and the two others and kills them. Not knowing where to send the body,
+they bury it up there at Sing Sing, and she never sees him again, living
+or dead. But here just a few days ago it seems she picks up, from
+overhearing some of the other Italians talking, that we've got such a
+thing as a Rogues' Gallery down here at headquarters and that her
+husband's picture is liable to be in it. So that's why she's here. She's
+found her way here somehow and she asks me won't I"--he caught
+himself--"won't the police please give her her husband's picture out of
+the gallery."
+
+"And for why did she want that?" rumbled Donohue.
+
+"That's what I asks her myself. It seems she's got no shame about it at
+all. She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get the
+money to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going to
+keep it--till the bambino--that's Italian for baby, commissioner, you
+know--till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father looked
+like."
+
+Now of a sudden La Farge knew--or thought he knew--why his interest had
+stirred in him a minute before. Instinctively his reporter's sixth sense
+had scented a good news story before the real point of the story had
+come out, even. A curious little silence had fallen on the half-lighted,
+almost empty big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this silence:
+
+"Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain to her what the
+circumstances are. I tells her that, in the first place, on account of
+the mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery having gone into
+effect, it's an even bet her husband's picture ain't there anyhow--that
+it's most likely been destroyed; and in the second place, even if it is
+there, I tells her I've got no right to be giving it to her without an
+order from somebody higher up. But either she can't understand or she
+won't. I guess my being in uniform makes her think I'm running the whole
+department, and she won't seem to listen to what I says.
+
+"She cries and she carries on worse than ever, and begs and begs me to
+give it to her. I guess you know how excitable those Italian women can
+be, especially when they are Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after a
+lot of that sort of thing I tells her to wait where she is for a minute.
+I leaves her and I goes across into the Bertillon room, where the
+pictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio Terranova. I forget his
+number now and I don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked when
+we're cleaning out the gallery; but he's there all right, full face and
+side view, with his gallery number in big white figures on his chest.
+And, commissioner, he's a pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney." The
+witness checked an inclination to grin. "I takes a slant at his picture,
+and I can't make up my own mind which way he'll look the worst enlarged
+into a crayon portrait--full face or side view. I can still hear her
+crying outside the door. She's crying harder than ever.
+
+"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries to
+argue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds the
+baby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's for
+the bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never even
+heard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It's
+pretty tough.
+
+"She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorry
+for her--nobody could." He hesitated a moment as though seeking for
+words of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regular
+vocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner," he said suddenly, and
+stopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of my
+own!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense.
+
+"Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voice
+seemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then the
+Semitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more than
+shamefaced--it was downright sheepish.
+
+"Why, then," he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room the
+second time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--of
+course she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe that
+explains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--every
+morning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin for
+me. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that."
+
+He halted as though he were through.
+
+"Then do I understand that, without an order from any superior
+authority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to the
+Police Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even.
+He whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top.
+
+"Yes, sir," owned up the Jew. "There's nobody there but just us two. And
+I don't know how Captain Meagher comes to find the picture is gone and
+that it was me took it--but it's true, commissioner. She goes away
+kissing it and holding it to the breast of her clothes--that Rogues'
+Gallery picture! Yes, sir; I gives it to her."
+
+The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded right arm was shoved out,
+with all the lean fingers upon the hand at the far end of it widely
+extended. He spoke, and something in his throat--a hard lump
+perhaps--husked his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice.
+
+"Lieutenant Weil," he said, "I congratulate you! You're guilty!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Escape of Mr. Trimm, by Irvin S. Cobb
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Escape of Mr. Trimm, 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: The Escape of Mr. Trimm
+       His Plight and other Plights
+
+Author: Irvin S. Cobb
+
+Release Date: March 11, 2008 [EBook #24799]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Marcia Brooks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h1>THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM</h1>
+
+<a name="frontis" id="frontis"></a>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;">
+<img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="368" height="500" alt="frontispiece" title="NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM." />
+<span class="caption">Nobody paid any attention to Mr. Trimm.
+&mdash;<i>Frontispiece</i> <small>(<i>Page 18</i>)</small></span>
+<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">[To List]</a></span></div>
+<br /><br />
+<div class="bbox">
+<h1>THE ESCAPE<br />
+OF MR. TRIMM<br /></h1>
+<h2><i>HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS</i></h2>
+<br />
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<br />
+<h2>IRVIN S. COBB</h2>
+<br />
+<h4>AUTHOR OF<br />
+OLD JUDGE PRIEST,<br />
+BACK HOME, <span class="smcap">Etc.</span><br /></h4>
+<br />
+<h3>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP</h3>
+<h4>PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK<br /></h4>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<center><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1910, 1911, 1912 <span class="smcap">and</span> 1913<br />
+<span class="smcap">By The Curtis Publishing Company</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1913<br />
+<span class="smcap">By The Frank A. Munsey Company</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1913<br />
+<span class="smcap">By George H. Doran Company</span><br /></center>
+
+<div class="trans-note">Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TO MY WIFE</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><a name="toc" id="toc"></a>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER</td><td align='left'></td><td align='right'>PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Escape of Mr. Trimm</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Belled Buzzard</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Occurrence up a Side Street</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Another of those Cub Reporter Stories</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Smoke of Battle</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Exit of Anne Dugmore</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_179">179</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">To the Editor of the Sun</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Fishhead</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_244">244</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Guilty as Charged</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<a name="toi" id="toi"></a>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Illustrations" width="80%">
+<tr><td align='left'>Nobody paid any attention to Mr. Trimm.</td><td align='right'><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&ldquo;Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down.&rdquo;</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_70">Facing page 70</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>&ldquo;I was the one that shot him&mdash;with this thing here.&rdquo;</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_164">Facing Page 164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>He Dragged The Rifle By The Barrel, So That Its Butt Made A Crooked Furrow In The Snow.</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_192">Facing Page 193</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM</h2>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>I</h2>
+<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h3><span class="g">THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">M</span>r. Trimm, recently president of the
+late Thirteenth National Bank, was
+taking a trip which was different in
+a number of ways from any he had
+ever taken. To begin with, he was used to
+parlor cars and Pullmans and even luxurious
+private cars when he went anywhere; whereas
+now he rode with a most mixed company in a
+dusty, smelly day coach. In the second place,
+his traveling companion was not such a one
+as Mr. Trimm would have chosen had the
+choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
+German-American with a drooping, yellow
+mustache. And in the third place, Mr.
+Trimm's plump white hands were folded in
+his lap, held in a close and enforced companionship
+by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
+Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr.
+Trimm was on his way to the Federal penitentiary
+to serve twelve years at hard labor for
+breaking, one way or another, about all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+laws that are presumed to govern national
+banks.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs,
+fighting for a new trial, a certain question had
+lain in his mind unasked and unanswered.
+Through the seven months of his stay in the
+jail that question had been always at the back
+part of his head, ticking away there like a
+little watch that never needed winding. A
+dozen times a day it would pop into his thoughts
+and then go away, only to come back again.</p>
+
+<p>When Copley was taken to the penitentiary&mdash;Copley
+being the cashier who got off with
+a lighter sentence because the judge and jury
+held him to be no more than a blind accomplice
+in the wrecking of the Thirteenth National&mdash;Mr.
+Trimm read closely every line that the
+papers carried about Copley's departure. But
+none of them had seen fit to give the young
+cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph.
+For Copley was only a small figure
+in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
+Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers
+to carry his appeal to the higher courts
+for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders;
+and as for Copley himself, he had been wearing
+stripes several months now.</p>
+
+<p>With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different.
+From the very beginning he had held the public
+eye. His bearing in court when the jury came
+in with their judgment; his cold defiance when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+the judge, in pronouncing sentence, mercilessly
+arraigned him and the system of finance for
+which he stood; the manner of his life in the
+Tombs; his spectacular fight to beat the
+verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper
+space. If Mr. Trimm had been a popular
+poisoner, or a society woman named as co-respondent
+in a sensational divorce suit, the
+papers could not have been more generous in
+their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in
+his cell had read all of it with smiling contempt,
+even to the semi-hysterical outpourings
+of the lady special writers who called him The
+Iron Man of Wall Street and undertook to
+analyze his emotions&mdash;and missed the mark
+by a thousand miles or two.</p>
+
+<p>Things had been smoothed as much as
+possible for him in the Tombs, for money and
+the power of it will go far toward ironing out
+even the corrugated routine of that big jail.
+He had a large cell to himself in the airiest,
+brightest corridor. His meals were served by
+a caterer from outside. Although he ate them
+without knife or fork, he soon learned that a
+spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good
+deal when backed by a good appetite, and Mr.
+Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The
+warden and his underlings had been models
+of official kindliness; the newspapers had sent
+their brightest young men to interview him
+whenever he felt like talking, which wasn't
+often; and surely his lawyers had done all in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+his behalf that money&mdash;a great deal of money&mdash;could
+do. Perhaps it was because of these
+things that Mr. Trimm had never been able
+to bring himself to realize that he was the
+Hobart W. Trimm who had been sentenced to
+the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow,
+that he, personally, was merely a spectator
+standing to one side watching the fight of
+another man to dodge the penitentiary.</p>
+
+<p>However, he didn't fail to give the other man
+the advantage of every chance that money
+would buy. This sense of aloofness to the
+whole thing had persisted even when his
+personal lawyer came to him one night in the
+early fall and told him that the court of last
+possible resort had denied the last possible
+motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short
+with a shake of his head as the other began
+saying something about the chances of a pardon
+from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in
+the habit of letting men deceive him with idle
+words. No President would pardon him, and
+he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Never mind that, Walling,&rdquo; he said steadily,
+when the lawyer offered to come to see him
+again before he started for prison the next
+day. &ldquo;If you'll see that a drawing-room on
+the train is reserved for me&mdash;for us, I mean&mdash;and
+all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you
+any further. I have a good many things to do
+tonight. Good night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Such a man, such a man,&rdquo; said Walling to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+himself as he climbed into his car; &ldquo;all chilled
+steel and brains. And they are going to lock
+that brain up for twelve years. It's a crime,&rdquo;
+said Walling, and shook his head. Walling
+always said it was a crime when they sent a
+client of his to prison. To his credit be it
+said, though, they sent very few of them
+there. Walling made as high as fifty thousand
+a year at criminal law. Some of it was very
+criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking
+holes in the statutes faster than the legislature
+could make them and provide them and
+putty them up with amendments. This was
+the first case he had lost in a good long time.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in
+the morning Mr. Trimm had made as careful
+a toilet as the limited means at his command
+permitted, and he had eaten a hearty breakfast
+and was ready to go, all but putting on his
+hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed,
+close-buttoned, iron-gray middle age, Mr.
+Trimm followed the turnkey through the long
+corridor and down the winding iron stairs to
+the warden's office. He gave no heed to the
+curious eyes that followed him through the
+barred doors of many cells; his feet rang
+briskly on the flags.</p>
+
+<p>The warden, Hallam, was there in the private
+office with another man, a tall, raw-boned
+man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache
+and the unmistakable look about him of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+police officer. Mr. Trimm knew without being
+told that this was the man who would take
+him to prison. The stranger was standing at
+a desk, signing some papers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm,&rdquo; said the
+warden with a nervous cordiality. &ldquo;Be through
+here in just one minute. This is Deputy
+Marshal Meyers,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers
+he was glad to meet him, but caught himself and
+merely nodded. The man stared at him with
+neither interest nor curiosity in his dull blue
+eyes. The warden moved over toward the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Trimm,&rdquo; he said, clearing his throat,
+&ldquo;I took the liberty of calling a cab to take
+you gents up to the Grand Central. It's
+out front now. But there's a big crowd of
+reporters and photographers and a lot of other
+people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out
+the back way&mdash;one of my men will open the
+yard gate for you&mdash;and jump aboard the
+subway down at Worth Street. Then you'll
+miss those fellows.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you, Warden&mdash;very kind of you,&rdquo;
+said Mr. Trimm in that crisp, businesslike way
+of his. He had been crisp and businesslike
+all his life. He heard a door opening softly
+behind him, and when he turned to look he
+saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in
+almost an embarrassed fashion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Meyers, &ldquo;all ready?&rdquo;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if
+to rise.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wait one minute,&rdquo; said Meyers.</p>
+
+<p>He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and
+fumbled at the side pocket of his ill-hanging
+coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave
+the least little jump, and the question that
+had ticked away so busily all those months
+began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was
+only a handkerchief the man was getting out.
+Doubtless he was going to mop his face.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled
+the handkerchief slowly, as if it contained
+something immensely fragile and valuable, and
+then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced
+Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in his hands
+a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed.
+The jaws had little notches in them, like
+teeth that could bite. The question that had
+ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at
+last&mdash;in the sight of these steel things with
+their notched jaws.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement
+as near to hesitation as he had ever been guilty
+of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess you're new at this kind of thing,&rdquo;
+said Meyers, grinning. &ldquo;This here way&mdash;one
+at a time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand,
+turned it sideways and settled one of the
+steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping
+the notched jaw up from beneath and pressing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+it in so that it locked automatically with
+a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff
+back and forth on Mr. Trimm's lower arm like
+a man adjusting a part of machinery, and then
+bringing the left hand up to meet the right, he
+treated it the same way. Then he stepped
+back.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The
+word came unbidden.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This&mdash;this isn't necessary, is it?&rdquo; he
+asked in a voice that was husky and didn't
+seem to belong to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yep,&rdquo; said Meyers. &ldquo;Standin' orders is
+play no favorites and take no chances. But
+you won't find them things uncomfortable.
+Lightest pair there was in the office, and I
+fixed 'em plenty loose.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a
+rooster hypnotized by a chalkmark, his arms
+extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His
+hands had fallen perhaps four inches apart,
+and in the space between his wrists a little
+chain was stretched taut. In the mounting
+tumult that filled his brain there sprang before
+Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he had
+heard or read somewhere, the title of a story
+or, perhaps, it was a headline&mdash;The Grips
+of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon
+Mr. Trimm&mdash;he felt them now for the first
+time in these shiny wristlets and this bit of
+chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole
+body with a strange, sinking feeling that made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+him physically sick. A sudden sweat beaded out
+on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.</p>
+
+<p>He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief
+with a hemstitched border and a monogram
+on it, in the upper breast pocket of his
+buttoned coat. He tried to reach it. His
+hands went up, twisting awkwardly like crab
+claws. The fingers of both plucked out the
+handkerchief. Holding it so, Mr. Trimm
+mopped the sweat away. The links of the
+handcuffs fell in upon one another and lengthened
+out again at each movement, filling the
+room with a smart little sound.</p>
+
+<p>He got the handkerchief stowed away with
+the same clumsiness. He raised the manacled
+hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward
+pull that brought it over his face and then,
+letting his short arms slide down upon his
+plump stomach, he faced the man who had
+put the fetters upon him, squaring his shoulders
+back. But it was hard, somehow, for him
+to square his shoulders&mdash;perhaps because of
+his hands being drawn so closely together.
+And his eyes would waver and fall upon his
+wrists. Mr. Trimm had a feeling that the skin
+must be stretched very tight on his jawbones
+and his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Isn't there some way to hide these&mdash;these
+things?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He began by blurting and ended by faltering
+it. His hands shuffled together, one over,
+then under the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here's a way,&rdquo; said Meyers. &ldquo;This'll
+help.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He bestirred himself, folding one of the
+chained hands upon the other, tugging at the
+white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves
+of his prisoner down over the bonds as far as
+the chain would let them come.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There's the notion,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Just do
+that-a-way and them bracelets won't hardly
+show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden.
+Merely a pair of steel rings clamped to one's
+wrists and coupled together with a scrap of
+chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper
+the movements of your body in a way to constantly
+catch the eye of the passer-by. When
+a man is coming toward you, you can tell that
+he is handcuffed before you see the cuffs.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward
+exactly how he got out of the Tombs.
+He had a confused memory of a gate that was
+swung open by some one whom Mr. Trimm
+saw only from the feet to the waist; then he
+and his companion were out on Lafayette
+Street, speeding south toward the subway
+entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below,
+with the marshal's hand cupped under Mr.
+Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump
+legs almost trotting in their haste. For a
+moment it looked as if the warden's well-meant
+artifice would serve them.</p>
+
+<p>But New York reporters are up to the tricks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+of people who want to evade them. At the
+sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner
+shouted a warning which was instantly caught
+up and passed on by another picket stationed
+half-way down the block; and around the wall
+of the Tombs came pelting a flying mob of
+newspaper photographers and reporters, with
+a choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers
+took up the chase, not knowing what it was
+about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen
+halted their teams, jumped down from their
+wagon seats and joined in. A man-chase is
+one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a
+big city like New York can offer its people.</p>
+
+<p>Fairly running now, the manacled banker
+and the deputy marshal shot down the winding
+steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead
+of the foremost pursuers. But there was one
+delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
+hand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the
+tickets, and another before a northbound local
+rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered at,
+shoved this way and that, panting in gulping
+breaths, for he was stout by nature and staled
+by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
+clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot
+aboard one of the cars, at the apex of a human
+wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation
+as the scrooging, shoving, noisy wave
+rolled across the platform toward the doors
+which he had opened and, thrusting the officer
+and his prisoner into the narrow platform space<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+behind him, he tried to form with his body a
+barrier against those who came jamming in.</p>
+
+<p>It didn't do any good. He was brushed
+away, protesting and blustering. The excitement
+spread through the train, and men, and
+even women, left their seats, overflowing the
+aisles.</p>
+
+<p>There is no crueler thing than a city crowd,
+all eyes and morbid curiosity. But Mr. Trimm
+didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
+Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting
+feet and a hedge of legs shutting him in
+closely&mdash;those and the things on his wrists.
+What the eyes of the crowd saw was a small,
+stout man who, for all his bulk, seemed to have
+dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged
+on him some places and bulged others, with
+his head tucked on his chest, his hat over his
+face and his fingers straining to hold his coat
+sleeves down over a pair of steel bracelets.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity
+whose existence he thought he had forgotten
+when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind
+him, shutting out the mob that had come with
+them all the way. Cameras had been shoved
+in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had
+scuttled alongside him, dodging under Meyers'
+fending arm to shout questions in his ears.
+He had neither spoken nor looked at them.
+The sweat still ran down his face, so that when
+finally he raised his head in the comparative
+quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>
+gray under the jail paleness like the color of
+wet wood ashes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment&mdash;for
+some private place on the
+train,&rdquo; he said to Meyers. &ldquo;The conductor
+ought to know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were the first words he had uttered
+since he left the Tombs. Meyers spoke to a
+jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside
+the car where they had halted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No such reservation,&rdquo; said the conductor,
+running through his sheaf of slips, with his eyes
+shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's
+hands and back again, as though he couldn't
+decide which was the more interesting part of
+him; &ldquo;must be some mistake. Or else it was
+for some other train. Too late to change now&mdash;we
+pull out in three minutes.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I reckon we better git on the smoker,&rdquo;
+said Meyers, &ldquo;if there's room there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length
+of the train through a double row of pop-eyed
+porters and staring trainmen. At the steps
+where they stopped the instinct to stretch out
+one hand and swing himself up by the rail
+operated automatically and his wrists got a
+nasty twist. Meyers and a brakeman practically
+lifted him up the steps and Meyers
+headed him into a car that was hazy with blue
+tobacco smoke. He was confused in his gait,
+almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,
+too.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who
+stood up, craning their necks and stumbling
+over each other in their desire to see him.
+These men came out into the aisle, so that
+Meyers had to shove through them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This here'll do as well as any, I guess,&rdquo;
+said Meyers. He drew Mr. Trimm past him
+into the seat nearer the window and sat down
+alongside him on the side next the aisle, settling
+himself on the stuffy plush seat and breathing
+deeply, like a man who had got through the
+hardest part of a not easy job.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Smoke?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Them cuffs feel plenty easy?&rdquo; was the
+deputy's next question. He lifted Mr. Trimm's
+hands as casually as if they had been his
+hands and not Mr. Trimm's, and looked at
+them.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Seem to be all right,&rdquo; he said as he let them
+fall back. &ldquo;Don't pinch none, I reckon?&rdquo;
+There was no answer.</p>
+
+<p>The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache,
+searching his arid mind. An idea came
+to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket,
+opened it out flat and spread it over Mr.
+Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained
+wrists. Almost instantly the train was in
+motion, moving through the yards.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>&ldquo;Be there in two hours more,&rdquo; volunteered
+Meyers. It was late afternoon. They were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+sliding through woodlands with occasional
+openings which showed meadows melting into
+wide, flat lands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Want a drink?&rdquo; said the deputy, next.
+&ldquo;No? Well, I guess I'll have a drop myself.
+Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust.&rdquo;
+He got up, lurching to the motion of the flying
+train, and started forward to the water cooler
+behind the car door. He had gone perhaps
+two-thirds of the way when Mr. Trimm felt
+a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet;
+it was exactly as though the train were trying
+to go forward and back at the same time.
+Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward
+end of the car slued out of its straight course,
+at the same time tilting up. There was a
+grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before
+Mr. Trimm's eyes Meyers vanished, tumbling
+forward out of sight as the car floor buckled
+under his feet. Then, as everything&mdash;the
+train, the earth, the sky&mdash;all fused together
+in a great spatter of white and black, Mr.
+Trimm, plucked from his seat as though a
+giant hand had him by the collar, shot forward
+through the air over the seatbacks, his chained
+hands aloft, clutching wildly. He rolled out
+of a ragged opening where the smoker had
+broken in two, flopped gently on the sloping
+side of the right-of-way and slid easily to the
+bottom, where he lay quiet and still on his
+back in a bed of weeds and wild grass, staring
+straight up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm
+didn't know. It may have been the shrieks
+of the victims or the glare from the fire that
+brought him out of the daze. He wriggled
+his body to a sitting posture, got on his feet,
+holding his head between his coupled hands,
+and gazed full-face into the crowning railroad
+horror of the year.</p>
+
+<p>There were numbers of the passengers who
+had escaped serious hurt, but for the most part
+these persons seemed to have gone daft from
+terror and shock. Some were running aimlessly
+up and down and some, a few, were
+pecking feebly with improvised tools at the
+wreck, an indescribable jumble of ruin, from
+which there issued cries of mortal agony, and
+from which, at a point where two locomotives
+were lying on their sides, jammed together like
+fighting bucks that had died with locked horns,
+a tall flame already rippled and spread, sending
+up a pillar of black smoke that rose straight,
+poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody
+paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood
+swaying upon his feet. There wasn't a scratch
+on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled,
+his hat was still on his head. He stood a
+minute and then, moved by a sudden impulse,
+he turned round and went running straight
+away from the railroad at the best speed his
+pudgy legs could accomplish, with his arms
+pumping up and down in front of him
+and his fingers interlaced. It was a grotesque<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span>
+gait, almost like a rabbit hopping on its
+hindlegs.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing
+down to the edge of the fill swallowed him
+up. He dodged and doubled back and forth
+among the tree trunks, his small, patent-leathered
+feet skipping nimbly over the irregular
+turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in
+his lungs to carry him another rod. When
+he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leaned
+against a tree and bent his head this way and
+that, listening. No sound came to his ears
+except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as
+Mr. Trimm might judge he had come far into
+the depths of a considerable woodland. Already
+the shadows under the low limbs were growing
+thick and confused as the hurried twilight of
+early September came on.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of
+thick green moss between two roots of an oak.
+The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented.
+For some little time he sat there motionless,
+in a sort of mental haze. Then his round body
+slowly slid down flat upon the moss, his head
+lolled to one side and, the reaction having come,
+Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxed and he went to
+sleep straightway.</p>
+
+<p>After a while, when the woods were black
+and still, the half-grown moon came up and,
+sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves
+above, shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he
+lay snoring gently with his mouth open, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+his hands rising and falling on his breast. The
+moonlight struck upon the Little Giant handcuffs,
+making them look like quicksilver.</p>
+
+<p>Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool.
+The dogwoods which had been a solid color at
+nightfall now showed pink in one light and
+green in another, like changeable silk, as the
+first level rays of the sun came up over the
+rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes
+between the tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened
+his eyes slowly, hardly sensing for the first
+moment or two how he came to be lying under
+a canopy of leaves, and gaped, seeking to
+stretch his arms. At that he remembered
+everything; he haunched his shoulders against
+the tree roots and wriggled himself up to a
+sitting position where he stayed for a while,
+letting his mind run over the sequence of
+events that had brought him where he was
+and taking inventory of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>Of escape he had no thought. The hue and
+cry must be out for him before now; doubtless
+men were already searching for him. It would
+be better for him to walk in and surrender
+than to be taken in the woods like an animal
+escaped from a traveling menagerie. But
+the mere thought of enduring again what he
+had already gone through&mdash;the thought of
+being tagged by crowds and stared at, with
+his fetters on&mdash;filled him with a nausea.
+Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might
+hold in store for him could equal the black,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knew
+that. The thought of the new ignominy that
+faced him made Mr. Trimm desperate. He
+had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder
+and hide his face and his chained hands.</p>
+
+<p>But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and
+so go to meet his captors in some manner of
+dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred
+to him before! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that
+he desired to get his two hands apart more
+than he had ever desired anything in his whole
+life before.</p>
+
+<p>The hands had begun naturally to adjust
+themselves to their enforced companionship,
+and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though
+it cost him some painful wrenches and much
+twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to get
+his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their
+small leather case out of his upper waistcoat
+pocket. With the glasses on his nose he subjected
+his bonds to a critical examination.
+Each rounded steel band ran unbroken except
+for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the
+small lock which sat perched on the back of the
+wrist in a little rounded excrescence like a steel
+wart. In the flat center of each lock was a
+small keyhole and alongside of it a notched
+nub, the nub being sunk in a minute depression.
+On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid
+into themselves&mdash;two notches on each showing
+where the jaws might be tightened to fit
+a smaller hand than his&mdash;and right over the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+large blue veins in the middle of the wrists were
+swivel links, shackle-bolted to the cuffs and
+connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link,
+giving the hands a palm-to-palm play of not
+more than four or five inches. The cuffs did
+not hurt&mdash;even after so many hours there
+was no actual discomfort from them and the
+flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.</p>
+
+<p>But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find
+out that they were not to be got off. He
+tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for
+a purchase. All he did was to chafe his skin
+and make his wrists throb with pain. The
+cuffs would go forward just so far, then the
+little humps of bone above the hands would
+catch and hold them.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in
+the pursuit of the obviously hopeless. Presently
+he stood up, shook himself and started
+off at a fair gait through the woods. The
+sun was up now and the turf was all dappled
+with lights and shadows, and about him much
+small, furtive wild life was stirring. He stepped
+along briskly, a strange figure for that green
+solitude, with his correct city garb and the
+glint of the steel at his sleeve ends.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering,
+banshee wail of a locomotive. The sound
+came from almost behind him, in an opposite
+direction from where he supposed the track
+to be. So he turned around and went back
+the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+runlet and climbed a small hill, neither of
+which he remembered having met in his night
+from the wreck, and in a little while he came
+out upon the railroad. To the north a little
+distance the rails ran round a curve. To the
+south, where the diminishing rails running
+through the unbroken woodland met in a long,
+shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge
+against the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm
+knew must come from the wreck&mdash;which was
+still burning, evidently. As nearly as he
+could judge he had come out of cover at least
+two miles above it. After a moment's consideration
+he decided to go south toward the
+wreck. Soon he could distinguish small dots
+like ants moving in and out about the black
+spot, and he knew these dots must be men.</p>
+
+<p>A whining, whirring sound came along the
+rails to him from behind. He faced about
+just as a handcar shot out around the curve
+from the north, moving with amazing rapidity
+under the strokes of four men at the pumps.
+Other men, laborers to judge by their blue
+overalls, were sitting on the edges of the car
+with their feet dangling. For the second time
+within twelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm,
+who wasn't given to impulses normally. He
+made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the
+handcar flashed by he watched its flight from
+the covert of a weed tangle.</p>
+
+<p>But even as the handcar was passing him
+Mr. Trimm regretted his hastiness. He must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+surrender himself sooner or later; why not to
+these overalled laborers, since it was a thing
+that had to be done? He slid out of hiding and
+came trotting back to the tracks. Already
+the handcar was a hundred yards away, flitting
+into distance like some big, wonderfully
+fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps
+rising and falling with a walking-beam regularity.
+As he stood watching them fade away
+and minded to try hailing them, yet still
+hesitating against his judgment, Mr. Trimm
+saw something white drop from the hands of
+one of the blue-clad figures on the handcar,
+unfold into a newspaper and come fluttering
+back along the tracks toward him. Just as he,
+starting doggedly ahead, met it, the little
+ground breeze that had carried it along died
+out and the paper dropped and flattened right
+in front of him. The front page was uppermost
+and he knew it must be of that morning's
+issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring
+headline: &ldquo;Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm
+patted the crumpled sheet flat with his hands.
+His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring
+captions to the second, to the next&mdash;and
+then his heart gave a great bound inside of him
+and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast,
+he bounded off the tracks back into another
+thicket and huddled there with the paper
+spread on the earth in front of him, reading by
+gulps while the chain that linked wrist to wrist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+tinkled to the tremors running through him.
+What he had seen first, in staring black-face
+type, was his own name leading the list of
+known dead, and what he saw now, broken up
+into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous
+English of a trained reporter throwing a great
+news story together to catch an edition, but
+telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was
+a narrative in which his name recurred again
+and again. The body of the United States
+deputy marshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed,
+had been taken from the wreckage of the
+smoker&mdash;so the double-leaded story ran&mdash;and
+near to Meyers another body, with features
+burned beyond recognition, yet still retaining
+certain distinguishing marks of measurement
+and contour, had been found and identified
+as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convicted
+banker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen
+other mangled dead, had been removed
+to a town called Westfield, from which town
+of Westfield the account of the disaster had
+been telegraphed to the New York paper. In
+another column farther along was more about
+Banker Trimm; facts about his soiled, selfish,
+greedy, successful life, his great fortune, his
+trial, and a statement that, lacking any close
+kin to claim his body, his lawyers had been
+notified.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm read the account through to
+the end, and as he read the sense of dominant,
+masterful self-control came back to him in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+waves. He got up, taking the paper with
+him, and went back into the deeper woods,
+moving warily and watchfully. As he went
+his mind, trained to take hold of problems and
+wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of
+the charred, grisly thing in the improvised
+morgue at Westfield, wherever that might be,
+Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity.
+All his life he had used live men to work his
+will, with no thought of what might come to
+them afterward. The living had served him,
+why not the dead?</p>
+
+<p>He had other things to think of than this
+dead proxy of his. He was as good as free!
+There would be no hunt for him now; no
+alarm out, no posses combing every scrap of
+cover for a famous criminal turned fugitive.
+He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere,
+then get in secret touch with Walling.
+Walling would do anything for money. And
+he had the money&mdash;four millions and more,
+cannily saved from the crash that had ruined
+so many others.</p>
+
+<p>He would alter his personal appearance,
+change his name&mdash;he thought of Duvall,
+which was his mother's name&mdash;and with
+Walling's aid he would get out of the country
+and into some other country where a man
+might live like a prince on four millions or the
+fractional part of it. He thought of South
+America, of South Africa, of a private yacht
+swinging through the little frequented islands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+of the South Seas. All that the law had tried
+to take from him would be given back. Walling
+would work out the details of the escape&mdash;and
+make it safe and sure&mdash;trust Walling
+for those things. On one side was the prison,
+with its promise of twelve grinding years
+sliced out of the very heart of his life; on the
+other, freedom, ease, security, even power.
+Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbled thoughts
+of concessions, enterprises, privileges&mdash;the
+back corners of the globe were full of possibilities
+for the right man. And between this
+prospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing
+in the way, nothing but&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands.
+Snug-fitting, shiny steel bands irked his wrists.
+The Grips of the Law were still upon him.</p>
+
+<p>But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous,
+unbelievable, altogether out of the
+question that a man with four millions salted
+down and stored away, a man who all his life
+had been used to grappling with the big things
+and wrestling them down into submission, a
+man whose luck had come to be a byword&mdash;and
+had not it held good even in this last
+emergency?&mdash;would be balked by puny scraps
+of forged steel and a trumpery lock or two.
+Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the gold
+bands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms
+of overdressed women at the opera. The
+chain that joined them was no larger and,
+probably, no stronger than the chains which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around the
+tires of the touring car in winter to keep the
+wheels from skidding on the slush. There
+would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free
+himself from these things. There must be&mdash;that
+was all there was to it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes
+were not badly rumpled; his patent-leather
+boots were scarcely scratched. Without the
+handcuffs he could pass unnoticed anywhere.
+By night then he must be free of them and on
+his way to some small inland city, to stay
+quiet there until the guarded telegram that
+he would send in cipher had reached Walling.
+There in the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no
+longer felt the ignominy of his bonds; he felt
+only the temporary embarrassment of them
+and the need of added precaution until he
+should have mastered them.</p>
+
+<p>He was once more the unemotional man
+of affairs who had stood Wall Street on its
+esteemed head and caught the golden streams
+that trickled from its pockets. First making
+sure that he was in a well-screened covert of
+the woods he set about exploring all his pockets.
+The coat pockets were comparatively easy, now
+that he had got used to using two hands where
+one had always served, but it cost him a lot
+of twisting of his body and some pain to his
+mistreated wrist bones to bring forth the
+contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain
+kinked time and again as he groped with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy,
+pudgy form writhed grotesquely. But finally
+he finished. The search produced four cigars
+somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches
+in a gun-metal case, a silver cigar cutter, two
+five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken
+feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple
+of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling
+fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr.
+Trimm ranged these things in a neat row upon
+a log, like a watchmaker setting out his kit,
+and took swift inventory of them. Some he
+eliminated from his design, stowing them back
+in the pockets easiest to reach. He kept for
+present employment the match safe, the cigar
+cutter and the watch.</p>
+
+<p>This place where he had halted would suit
+his present purpose well, he decided. It was
+where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving
+bank, made a snug little recess that was
+closed in on three sides. Spreading the newspaper
+on the turf to save his knees from soiling,
+he knelt and set to his task. For the time he
+felt neither hunger nor thirst. He had found
+out during his earlier experiments that the
+nails of his little fingers, which were trimmed
+to a point, could invade the keyholes in the
+little steel warts on the backs of his wrists and
+touch the locks. The mechanism had even
+twitched a little bit under the tickle of the
+nail ends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal
+match safe under his heel, Mr. Trimm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+selected a slender-pointed bit from among its
+fragments and got to work, the left hand drawn
+up under the right, the fingers of the right
+busy with the lock of the left, the chain
+tightening and slackening with subdued clinking
+sounds at each movement.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking
+a lock. He had got his money by a higher form
+of burglary that did not require a knowledge
+of lock picking. Nor as a boy had he been
+one to play at mechanics. He had let other
+boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden
+traps and the like, and then he had traded
+for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't
+given more heed to the mechanical side of
+things when he was growing up.</p>
+
+<p>He worked with a deliberate slowness,
+steadily. Nevertheless, it was hot work. The
+sun rose over the bank and shone on him
+through the limbs of the uprooted tree. His
+hat was on the ground alongside of him. The
+sweat ran down his face, streaking it and wilting
+his collar flat. The scrap of gun metal
+kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down
+would go the chained hands to scrabble in the
+grass for it, and then the picking would go on
+again. This happened a good many times.
+Birds, nervous with the spirit that presages
+the fall migration, flew back and forth along
+the creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes.
+A rain crow wove a brown thread in
+the green warp of the bushes above his head.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+A chattering red squirrel sat up on a tree
+limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly,
+came the cough of laboring trains, showing
+that the track must have been cleared. There
+were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt
+the lock giving. These times he would work
+harder.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back
+against the bank, panting. His face was
+splotched with red, and the little hollows at
+the sides of his forehead pulsed rapidly up and
+down like the bellies of scared tree frogs. The
+bent outer case of the watch littered a bare
+patch on the log; its mainspring had gone the
+way of the fragments of the gun-metal match
+safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down,
+twisted wisp of metal. The spring of
+the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago
+and the broken crystals powdered the earth
+where Mr. Trimm's toes had scraped a smooth
+patch. The nails of the two little fingers were
+worn to the quick and splintered down into
+the raw flesh. There were countless tiny
+scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs,
+and the steel wristbands were dulled with
+blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of new
+rust; but otherwise they were as stanch and
+strong a pair of Bean's Latest Model Little
+Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware
+store anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+things! With an acid oath Mr. Trimm raised
+his hands and brought them down on the log
+violently. There was a double click and the
+bonds tightened painfully, pressing the chafed
+red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his
+hands close to his near-sighted eyes and looked.
+One of the little notches on the under side of
+each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they
+were living things that had turned and bitten
+him for the blow he gave them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>From the time the sun went down there
+was a tingle of frost in the air. Mr. Trimm
+didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the
+tightened fetters his wrists throbbed steadily
+and racking cramps ran through his arms.
+His stomach felt as though it were tied into
+knots. The water that he drank from the
+branch only made his hunger sickness worse.
+His undergarments, that had been wet with
+perspiration, clung to him clammily. His
+middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called
+through every pore for clean linen and soap
+and water and rest, as his empty insides called
+for food.</p>
+
+<p>After a while he became so chilled that the
+demand for warmth conquered his instinct
+for caution. He felt about him in the darkness,
+gathering scraps of dead wood, and, after breaking
+several of the matches that had been in the
+gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike
+one and with its tiny flame started a fire. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>
+huddled almost over the fire, coughing when
+the smoke blew into his face and twisting and
+pulling at his arms in an effort to get relief
+from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to
+him that if he could only get an inch or two
+more of play for his hands he would be ever
+so much more comfortable. But he couldn't,
+of course.</p>
+
+<p>He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with
+his head sunk between his hunched shoulders.
+A pain in a new place woke him. The fire
+had burned almost through the thin sole of his
+right shoe, and as he scrambled to his feet and
+stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against
+his blistered foot almost made him cry out.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse
+down a faintly traced footpath along the
+creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck
+ahead of him. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the
+sound of the clanking bell before either the
+cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped
+away, running, skulking through the thick
+cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,
+swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off
+his head; but Mr. Trimm, imagining pursuit,
+did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheaded
+until he had to stop from exhaustion.
+He saw some dark-red berries on a shrub upon
+which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked
+some of them with his two hands and put
+three or four in his mouth experimentally.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+Warned instantly by the acrid, burning taste,
+he spat the crushed berries out and went on
+doggedly, following, according to his best
+judgment, a course parallel to the railroad.
+It was characteristic of him, a city-raised man,
+that he took no heed of distances nor of the
+distinguishing marks of the timber.</p>
+
+<p>Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing
+in the woods he halted some little time, watching
+and listening. The clearing had grown
+up in sumacs and weeds and small saplings
+and it seemed deserted; certainly it was still.
+Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of
+what had been a shack or a shed of some sort.
+Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare head
+below the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm
+made for the ruined shanty and gained it
+safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky
+logs that had once formed the walls he began
+scraping with his feet. Presently he uncovered
+something. It was a broken-off harrow tooth,
+scaled like a long, red fish with the crusted rust
+of years.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs
+on the edge of an old, broken watering
+trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crusted
+harrow tooth into the flat middle link
+of the chain as far as it would go, and then
+with one hand on top of the other he pressed
+downward with all his might. The pain in his
+wrists made him stop this at once. The link
+had not sprung or given in the least, but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+twisting pressure had almost broken his wrist
+bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowing
+that it would never serve as a lever to free him&mdash;which,
+indeed, he had known all along&mdash;and
+sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his
+wrists and thinking.</p>
+
+<p>He had another idea. It came into his mind
+as a vague suggestion that fire had certain
+effects upon certain metals. He kindled a
+fire of bits of the rotted wood, and when the
+flames ran together and rose slender and straight
+in a single red thread he thrust the chain into
+it, holding his hands as far apart as possible
+in the attitude of a player about to catch a
+bounced ball. But immediately the pain of
+that grew unendurable too, and he leaped
+back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded
+only in blackening the steel and putting
+a big water blister on one of his wrists right
+where the shackle bolt would press upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Where he huddled down in the shelter of
+one of the fallen walls he noticed, presently,
+a strand of rusted fence wire still held to half-tottering
+posts by a pair of blackened staples;
+it was part of a pen that had been used once
+for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried the
+wire with his fingers. It was firm and springy.
+Rocking and groaning with the pain of it, he
+nevertheless began sliding the chain back and
+forth, back and forth along the strand of wire.</p>
+
+<p>Eventually the wire, weakened by age,
+snapped in two. A tiny shined spot, hardly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished,
+smudged surface was all the mark that
+the chain showed.</p>
+
+<p>Staggering a little and putting his feet
+down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left the clearing,
+heading as well as he could tell eastward, away
+from the railroad. After a mile or two he came
+to a dusty wood road winding downhill.</p>
+
+<p>To the north of the clearing where Mr.
+Trimm had halted were a farm and a group
+of farm buildings. To the southward a mile
+or so was a cluster of dwellings set in the midst
+of more farm lands, with a shop or two and a
+small white church with a green spire in the
+center. Along a road that ran northward from
+the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old
+boy came, carrying a covered tin pail. A
+young gray squirrel flirted across the wagon
+ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut
+sapling. The boy put the pail down at the
+side of the road and began looking for a stone
+to throw at the squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A
+hemstitched handkerchief, grimed and stained,
+was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly
+hiding the handcuffs. He moved along with
+a queer, sliding gait, keeping as much of his
+body as he could turned from the youngster.
+The ears of the little chap caught the faint
+scuffle of feet and he spun around on his bare
+heel.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My boy, would you&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; Mr. Trimm began.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition
+that was sidling toward him in so strange
+a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged
+past Mr. Trimm and ran back the way he had
+come, as fast as his slim brown legs could take
+him. In half a minute he was out of sight
+round a bend.</p>
+
+<p>Had the boy looked back he would have
+seen a still more curious spectacle than the
+one that had frightened him. He would have
+seen a man worth four million dollars down on
+his knees in the yellow dust, pawing with
+chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the
+tin pail, and then, when he had got the lid off,
+drinking the fresh, warm milk which the pail
+held with great, choking gulps, uttering little
+mewing, animal sounds as he drank, while
+the white, creamy milk ran over his chin and
+splashed down his breast in little, spurting
+streams.</p>
+
+<p>But the boy didn't look back. He ran all
+the way home and told his mother he had seen
+a wild man on the road to the village; and
+later, when his father came in from the fields,
+he was soundly thrashed for letting the sight
+of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket
+and half a gallon of milk worth six cents a
+quart.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm.
+He rested the better for it during the early
+part of that night in a haw thicket. Only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+the sharp, darting pains in his wrists kept rousing
+him to temporary wakefulness. In one
+of those intervals of waking the plan that had
+been sketchily forming in his mind from the
+time he had quit the clearing in the woods took
+on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he
+with safety to get the sort of aid he needed,
+and where?</p>
+
+<p>Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he
+dozed off again.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith
+shop three yokels were languidly pitching
+horseshoes&mdash;&ldquo;quaits&rdquo; they called them&mdash;at
+a stake driven in the earth. Just beyond,
+the woods shredded out into a long, yellow and
+green peninsula which stretched up almost to
+the back door of the smithy, so that late of
+afternoons the slanting shadows of the near-most
+trees fell on its roof of warped shingles.
+At the extreme end of this point of woods Mr.
+Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder,
+squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain
+of ripened goldenrod tops and sumacs,
+heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He
+had been there more than an hour, cautiously
+waiting his chance to hail the blacksmith,
+whose figure he could make out in the smoky
+interior of his shop, passing back and forth in
+front of a smudgy forge fire and rattling metal
+against metal in intermittent fits of professional
+activity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>From where Mr. Trimm watched to where
+the horseshoe-pitching game went on was not
+more than sixty feet. He could hear what
+the players said and even see the little puffs
+of dust rise when one of them clapped his
+hands together after a pitch. He judged by
+the signs of slackening interest that they would
+be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clear
+away.</p>
+
+<p>But the smith loafed out of his shop and,
+after an exchange of bucolic banter with the
+three of them, he took a hand in their game
+himself. He wore no coat or waistcoat and,
+as he poised a horseshoe for his first cast at
+the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against
+the broad strap of his suspenders, a shiny,
+silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe,
+the smith moved over into the shade, so that
+he almost touched the clump of undergrowth
+that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting
+boulder. The near-sighted eyes of the fugitive
+banker could make out then what the flat,
+silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered
+low in his covert behind the rock, holding his
+hands down between his knees, fearful that a
+gleam from his burnished wristlets might strike
+through the screen of weed growth and catch
+the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed,
+not daring to move, until a dinner horn sounded
+somewhere in the cluster of cottages beyond,
+and the smith, closing the doors of his shop,
+went away with the three yokels.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Trimm, stooping low, stole back
+into the deep woods again. In his extremity
+he was ready to risk making a bid for the
+hire of a blacksmith's aid to rid himself of
+his bonds, but not a blacksmith who wore a
+deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>He caught himself scraping his wrists up
+and down again against the rough, scrofulous
+trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation
+was comforting to the swollen skin. The
+cuffs, which kept catching on the bark and
+snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed
+to Mr. Trimm to have been a part and parcel
+of him for a long time&mdash;almost as long a time
+as he could remember. But the hands which
+they clasped so close seemed like the hands of
+somebody else. There was a numbness about
+them that made them feel as though they were
+a stranger's hands which never had belonged
+to him. As he looked at them with a sort of
+vague curiosity they seemed to swell and grow,
+these two strange, fettered hands, until they
+measured yards across, while the steel bands
+shrunk to the thinness of piano wire, cutting
+deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the
+hands in turn began to shrink down and the
+cuffs to grow up into great, thick things as
+cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car.
+A voice that Mr. Trimm dimly recognized as
+his own was saying something about four
+million dollars over and over again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head
+angrily to clear it. He rubbed his eyes free
+of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for
+him to be getting light-headed.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a
+cut through which the railroad ran at a point
+about five miles north of where the collision
+had occurred, a tramp was busy, just before
+sundown, cooking something in an old washboiler
+that perched precariously on a fire of
+wood coals. This tramp was tall and spindle-legged,
+with reddish hair and a pale, beardless,
+freckled face with no chin to it and not much
+forehead, so that it ran out to a peak like the
+profile of some featherless, unpleasant sort of
+fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat
+dangled grotesquely about his spare shanks.</p>
+
+<p>Desperate as his plight had become, Mr.
+Trimm felt the old sick shame at the prospect
+of exposing himself to this knavish-looking
+vagabond whose help he meant to buy with a
+bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp of
+smoke from the wood fire curling upward
+through the cloudy, damp air that had brought
+him limping cautiously across the right-of-way,
+to climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now
+he hesitated, shielded in the shadows twenty
+yards away. It was a whiff of something
+savory in the washboiler, borne to him on the
+still air and almost making him cry out with
+eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+the sound of the halting footsteps the tramp
+stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler
+and glanced up apprehensively. As he took in
+the figure of the newcomer his eyes narrowed
+and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin of
+comprehension.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well, well,&rdquo; he said, leering offensively,
+&ldquo;welcome to our city, little stranger.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet,
+for they were almost out of the wrecks of his
+patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from
+the tramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his
+nostrils wrinkling. Then slowly: &ldquo;I'm in
+trouble,&rdquo; he said, and held out his hands.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it,&rdquo;
+said the tramp coolly. &ldquo;That purticular kind
+o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved
+past Mr. Trimm's stooped figure down the
+slope of the hillock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore
+keeper?&rdquo; he demanded, his manner changing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is no one after me&mdash;no one that
+I know of,&rdquo; explained Mr. Trimm. &ldquo;I am
+quite alone&mdash;I am certain of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?&rdquo;
+the other persisted suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you I am all alone,&rdquo; protested Mr.
+Trimm. &ldquo;I want your help in getting these&mdash;these
+things off and sending a message to a
+friend. You'll be well paid, very well paid.
+I can pay you more money than you ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+had in your life, probably, for your help.
+I can promise&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured
+by his words, had stooped again to his cooking
+and was stirring the bubbling contents of the
+washboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of
+the stew, rising strongly, filled Mr. Trimm with
+such a sharp and an aching hunger that he
+could not speak for a moment. He mastered
+himself, but the effort left him shaking and
+gulping.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about
+yourself,&rdquo; said the freckled man. &ldquo;Wot brings
+you roamin' round this here railroad cut with
+them bracelets on?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was in the wreck,&rdquo; obeyed Mr. Trimm.
+&ldquo;The man with me&mdash;the officer&mdash;was killed.
+I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods.
+But they think I'm dead too&mdash;my name was
+among the list of dead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, say,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;I read all about
+that there wreck&mdash;seen the list myself&mdash;say,
+you can't be Trimm, the New York banker?
+Yes, you are! Wot a streak of luck! Lemme
+look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer,
+sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all
+nice an' snug an' reg'lar! Mister Trimm&mdash;well,
+if this ain't rich!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My name is Trimm,&rdquo; said the starving
+banker miserably. &ldquo;I've been wandering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+about here a great many hours&mdash;several days,
+I think it must be&mdash;and I need rest and food
+very much indeed. I don't&mdash;don't feel very
+well,&rdquo; he added, his voice trailing off.</p>
+
+<p>At this his self-control gave way again and
+he began to quake violently as if with an ague.
+The smell of the cooking overcame him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don't look so well an' that's a fact,
+Trimm,&rdquo; sneered the tramp, resuming his
+malicious, mocking air. &ldquo;But set down an'
+make yourself at home, an' after a while, when
+this is done, we'll have a bite together&mdash;you
+an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us
+two.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made
+him appear even more repulsive than before.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But looky here, you wus sayin' somethin'
+about money,&rdquo; he said suddenly. &ldquo;Le's take
+a look at all this here money.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He came over to him and went through Mr.
+Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm said nothing
+and stood quietly, making no resistance. The
+tramp finished a workmanlike search of the
+banker's pockets. He looked at the result as
+it lay in his grimy palm&mdash;a moist little wad
+of bills and some chicken-feed change&mdash;and
+spat disgustedly with a nasty oath.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, Trimm,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;fur a Wall Street
+guy seems to me you travel purty light. About
+how much did you think you'd get done fur
+all this pile of wealth?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will be well paid,&rdquo; said Mr. Trimm,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+arguing hard; &ldquo;my friend will see to that.
+What I want you to do is to take the money
+you have there in your hand and buy a cold
+chisel or a file&mdash;any tools that will cut these
+things off me. And then you will send a telegram
+to a certain gentleman in New York.
+And let me stay with you until we get an
+answer&mdash;until he comes here. He will pay
+you well; I promise it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the
+bubbling stuff in the rusted washboiler. The
+freckled vagrant studied him through his red-lidded
+eyes, kicking some loose embers back
+into the fire with his toe.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I've heard a lot about you one way an'
+another, Trimm,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;'Tain't as if you
+wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to
+beat the cops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're
+the way-up, high-an'-mighty kind of crook.
+An' from wot I've read an' heard about you,
+you never toted fair with nobody yet. There
+wuz that young feller, wot's his name?&mdash;the
+cashier&mdash;him that wuz tried with you. He
+went along with you in yore games an' done
+yore work fur you an' you let him go over the
+road to the same place you're tryin' to dodge
+now. Besides,&rdquo; he added cunningly, &ldquo;you
+come here talkin' mighty big about money,
+yet I notice you ain't carryin' much of it in
+yore clothes. All I've had to go by is yore
+word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by
+all accounts.&rdquo;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly,&rdquo;
+burst out Mr. Trimm, the words falling over
+each other in his new panic. &ldquo;You must help
+me; I've endured too much&mdash;I've gone
+through too much to give up now.&rdquo; He
+pleaded fast, his hands shaking in a quiver of
+fear and eagerness as he stretched them out
+in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with
+them. Promises, pledges, commands, orders,
+arguments poured from him. His tormentor
+checked him with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand,&rdquo;
+he chuckled, hugging his slack frame, &ldquo;an'
+it ain't fur you to be givin' orders&mdash;it's fur
+me. An', anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin'
+to be able to make a trade&mdash;leastwise not on
+yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all
+right&mdash;anyhow, I will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you mean?&rdquo; panted Mr. Trimm,
+full of terror. &ldquo;You'll help me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I mean this,&rdquo; said the tramp slowly. He
+put his hands under his loose-hanging overcoat
+and began to fumble at a leather strap
+about his waist. &ldquo;If I turn you over to the
+Government I know wot you'll be worth,
+purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an'
+besides, it'll maybe help to square me up fur
+one or two little matters. If I turn you loose
+I ain't got nothin' only your word&mdash;an'
+I've got an idea how much faith I kin put in
+that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+was no escape. He was fast in a trap which
+he himself had sprung. The thought of being
+led to jail, all foul of body and fettered as
+he was, by this filthy, smirking wretch made
+him crazy. He stumbled backward with some
+insane idea of running away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No hurry, no hurry a-tall,&rdquo; gloated the
+tramp, enjoying the torture of this helpless
+captive who had walked into his hands. &ldquo;I
+ain't goin' to hurt you none&mdash;only make sure
+that you don't wander off an' hurt yourself
+while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be
+damagin' yoreself; you're valuable property.
+Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'll
+just back you up agin one of these trees an'
+then we'll jest slip this here belt through
+yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at
+the back; an' I kinder guess you'll stay right
+there till I go down yonder to that station
+that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind
+of a bargain I kin strike up with the marshal.
+Come on, now,&rdquo; he threatened with a show of
+bluster, reading the resolution that was mounting
+in Mr. Trimm's face. &ldquo;Come on peaceable,
+if you don't want to git hurt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive
+man. He was filled with those elemental
+emotions that make a man see in spatters of
+crimson. Gathering strength from passion out
+of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward at
+the tramp. He struck at him with his head,
+his shoulders, his knees, his manacled wrists,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+all at once. Not really hurt by the puny
+assault, but caught by surprise, the freckled
+man staggered back, clawing at the air, tripped
+on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell
+vanished below the smooth edge of the cut.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over
+the bluff. Half-way down the cliff on an outcropping
+shelf of rock the man lay, face downward,
+motionless. He seemed to have grown
+smaller and to have shrunk into his clothes.
+One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts
+of the overcoat in a queer, twisted way, and
+the cloth of the trouser leg looked flattened
+and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at
+him he saw a red stain spreading on the rock
+under the still, silent figure's head.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It
+lay on its side, empty, the last of its recent
+contents sputtering out into the half-drowned
+fire. He stared at this ruin a minute. Then
+without another look over the cliff edge he
+stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to
+himself as he went. Just as he struck the level
+it began to rain, gently at first, then hard,
+and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest
+trees, he was soon wet through to his skin
+and dripped water as he lurched along without
+sense of direction or, indeed, without any
+active realization of what he was doing.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Late that night it was still raining&mdash;a cold,
+steady, autumnal downpour. A huddled figure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+slowly climbed upon a low fence running about
+the house-yard of the little farm where the boy
+lived who got thrashed for losing a milkpail.
+On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the
+figure slipped and sprawled forward in the
+miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on
+its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food.
+He moved slowly toward the house, tottering
+with weakness and because of the slick mud
+underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and
+that through the murk; starting at every sound
+and stopping often to listen.</p>
+
+<p>The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back
+of the house were looming dead ahead of him
+when from the corner of the cottage sprang a
+small terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking
+shrilly. He retreated backward, kicking
+at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking
+out with short, dabby jerks of his fettered
+hands&mdash;they were such motions as the terrier
+itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs.
+Still backing away, expecting every
+instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh,
+Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with
+a great clatter of the breaking glass. He felt
+the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing and
+cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering
+himself, he dealt the terrier a lucky
+kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling,
+to where it had come from, and then, as
+a door jerked open and a half-dressed man
+jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+half hobbled, half fell out of sight behind the
+woodpile.</p>
+
+<p>Back and forth along the lower edge of his
+yard the farmer hunted, with the whimpering,
+cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark
+corners with the muzzle of his shotgun for the
+unseen intruder whose coming had aroused
+the household. In a brushpile just over the
+fence to the east Mr. Trimm lay on his face
+upon the wet earth, with the rain beating down
+on him, sobbing with choking gulps that
+wrenched him cruelly, biting at the bonds on
+his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth
+gritted in the air. Finally, in the hopeless,
+helpless frenzy of his agony he beat his arms up
+and down until the bracelets struck squarely
+on a flat stone and the force of the blow sent
+the cuffs home to the last notch so that they
+pressed harder and faster than ever upon the
+tortured wrist bones.</p>
+
+<p>When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes
+in a vain search the farmer went shivering back
+indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the
+groveling figure in the brushpile lay for a long
+time where it was, only stirring a little while
+the rain dripped steadily down on everything.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early
+on the Saturday morning following the chief
+of police, who was likewise the whole of the day
+police force in the town of Westfield, nine miles
+from the place where the collision occurred,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking at
+the front door of his cottage, where he also had
+his office. The door was a Dutch door, sawed
+through the middle, so that the top half might
+be opened independently, leaving the lower
+panel fast. He swung this top half back.</p>
+
+<p>A face was framed in the opening&mdash;an
+indescribably dirty, unutterably weary face,
+with matted white hair and a rime of whitish
+beard stubble on the jaws. It was fallen in
+and sunken and it drooped on the chest of its
+owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if
+from repeated hard blows, hung agape, and
+between the purplish parted lips showed the
+stumps of broken teeth. The eyes blinked
+weakly at the chief from under lids as colorless
+as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white
+head was filthy with plastered mud and twigs,
+and dripping wet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hello, there!&rdquo; said the chief, startled at
+this apparition. &ldquo;What do you want?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With a movement that told of straining
+effort the lolled head came up off the chest.
+The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising
+from a dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's
+apple bulged out prominently, as big as a
+pigeon's egg.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have come,&rdquo; said the specter in a wheezing
+rasp of a voice which the chief could hardly
+hear&mdash;&ldquo;I have come to surrender myself. I
+am Hobart W. Trimm.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I guess you got another thing comin',&rdquo;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+said the chief, who was by way of being a
+neighborhood wag. &ldquo;When last seen Hobart
+W. Trimm was only fifty-two years old. Besides
+which, he's dead and buried. I guess
+maybe you'd better think agin, grandpap, and
+see if you ain't Methus'lah or the Wanderin'
+Jew.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker,&rdquo;
+whispered the stranger with a sort of wan
+stubbornness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go on and prove it,&rdquo; suggested the chief,
+more than willing to prolong the enjoyment of
+the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield
+that wandering lunatics came a-calling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Got any way to prove it?&rdquo; he repeated as
+the visitor stared at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; came the creaking, rusted hinge of
+a voice, &ldquo;I have.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised
+his hands into the chief's sight. They were
+horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood
+where they were not black with the dried dirt;
+the fingers puffed up out of shape; the nails
+broken; they were like the skinned paws of a
+bear. And at the wrists, almost buried in the
+bloated folds of flesh, blackened, rusted, battered,
+yet still strong and whole, was a tightly-locked
+pair of Bean's Latest Model Little Giant
+handcuffs.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great God!&rdquo; cried the chief, transfixed at
+the sight. He drew the bolt and jerked open
+the lower half of the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come in,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and lemme get them
+irons off of you&mdash;they must hurt something
+terrible.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They can wait,&rdquo; said Mr. Trimm very
+feebly, very slowly and very humbly. &ldquo;I
+have worn them a long, long while&mdash;I am
+used to them. Wouldn't you please get me
+some food first?&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>II</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">THE BELLED BUZZARD</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">T</span>here was a swamp known as Little
+Niggerwool, to distinguish it from Big
+Niggerwool, which lay across the river.
+It was traversable only by those who
+knew it well&mdash;an oblong stretch of tawny
+mud and tawny water, measuring maybe four
+miles its longest way and two miles roughly
+at its widest; and it was full of cypress and
+stunted swamp oak, with edgings of canebrake
+and rank weeds; and in one place, where a
+ridge crossed it from side to side, it was snaggled
+like an old jaw with dead tree trunks,
+rising close-ranked and thick as teeth. It
+was untenanted of living things&mdash;except,
+down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes,
+and a few wading and swimming fowl;
+and up above, those big woodpeckers that the
+country people called logcocks&mdash;larger than
+pigeons, with flaming crests and spiky tails&mdash;swooping
+in their long, loping flight from snag
+to snag, always just out of gunshot of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+chance invader, and uttering a strident cry
+which matched those surroundings so fitly
+that it might well have been the voice of the
+swamp itself.</p>
+
+<p>On one side little Niggerwool drained its
+saffron waters off into a sluggish creek, where
+summer ducks bred, and on the other it ended
+abruptly at a natural bank of high ground,
+along which the county turnpike ran. The
+swamp came right up to the road and thrust
+its fringe of reedy, weedy undergrowth forward
+as though in challenge to the good farm lands
+that were spread beyond the barrier. At the
+time I am speaking of it was mid-summer, and
+from these canes and weeds and waterplants
+there came a smell so rank as almost to be
+overpowering. They grew thick as a curtain,
+making a blank green wall taller than a man's
+head.</p>
+
+<p>Along the dusty stretch of road fronting the
+swamp nothing living had stirred for half an
+hour or more. And so at length the weed-stems
+rustled and parted, and out from among
+them a man came forth silently and cautiously.
+He was an old man&mdash;an old man who had
+once been fat, but with age had grown lean
+again, so that now his skin was by odds too
+large for him. It lay on the back of his neck
+in folds. Under the chin he was pouched like
+a pelican and about the jowls was wattled
+like a turkey gobbler.</p>
+
+<p>He came out upon the road slowly and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+stopped there, switching his legs absently
+with the stalk of a horseweed. He was in his
+shirtsleeves&mdash;a respectable, snuffy old figure;
+evidently a man deliberate in words and
+thoughts and actions. There was something
+about him suggestive of an old staid sheep
+that had been engaged in a clandestine transaction
+and was afraid of being found out.</p>
+
+<p>He had made amply sure no one was in sight
+before he came out of the swamp, but now,
+to be doubly certain, he watched the empty
+road&mdash;first up, then down&mdash;for a long half
+minute, and fetched a sighing breath of satisfaction.
+His eyes fell upon his feet, and,
+taken with an idea, he stepped back to the edge
+of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped
+his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was
+of a different color and texture from the soil
+of the upland. All his life Squire H. B.
+Gathers had been a careful, canny man, and
+he had need to be doubly careful on this summer
+morning. Having disposed of the mud on his
+feet, he settled his white straw hat down
+firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road,
+he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously
+and went plodding sedately across a weedfield
+and up a slight slope toward his house, half a
+mile away, upon the crest of the little hill.</p>
+
+<p>He felt perfectly natural&mdash;not like a man
+who had just taken a fellowman's life&mdash;but
+natural and safe, and well satisfied with himself
+and with his morning's work. And he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span>
+safe; that was the main thing&mdash;absolutely
+safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done
+the thing for which he had been planning and
+waiting and longing all these months. There
+had been no slip or mischance; the whole
+thing had worked out as plainly and simply
+as two and two make four. No living creature
+except himself knew of the meeting in the
+early morning at the head of Little Niggerwool,
+exactly where the squire had figured they
+should meet; none knew of the device by which
+the other man had been lured deeper and
+deeper in the swamp to the exact spot where
+the gun was hidden. No one had seen the two
+of them enter the swamp; no one had seen
+the squire emerge, three hours later, alone.</p>
+
+<p>The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden
+again, in a place no mortal eye would
+ever discover. Face downward, with a hole
+between his shoulder blades, the dead man was
+lying where he might lie undiscovered for
+months or for years, or forever. His pedler's
+pack was buried in the mud so deep that not
+even the probing crawfishes could find it.
+He would never be missed probably. There
+was but the slightest likelihood that inquiry
+would ever be made for him&mdash;let alone a
+search. He was a stranger and a foreigner,
+the dead man was, whose comings and goings
+made no great stir in the neighborhood, and
+whose failure to come again would be taken as
+a matter of course&mdash;just one of those shiftless,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+wandering Dagoes, here today and gone
+tomorrow. That was one of the best things
+about it&mdash;these Dagoes never had any people
+in this country to worry about them or look
+for them when they disappeared. And so it
+was all over and done with, and nobody the
+wiser. The squire clapped his hands together
+briskly with the air of a man dismissing a
+subject from his mind for good, and mended
+his gait.</p>
+
+<p>He felt no stabbings of conscience. On
+the contrary, a glow of gratification filled him.
+His house was saved from scandal; his present
+wife would philander no more&mdash;before his
+very eyes&mdash;with these young Dagoes, who
+came from nobody knew where, with packs on
+their backs and persuasive, wheedling tongues
+in their heads. At this thought the squire
+raised his head and considered his homestead.
+It looked good to him&mdash;the small white
+cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives
+and flower beds about it; the tidy whitewashed
+fence; the sound outbuildings at the back,
+and the well-tilled acres roundabout.</p>
+
+<p>At the fence he halted and turned about,
+carelessly and casually, and looked back along
+the way he had come. Everything was as
+it should be&mdash;the weedfield steaming in the
+heat; the empty road stretching along the
+crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning
+itself; and beyond it, massing up, the dark,
+cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+all right, but&mdash;&mdash;The squire's eyes, in their
+loose sacs of skin, narrowed and squinted.
+Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small
+black dot had resolved itself and was swinging
+to and fro, like a mote. A buzzard&mdash;hey?
+Well, there were always buzzards about on a
+clear day like this. Buzzards were nothing
+to worry about&mdash;almost any time you could
+see one buzzard, or a dozen buzzards if you
+were a mind to look for them.</p>
+
+<p>But this particular buzzard now&mdash;wasn't
+he making for Little Niggerwool? The squire
+did not like the idea of that. He had not
+thought of the buzzards until this minute.
+Sometimes when cattle strayed the owners
+had been known to follow the buzzards, knowing
+mighty well that if the buzzards led the
+way to where the stray was, the stray would
+be past the small salvage of hide and hoofs&mdash;but
+the owner's doubts would be set at rest
+for good and all.</p>
+
+<p>There was a grain of disquiet in this. The
+squire shook his head to drive the thought
+away&mdash;yet it persisted, coming back like a
+midge dancing before his face. Once at home,
+however, Squire Gathers deported himself in a
+perfectly normal manner. With the satisfied
+proprietorial eye of an elderly husband who
+has no rivals, he considered his young wife,
+busied about her household duties. He sat
+in an easy-chair upon his front gallery and read
+his yesterday's Courier-Journal which the rural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+carrier had brought him; but he kept stepping
+out into the yard to peer up into the sky and
+all about him. To the second Mrs. Gathers
+he explained that he was looking for weather
+signs. A day as hot and still as this one was a
+regular weather breeder; there ought to be
+rain before night.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe so,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;but looking's not
+going to bring rain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless the squire continued to look.
+There was really nothing to worry about; still
+at midday he did not eat much dinner, and
+before his wife was half through with hers he
+was back on the gallery. His paper was cast
+aside and he was watching. The original
+buzzard&mdash;or, anyhow, he judged it was the
+first one he had seen&mdash;was swinging back and
+forth in great pendulum swings, but closer
+down toward the swamp&mdash;closer and closer&mdash;until
+it looked from that distance as though
+the buzzard flew almost at the level of the
+tallest snags there. And on beyond this first
+buzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards.
+Were there four of them? No; there
+were five&mdash;five in all.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the way of the buzzard&mdash;that
+shifting black question mark which punctuates
+a Southern sky. In the woods a shoat or a
+sheep or a horse lies down to die. At once,
+coming seemingly out of nowhere, appears a
+black spot, up five hundred feet or a thousand
+in the air. In broad loops and swirls this dot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+swings round and round and round, coming a
+little closer to earth at every turn and always
+with one particular spot upon the earth for
+the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other
+moving spots emerge and grow larger as they
+tack and jib and drop nearer, coming in their
+leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There
+is no haste&mdash;the feast will wait. If it is a
+dumb creature that has fallen stricken the
+grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled
+about it and alongside it, scrouging ever closer
+and closer to the dying thing, with awkward
+out-thrustings of their naked necks and great
+dust-raising flaps of the huge, unkempt wings;
+lifting their feathered shanks high and stiffly
+like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that
+are too tight&mdash;but silent and patient all,
+offering no attack until the last tremor runs
+through the stiffening carcass and the eyes
+glaze over. To humans the buzzard pays a
+deeper meed of respect&mdash;he hangs aloft longer;
+but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark,
+no carrion crab, ever chambered more grisly
+secrets in his digestive processes than this
+big charnel bird. Such is the way of the
+buzzard.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>The squire missed his afternoon nap, a thing
+that had not happened in years. He stayed
+on the front gallery and kept count. Those
+moving distant black specks typified uneasiness
+for the squire&mdash;not fear exactly, or panic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging
+kind of uneasiness. Time and again he said
+to himself that he would not think about them
+any more; but he did&mdash;unceasingly.</p>
+
+<p>By supper time there were seven of them.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>He slept light and slept badly. It was not
+the thought of that dead man lying yonder
+in Little Niggerwool that made him toss
+and fume while his wife snored gently alongside
+him. It was something else altogether.
+Finally his stirrings roused her and she asked
+him drowsily what ailed him. Was he sick?
+Or bothered about anything?</p>
+
+<p>Irritated, he answered her snappishly. Certainly
+nothing was bothering him, he told her.
+It was a hot enough night&mdash;wasn't it? And
+when a man got a little along in life he was apt
+to be a light sleeper&mdash;wasn't that so? Well,
+then? She turned upon her side and slept
+again with her light, purring snore. The
+squire lay awake, thinking hard and waiting
+for day to come.</p>
+
+<p>At the first faint pink-and-gray glow he was
+up and out upon the gallery. He cut a comic
+figure standing there in his shirt in the half
+light, with the dewlap at his throat dangling
+grotesquely in the neck opening of the unbuttoned
+garment, and his bare bowed legs
+showing, splotched and varicose. He kept
+his eyes fixed on the skyline below, to the south.
+Buzzards are early risers too. Presently, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+the heavens shimmered with the miracle of
+sunrise, he could make them out&mdash;six or
+seven, or maybe eight.</p>
+
+<p>An hour after breakfast the squire was on
+his way down through the weedfield to the
+county road. He went half eagerly, half
+unwillingly. He wanted to make sure about
+those buzzards. It might be that they were
+aiming for the old pasture at the head of the
+swamp. There were sheep grazing there&mdash;and
+it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards
+were notoriously fond of sheep, when dead.
+Or, if they were pointed for the swamp, he
+must satisfy himself exactly what part of the
+swamp it was. He was at the stake-and-rider
+fence when a mare came jogging down the road,
+drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of
+the squire in the field the man pulled up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hi, squire!&rdquo; he saluted. &ldquo;Goin' somewheres?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; jest knockin' about,&rdquo; the squire
+said&mdash;&ldquo;jest sorter lookin' the place over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hot agin&mdash;ain't it?&rdquo; said the other.</p>
+
+<p>The squire allowed that it was, for a fact,
+mighty hot. Commonplaces of gossip followed
+this&mdash;county politics and a neighbor's wife
+sick of breakbone fever down the road a piece.
+The subject of crops succeeded inevitably.
+The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly
+he regretted it, for the other man, who was by
+way of being a weather wiseacre, cocked his head
+aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin'
+yonder, squire,&rdquo; he said, pointing upward with
+his whipstock.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whut buzzards&mdash;where?&rdquo; asked the squire
+with an elaborate note of carelessness in his
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool&mdash;see
+'em there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; the squire made answer. &ldquo;Now
+I see 'em. They ain't doin' nothin', I reckin&mdash;jest
+flyin' round same as they always do in
+clear weather.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Must be somethin' dead over there!&rdquo;
+speculated the man in the buggy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A hawg probably,&rdquo; said the squire promptly&mdash;almost
+too promptly. &ldquo;There's likely to
+be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over
+on the other side from here&mdash;he's got a big
+drove of hawgs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, mebbe so,&rdquo; said the man; &ldquo;but
+hawgs is a heap more apt to be feedin' on high
+ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin'
+along towards town. G'day, squire.&rdquo; And
+he slapped the lines down on the mare's flank
+and jogged off through the dust.</p>
+
+<p>He could not have suspected anything&mdash;that
+man couldn't. As the squire turned away
+from the road and headed for his house he
+congratulated himself upon that stroke of his
+in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yet there
+remained this disquieting note in the situation,
+that buzzards flying, and especially buzzards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>
+flying over Little Niggerwool, made people
+curious&mdash;made them ask questions.</p>
+
+<p>He was half-way across the weedfield when,
+above the hum of insect life, above the inward
+clamor of his own busy speculations, there came
+to his ear dimly and distantly a sound that
+made him halt and cant his head to one side
+the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way
+off, there was a thin, thready, broken strain
+of metallic clinking and clanking&mdash;an eery
+ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became
+plainer&mdash;tonk-tonk-tonk; then the tonks
+all running together briskly.</p>
+
+<p>A sheep bell or a cowbell&mdash;that was it; but
+why did it seem to come from overhead, from
+up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so
+abruptly from one quarter to another&mdash;from
+left to right and back again to left? And how
+was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast?
+Not even the breachiest of breachy young
+heifers could be expected to tinkle a cowbell
+with such briskness. The squire's eye searched
+the earth and the sky, his troubled mind giving
+to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny. He
+had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not
+anything that went on four legs.</p>
+
+<p>One of the loathly flock had left the others.
+The orbit of his swing had carried him across
+the road and over Squire Gathers' land. He
+was sailing right toward and over the squire
+now. Craning his flabby neck, the squire
+could make out the unwholesome contour of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+the huge bird. He could see the ragged black
+wings&mdash;a buzzard's wings are so often ragged
+and uneven&mdash;and the naked throat; the
+slim, naked head; the big feet folded up against
+the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too&mdash;an
+undersized cowbell&mdash;that dangled at the
+creature's breast and jangled incessantly. All
+his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing
+about the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own
+eye he was seeing him.</p>
+
+<p>Once, years and years and years ago, some
+one trapped a buzzard, and before freeing it
+clamped about its skinny neck a copper band
+with a cowbell pendent from it. Since then
+the bird so ornamented has been seen a hundred
+times&mdash;and heard oftener&mdash;over an area
+as wide as half the continent. It has been
+reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas,
+now in North Carolina&mdash;now anywhere between
+the Ohio River and the Gulf. Crossroads
+correspondents take their pens in hand
+to write to the country papers that on such
+and such a date, at such a place, So-and-So
+saw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the
+Belled Buzzard, never a belled buzzard. The
+Belled Buzzard is an institution.</p>
+
+<p>There must be more than one of them. It
+seems hard to believe that one bird, even a
+buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in
+every Southern state and known to be a bird
+of great age, could live so long and range so
+far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+Probably other jokers have emulated the
+original joker; probably if the truth were
+known there have been a dozen such; but the
+country people will have it that there is only
+one Belled Buzzard&mdash;a bird that bears a
+charmed life and on his neck a never silent
+bell.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward
+thing that the Belled Buzzard should have
+come just at this time. The movements of
+ordinary, unmarked buzzards mainly concerned
+only those whose stock had strayed;
+but almost anybody with time to spare might
+follow this rare and famous visitor, this belled
+and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing
+now that some one followed it today&mdash;maybe
+followed it even to a certain thick clump of
+cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!</p>
+
+<p>But at this particular moment the Belled
+Buzzard was heading directly away from that
+quarter. Could it be following him? Of
+course not! It was just by chance that it flew
+along the course the squire was taking. But,
+to make sure, he veered off sharply, away from
+the footpath into the high weeds so that the
+startled grasshoppers sprayed up in front of
+him in fan-like flights.</p>
+
+<p>He was right; it was only a chance. The
+Belled Buzzard swung off too, but in the
+opposite direction, with a sharp tonking of its
+bell, and, flapping hard, was in a minute or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+two out of hearing and sight, past the trees
+to the westward.</p>
+
+<p>Again the squire skimped his dinner, and
+again he spent the long drowsy afternoon
+upon his front gallery. In all the sky there
+were now no buzzards visible, belled or unbelled&mdash;they
+had settled to earth somewhere; and
+this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pestered
+mind. This does not mean, though, that
+he was by any means easy in his thoughts.
+Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative
+judicial air befitting the oldest justice
+of the peace in the county; but, within him,
+a little something gnawed unceasingly at his
+nerves like one of those small white worms that
+are to be found in seemingly sound nuts.
+About once in so long a tiny spasm of the
+muscles would contract the dewlap under his
+chin. The squire had never heard of that
+play, made famous by a famous player, wherein
+the murdered victim was a pedler too, and
+a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable
+remorse in the murderer's ear. As a strict
+churchgoer the squire had no use for players or
+for play actors, and so was spared that added
+canker to his conscience. It was bad enough
+as it was.</p>
+
+<p>That night, as on the night before, the old
+man's sleep was broken and fitful and disturbed
+by dreaming, in which he heard a metal
+clapper striking against a brazen surface.
+This was one dream that came true. Just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>
+after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed,
+with a flop of his broad bare feet upon the floor,
+and stepped to the window and peered out.
+Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard
+flapped directly over his roof and flew
+due south, right toward the swamp&mdash;drawing
+a direct line through the air between the slayer
+and the victim&mdash;or, anyway, so it seemed to
+the watcher, grown suddenly tremulous.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Knee deep in yellow swamp water the squire
+squatted, with his shotgun cocked and loaded
+and ready, waiting to kill the bird that now
+typified for him guilt and danger and an abiding
+great fear. Gnats plagued him and about
+him frogs croaked. Almost overhead a log-cock
+clung lengthwise to a snag, watching him.
+Snake doctors, limber, long insects with bronze
+bodies and filmy wings, went back and forth
+like small living shuttles. Other buzzards
+passed and repassed, but the squire waited,
+forgetting the cramps in his elderly limbs and
+the discomfort of the water in his shoes.</p>
+
+<p>At length he heard the bell. It came nearer
+and nearer, and the Belled Buzzard swung
+overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair
+target against the blue. He aimed and fired,
+both barrels bellowing at once and a fog of
+thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through
+the smoke he saw the bird careen and its bell
+jangled furiously; then the buzzard righted
+itself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+sound of its bell was hushed almost instantly.
+Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;
+torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green
+scraps of leaves descended about the squire in
+a little shower.</p>
+
+<p>He cast his empty gun from him so that it
+fell in the water and disappeared; and he
+hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky
+legs would take him, splashing himself with
+mire and water to his eyebrows. Mucked with
+mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a
+suspicious figure to any eye, he burst through
+the weed curtain and staggered into the open,
+his caution all gone and a vast desperation
+fairly choking him&mdash;but the gray road was
+empty and the field beyond the road was
+empty; and, except for him, the whole world
+seemed empty and silent.</p>
+
+<p>As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed
+himself. With plucked handfuls of grass
+he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire
+that coated him over; but the little white
+worm that gnawed at his nerves had become a
+cold snake that was coiled about his heart,
+squeezing it tighter and tighter!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/illo_facing_p70.jpg" width="370" height="500" alt="p70" title="TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN" />
+<span class="caption">&ldquo;Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down.&rdquo;
+&mdash;<small><i>Page 70</i></small></span>
+<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">To List</a></span></div>
+
+<p>This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled
+Buzzard occurred in the afternoon of the third
+day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weather
+being still hot, with cloudless skies and no air
+stirring, there was a rattle of warped wheels
+in the squire's lane and a hail at his yard fence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost
+darkened room of his house, where he had been
+stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded his
+eyes from the glare and saw the constable of
+his own magisterial district sitting in a buggy
+at the gate waiting.</p>
+
+<p>The old man went down the dirtpath slowly,
+almost reluctantly, with his head twisted up
+side wise, listening, watching; but the constable
+sensed nothing strange about the other's
+gait and posture; the constable was full of
+the news he brought. He began to unload the
+burden of it without preamble.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mornin', Squire Gathers. There's been a
+dead man found in Little Niggerwool&mdash;and
+you're wanted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He did not notice that the squire was holding
+on with both hands to the gate; but he did
+notice that the squire had a sick look out of
+his eyes and a dead, pasty color in his face;
+and he noticed&mdash;but attached no meaning
+to it&mdash;that when the squire spoke his voice
+seemed flat and hollow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wanted&mdash;fur&mdash;whut?&rdquo; The squire
+forced the words out of his throat, pumped
+them out fairly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, to hold the inquest,&rdquo; explained the
+constable. &ldquo;The coroner's sick abed, and he
+said you bein' the nearest jestice of the peace
+you should serve.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the squire with more ease. &ldquo;Well,
+where is it&mdash;the body?&rdquo;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They taken it to Bristow's place and put
+it in his stable for the present. They brought
+it out over on that side and his place was the
+nearest. If you'll hop in here with me, squire,
+I'll ride you right over there now. There's
+enough men already gathered to make up a
+jury, I reckin.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&mdash;I ain't well,&rdquo; demurred the squire.
+&ldquo;I've been sleepin' porely these last few nights.
+It's the heat,&rdquo; he added quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, suh, you don't look very brash, and
+that's a fact,&rdquo; said the constable; &ldquo;but this
+here job ain't goin' to keep you long. You see
+it's in such shape&mdash;the body is&mdash;that there
+ain't no way of makin' out who the feller
+was nor whut killed him. There ain't nobody
+reported missin' in this county as we know of,
+either; so I jedge a verdict of a unknown
+person dead from unknown causes would be
+about the correct thing. And we kin git it all
+over mighty quick and put him underground
+right away, suh&mdash;if you'll go along now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll go,&rdquo; agreed the squire, almost quivering
+in his newborn eagerness. &ldquo;I'll go right now.&rdquo;
+He did not wait to get his coat or to notify
+his wife of the errand that was taking him.
+In his shirtsleeves he climbed into the buggy,
+and the constable turned his horse and clucked
+him into a trot. And now the squire asked the
+question that knocked at his lips demanding to
+be asked&mdash;the question the answer to which
+he yearned for and yet dreaded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did they come to find&mdash;it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, suh, that's a funny thing,&rdquo; said
+the constable. &ldquo;Early this mornin' Bristow's
+oldest boy&mdash;that one they call Buddy&mdash;he
+heared a cowbell over in the swamp and so he
+went to look; Bristow's got cows, as you know,
+and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept
+on followin' after the sound of it till he got way
+down into the thickest part of them cypress
+slashes that's near the middle there; and
+right there he run acrost it&mdash;this body.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all.
+No, suh; it was a buzzard with a cowbell on
+his neck&mdash;that's whut it was. Yes, suh;
+that there same old Belled Buzzard he's come
+back agin and is hangin' round. They tell
+me he ain't been seen round here since the year
+of the yellow fever&mdash;I don't remember myself,
+but that's whut they tell me. The niggers
+over on the other side are right smartly worked
+up over it. They say&mdash;the niggers do&mdash;that
+when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign
+of bad luck for somebody, shore!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous
+as a guinea hen. The squire didn't heed
+him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened
+only to those busy inner voices filling his mind
+with thundering portents. Even so, his ear
+was first to catch above the rattle of the
+buggy wheels the far-away, faint tonk-tonk!
+They were about half-way to Bristow's place
+then. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+half a minute before his companion heard
+it too.</p>
+
+<p>The constable jerked the horse to a standstill
+and craned his neck over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, by doctors!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;if there ain't
+the old scoundrel now, right here behind us!
+I kin see him plain as day&mdash;he's got an old
+cowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a
+couple of feathers out of one wing. By doctors,
+that's somethin' you won't see every day! In
+all my born days I ain't never seen the beat of
+that!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered
+back farther under the buggy top. In the
+pleasing excitement of the moment his companion
+took no heed, though, of anything
+except the Belled Buzzard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is he followin' us?&rdquo; asked the squire in a
+curiously flat, weighted voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which&mdash;him?&rdquo; answered the constable,
+still stretching his neck. &ldquo;No, he's gone now&mdash;gone
+off to the left&mdash;jest a-zoomin', like
+he'd done forgot somethin'.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And Bristow's place was to the left! But
+there might still be time. To get the inquest
+over and the body underground&mdash;those were
+the main things. Ordinarily humane in his
+treatment of stock, Squire Gathers urged the
+constable to greater speed. The horse was
+lathered and his sides heaved wearily as they
+pounded across the bridge over the creek which
+was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+a patch of woods in sight of Bristow's farm
+buildings.</p>
+
+<p>The house was set on a little hill among
+cleared fields and was in other respects much
+like the squire's own house except that it was
+smaller and not so well painted. There was
+a wide yard in front with shade trees and a lye
+hopper and a well-box, and a paling fence with
+a stile in it instead of a gate. At the rear,
+behind a clutter of outbuildings&mdash;a barn, a
+smokehouse and a corncrib&mdash;was a little
+peach orchard, and flanking the house on the
+right there was a good-sized cowyard, empty
+of stock at this hour, with feedracks ranged in
+a row against the fence. A two-year-old negro
+child, bareheaded and barefooted and wearing
+but a single garment, was grubbing busily in
+the dirt under one of these feedracks.</p>
+
+<p>To the front fence a dozen or more riding
+horses were hitched, flicking their tails at the
+flies; and on the gallery men in their shirtsleeves
+were grouped. An old negro woman,
+with her head tied in a bandanna and a man's
+old slouch hat perched upon the bandanna,
+peeped out from behind a corner. There were
+gaunt hound dogs wandering about, sniffing
+uneasily.</p>
+
+<p>Before the constable had the horse hitched
+the squire was out of the buggy and on his
+way up the footpath, going at a brisker step
+than the squire usually traveled. The men
+on the porch hailed him gravely and ceremoniously,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>
+as befitting an occasion of solemnity.
+Afterward some of them recalled the look in
+his eye; but at the moment they noted it&mdash;if
+they noted it at all&mdash;subconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>For all his haste the squire, as was also
+remembered later, was almost the last to enter
+the door; and before he did enter he halted and
+searched the flawless sky as though for signs
+of rain. Then he hurried on after the others,
+who clumped single file along a narrow little
+hall, the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly
+under their heavy farm shoes, and entered a
+good-sized room that had in it, among other
+things, a high-piled feather bed and a cottage
+organ&mdash;Bristow's best room, now to be placed
+at the disposal of the law's representatives
+for the inquest. The squire took the largest
+chair and drew it to the very center of the
+room, in front of a fireplace, where the grate
+was banked with withering asparagus ferns.
+The constable took his place formally at one
+side of the presiding official. The others sat
+or stood about where they could find room&mdash;all
+but six of them, whom the squire picked for
+his coroner's jury, and who backed themselves
+against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>The squire showed haste. He drove the
+preliminaries forward with a sort of tremulous
+insistence. Bristow's wife brought a bucket
+of fresh drinking water and a gourd, and
+almost before she was out of the room and the
+door closed behind her the squire had sworn his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+jurors and was calling the first witness, who it
+seemed likely would also be the only witness&mdash;Bristow's
+oldest boy. The boy wriggled
+in confusion as he sat on a cane-bottomed
+chair facing the old magistrate. All there,
+barring one or two, had heard his story a dozen
+times already, but now it was to be repeated
+under oath; and so they bent their heads,
+listening as though it were a brand-new tale.
+All eyes were on him; none were fastened on
+the squire as he, too, gravely bent his head,
+listening&mdash;listening.</p>
+
+<p>The witness began&mdash;but had no more than
+started when the squire gave a great, screeching
+howl and sprang from his chair and staggered
+backward, his eyes popped and the
+pouch under his chin quivering as though it
+had a separate life all its own. Startled, the
+constable made toward him and they struck
+together heavily and went down&mdash;both on
+their all fours&mdash;right in front of the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>The constable scrambled free and got upon
+his feet, in a squat of astonishment, with his
+head craned; but the squire stayed upon the
+floor, face downward, his feet flopping among
+the rustling asparagus greens&mdash;a picture of
+slavering animal fear. And now his gagging
+screech resolved itself into articulate speech.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I done it!&rdquo; they made out his shrieked
+words. &ldquo;I done it! I own up&mdash;I killed him!
+He aimed fur to break up my home and I
+tolled him off into Niggerwool and killed him!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+There's a hole in his back if you'll look fur it.
+I done it&mdash;oh, I done it&mdash;and I'll tell everything
+jest like it happened if you'll jest keep
+that thing away from me! Oh, my Lawdy!
+Don't you hear it? It's a-comin' clos'ter and
+clos'ter&mdash;it's a-comin' after me! Keep it
+away&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; His voice gave out and he buried
+his head in his hands and rolled upon the
+gaudy carpet.</p>
+
+<p>And now they all heard what he had heard
+first&mdash;they heard the tonk-tonk-tonk of a
+cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them
+along the hallway without. It was as though
+the sound floated along. There was no creak
+of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards&mdash;and
+the bell jangled faster than it would
+dangling from a cow's neck. The sound
+came right to the door and Squire Gathers
+wallowed among the chair legs.</p>
+
+<p>The door swung open. In the doorway
+stood a negro child, barefooted and naked
+except for a single garment, eyeing them with
+serious, rolling eyes&mdash;and, with all the strength
+of his two puny arms, proudly but solemnly
+tolling a small rusty cowbell he had found in
+the cowyard.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>III</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">AN OCCURRENCE UP A<br />
+SIDE STREET</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">&ldquo;S</span>ee if he's still there, will you?&rdquo; said
+the man listlessly, as if knowing in
+advance what the answer would be.</p>
+
+<p>The woman, who, like the man, was
+in her stocking feet, crossed the room, closing
+the door with all softness behind her. She
+felt her way silently through the darkness of a
+small hallway, putting first her ear and then
+her eye to a tiny cranny in some thick curtains
+at a front window.</p>
+
+<p>She looked downward and outward upon one
+of those New York side streets that is precisely
+like forty other New York side streets: two
+unbroken lines of high-shouldered, narrow-chested
+brick-and-stone houses, rising in abrupt,
+straight cliffs; at the bottom of the canyon a
+narrow river of roadway with manholes and
+conduit covers dotting its channel intermittently
+like scattered stepping stones; and on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+either side wide, flat pavements, as though the
+stream had fallen to low-water mark and
+left bare its shallow banks. Daylight would
+have shown most of the houses boarded up,
+with diamond-shaped vents, like leering eyes,
+cut in the painted planking of the windows and
+doors; but now it was night time&mdash;eleven
+o'clock of a wet, hot, humid night of the late
+summer&mdash;and the street was buttoned down
+its length in the double-breasted fashion of a
+bandmaster's coat with twin rows of gas lamps
+evenly spaced. Under each small circle of
+lighted space the dripping, black asphalt had
+a slimy, slick look like the sides of a newly
+caught catfish. Elsewhere the whole vista
+lay all in close shadow, black as a cave mouth
+under every stoop front and blacker still in
+the hooded basement areas. Only, half a mile
+to the eastward a dim, distant flicker showed
+where Broadway ran, a broad, yellow streak
+down the spine of the city, and high above
+the broken skyline of eaves and cornices there
+rolled in cloudy waves the sullen red radiance,
+born of a million electrics and the flares from
+gas tanks and chimneys, which is only to be
+seen on such nights as this, giving to the heaven
+above New York that same color tone you find
+in an artist's conception of Babylon falling or
+Rome burning.</p>
+
+<p>From where the woman stood at the window
+she could make out the round, white, mushroom
+top of a policeman's summer helmet as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+its wearer leaned back, half sheltered under
+the narrow portico of the stoop just below her;
+and she could see his uniform sleeve and his
+hand, covered with a white cotton glove, come
+up, carrying a handkerchief, and mop the
+hidden face under the helmet's brim. The
+squeak of his heavy shoes was plainly audible
+to her also. While she stayed there, watching
+and listening, two pedestrians&mdash;and only
+two&mdash;passed on her side of the street: a
+messenger boy in a glistening rubber poncho
+going west and a man under an umbrella going
+east. Each was hurrying along until he came
+just opposite her, and then, as though controlled
+by the same set of strings, each stopped
+short and looked up curiously at the blind, dark
+house and at the figure lounging in the doorway,
+then hurried on without a word, leaving the
+silent policeman fretfully mopping his moist
+face and tugging at the wilted collar about
+his neck.</p>
+
+<p>After a minute or two at her peephole behind
+the window curtains above, the woman passed
+back through the door to the inner, middle
+room where the man sat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Still there,&rdquo; she said lifelessly in the half
+whisper that she had come to use almost
+altogether these last few days; &ldquo;still there
+and sure to stay there until another one just
+like him comes to take his place. What else
+did you expect?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man only nodded absently and went on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>
+peeling an overripe peach, striking out constantly,
+with the hand that held the knife, at
+the flies. They were green flies&mdash;huge, shiny-backed,
+buzzing, persistent vermin. There
+were a thousand of them; there seemed to be
+a million of them. They filled the shut-in
+room with their vile humming; they swarmed
+everywhere in the half light. They were
+thickest, though, in a corner at the back, where
+there was a closed, white door. Here a great
+knot of them, like an iridescent, shimmering
+jewel, was clustered about the keyhole. They
+scrolled the white enameled panels with intricate,
+shifting patterns, and in pairs and singly
+they promenaded busily on the white porcelain
+knob, giving it the appearance of being alive
+and having a motion of its own.</p>
+
+<p>It was stiflingly hot and sticky in the room.
+The sweat rolled down the man's face as he
+peeled his peach and pared some half-rotted
+spots out of it. He protected it with a cupped
+palm as he bit into it. One huge green fly
+flipped nimbly under the fending hand and lit
+on the peach. With a savage little snarl of
+disgust and loathing the man shook the clinging
+insect off and with the knife carved away
+the place where its feet had touched the soft
+fruit. Then he went on munching, meanwhile
+furtively watching the woman. She was on
+the opposite side of a small center-table from
+him, with her face in her hands, shaking her
+head with a little shuddering motion whenever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>
+one of the flies settled on her close-cropped hair
+or brushed her bare neck.</p>
+
+<p>He was a smallish man, with a suggestion of
+something dapper about him even in his present
+unkempt disorder; he might have been handsome,
+in a weakly effeminate way, had not
+Nature or some mishap given his face a twist
+that skewed it all to one side, drawing all of
+his features out of focus, like a reflection viewed
+in a flawed mirror. He was no heavier than
+the woman and hardly as tall. She, however,
+looked less than her real height, seeing that
+she was dressed, like a half-grown boy, in a
+soft-collared shirt open at the throat and a
+pair of loose trousers. She had large but
+rather regular features, pouting lips, a clear
+brown skin and full, prominent brown eyes;
+and one of them had a pronounced cast in
+it&mdash;an imperfection already made familiar
+by picture and printed description to sundry
+millions of newspaper readers. For this was
+Ella Gilmorris, the woman in the case of the
+Gilmorris murder, about which the continent
+of North America was now reading and talking.
+And the little man with the twisted face, who
+sat across from her, gnawing a peach stone
+clean, was the notorious &ldquo;Doctor&rdquo; Harris
+Devine, alias Vanderburg, her accomplice, and
+worth more now to society in his present untidy
+state than ever before at any one moment of
+his whole discreditable life, since for his capture
+the people of the state of New York stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+willing to pay the sum of one thousand dollars,
+which tidy reward one of the afternoon papers
+had increased by another thousand.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere detectives&mdash;amateurs and the
+kind who work for hire&mdash;were seeking the
+pair who at this precise moment faced each
+other across a little center-table in the last
+place any searcher would have suspected or
+expected them to be&mdash;on the second floor of
+the house in which the late Cassius Gilmorris
+had been killed. This, then, was the situation:
+inside, these two fugitives, watchful, silent,
+their eyes red-rimmed for lack of sleep, their
+nerves raw and tingling as though rasped with
+files, each busy with certain private plans, each
+fighting off constantly the touch of the nasty
+scavenger flies that flickered and flitted iridescently
+about them; outside, in the steamy,
+hot drizzle, with his back to the locked and
+double-locked door, a leg-weary policeman,
+believing that he guarded a house all empty
+except for such evidences as yet remained of
+the Gilmorris murder.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>It was one of those small, chancy things that
+so often disarrange the best laid plots of murderers
+that had dished their hope of a clean
+getaway and brought them back, at the last,
+to the starting point. If the plumber's helper,
+who was sent to cure a bathtub of leaking in
+the house next door, had not made a mistake
+and come to the wrong number; and if they,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+in the haste of flight, had not left an area door
+unfastened; and if this young plumbing apprentice,
+stumbling his way upstairs on the hunt
+for the misbehaving drain, had not opened the
+white enameled door and found inside there
+what he did find&mdash;if this small sequence of
+incidents had not occurred as it did and when
+it did, or if only it had been delayed another
+twenty-four hours, or even twelve, everything
+might have turned out differently. But fate,
+to call it by its fancy name&mdash;coincidence, to
+use its garden one&mdash;interfered, as it usually
+does in cases such as this. And so here they
+were.</p>
+
+<p>The man had been on his way to the steamship
+office to get the tickets when an eruption
+of newsboys boiled out of Mail Street into
+Broadway, with extras on their arms, all shouting
+out certain words that sent him scurrying
+back in a panic to the small, obscure family
+hotel in the lower thirties where the woman
+waited. From that moment it was she, really,
+who took the initiative in all the efforts to
+break through the doubled and tripled lines
+that the police machinery looped about the
+five boroughs of the city.</p>
+
+<p>At dark that evening &ldquo;Mr. and Mrs. A.
+Thompson, of Jersey City,&rdquo; a quiet couple
+who went closely muffled up, considering that
+it was August, and carrying heavy valises,
+took quarters at a dingy furnished room house
+on a miscalled avenue of Brooklyn not far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+from the Wall Street ferries and overlooking
+the East River waterfront from its bleary back
+windows. Two hours later a very different-looking
+pair issued quietly from a side entrance of
+this place and vanished swiftly down toward the
+docks. The thing was well devised and carried
+out well too; yet by morning the detectives,
+already ranging and quartering the town as
+bird-dogs quarter a brier-field, had caught
+up again and pieced together the broken ends
+of the trail; and, thanks to them and the
+newspapers, a good many thousand wide awake
+persons were on the lookout for a plump, brown-skinned
+young woman with a cast in her right
+eye, wearing a boy's disguise and accompanied
+by a slender little man carrying his head slightly
+to one side, who when last seen wore smoked
+glasses and had his face extensively bandaged,
+as though suffering from a toothache.</p>
+
+<p>Then had followed days and nights of blind
+twisting and dodging and hiding, with the hunt
+growing warmer behind them all the time.
+Through this they were guided and at times
+aided by things printed in the very papers
+that worked the hardest to run them down.
+Once they ventured as far as the outer entrance
+of the great, new uptown terminal, and turned
+away, too far gone and sick with fear to dare
+run the gauntlet of the waiting room and the
+train-shed. Once&mdash;because they saw a made-up
+Central Office man in every lounging long-shoreman,
+and were not so far wrong either&mdash;they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+halted at the street end of one of the
+smaller piers and from there watched a grimy
+little foreign boat that carried no wireless
+masts and that might have taken them to any
+one of half a dozen obscure banana ports of
+South America&mdash;watched her while she hiccoughed
+out into midstream and straightened
+down the river for the open bay&mdash;watched
+her out of sight and then fled again to their
+newest hiding place in the lower East Side
+in a cold sweat, with the feeling that every
+casual eye glance from every chance passer-by
+carried suspicion and recognition in its flash,
+that every briskening footstep on the pavement
+behind them meant pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>Once in that tormented journey there was a
+sudden jingle of metal, like rattling handcuffs,
+in the man's ear and a heavy hand fell detainingly
+on his shoulder&mdash;and he squeaked like
+a caught shore-bird and shrunk away from
+under the rough grips of a truckman who had
+yanked him clear of a lurching truck horse
+tangled in its own traces. Then, finally, had
+come a growing distrust for their latest landlord,
+a stolid Russian Jew who read no papers
+and knew no English, and saw in his pale pair
+of guests only an American lady and gentleman
+who kept much to their room and paid
+well in advance for everything; and after
+that, in the hot rainy night, the flight afoot
+across weary miles of soaking cross streets
+and up through ill-lighted, shabby avenues<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+to the one place of refuge left open to them.
+They had learned from the newspapers, at
+once a guide and a bane, a friend and a dogging
+enemy, that the place was locked up, now that
+the police had got through searching it, and
+that the coroner's people held the keys. And
+the woman knew of a faulty catch on a rear
+cellar window, and so, in a fit of stark desperation
+bordering on lunacy, back they ran, like
+a pair of spent foxes circling to a burrow from
+which they have been smoked out.</p>
+
+<p>Again it was the woman who picked for her
+companion the easiest path through the inky-black
+alley, and with her own hands she pulled
+down noiselessly the broken slats of the rotting
+wooden wall at the back of the house. And
+then, soon, they were inside, with the reeking
+heat of the boxed-up house and the knowledge
+that at any moment discovery might come
+bursting in upon them&mdash;inside with their
+busy thoughts and the busy green flies. How
+persistent the things were&mdash;shake them off a
+hundred times and back they came buzzing!
+And where had they all come from? There
+had been none of them about before, surely,
+and now their maddening, everlasting droning
+filled the ear. And what nasty creatures they
+were, forever cleaning their shiny wings and
+rubbing the ends of their forelegs together
+with the loathsome suggestion of little grave-diggers
+anointing their palms. To the woman,
+at least, these flies almost made bearable the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+realization that, at best, this stopping point
+could be only a temporary one, and that within
+a few hours a fresh start must somehow be
+made, with fresh dangers to face at every
+turning.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>It was during this last hideous day of flight
+and terror that the thing which had been growing
+in the back part of the brain of each of
+them began to assume shape and a definite
+aspect. The man had the craftier mind, but
+the woman had a woman's intuition, and she
+already had read his thoughts while yet he
+had no clue to hers. For the primal instinct
+of self-preservation, blazing up high, had
+burned away the bond of bogus love that held
+them together while they were putting her
+drunkard of a husband out of the way, and
+now there only remained to tie them fast this
+partnership of a common guilt.</p>
+
+<p>In these last few hours they had both come
+to know that together there was no chance of
+ultimate escape; traveling together the very
+disparity of their compared appearances marked
+them with a fatal and unmistakable conspicuousness,
+as though they were daubed with
+red paint from the same paint brush; staying
+together meant ruin&mdash;certain, sure. Now,
+then, separated and going singly, there might
+be a thin strand of hope. Yet the man felt
+that, parted a single hour from the woman,
+and she still alive, his wofully small prospect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+would diminish and shrink to the vanishing
+point&mdash;New York juries being most notoriously
+easy upon women murderers who give themselves
+up and turn state's evidence; and, by
+the same mistaken processes of judgment,
+notoriously hard upon their male accomplices&mdash;half
+a dozen such instances had been playing
+in flashes across his memory already.</p>
+
+<p>Neither had so much as hinted at separating.
+The man didn't speak, because of a
+certain idea that had worked itself all out
+hours before within his side-flattened skull.
+The woman likewise had refrained from putting
+in words the suggestion that had been uppermost
+in her brain from the time they broke
+into the locked house. Some darting look of
+quick, malignant suspicion from him, some
+inner warning sense, held her mute at first;
+and later, as the newborn hate and dread of
+him grew and mastered her and she began to
+canvass ways and means to a certain end, she
+stayed mute still.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever was to be done must be done
+quietly, without a struggle&mdash;the least sound
+might arouse the policeman at the door below.
+One thing was in her favor&mdash;she knew he was
+not armed; he had the contempt and the
+fear of a tried and proved poisoner for cruder
+lethal tools.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic also of the difference
+between these two that Devine should have
+had his plan stage-set and put to motion long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+before the woman dreamed of acting. It was
+all within his orderly scheme of the thing
+proposed that he, a shrinking coward, should
+have set his squirrel teeth hard and risked
+detection twice in that night: once to buy a
+basket of overripe fruit from a dripping Italian
+at a sidewalk stand, taking care to get some
+peaches&mdash;he just must have a peach, he had
+explained to her; and once again when he
+entered a dark little store on Second Avenue,
+where liquors were sold in their original packages,
+and bought from a sleepy, stupid clerk
+two bottles of a cheap domestic champagne&mdash;&ldquo;to
+give us the strength for making a fresh
+start,&rdquo; he told her glibly, as an excuse for taking
+this second risk. So, then, with the third
+essential already resting at the bottom of an
+inner waistcoat pocket, he was prepared; and
+he had been waiting for his opportunity from
+the moment when they crept in through the
+basement window and felt their way along, she
+resolutely leading, to the windowless, shrouded
+middle room here on the second floor.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>How she hated him, feared him too! He
+could munch his peaches and uncork his warm,
+cheap wine in this very room, with that bathroom
+just yonder and these flies all about.
+From under her fingers, interlaced over her
+forehead, her eyes roved past him, searching
+the littered room for the twentieth time in the
+hour, looking, seeking&mdash;and suddenly they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+fell on something&mdash;a crushed and rumpled
+hat of her own, a milliner's masterpiece, laden
+with florid plumage, lying almost behind him
+on a couch end where some prying detective
+had dropped it, with a big, round black button
+shining dully from the midst of its damaged
+tulle crown. She knew that button well. It
+was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin&mdash;a
+steel hatpin&mdash;that was ten inches long and
+maybe longer.</p>
+
+<p>She looked and looked at the round, dull
+knob, like a mystic held by a hypnotist's
+crystal ball, and she began to breathe a little
+faster; she could feel her resolution tighten
+within her like a turning screw.</p>
+
+<p>Beneath her brows, heavy and thick for a
+woman's, her eyes flitted back to the man.
+With the careful affectation of doing nothing at
+all, a theatricalism that she detected instantly,
+but for which she could guess no reason, he
+was cutting away at the damp, close-gnawed
+seed of the peach, trying apparently to fashion
+some little trinket&mdash;a toy basket, possibly&mdash;from
+it. His fingers moved deftly over its
+slick, wet surface. He had already poured
+out some of the champagne. One of the pint
+bottles stood empty, with the distorted button-headed
+cork lying beside it, and in two glasses
+the yellow wine was fast going flat and dead in
+that stifling heat. It still spat up a few little
+bubbles to the surface, as though minute
+creatures were drowning in it down below.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+The man was sweating more than ever, so that,
+under the single, low-turned gas jet, his crooked
+face had a greasy shine to it. A church clock
+down in the next block struck twelve slowly.
+The sleepless flies buzzed evilly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look out again, won't you?&rdquo; he said for
+perhaps the tenth time in two hours. &ldquo;There's
+a chance, you know, that he might be gone&mdash;just
+a bare chance. And be sure you close
+the door into the hall behind you,&rdquo; he added
+as if by an afterthought. &ldquo;You left it ajar
+once&mdash;this light might show through the
+window draperies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At his bidding she rose more willingly than
+at any time before. To reach the door she
+passed within a foot of the end of the couch,
+and watching over her shoulder at his hunched-up
+back she paused there for the smallest fraction
+of time. The damaged picture hat slid
+off on the floor with a soft little thud, but he
+never turned around.</p>
+
+<p>The instant, though, that the hall door closed
+behind her the man's hands became briskly
+active. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his
+unbuttoned waistcoat; then his right hand,
+holding a small cylindrical vial of a colorless
+liquid, passed swiftly over one of the two
+glasses of slaking champagne and hovered
+there a second. A few tiny globules fell
+dimpling into the top of the yellow wine, then
+vanished; a heavy reek, like the smell of
+crushed peach kernels, spread through the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+whole room. In the same motion almost he
+recorked the little bottle, stowed it out of sight,
+and with a quick, wrenching thrust that bent
+the small blade of his penknife in its socket he
+split the peach seed in two lengthwise and
+with his thumb-nail bruised the small brown
+kernel lying snugly within. He dropped the
+knife and the halved seed and began sipping
+at the undoctored glass of champagne, not
+forgetting even then to wave his fingers above
+it to keep the winged green tormentors out.</p>
+
+<p>The door at the front reopened and the
+woman came in. Her thoughts were not upon
+smells, but instinctively she sniffed at the
+thick scent on the poisoned air.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I accidentally split this peach seed open,&rdquo;
+he said quickly, with an elaborate explanatory
+air. &ldquo;Stenches up the whole place, don't it?
+Come, take that other glass of champagne&mdash;it
+will do you good to&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was some subtle sixth sense that
+warned him; perhaps the lightning-quick realization
+that she had moved right alongside him,
+poised and set to strike. At any rate he
+started to fling up his head&mdash;too late! The
+needle point of the jet-headed hatpin entered
+exactly at the outer corner of his right eye and
+passed backward for nearly its full length into
+his brain&mdash;smoothly, painlessly, swiftly. He
+gave a little surprised gasp, almost like a sob,
+and lolled his head back against the chair rest,
+like a man who has grown suddenly tired. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>
+hand that held the champagne glass relaxed
+naturally and the glass turned over on its side
+with a small tinkling sound and spilled its
+thin contents on the table.</p>
+
+<p>It had been easier than she had thought it
+would be. She stepped back, still holding the
+hatpin. She moved around from behind him,
+and then she saw his face, half upturned, almost
+directly beneath the low light. There was no
+blood, no sign even of the wound, but his jaw
+had dropped down unpleasantly, showing the
+ends of his lower front teeth, and his eyes
+stared up unwinkingly with a puzzled, almost
+a disappointed, look in them. A green fly lit
+at the outer corner of his right eye; more green
+flies were coming. And he didn't put up his
+hand to brush it away. He let it stay&mdash;he
+let it stay there.</p>
+
+<p>With her eyes still fixed on his face, the
+woman reached out, feeling for her glass of
+the champagne. She felt that she needed it
+now, and at a gulp she took a good half of it
+down her throat.</p>
+
+<p>She put the glass down steadily enough on
+the table; but into her eyes came the same
+puzzled, baffled look that his wore, and almost
+gently she slipped down into the chair facing
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Then her jaw lolled a little too, and some of
+the other flies came buzzing toward her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB<br />
+REPORTER STORIES</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">T</span>he first time I saw Major Putnam
+Stone I didn't see him first. To be
+exact, I heard him first, and then I
+walked round the end of a seven-foot
+partition and saw him.</p>
+
+<p>I had just gone to work for the Evening Press.
+As I recall now it was my second day, and I
+hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and
+probably was more sensitive to outside sights
+and noises than I would ever again be in that
+place. Generally speaking, when a reporter
+settles down to his knitting, which in his case
+is his writing, he becomes impervious to all
+disturbances excepting those that occur inside
+his own brainpan. If he couldn't, he wouldn't
+amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a
+good, live-action story to write for an edition
+going to press in about nine minutes, and the
+rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting
+machines, and the blattings of a pestered city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+editor, and the gabble of a couple of copy boys
+at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry
+him. He may not think he hears it, but he
+does, only instead of being distracting it is
+stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism
+of the shop, helping him along unconsciously to
+speed and efficiency. I've often thought that,
+when I was handling a good, bloody murder
+story, say, it would tone up my style to have
+a phonograph about ten feet away grinding out
+The Last Ravings of John McCullough. Anyway,
+I am sure it wouldn't do any harm. A
+brass band playing a John Philip Sousa march
+makes fine accompaniment to write copy to.
+I've done it before now, covering parades and
+conventions, and I know.</p>
+
+<p>But on this particular occasion I was, as I
+say, new to the job and maybe a little nervous
+to boot, and as I sat there, trying to frame a
+snappy opening paragraph for the interview I
+had just brought back with me from one of
+the hotels, I became aware of a voice somewhere
+in the immediate vicinity, a voice that didn't
+jibe in with my thoughts. At the moment I
+stopped to listen it was saying: &ldquo;As for me,
+sir, I have always contended that the ultimate
+fate of the cause was due in great measure to
+the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh
+on the evening of the first day's fight. Now
+then, what would have been the final result
+if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived? I ask
+you, gentlemen, what would have been the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+final result if Albert Sidney Johnston had
+lived?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Across the room from me I heard Devore
+give a hollow groan. His desk was backed
+right up against the cross partition, and the
+partition was built of thin pine boards and was
+like a sounding board in his ear. Devore was
+city editor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, thunder!&rdquo; he said, half under his
+breath, &ldquo;I'll be the goat! What would have
+been the result if Albert Sidney Johnston had
+lived?&rdquo; He looked at me and gave a wink of
+serio-comic despair, and then he ran his blue
+pencil up through his hair and left a blue
+streak like a scar on his scalp. Devore was one
+of the few city editors I have ever seen who
+used that tool which all of them are popularly
+supposed to handle so murderously&mdash;a blue
+pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was
+flustered or annoyed&mdash;and that was most of
+the time&mdash;of scratching his head with the
+point end of it, his forehead under the hair
+roots was usually streaked with purplish-blue
+tracings, like a fly-catcher's egg.</p>
+
+<p>The voice, which had a deep and space-filling
+quality to it, continued to come through and
+over the partition that divided off our cubby-hole
+of a workroom&mdash;called a city room by
+courtesy&mdash;from the space where certain other
+members of the staff had their desks. I got
+up from my place and stepped over to where
+the thin wall ended in a doorway, being minded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+to have a look at the speaker. The voice
+sounded as though it must belong to a big man
+with a barrel-organ chest. I was surprised to
+find that it didn't.</p>
+
+<p>Its owner was sitting in a chair in the middle
+of a little space cluttered up with discarded
+exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather
+a small man, short but compact. He had his
+hat off and his hair, which was thin but fine
+as silk floss, was combed back over his ears
+and sprayed out behind in a sort of mane
+effect. It had been red hair once, but was now
+so thickly streaked with white that it had
+become a faded brindle color. I took notice
+of this first because his back was toward me;
+in a second or two he turned his head sideways
+and I saw that he had exactly the face to
+match the hair. It was a round, plump, elderly
+face, with a short nose, delicately pink at the
+tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and just under
+the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was
+a small gray-red goatee, sticking straight out
+from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a sandy
+sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung
+himself further round, I took note of a shirt of
+plaited white linen billowing out over his chest
+and ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply
+collar that rolled majestically and Byronically
+clear up under his ears. Under the collar was
+loosely knotted a black-silk tie such as sailors
+wear. His vest was unbuttoned, all except the
+two lowermost buttons, and the sleeves of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+coat were turned back neatly off his wrists.
+This, though, could not have been on account
+of the heat, because the weather wasn't very
+hot yet. I learned later that, winter or
+summer, he always kept his coat sleeves turned
+back and the upper buttons of his vest unfastened.
+His hands were small and plump,
+and his feet were small too and daintily shod
+in low, square-toed shoes. About the whole
+man there was an air somehow of full-bloomed
+foppishness gone to tassel&mdash;as though having
+been a dandy once, he was now merely neat
+and precise in his way of dress.</p>
+
+<p>He was talking along with the death of Albert
+Sidney Johnston for his subject, not seeming
+to notice that his audience wasn't deeply
+interested. He had, it seemed, a way of stating
+a proposition as a fact, as an indisputable,
+everlasting, eternal fact, an immutable thing.
+It became immutable through his way of
+stating it. Then he would frame it in the form
+of a question and ask it. Then he would
+answer it himself and go right ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled
+up at his desk, wearing a look of patient endurance
+on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor,
+was trying to do his work&mdash;trying, I say,
+because the orator was booming away like a
+bittern within three feet of him and Harty
+plainly was pestered and fretful. Really the
+only person in sight who seemed entertained
+was Sidley, the exchange editor, a young man<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+with hair that had turned white before its time
+and in his eye the devil-driven look of a man
+who drinks hard, not because he wants to drink
+but because he can't help drinking. Sidley,
+as I was to find out later, had less cause to
+care for the old man than anybody about the
+shop, for he used to disarrange Sidley's neatly
+piled exchanges, pawing through them for his
+favorite papers. But Sidley could forget his
+own grievances in watchful enjoyment of the
+dumb sufferings of Harty, whom he hated, as
+I came to know, with the blind hate a dipsomaniac
+often has for any mild and perfectly
+harmless individual.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood there taking in the picture, the
+speaker, sensing a stranger's presence, faced
+clear about and saw me. He nodded with a
+grave courtesy, and then paused a moment as
+though expecting that one of the others would
+introduce us. None of the others did introduce
+us though, so he went ahead talking about
+Albert Sidney Johnston's death, and I turned
+away. I stopped by Devore's desk.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who is he?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That,&rdquo; he said, with a kind of leashed and
+restrained ferocity in his voice, &ldquo;is Major
+Putnam P. Stone&mdash;and the P stands for Pest,
+which is his middle name&mdash;late of the Southern
+Confederacy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Picturesque-looking old fellow, isn't he?&rdquo;
+I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Picturesque old nuisance,&rdquo; he said, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+jabbed at his scalp with his pencil as though
+he meant to puncture his skull. &ldquo;Wait until
+you've been here a few weeks and you'll have
+another name for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, anyway, he's got a good carrying
+voice,&rdquo; I said, rather at a loss to understand
+Devore's bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great,&rdquo; he mocked venomously; &ldquo;you can
+hear it a mile. I hear it in my sleep. So will
+you when you get to know him, the old bore!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In due time I did get to know Major Stone
+well. He was dignified, tiresome, conversational,
+gentle mannered and, I think, rather
+lonely. By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap
+there, I learned something about his private
+life. He came from the extreme eastern end
+of the state. He belonged to an old family.
+His grandfather&mdash;or maybe it was his great-grand-uncle&mdash;had
+been one of the first United
+States senators that went to Washington after
+our state was admitted into the Union. He
+had never married. He had no business or
+profession. From some property or other he
+drew an income, small, but enough to keep him
+in a sort of simple and genteel poverty. He
+belonged to the best club in town and the most
+exclusive, the Shawnee Club, and he had served
+four years in the Confederate army. That
+last was the one big thing in his life. To the
+major's conceptions everything that happened
+before 1861 had been of a preparatory nature,
+leading up to and paving the way for the main<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+event; and what had happened since 1865
+was of no consequence, except in so far as it
+reflected the effects of the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>Daily, as methodically as a milkwagon horse,
+he covered the same route. First he sat in
+the reading room of the old Gaunt House,
+where by an open fire in winter or by an open
+window in summer he discussed the blunders
+of Braxton Bragg and similar congenial topics
+with a little group of aging, fading, testy
+veterans. On his way to the Shawnee Club
+he would come by the Evening Press office
+and stay an hour, or two hours, or three hours,
+to go away finally with a couple of favored
+exchanges tucked under his arm, and leave us
+with our ears still dinned and tingling. Once
+in a while of a night, passing the Gaunt House
+on my way to the boarding house where I
+lived&mdash;for four dollars a week&mdash;I would see
+him through the windows, sometimes sitting
+alone, sometimes with one of his cronies.</p>
+
+<p>Round the office he sometimes bothered us
+and sometimes he interfered with our work;
+but mainly all the men on the staff liked him,
+I think, or at least we put up with him. In
+our home town each of us had known somebody
+very much like him&mdash;there used to be at least
+one Major Stone in every community in the
+South, although most of them are dead now,
+I guess&mdash;so we all could understand him.
+When I say all I mean all but Devore. The
+major's mere presence would poison Devore's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+whole day for him. The major's blaring notes
+would cross-cut Devore's nerves as with a dull
+and haggling saw. He&mdash;Devore I mean&mdash;disliked
+the major with a dislike almost too
+deep for words. It had got to be an obsession
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You fellows that were born down here have
+to stand for him,&rdquo; he said once, when the
+major had stumped out on his short legs after
+an unusually long visit. &ldquo;It's part of the
+penalty you pay for belonging in this country.
+But I don't have to venerate him and fuss over
+him and listen to him. I'm a Yankee, thank
+the Lord!&rdquo; Devore came from Michigan and
+had worked on papers in Cleveland and Detroit
+before he drifted South. &ldquo;Oh, we've got his
+counterpart up my way,&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;Up
+there he'd be a pension-grabbing old kicker,
+ready to have a fit any time anybody wearing
+a gray uniform got within ninety miles of him,
+and writing red-hot letters of protest to the
+newspapers every time the state authorities
+sent a captured battle flag back down South.
+Down here he's a pompous, noisy old fraud, too
+proud to work for a living&mdash;or too lazy&mdash;and
+too poor to count for anything in this world.
+The difference is that up in my country we've
+squelched the breed&mdash;we got good and tired
+of these professional Bloody Shirt wavers a
+good while ago; but here you fuss over this
+man, and you'll sit round and pretend to listen
+while he drools away about things that happened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+before any one of you was born. Do
+you fellows know what I've found out about
+your Major Putnam Stone? He's a life member
+of the Shawnee Club&mdash;a life member, mind
+you! And here I've been living in this town
+over a year, and nobody ever so much as
+invited me inside its front door!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>All of which was, perhaps, true, even though
+Devore had an unnecessarily harsh way of
+stating the case; the part about the Shawnee
+Club was true, at any rate, and I used to think
+it possibly had something to do with Devore's
+feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore
+gave open utterance to his feelings to the
+major's face. To the major he was always
+silently polite, with a little edging of ice on
+his politeness; he saved up his spleen to spew
+it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther
+than that he couldn't well afford to go anyhow.
+The Chief, owner of the paper and its editor,
+was the major's friend. As for the major
+himself, he seemed never to notice Devore's
+attitude. For a fact, I believe he actually felt
+a sort of pity for Devore, seeing that Devore
+had been born in the North. Not to have been
+born in the South was, from the major's way of
+looking at the thing, a great and regrettable
+misfortune for which the victim could not be
+held responsible, since the fault lay with his
+parents and not with him. By way of a suitable
+return for this, Devore spent many a spare
+moment thinking up grotesque yet wickedly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+appropriate nicknames for the major. He
+called him Old First and Second Manassas
+and Old Hardee's Tactics and Old Valley of
+Virginia. He called him an old bluffer too.</p>
+
+<p>He was wrong there, though, certainly.
+Though the major talked pretty exclusively
+about the war, I took notice that he rarely
+talked about the part he himself had played
+in it. Indeed, he rarely discussed anybody
+below the rank of brigadier. The errors of
+Hood's campaign concerned him more deeply
+than the personal performances of any individual.
+Campaigns you might say were his
+specialty, campaigns and strategy. About such
+things as these he could talk for hours&mdash;and
+he did.</p>
+
+<p>I've known other men&mdash;plenty of them&mdash;not
+nearly so well educated as the major, who
+could tell you tales of the war that would
+make you see it&mdash;yes, and smell it too&mdash;the
+smoke of the campfires, the unutterable fatigue
+of forced marches when the men, with their
+tongues lolling out of their mouths like dogs,
+staggered along, panting like dogs; the bloody
+prints of unshod feet on flinty, frozen clods;
+the shock and fearful joy of the fighting; the
+shamed numbness of retreats; artillery horses,
+their hides all blood-boltered and their tails
+clubbed and clotted with mire, lying dead with
+stiff legs between overturned guns; dead men
+piled in heaps and living men huddled in
+panics&mdash;all of it. But when the major talked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>
+I saw only some serious-minded officers, in
+whiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking
+shirt collars, poring over maps round a table
+in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on
+the cud of the vanished past it certainly was
+mighty dry chewing.</p>
+
+<p>There came a day, a few weeks after I went
+to work for the Evening Press, when for once
+anyway the major didn't seem to have anything
+to say. It was in the middle of a blistering,
+smothering hot forenoon in early June, muggy
+and still and close, when a fellow breathing
+felt as though he had his nose buried in layers
+of damp cotton waste. The city room was a
+place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing
+room at the back the stenches of melting metals
+and stale machine oils came rolling in to us in
+nasty waves. With his face glistening through
+the trickling sweat, the major came in about
+ten o'clock, fanning himself with his hat, and
+when he spoke his greeting the booming note
+seemed all melted and gone out of his voice.
+He went through the city room into the room
+behind the partition, and passing through a
+minute later I saw him sitting there with one
+of Sidley's exchanges unfolded across his knee,
+but he wasn't reading it. Presently I saw him
+climbing laboriously up the stairs to the second
+floor where the chief had his office. At quitting
+time that afternoon I dropped into the place
+on the corner for a beer, and I was drinking it,
+as close to an electric fan as I could get, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+Devore came in and made for where I was
+standing. I asked him to have something.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll take the same,&rdquo; he said to the man
+behind the bar, and then to me with a kind
+of explosive snap: &ldquo;By George, I'm in a good
+mind to resign this rotten job!&rdquo; That didn't
+startle me. I had been in the business long
+enough to know that the average newspaper
+man is forever threatening to resign. Most
+of them&mdash;to hear them talk&mdash;are always
+just on the point of throwing up their jobs
+and buying a good-paying country weekly
+somewhere and taking things easy for the rest
+of their lives, or else they're going into magazine
+work. Only they hardly ever do it. So
+Devore's threat didn't jar me much. I'd
+heard it too often.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What's the trouble?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;Heat
+getting on your nerves?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, it's not the heat,&rdquo; he said peevishly;
+&ldquo;it's worse than the heat. Do you know
+what's happened? The chief has saddled Old
+Signal Corps on me. Yes, sir, I've got to take
+his old pet, the major, on the city staff. It
+seems he's succeeded in losing what little
+property he had&mdash;the chief told me some rigmarole
+about sudden financial reverses&mdash;and
+now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've
+got to take him on as a reporter&mdash;a cub
+reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, who
+hasn't heard of anything worth while since
+Robert E. Lee surrendered!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>The pathos of the situation&mdash;if you could
+call it that&mdash;hit me with a jolt; but it hadn't
+hit Devore, that was plain. He saw only the
+annoying part of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What's he going to do?&rdquo; I asked&mdash;&ldquo;assignments,
+or cover a route like the district men?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lord knows,&rdquo; said Devore. &ldquo;Because the
+old bore knows a lot of big people in this town
+and is friendly with all the old-timers in the
+state, the chief has a wild delusion that he can
+pick up a lot of stuff that an ordinary reporter
+wouldn't get. Rats!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on, let's take another beer,&rdquo; he said,
+and then he added: &ldquo;Well, I'll just make
+you two predictions. He'll be a total loss as
+a reporter&mdash;that's one prediction; and the
+other is that he'll have a hard time buying his
+provender and his toddies over at the Shawnee
+Club on the salary he'll draw down from the
+Evening Press.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Devore was not such a very great city editor,
+as I know now in the light of fuller experience,
+but I must say that as a prophet he was fairly
+accurate. The major did have a hard time
+living on his salary&mdash;it was twelve a week,
+I learned&mdash;and as a reporter he certainly was
+not what you would call a dazzling success.
+He came on for duty at eight the next morning,
+the same as the rest of us, and sorry as I
+felt for him I had to laugh. He had bought
+himself a leather-backed notebook as big as a
+young ledger, just as a green kid just out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+high school would have done, and he had a
+long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencil
+sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat.
+He tried to come in smartly with a businesslike
+air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blind man,
+because he was as nervous as a debutante. It
+struck me as one of the funniest things&mdash;and
+one of the most pathetic&mdash;I had ever seen.</p>
+
+<p>I'll say this for Devore&mdash;he tried out the
+major on nearly every kind of job; and surely
+it wasn't Devore's fault that the major failed
+on every single one of them. His first attempt
+was as typical a failure as any of them. That
+first morning Devore assigned him to cover a
+wedding at high noon, high noon being the
+phrase we always used for a wedding that took
+place round twelve o'clock in the day. The
+daughter of one of the wealthiest merchants in
+the town, and also one of our largest advertisers,
+was going to be married to the first deputy
+cotillion leader of the German Club, or something
+of that nature. Anyhow the groom was
+what is known as prominent in society, and the
+chief wanted a spread made of it. Devore sent
+the major out to cover the wedding, and when
+he came back told him to write about half a
+column.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote half a column before he mentioned
+the bride's name. He started off with an eight-line
+quotation from Walter Scott's Lady of the
+Lake, and then he went into a long, flowery
+dissertation on the sacred rite or ceremony of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+matrimony, proving conclusively and beyond
+the peradventure of a doubt that it was handed
+down to us from remote antiquity. And he
+forgot altogether to tell the minister's name,
+and he got the groom's middle initial wrong&mdash;he
+was the kind of groom who would make a
+fuss over a wrong middle initial, too&mdash;and
+along toward the end of his story he devoted
+about three closely-written pages to the military
+history of the young woman's father. It
+seems that her parent had served with distinction
+as colonel of a North Carolina regiment.
+And he wound up with a fancy flourish and
+handed it in. I know all these details of his
+story, because it fell to me to rewrite it.</p>
+
+<p>Devore didn't say a word when the old major
+reverently laid that armload of copy down in
+front of him. He just sat and waited in silence
+until the major had gone out to get a bite to
+eat, and then he undertook to edit it. But
+there wasn't any way to edit it, except to throw
+it away. I suppose that kind of literature went
+very well indeed back along about 1850; I
+remember having read such accounts in the
+back files of old weeklies, printed before the
+war. But we were getting out a live, snappy
+paper. Devore tried to pattern the local side
+after the New York and Chicago models. As
+yet we hadn't reached the point where we spoke
+of any white woman without the prefix Mrs.
+or Miss before her name, but we were up-to-date
+in a good many other particulars. Why,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+it was even against the office rule to run
+&ldquo;beauty and chivalry&rdquo; into a story when
+describing a mixed assemblage of men and
+women; and when a Southern newspaper bars
+out that ancient and honorable standby among
+phrases it is a sign that the old order has
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>For ten minutes or so Devore, cursing softly
+to himself, cut and chopped and gutted his way
+through the major's introduction, and between
+slashing strokes made a war map of the Balkans
+in his scalp with his blue pencil. Then
+he lost patience altogether.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; he said to me, &ldquo;you're not doing
+anything, are you? Well, take this awful
+bunch of mushy slush and read it through, and
+then try to make a decent half-column story
+out of it. And rush it over a page at a time,
+will you? We've got to hustle to catch the
+three o'clock edition with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Long before three o'clock the major was back
+in the shop, waiting for the first run of papers
+to come off the press. Furtively I watched him
+as he hunted through the sticky pages to find
+his first story. I guess he had the budding
+pride of authorship in him, just as all the rest
+of us have it in us. But he didn't find his
+story, he found mine. He didn't say anything,
+but he looked crushed and forlorn as he got up
+and went away. It was like him not to ask
+for any explanations, and it was like Devore
+not to offer him any.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>So it went. Even if he had grown up in the
+business I doubt whether Major Putnam Stone
+would ever have made a newspaper man; and
+now he was too far along in life to pick up even
+the rudiments of the trade. He didn't have
+any more idea of news values than a rabbit.
+He had the most amazing faculty for overlooking
+what was vital in the news, but he
+could always be depended upon to pick out
+some trivial and inconsequential detail and
+dress it up with about half a yard of old-point
+lace adjectives. He never by any chance used
+a short word if he could dig up a long, hard one,
+and he never seemed to be able to start a story
+without a quotation from one of the poets. It
+never was a modern poet either. Excepting
+for Sidney Lanier and Father Ryan, apparently
+he hadn't heard of any poet worth while since
+Edgar Allan Poe died. And everything that
+happened seemed to remind him&mdash;at great
+length&mdash;of something else that had happened
+between 1861 and 1865. When it came to
+lugging the Civil War into a tale, he was as
+bad as that character in one of Dickens' novels
+who couldn't keep the head of King Charles
+the First out of his literary productions. With
+that reared-back, flat-heeled, stiff-spined gait
+of his, he would go rummaging round the
+hotels and the Shawnee Club, meeting all sorts
+of people and hearing all sorts of things that
+a real reporter would have snatched at like a
+hungry dog snatching at a T-bone, and then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+he would remember that it was the fortieth
+anniversary of the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain,
+or something, and, forgetting everything
+else, would come bulging and bustling back
+to the office, all worked up over the prospect
+of writing two or three columns about that.
+He just simply couldn't get the viewpoint;
+yet I think he tried hard enough. I guess the
+man who said you couldn't teach an old dog
+new tricks had particular reference to an old
+war dog.</p>
+
+<p>I remember mighty well one incident that
+illustrates the point I am trying to make.
+We had a Sunday edition. We were rather
+vain of our Sunday edition. It carried a
+colored comic supplement and a section full
+of special features, and we all took a more or
+less righteous pride in it and tried hard to make
+it alive and attractive. We didn't always
+succeed, but we tried all right. One Saturday
+night we put the Sunday to bed, and about one
+o'clock, when the last form was locked, three
+or four of us dropped into Tony's place at
+the corner for a bite to eat and a drink. We
+hadn't been there very long when in came the
+old major, and at my invitation he joined us
+at one of Tony's little round tables at the back
+of the place. As a general thing the major
+didn't patronize Tony's. I had never heard
+him say so&mdash;probably he wouldn't have said
+it for fear of hurting our feelings&mdash;but I
+somehow had gathered the impression that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all,
+should drink at his club. But it was long after
+midnight now and the Shawnee Club would
+be closed. Ike Webb spoke up presently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It's a pity we couldn't dig up the governor
+tonight,&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>The governor had come down from the state
+capital about noon, and all the afternoon and
+during most of the evening Webb had been
+trying to find him. There was a possibility
+of a big story in the governor if Webb could
+have found him. The major, who had been
+sitting there stirring his toddy in an absent-minded
+sort of way, spoke up casually: &ldquo;I
+spent an hour with the governor tonight&mdash;at
+my club. In fact, I supped with him in
+one of the private dining rooms.&rdquo; We looked
+up, startled, but the major went right along.
+&ldquo;Young gentlemen, it may interest you to
+know that every time I see our worthy governor
+I am struck more and more by his
+resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that
+gallant soldier and gentleman looked when I
+last saw him&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Devore, who had been sitting next to the
+major, with his shoulder half turned from the
+old man, swung round sharply and interrupted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Major,&rdquo; he said, with a thin icy stream of
+sarcasm trickling through his words, &ldquo;did
+you and the governor by any remote chance
+discuss anything so brutally new and fresh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+as the present political complications in this
+state?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, yes,&rdquo; said the major blandly. &ldquo;We
+discussed them quite at some length&mdash;or at
+least the governor did. Personally I do not
+take a great interest in these matters, not so
+great an interest as I should, perhaps, take.
+However, I did feel impelled to take issue with
+him on one point. Our governor is an honest
+gentleman&mdash;more than that, he was a brave
+soldier&mdash;but I fear he is mistaken in some of
+his attitudes. I regard him as being badly
+advised. For example, he told me that no
+longer ago than this afternoon he affixed his
+official signature to a veto of Senator Stickney's
+measure in regard to the warehouses of
+our state&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As Devore jumped up he overturned the
+major's toddy right in the major's lap. He
+didn't stop to beg pardon, though; in fact,
+none of us stopped. But at the door I threw
+one glance backward over my shoulder. The
+major was still sitting reared back in his chair,
+with his wasted toddy seeping all down the
+front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishing
+figures with amazement and a mild reproof
+in his eyes. In the one quick glance that I
+took I translated his expression to mean
+something like this:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good Heavens, is this any way for a party
+of gentlemen to break up! This could never
+happen at a gentlemen's club.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>It was a foot-race back to the office, and
+Devore, who had the start, won by a short
+length. Luckily the distance was short, not
+quite half a block, and the presses hadn't
+started yet. Working like the crew of a sinking
+ship, we snatched the first page form back
+off the steam table and pried it open and
+gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of
+the last column&mdash;Devore blistered his fingers
+doing it. A couple of linotype operators who
+were on the late trick threw together the stick
+or two of copy that Webb and I scribbled off
+a line at a time. And while we were doing this
+Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head.
+So we missed only one mail.</p>
+
+<p>The first page had a ragged, sloppy look, but
+anyway we were saved from being scooped to
+death on the most important story of the year.
+The vetoing of the Stickney Bill vitally affected
+the tobacco interests, and they were the biggest
+interests in the state, and half the people of
+the state had been thinking about nothing else
+and talking about nothing else for two months&mdash;ever
+since the extra session of the legislature
+started. It was well for us too that we did
+save our faces, because the opposition sheet
+had managed to find the governor&mdash;he was
+stopping for the night at the house of a friend
+out in the suburbs&mdash;and over the telephone
+at a late hour he had announced his decision
+to them. But by Monday morning the major
+seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+think he had even forgiven Devore for spilling
+his toddy and not stopping to apologize.</p>
+
+<p>As for Devore, he didn't say a word to the
+major&mdash;what would have been the use? To
+Devore's credit also I will say that he didn't
+run to the chief, bearing complaints of the
+major's hopeless incompetency. He kept his
+tongue between his teeth and his teeth locked;
+and that must have been hard on Devore, for he
+was a flickery, high-tempered man, and nervous
+as a cat besides. To my knowledge, the only
+time he ever broke out was when we teetotally
+missed the Castleton divorce story. So far as
+the major's part in it was concerned, it was
+the Stickney veto story all over again, with
+variations. The Castletons were almost the
+richest people in town, and socially they stood
+way up. That made the scandal that had been
+brewing and steeping and simmering for months
+all the bigger when finally it came to a boil.
+When young Buford Castleton got his eyes
+open and became aware of what everybody else
+had known for a year or more, and when the
+rival evening paper came out in its last edition
+with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening
+Press shop, were plastered with shame, for
+we didn't have a line of it.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger dropping in just about that time
+would have been justified in thinking there
+was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere,
+and that all the members of the city staff
+were sitting up with the remains. As luck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped
+in on our grand lodge of sorrow. It was
+Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the
+door he caught the tag end of what one of us
+was saying.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I gather,&rdquo; he said in that large round
+voice of his, &ldquo;that you young gentlemen are
+discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is
+mentioned with such signally poor taste in the
+columns of our sensational contemporary. I
+may state that I knew of this contemplated
+divorce action yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton,
+Senior, was my informant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What!&rdquo; Devore almost yelled it. He had
+the love of a true city editor for his paper, and
+the love of a mother for her child or a miser
+for his gold is no greater love than that, let me
+tell you. &ldquo;You knew about this thing here?&rdquo;
+He beat with two fingers that danced like the
+prongs of a tuning fork on the paper spread
+out in front of him. &ldquo;You knew it yesterday?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; said the major. &ldquo;The elder
+Mr. Castleton bared the truly distressing
+details to me at the Shawnee Club.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In confidence though&mdash;he told you about
+it in confidence, didn't he, major?&rdquo; said Ike
+Webb, trying to save the old fellow.</p>
+
+<p>But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Absolutely not,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There were
+several of us present, at least three other
+gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall.
+Mr. Castleton made the disclosure as though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+he wished it to be known among his friends
+and his son's friends. It was quite evident to
+all of us that he was entirely out of sympathy
+with the lady who is his daughter-in-law.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Devore forced himself to be calm. It was
+almost as though he sat on himself to hold
+himself down in his chair; but when he spoke
+his voice ran up and down the scales quiveringly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Major,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;don't you think it would
+be a good idea if you would admit that the
+Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned
+your attention to a few things that have occurred
+subsequently? Why didn't you write
+this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I
+could write it? Why didn't&mdash;&mdash;Oh, what's
+the use!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The major straightened himself up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;allow me to correct you in
+regard to a plain misstatement of fact. Sir,
+the Southern Confederacy was never defeated.
+It ceased to exist as a nation because we were
+exhausted&mdash;because our devastated country
+was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am
+employed upon this paper, I gainsay you, as
+a reporter, not as a scandal monger. I would
+be the last to give circulation in the public
+prints to another gentleman's domestic unhappiness.
+I regard it as highly improper that a
+gentleman's private affairs should be aired in
+a newspaper under any circumstances.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And with that he bowed and turned on his
+heel and went out, leaving Devore shaking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+all over with the superhuman task of trying
+to hold himself in. About ten minutes later,
+when I came out bound for my boarding house,
+the major was standing at the front door. He
+looped one of his absurdly small fingers into
+one of my buttonholes.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Our city editor means well, no doubt,&rdquo;
+he said, &ldquo;but he doesn't understand, he doesn't
+appreciate our conceptions of these matters.
+He was born on the other side of the river,
+you know,&rdquo; he said as though that explained
+everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety
+crept into it. &ldquo;Do you think that I went too
+far? Do you think I ought to return to him
+and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty
+and abrupt manner of speech I used just now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I told him no&mdash;I didn't know what might
+happen if he went back in there then&mdash;and
+I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect
+any apology; and with that he seemed better
+satisfied and walked off. As I stood there
+watching him, his stiff old back growing smaller
+as he went away from me, I didn't know which
+I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant,
+cold disdain of the major, or the major for his
+blatant stupidity. And right then and there,
+all of a sudden, there came to me an understanding
+of a thing that had been puzzling me
+all these weeks. Often I had wondered how
+the major had endured Devore's contempt.
+I had decided in my own mind that he must be
+blind to it, else he would have shown resentment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>
+But now I knew the answer. The
+major wasn't blind, he was afraid; as the saying
+goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it;
+he needed the little scrap of money it brought
+him every Saturday night. That was it, I
+knew now.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing it made me sorrier than ever for
+the old man. Dimly I began to realize, I
+think, what his own mental attitude toward
+his position must be. Here he was, a mere
+cub reporter&mdash;and a remarkably bad one, a
+proven failure&mdash;skirmishing round for small,
+inconsequential items, running errands really,
+at an age when most of the men he knew were
+getting ready to retire from business. Yet
+he didn't dare quit. He didn't dare even to
+rebel against the slights of the man over him,
+because he needed that twelve dollars a week.
+It was all, no doubt, that stood between him
+and actual want. His pride was bleeding to
+death internally. On top of all that he was
+being forced into a readjustment of his whole
+scheme of things, at a time of life when its
+ordered routine was almost as much a part
+of him as his hands and feet. As I figured
+it, he had long before adjusted his life to
+his income, cunningly fitting in certain small
+luxuries and all the small comforts; and now
+this income was cut to a third or a quarter
+perhaps of its former dimensions. It seemed
+a pretty hard thing for the major. It was
+fierce.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>Perhaps my vision was clouded by my sympathy,
+but I thought Major Stone aged visibly
+that summer. Maybe you have noticed how
+it is with men who have gone along, hale and
+stanch, until they reach a certain age. When
+they do start to break they break fast. He
+lost some of his flesh and most of his rosiness.
+The skin on his face loosened a little and
+became a tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like
+a winter-killed apple.</p>
+
+<p>His wardrobe suffered. One day one of his
+short little shoes was split across the top just
+back of the toe cap, and the next morning
+it was patched. Pretty soon the other shoe
+followed suit&mdash;first a crack in the leather,
+then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore
+his black slouch hat until it was as green in
+spots as a gage plum; and late in August he
+supplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished
+brown-straw hats that cost about thirty-five
+cents apiece and look it.</p>
+
+<p>His linen must have been one of his small
+extravagances. Those majestically collared
+garments with the tremendous plaited bosoms
+and the hand worked eyelets, where the three
+big flat gold studs went in, never came ready
+made from any shop. They must have been
+built to his measure and his order. Now
+he wore them until there were gaped places
+between the plaits where the fine, fragile linen
+had ripped lengthwise, and the collars were
+frayed down and broken across and caved in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+limply. Finally he gave them up too, and
+one morning came to work wearing a flimsy,
+sleazy, negligee shirt. I reckon you know the
+kind of shirt I mean&mdash;always it fits badly,
+and the sleeves are always short and the bosom
+is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper.
+After his old full-bosomed grandeur
+this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned on
+to it and overriding the neckband, and gaping
+away in the front so that the major's throat
+showed, seemed to typify more than anything
+else the days upon which he had fallen.
+About this time I thought his voice took
+on a changed tone permanently. It was still
+hollow, but it no longer rang.</p>
+
+<p>A good many men similarly placed would
+have taken to drink, but Major Putnam Stone
+plainly was never born to be a drunkard and
+hard times couldn't make one of him. With
+a sort of gentle, stupid persistence he hung
+fast to his poor job, blundering through some
+way, struggling constantly to learn the first
+easy tricks of the trade&mdash;the a, b, c's of it&mdash;and
+never succeeding. He still lugged the
+classical poets and the war into every story
+he tried to write, and day after day Devore
+maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence,
+refusing dumbly to accept the major's clumsy
+placating attempts to get upon a better footing
+with him. After that once he had never
+attempted to scold the old man, but he would
+watch the major pottering round the city room,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+and he would chew on his under lip and viciously
+lance his scalp with his pencil point.</p>
+
+<p>Well, aside from the major, Devore had his
+troubles that summer. That was the summer
+of the biggest, bitterest campaign that the
+state had seen, so old-timers said, since Breckinridge
+ran against Douglas and both of them
+against Lincoln. If you have ever lived in the
+South, probably you know something of political
+fights that will divide a state into two
+armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until
+old slumbering animosities come crawling out
+into the open, like poison snakes from under
+a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the
+shell every hour or so in a multiplying adder
+brood.</p>
+
+<p>This was like that, only worse. Stripped of
+a lot of embroidery in the shape of side issues
+and local complications, it resolved itself in a
+last-ditch, last-stand, back-to-the-wall fight of
+the old r&eacute;gime of the party against the new.
+On one side were the oldsters, bearers of famous
+names some of them, who had learned politics
+as a trade and followed it as a profession.
+Almost to a man they were professional office
+holders, professional handshakers, professional
+silver tongues. And against them were pitted
+a greedy, hungry group of younger men, less
+showy perhaps in their persons, less picturesque
+in their manner of speech, but filled each one
+with a great yearning for office and power;
+and they brought to the aid of their vaulting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+ambitions a new and a faultlessly running
+machine. From the outset the Evening Press
+had championed the cause of the old crowd&mdash;the
+state-house ring as the enemy called it,
+when they didn't call it something worse. We
+championed it not as a Northern or an Eastern
+paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but
+fiercely and wholly and blindly&mdash;so blindly
+that we could see nothing in our own faction
+but what was good and high and pure, nothing
+in the other but what was smutted with evil
+intent. In daily double-leaded editorial columns
+the chief preached a Holy War, and in
+the local pages we fought the foe tooth and
+nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they
+gouged and clawed back at us like catamounts.
+That was where the hard work fell upon Devore.
+He had to keep half his scanty staff working
+on politics while the other half tried to cover
+the run of the news.</p>
+
+<p>If I live to be a thousand years old I am
+not going to forget the state convention that
+began at two o'clock that muggy September
+afternoon at Lyric Hall up on Washington
+Street in the old part of the town. Once upon
+a time, twenty or thirty years before, Lyric
+Hall had been the biggest theater in town.
+The stage was still there and the boxes, and
+at the back there were miles&mdash;they seemed
+miles anyway&mdash;of ancient, crumbling, dauby
+scenery stacked up and smelling of age and
+decay. Booth and Barrett had played there,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence.
+Now, having fallen from its high estate, it
+served altered purposes&mdash;conventions were
+held at Lyric Hall and cheap masquerade balls
+and the like.</p>
+
+<p>The press tables that had been provided
+were not, strictly speaking, press tables at
+all. They were ordinary unpainted kitchen
+tables, ranged two on one side and two on the
+other side at the front of the stage, close up
+to the old gas-tipped footlights; and when we
+came in by the back way that afternoon and
+found our appointed places I was struck by
+certain sinister facts. Usually women flocked
+to a state convention. By rights there should
+have been ladies in the boxes and in the balcony.
+Now there wasn't a woman in sight anywhere,
+only men, row after row of them. And there
+wasn't any cheering, or mighty little of it.
+When I tell you the band played Dixie all the
+way through with only a stray whoop now and
+then, you will understand better the temper
+of that crowd.</p>
+
+<p>The situation, you see, was like this: One
+side had carried the mountain end of the
+state; the other had carried the lowlands.
+One side had swept the city; that meant a
+solid block of more than a hundred delegates.
+The other side had won the small towns and
+the inland counties. So it stood lowlander
+against highlander, city man against country
+man, and the bitter waters of those ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+feuds have their wellsprings back a thousand
+years in history, they tell me. One side led
+slenderly on instructed vote. The other side
+had enough contesting delegations on hand to
+upset the result if these contestants or any
+considerable proportion of them should be
+recognized in the preliminary organization.</p>
+
+<p>One side held a majority of the delegates who
+sat upon the floor; the other side had packed
+the balcony and the aisles and the corners with
+its armed partizans. One side was in the
+saddle and determined; the other afoot and
+grimly desperate. And it was our side, as I
+shall call it, meaning by that the state-house
+ring, that for the moment had the whiphand;
+and it was the other side, led in person by State
+Senator Stickney, god of the new machine,
+that stood ready to wade hip deep through
+trouble to unhorse us.</p>
+
+<p>Just below me, stretching across the hall
+from side to side in favored front places, sat
+the city delegates&mdash;Stickney men all of them.
+And as my eye swept the curved double row
+of faces it seemed to me I saw there every man
+in town with a reputation as a gun-fighter or
+a knife-fighter or a fist-fighter; and every one
+of them wore, pinning his delegate's badge to
+his breast, a Stickney button that was round
+and bright red, like a clot of blood on his shirt
+front.</p>
+
+<p>They made a contrast, these half-moon
+lines of blocky men, to the lank, slouch-hatted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+low-collared country delegates&mdash;farmers, school
+teachers, country doctors and country lawyers&mdash;who
+filled the seats behind them and on
+beyond them. To the one group politics was
+a business in which there was money to be
+made and excitement to be had; to the other
+group it was a passion, veritably a sacredly
+high and serious thing, which they took as
+they did their religion, with a solemn, intolerant,
+Calvinistic sincerity. There was one
+thing, though, they all shared in common.
+Whether a man's coat was of black alpaca or
+striped flannel, the right-hand pocket sagged
+under the weight of unseen ironmongery; or if
+the coat pocket didn't sag there was a bulging
+clump back under the skirts on the right hip.
+For all the heat, hardly a man there was in
+his shirtsleeves; and it would have been funny
+to watch how carefully this man or that eased
+himself down into his seat, favoring his flanks
+against the pressure of his hardware&mdash;that is
+to say, it would have been funny if it all hadn't
+been so deadly earnest.</p>
+
+<p>You could fairly smell trouble cooking in
+that hall. In any corner almost there were
+the potential makings of half a dozen prominent
+funerals. There was scarce a man, I judged,
+but nursed a private grudge against some
+other man; and then besides these there was
+the big issue itself, which had split the state
+apart lengthwise as a butcher's cleaver splits
+a joint. Looking out over that convention,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+you could read danger spelled out everywhere,
+in everything, as plain as print.</p>
+
+<p>I was where I could read it with particular
+and uncomfortable distinctness, too, for I had
+the second place at the table that had been
+assigned to the Evening Press crew. There
+were four of us in all&mdash;Devore, who had
+elected to be in direct charge of the detail;
+Ike Webb, our star man, who was to handle
+the main story; I who was to write the running
+account&mdash;and, fourthly and lastly, Major
+Putnam Stone. The major hadn't been included
+in the assignment originally, but little
+Pinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning,
+and the chief decided the major should come
+along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief
+had a deluded notion that the major could
+circulate on a roving commission and pick up
+spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once
+anyway, was a convention wherein there were
+no spicy bits of gossip to be picked up&mdash;curse
+words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words,
+but not gossip&mdash;everything focused and was
+summed up in the one main point: Should
+the majority rule the machine or should the
+machine rule the majority? So the major sat
+there at the far inside corner of the table doing
+nothing at all&mdash;Devore saw to that&mdash;and
+was rather in the way. For the time I forgot
+all about him.</p>
+
+<p>The clash wasn't long in coming. It came
+on the first roll call of the counties. Later<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+we found out that the Stickney forces had been
+counting, all along, on throwing the convention
+into a disorder of such proportions as to force
+an adjournment, trusting then to their acknowledged
+superiority at organization to win some
+strong strategic advantage in the intervening
+gap of time. Failing there they meant to raise
+a cry of unfairness and walk out. That then
+was their program&mdash;first the riot and then,
+as a last resort, the bolt. But they had men
+in their ranks, high-tempered men who, like
+so many skittish colts, wouldn't stand without
+hitching. The signals crossed and the thunder
+cracked across that calm-before-the-storm situation
+before there was proper color of excuse
+either for attack or for retreat.</p>
+
+<p>It came with scarcely any warning at all.
+Old Judge Marcellus Barbee, the state chairman,
+called the convention to order, he standing
+at a little table in the center of the stage.
+Although counted as our man, the judge was
+of such uncertain fiber as to render it doubtful
+whose man he really was. He was a kindly,
+wind-blown old gentleman, who very much
+against his will had been drawn unawares, as it
+were, into the middle of this fight, and he was
+bewildered by it all&mdash;and not only bewildered
+but unhappy and frightened. His gavel
+seemed to quaver its raps out timorously.</p>
+
+<p>A pastor of one of the churches, a reverend
+man with a bleak, worried face, prayed the
+Good Lord that peace and good-will and wise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+counsel might rule these deliberations, and then
+fled away as though fearing the mocking echoes
+of his own Amen. Summoning his skulking
+voice out of his lower throat, Judge Barbee
+bade the secretary of the state committee
+call the counties. The secretary got as far
+as Blanton, the third county alphabetically
+down the list. And Blanton was one of the
+contested counties. So up rose two rival
+chairmen of delegations, each waving aloft
+his credentials, each demanding the right to
+cast the vote of free and sovereign Blanton,
+each shaking a clenched fist at the other. Up
+got the rival delegations from Blanton. Up
+got everybody. Judge Barbee, with a gesture,
+recognized the rights of the anti-Stickney delegation.
+Jeers and yells broke out, spattering
+forth like a skirmish fire, then almost instantly
+were merged into a vast, ominous roar. Chairs
+began to overturn. Not twenty feet from me
+the clattering of the chairman's gavel, as he
+vainly beat for order, sounded like the clicking
+of a telegraph instrument in a cyclone.</p>
+
+<p>I saw the sergeant-at-arms&mdash;who was our
+man too&mdash;start down the middle aisle and
+saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble
+and fall, and I saw a big mountaineer drop
+right on top of him, pinning him flat to the
+floor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra
+rail, almost under my feet, scuttling away in
+two directions like a divided covey of gorgeous
+blue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>
+a little round German, put his foot through
+the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge
+Barbee overturn the white china pitcher of ice
+water that sweated on the table at his elbow,
+and as the cold stream of its contents spattered
+down the legs of his trousers saw him staring
+downward, contemplating his drenched limbs
+as though that mattered greatly.</p>
+
+<p>All in a flash I saw these things, and in that
+same flash I saw, taking shape and impulse,
+a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons,
+rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad
+men of the city wards for its crest; and out
+of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out
+from the rear of the stage, a small, compact
+wedge of men wearing those same red buttons;
+and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave
+Dancy, the official bad man of a bad county,
+a man who packed a gun on each hip and carried
+a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man
+who would shoot you at the drop of a hat and
+provide the hat himself&mdash;or at least so it was
+said of him.</p>
+
+<p>And I realized that the enemy, coming by
+concerted agreement from front and rear at
+once, had nipped those of us who were upon
+the stage as between two closing walls, and
+I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. I
+ducked my head low, waiting for the shooting
+to begin. Afterward we figured it out that
+nobody fired the first shot because everybody
+knew the first shot would mean a massacre,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+where likely enough a man would kill more
+friends than foes.</p>
+
+<p>What happened now in the space of the next
+few seconds I saw with particular clarity of
+vision, because it happened right alongside me
+and in part right over me. I recall in especial
+Mink Satterlee. Mink Satterlee was one of
+the worst men in town, and he ran the worst
+saloon and prevailed mightily in ward politics.
+He had been sitting just below our table in the
+front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man,
+fat-necked, but this day he showed himself
+quick on his feet as any toe-dancer. Leading
+his own forces by a length, he vaulted the
+orchestra rail and lit lightly where a scared
+oboe player had been squatted a moment before;
+Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of
+the footlights and leaped upward, teetering a
+moment in space. One of his hands grabbed
+out for a purchase and closed on the leg of
+our table and jerked it almost from under us.</p>
+
+<p>At that Devore either lost his head or else
+indignation made him reckless. Still half
+sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk
+at his feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink
+Satterlee in his chest. It was a puny enough
+kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee
+loose from where he clung. He gave a bellow
+and heaved himself up on the stage and, before
+any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the
+throat with his left hand and jammed him
+back, face upward, on the table until I thought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+Devore's spine would crack. His right hand
+shot into his coat pocket, then, quick as a
+snake, came out again, showing the fat fist
+armed with a set of murderously heavy brass
+knucks, and he bent his arm in a crooked sickle-like
+stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple.
+I've always been satisfied&mdash;and so has Devore&mdash;that
+if the blow had landed true his skull
+would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it
+never landed.</p>
+
+<p>Above me a shadow of something hung for
+the hundredth part of a second, something
+white flashed over me and by me, moving downward
+whizzingly; something cracked on something;
+and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentle
+little grunt right in Devore's face and then
+relaxed and slid down on the floor, lying half
+under the table and half in the tin trough
+where the stubby gas jets of the footlights
+stood up, with his legs protruding stiffly out
+over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously
+I noted that his socks were not mates,
+one of them being blue and one black; also
+that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split
+place in it just between and above his half-closed
+eyes. All this, though, couldn't have
+taken one-fifth of the time it has required for
+me to tell it. It couldn't have taken more
+than a brace of seconds, but even so it was
+time enough for other things to happen; and
+I looked back again toward the center of the
+stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+startled old Judge Barbee by the middle from
+behind and flung him aside so roughly that
+the old man spun round twice, clutching at
+nothing, and then sat down very hard, yards
+away from where he started spinning.</p>
+
+<p>Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had
+fallen from the judge's hand, being minded,
+I think, to run the convention awhile in the
+interest of his own crowd. But his greedy
+fingers never closed over its black-walnut
+handle, because, facing him, he saw just then
+what made him freeze solid where he was.</p>
+
+<p>Out from behind the Evening Press table
+and through a scattering huddle of newspaper
+reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as
+lightly as a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam
+Stone. His sleeves were turned back off his
+wrists and his vest flared open. His head
+was thrust forward so that the tuft of goatee
+on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him
+like a little burgee in a fair breeze. His face
+was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in
+his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry
+revolvers that ever was made, I reckon.
+It had a square-butted ivory handle, and as I
+saw that ivory handle I knew what the white
+thing was that had flashed by me only a
+moment before to fell Mink Satterlee so
+expeditiously.</p>
+
+<p>Writing this, I've been trying to think of
+the one word that would best describe how
+Major Putnam Stone looked to me as he ad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>vanced
+on Dave Dancy. I think now that
+the proper word is competent, for indeed the
+old major did look most competent&mdash;the
+tremendous efficiency he radiated filled him
+out and made him seem sundry sizes larger
+than he really was. A great emergency acts
+upon different men as chemical processes act
+upon different metals. Some it melts like lead,
+so that their resolution softens and runs away
+from them; and some it hardens to tempered
+steel. There was the old major now. Always
+before this he had seemed to me to be but
+pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert,
+ready&mdash;a wire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus
+blade of a man&mdash;all changed and transformed
+and glorified, he was coming down on
+Dave Dancy, finger on trigger, thumb on
+hammer, eye on target, dominating the whole
+scene.</p>
+
+<p>Ten feet from him he halted and there
+was nobody between them. Somehow everybody
+else halted too, some even giving back a
+little. Over the edge of the stage a ring of
+staring faces, like a high-water mark, showed
+where the onward rushing swell of the Stickney
+city delegates had checked itself. Seemingly
+to all at once came the realization that the
+destinies of the fight had by the chances of
+the fight been entrusted to these two men&mdash;to
+Dancy and the major&mdash;and that between
+them the issue would be settled one way or
+the other.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Still at a half crouch, Dancy's right hand
+began to steal back under the skirt of his long
+black coat. At that the major flung up the
+muzzle of his weapon so that it pointed skyward,
+and he braced his left arm at his side
+in the attitude you have seen in the pictures
+of dueling scenes of olden times.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am waiting, sir, for you to draw,&rdquo; said
+the major quite briskly. &ldquo;I will shoot it
+out with you to see whether right or might
+shall control this convention.&rdquo; And his heels
+clicked together like castanets.</p>
+
+<p>Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and
+farther back. And then you could mark by
+the change of his skin and by the look out of
+his eyes how his courage was clabbering to
+whey inside him, making his face a milky,
+curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred
+emulsion, and then he quit&mdash;he quit cold&mdash;his
+hand came out again from under his coat
+tails and it was an empty hand and wide open.
+It was from that moment on that throughout
+our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to
+be Fighting Dave and became instead Yaller
+Dave.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then, sir,&rdquo; said the major, &ldquo;as you do not
+seem to care to shoot it out with me, man to
+man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw
+from this stage and allow the business of this
+convention to proceed in an orderly manner.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody
+laughed. In another second we were all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+laughing and the danger was over. When an
+American crowd begins laughing the danger is
+always over.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Newspaper men down in that town still
+talk about the story that Ike Webb wrote for
+the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon.
+It was a great story, as Ike Webb told
+it&mdash;how, still sitting on the floor, old Judge
+Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth
+commissioned the major a special sergeant-at-arms;
+how the major privily sent men to close
+and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney
+people couldn't get out to bolt, even if
+they had now been of a mind to do so; how
+the convention, catching the spirit of the
+moment, elected the major its temporary chairman,
+and how even after that, for quite a
+spell, until some of his friends bethought to
+remove him, Mink Satterlee slept peacefully
+under our press table with his mismated legs
+bridged across the tin trough of the footlights.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>In rapid succession a number of unusual
+events occurred in the Evening Press shop
+the next morning. To begin with, the chief
+came down early. He had a few words in
+private with Devore and went upstairs. When
+the major came at eight as usual, Devore was
+waiting for him at the door of the city room;
+and as they went upstairs together, side by side,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+I saw Devore's arm steal timidly out and rest
+a moment on the major's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The major was the first to descend. Walking
+unusually erect, even for him, he bustled
+into the telephone booth. Jessie, our operator,
+told us afterward that he called up a haberdasher,
+and in a voice that boomed like a bell
+ordered fourteen of those plaited-bosom shirts
+of his, the same to be made up and delivered
+as soon as possible. Then he stalked out.
+And in a minute or two more Devore came
+down looking happy and unhappy and embarrassed
+and exalted, all of them at once.
+On his way to his desk he halted midway of
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gentlemen,&rdquo; he said huskily&mdash;&ldquo;fellows,
+I mean&mdash;I've got an announcement to make,
+or rather two announcements. One is this:
+Right here before you fellows who heard most
+of them I want to take back all the mean
+things I ever said about him&mdash;about Major
+Stone&mdash;and I want to say I'm sorry for all
+the mean things I've done to him. I've tried
+to beg his pardon, but he wouldn't listen&mdash;he
+wouldn't let me beg his pardon&mdash;he&mdash;he
+said everything was all right. That's
+one announcement. Here's the other: The
+major is going to have a new job with this
+paper. He's going to leave the city staff.
+Hereafter he's going to be upstairs in the room
+next to the chief. He's gone out now to pick
+out his own desk. He's going to write specials<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+for the Sunday&mdash;specials about the war.
+And he's going to do it on a decent salary too.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I judge by my own feelings that we all
+wanted to cheer, but didn't because we thought
+it might sound theatrical and foolish. Anyhow,
+I know that was how I felt. So there
+was a little awkward pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What's his new title going to be?&rdquo; asked
+somebody then.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The title is appropriate&mdash;I suggested it
+myself,&rdquo; said Devore. &ldquo;Major Stone is going
+to be war editor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>V</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">SMOKE OF BATTLE</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">T</span>his befell during the period that Major
+Putnam Stone, at the age of sixty-two,
+held a job as cub reporter on the Evening
+Press and worked at it until his
+supply of fine linen and the patience of City
+Editor Wilbert Devore frazzled out practically
+together. The episode to which I would here
+direct attention came to pass in the middle of
+a particularly hot week in the middle of that
+particularly hot and grubby summer, at a
+time when the major was still wearing the last
+limp survivor of his once adequate stock of
+frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when
+Devore's scanty stock of endurance had already
+worn perilously near the snapping point.</p>
+
+<p>As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a
+life of comparative leisure from the day he
+came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned
+veteran, until the day he joined the staff of the
+Evening Press, a rank beginner; and of these
+two employments one lay a matter of four<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+decades back in a half-forgotten past, while
+the other was of pressing moment, having
+to do with Major Stone's enjoyment of his
+daily bread and other elements of nutrition
+regarded as essential to the sustenance of
+human life. In his military career he might
+have been more or less of a success. Certainly
+he must have acquitted himself with
+some measure of personal credit; the rank he
+had attained in the service and the standing
+he had subsequently enjoyed among his comrades
+abundantly testified to that.</p>
+
+<p>As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss;
+for, as already set forth in some detail, he was
+hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and speech&mdash;hopelessly
+old-fashioned and pedantic in his
+style of writing; and since his mind mainly
+concerned itself with retrospections upon the
+things that happened between April, 1861,
+and May, 1865, he very naturally&mdash;and very
+frequently&mdash;forgot that to a newspaper reporter
+every day is a new day and a new beginning,
+and that yesterday always is or always
+should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnished
+yesterdays of forty-odd years ago.
+Indeed I doubt whether the major ever comprehended
+that first commandment of the
+prentice reporter's catechism.</p>
+
+<p>Devore, himself no grand and glittering success
+as a newspaper man, nevertheless had
+mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous
+old major. Devore did not believe that bricks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+could be made without straw. He considered
+it a waste of time and raw material to
+try. Through that summer he kept the major
+on the payroll solely because the chief so willed
+it. But, though he might not discharge the
+major, at least he could bait him&mdash;and bait
+him Devore did&mdash;not, mind you, with words,
+but with a silent, sublimated contempt more
+bitter and more biting than any words.</p>
+
+<p>So there, on the occasion in question, the
+situation stood&mdash;the major hanging on tooth
+and nail to his small job, because he needed
+most desperately the twelve dollars a week
+it brought him; the city editor regarding him
+and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission,
+commission and remission with a corrosive,
+speechless venom; and the rest of us
+in the city room divided in our sympathies
+as between those two. We sympathized with
+Devore for having to carry so woful an incompetent
+upon his small and overworked crew;
+we sympathized with the kindly, gentle, tiresome
+old major for his bungling, vain attempts
+to creditably cover the small and piddling
+assignments that came his way.</p>
+
+<p>I remember the date mighty well&mdash;the
+third of July. For three days now the Democratic
+party, in national convention assembled
+at Chicago, had been in the throes of labor.
+It had been expected&mdash;in fact had been as
+good as promised&mdash;that by ten o'clock that
+evening the deadlock would melt before a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and
+the head of the presidential ticket would be
+named, wherefore in the Evening Press shop
+a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an
+extra. Back in the press-room the press was
+dressed. A front page form was made up and
+ready, all but the space where the name of the
+nominee would be inserted when the flash
+came; and in the alley outside a picked squad
+of newsboys, renowned for speed of the leg
+and carrying quality of the voice, awaited
+their wares, meanwhile skylarking under the
+eye of a circulation manager.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, there was no telling when an arrest
+might be made in the Bullard murder case&mdash;that
+just by itself would provide ample excuse
+for an extra. Two days had passed and two
+nights since the killing of Attorney-at-Law
+Rodney G. Bullard, and still the killing, to
+quote a favorite line of the local descriptive
+writers, &ldquo;remained shrouded in impenetrable
+mystery.&rdquo; If the police force, now busily
+engaged in running clues into theories and
+theories into the ground, should by any blind
+chance of fortune be lucky enough to ascertain
+the identity and lay hands upon the person
+of Bullard's assassin, the whole town,
+regardless of the hour, would rise up out of
+bed to read the news of it. It was the biggest
+crime story that town had known for ten
+years; one of the biggest crime stories it had
+ever known.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>In the end our waiting all went for nothing.
+There were no developments at Central Station
+or elsewhere in the Bullard case, and at
+Chicago there was no nomination. At nine-thirty
+a bulletin came over our leased wire
+saying that Tammany, having been beaten
+before the Resolutions Committee, was still
+battling on the floor for its candidate; so that
+finally the convention had adjourned until
+morning, and now the delegates were streaming
+out of the hall, too tired to cheer and almost
+too tired to jeer&mdash;all of which was sad news
+to us, because it meant that, instead of taking
+a holiday on the Fourth, we must work until
+noon at least, and very likely until later.
+Down that way the Fourth was not observed
+with quite the firecrackery and skyrockety
+enthusiasm that marked its celebration in most
+of the states to the north of us; nevertheless,
+a day off was a day off and we were deeply disgusted
+at the turn affairs had taken. It was
+almost enough to make a fellow feel friendly
+toward the Republicans.</p>
+
+<p>Following the tension there was a snapback;
+a feeling of languor and disappointment possessed
+us. Devore slammed down the lid of
+his desk and departed, cursing the luck as he
+went. Harty, the telegraph editor, and Wilbur,
+the telegraph operator, rolled down their
+shirtsleeves and, taking their coats over their
+arms, departed in company for Tony's place
+up at the corner, where cool beers were to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+found and electric fans, and a business men's
+lunch served at all hours.</p>
+
+<p>That left in the city room four or five men.
+Sprawled upon battered chairs and draped
+over battered desks, they inhaled the smells
+of rancid greases that floated in to them from
+the back of the building; they coddled their
+disappointment to keep it warm and they
+talked shop. When it comes to talking shop
+in season and out of season, neither stock actors
+nor hospital surgeons are worse offenders than
+newspaper reporters&mdash;especially young newspaper
+reporters, as all these men were except
+only Major Stone.</p>
+
+<p>It was inevitable that the talk should turn
+upon the Bullard murder, and that the failure
+of the police force to find the killer or even to
+find a likely suspect should be the hinge for
+its turning. For the moment Ike Webb had
+the floor, expounding his own pet theories.
+Ike was a good talker&mdash;a mighty good reporter
+too, let me tell you. Across the room from
+Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall,
+sat the major, looking shabby and a bit forlorn.
+For a month now shabbiness had been
+seizing on the major, spreading over him like
+a mildew. It started first with his shoes, which
+turned brown and then cracked across the
+toes, it extended to his hat, which sagged in
+its brim and became a moldy green in its
+crown, and now it had touched his coat
+lapels, his waistcoat front, his collar&mdash;his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+rolling Lord Byron collar&mdash;and his sleeve
+ends.</p>
+
+<p>The major's harmlessly pompous manner
+was all gone from him that night. Of late his
+self-assurance had seemed to be fraying and
+frazzling away, along with those old-timey,
+full-bosomed shirts of which he had in times
+gone by been so tremendously proud. It was
+as though the passing of the one marked the
+passing of the other&mdash;symbolic as you might
+say. Formerly, too, the major had also excelled
+mightily in miscellaneous conversation,
+dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness.
+Now he sat silent while these youngsters with
+their unthatched lips&mdash;born, most of them,
+after he reached middle age&mdash;babbled the
+jargon of their trade. He considered a little
+ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously.</p>
+
+<p>Ike Webb was saying this&mdash;that the biggest
+thing in the whole created world was a big
+scoop&mdash;an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up
+scoop of a scoop. Nothing that could possibly
+come into a reporter's life was one-half so big
+and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to
+his theme:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee! fellows, but wouldn't it be great to
+get a scoop on a thing like this Bullard murder!
+Just suppose now that one of us, all by
+himself, found the person who did the shooting
+and got a full confession from him, whoever
+he was; and got the gun that it was done
+with&mdash;got the whole thing&mdash;and then turned<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+it loose all over the front page before that big
+stiff of a Chief Gotlieb down at Central Station
+knew a thing about it. Beating the police to
+it would be the best part of that job. That's
+the way they do things in New York. In
+New York it's the newspapers that do the
+real work on big murder mysteries, and the
+police take their tips from them. Why, some
+of the best detectives in New York are reporters.
+Look what they did in that Guldensuppe case!
+Look at what they've done in half a dozen
+other big cases! Down here we just follow
+along, like sheep, behind a bunch of fat-necked
+cops, taking their leavings. Up there a
+paper turns a man loose, with an unlimited
+expense account and all the time he needs, and
+tells him to go to it. That's the right way
+too!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By that the others knew Ike Webb was
+thinking of what Vogel had told him. Vogel
+was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius
+from the metropolis who had come upon us as
+angels sometimes do&mdash;unawares&mdash;two weeks
+before, with cinders in his ears and the grime
+of a dusty right-of-way upon his collar. He
+had worked for the sheet two weeks and
+then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what
+sums of small change he could and under cover
+of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown,
+leaving us dazzled by the careless,
+somewhat patronizing brilliance of his manner,
+and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+the splendid, adventurous, bohemian lives that
+newspaper men in New York lived.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I know this,&rdquo; put in little Pinky
+Gilfoil, who was red-headed, red-freckled and
+red-tempered: &ldquo;I'd give my right leg to pull
+off that Bullard story as a scoop. No, not
+my right leg&mdash;a reporter needs all the legs
+he's got; but I'd give my right arm and throw
+in an eye for good measure. It would be the
+making of a reporter in this town&mdash;he'd have
+'em all eating out of his hand after that.&rdquo; He
+licked his lips. Even the bare thought of the
+thing tasted pretty good to Pinky.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now you're whistling!&rdquo; chimed Ike Webb.
+&ldquo;The fellow who single-handed got that tale
+would have a job on this paper as long as he
+lived. The chief would just naturally have
+to hand him more money. In New York,
+though, he'd get a big cash bonus besides, an
+award they call it up there. I'd go anywhere
+and do anything and take any kind of a chance
+to land that story as an exclusive&mdash;yes, or
+any other big story.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>To all this the major, it appeared, had been
+listening, for now he spoke up in a pretty fair
+imitation of his old impressive manner:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But, young gentlemen&mdash;pardon me&mdash;do
+you seriously think&mdash;any of you&mdash;that any
+honorarium, however large, should or could
+be sufficient temptation to induce one in your&mdash;in
+our profession&mdash;to give utterance in
+print to a matter that he had learned, let us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+say, in confidence? And suppose also that by
+printing it he brought suffering or disgrace
+upon innocent parties. Unless one felt that
+he was serving the best ends of society&mdash;unless
+one, in short, were actuated by the
+highest of human motives&mdash;could one afford
+to do such a thing? And, under any circumstances,
+could one violate a trust&mdash;could one
+violate the common obligation of a gentleman's
+rules of deportment&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Major,&rdquo; broke in Ike Webb earnestly, &ldquo;the
+way I look at it, a reporter can't afford too
+many of the luxuries you're mentioning. His
+duty, it seems to me, is to his paper first and
+the rest of the world afterward. His paper
+ought to be his mother and his father and all
+his family. If he gets a big scoop&mdash;no matter
+how he gets it or where he gets it&mdash;he
+ought to be able to figure out some way of
+getting it into print. It's not alone what he
+owes his paper&mdash;it's what he owes himself.
+Personally I wouldn't be interested for a minute
+in bringing the person that killed Rod Bullard
+to justice&mdash;that's not the point. He was a
+pretty shady person&mdash;Rod Bullard. By all
+accounts he got what was coming to him. It's
+the story itself that I'd want.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, listen here, major,&rdquo; put in Pinky
+Gilfoil, suddenly possessed of a strengthening
+argument; &ldquo;I reckon back yonder in the Civil
+War, when you all got the smoke of battle in
+your noses, you didn't stop to consider that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+you were about to make a large crop of widows
+and orphans and cause suffering to a whole
+slue of innocent people that'd never done you
+any harm! You didn't stop then, did you?
+I'll bet you didn't&mdash;you just sailed in! It
+was your duty&mdash;the right thing to do&mdash;and
+you just went and did it. 'War is hell!' Sherman
+said. Well, so is newspaper work hell&mdash;in
+a way. And smelling out a big story
+ought to be the same to a reporter that the
+smoke of battle is to a soldier. That's right&mdash;I'll
+leave it to any fellow here if that ain't
+right!&rdquo; he wound up, forgetting in his enthusiasm
+to be grammatical.</p>
+
+<p>It was an unfortunate simile to be making
+and Pinky should have known better, for at
+Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye
+widened and, expanding himself, he brought
+his chair legs down to the floor with a thump.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, yes!&rdquo; he said, and his voice took on
+still more of its old ringing quality. &ldquo;Speaking
+of battles, I am just reminded, young
+gentlemen, that tomorrow is the anniversary
+of the fall of Vicksburg. Though Northern-born,
+General Pemberton was a gallant officer&mdash;none
+of our own Southern leaders was more
+gallant&mdash;but it has always seemed to me that
+his defense of Vicksburg was marked by a
+series of the most lamentable and disastrous
+mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain
+further.&rdquo; And he squared himself forward,
+with one short, plump hand raised, ready to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+tick off his points against Pemberton upon his
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>By experience dearly bought at the expense
+of our ear-drums, the members of the Evening
+Press staff knew what that meant; for as you
+already know, the major's conversational specialty
+was the Civil War&mdash;it and its campaigns.
+Describing it, he made even war a
+commonplace and a tiresome topic. In his hands
+an account of the hardest fought battle became
+a tremendously uninteresting thing. He weeded
+out all the thrills and in their places planted
+hedges of dusty, deadly dry statistics. When
+the major started on the war it was time to be
+going. One by one the youngsters got up and
+slipped out. Presently the major, booming
+away like a bell buoy, became aware that his
+audience had dwindled. Only Ike Webb remained,
+and Ike was getting upon his feet and
+reaching for the peg where his coat swung.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'm sorry to leave you right in the middle
+of your story, major; but, honestly, I've got
+to be going,&rdquo; apologized Ike. &ldquo;Good night,
+and don't forget this, major&rdquo;&mdash;Ike had halted
+at the door&mdash;&ldquo;when a big story comes your
+way freeze to it with both hands and slam it
+across the plate as a scoop. Do that and you
+can give 'em all the laugh. Good night again&mdash;see
+you in the morning, major!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He grinned to himself as he turned away.
+The major was a mighty decent, tender-hearted
+little old scout, a gentleman by birth and breeding,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+even if he was down and out and dog-poor.
+It was a shame that Devore kept him skittering
+round on little picayunish jobs&mdash;running
+errands, that was really what it was. Still,
+at that, the old major was no reporter and
+never would be. He wouldn't know a big
+story if he ran into it on the big road&mdash;it
+would have to burst right in his face before he
+recognized it. And even then the chances were
+that he wouldn't know what to do with it. It
+was enough to make a fellow grin.</p>
+
+<p>Deserted by the last of his youthful compatriots&mdash;which
+was what he himself generally
+called them&mdash;the major lingered a moment
+in heavy thought. He glanced about the
+cluttered city room, now suddenly grown
+large and empty. This was the theater where
+his own little drama of unfitness and failure
+and private mortification had been staged and
+acted. It had run nearly a month now, and a
+month is a long run for a small tragedy in a
+newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook
+his head. He shook it as though he were trying
+to shake it clear of a job lot of old-fashioned,
+antiquated ideals&mdash;as though he were trying
+to make room for newer, more useful, more
+modern conceptions. Then he settled his
+aged and infirm slouch hat more firmly upon
+his round-domed skull, straightened his shoulders
+and stumped out.</p>
+
+<p>At the second turning up the street from the
+office an observant onlooker might have noticed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+a small, an almost imperceptible change in
+the old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky
+bone in the major's body&mdash;he walked as he
+thought and as he talked, in straight lines;
+but before he turned the corner he glanced up
+and down the empty sidewalk in a quick,
+furtive fashion, and after he had swung into
+the side street a trifle of the steam seemed
+gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait.
+It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod.</p>
+
+<p>The street he had now entered was a badly
+lighted street, with long stretches of murkiness
+between small patches of gas-lamped
+brilliance. By day the houses that walled it
+would have showed themselves as shabby and
+gone to seed&mdash;the sort of houses that second
+cousins move into after first families have
+moved out. Two-thirds of the way along the
+block the major turned in at a sagged gate.
+He traversed a short walk of seamed and
+decrepit flagging, where tufts of rank grass
+sprouted between the fractures in the limestone
+slabs, and mounted the front porch of a house
+that had cheap boarding house written all
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>When the major opened the front door the
+tepid smell that gushed out to greet him was
+the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you
+know what I mean&mdash;a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage,
+dust-in-the-corners smell. Once upon
+a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry
+way had exhibited a vivid and violent pattern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+of green octagons upon a red and yellow
+background, but that had been in some far
+distant day of its youth and freshness. Now
+it was worn to a scaly, crumbly color of
+nothing at all, and it was frayed into fringes
+at the door and in places scuffed clear through,
+so that the knot-holes of the naked planking
+showed like staring eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Standing just inside the hall, the major
+glanced down first at the floor and then up to
+where in a pendent nub a pinprick of light
+like a captive lightning-bug flickered up and
+down feebly as the air pumped through the
+pipe; and out of his chest the major fetched
+a small sigh. It was a sigh of resignation,
+but it had loneliness in it too. Well, it was a
+come-down, after all these peaceful and congenial
+years spent among the marble-columned,
+red-plushed glories of the old Gaunt House, to
+be living in this place.</p>
+
+<p>The major had been here now almost a month.
+Very quietly, almost secretly, he had come
+hither when he found that by no amount of
+stretching could his pay as a reporter on the
+Evening Press be made to cover the cost of
+living as he had been accustomed to live prior
+to that disastrous day when the major waked
+up in the morning to find that all his inherited
+investments had vanished over night&mdash;and,
+vanishing so, had taken with them the
+small but sufficient income that had always
+been ample for his needs.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>In that month the major had seen but one
+or two of his fellow lodgers, slouching forms
+that passed him by in the gloom of the
+half-lighted hallways or on the creaky stairs.
+His landlady he saw but once a week&mdash;on
+Saturday, which was settlement day. She
+was a forlorn, gray creature, half blind, and
+she felt her way about gropingly. By the
+droop in her spine and by the corners of her
+lips, permanently puckered from holding pins
+in her mouth, a close observer would have
+guessed that she had been a seamstress before
+her eyes gave out on her and she took to keeping
+lodgers. Of the character of the establishment
+the innocent old major knew nothing; he
+knew that it was cheap and that it was on a
+quiet by-street, and for his purposes that was
+sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>He heaved another small sigh and passed
+slowly up the worn steps of the stairwell until
+he came to the top of the house. His room
+was on the attic floor, the middle room of the
+three that lined the bare hall on one side.
+The door-knob was broken off; only its iron
+center remained. His fingers slipped as he
+fumbled for a purchase upon the metal core;
+but finally, after two attempts, he gripped it
+and it turned, admitting him into the darkness
+of a stuffy interior. The major made
+haste to open the one small window before
+he lit the single gas jet. Its guttery flare
+exposed a bed, with a thin mattress and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+skimpy cover, shoved close up under the
+sloping wall; a sprained chair on its last legs;
+an old horsehide trunk; a shaky washstand of
+cheap yellow pine, garnished forth with an ewer
+and a basin; a limp, frayed towel; and a
+minute segment of pale pink soap.</p>
+
+<p>Major Stone was in the act of removing his
+coat when he became aware of a certain sound,
+occurring at quick intervals. In the posture
+of a plump and mature robin he cocked his
+head on one side to listen; and now he remembered
+that he had heard the same sound the
+night before, and the night before that. These
+times, though, he had heard it intermittently
+and dimly, as he tossed about half awake and
+half asleep, trying to accommodate his elderly
+bones to the irregularities of his hot and uncomfortable
+bed. But now he heard it more
+plainly, and at once he recognized it for what
+it was&mdash;the sound of a woman crying; a
+wrenching succession of deep, racking gulps,
+and in between them little moaning, panting
+breaths, as of utter exhaustion&mdash;a sound
+such as might be distilled from the very dregs
+of a grief too great to be borne.</p>
+
+<p>He looked about him, his eyes and ears
+searching for further explanation of this. He
+had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall
+of his room&mdash;a door bolted and nailed
+up. It had a transom over it and against the
+dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected,
+and through the door and the transom the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>
+sound came. The person in trouble, whoever
+it might be, was in that next room&mdash;and that
+person was a woman and she was in dire distress.
+There was a compelling note in her
+sobbing.</p>
+
+<p>Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute
+rubbing his nose pensively with a small forefinger;
+then the resolution to act fastened
+upon him. He slipped his coat back on,
+smoothed down his thin mane of reddish
+gray hair with his hands, stepped out into the
+hall and rapped delicately with a knuckled
+finger upon the door of the next room. There
+was no answer, so he rapped a little harder;
+and at that a sob checked itself and broke off
+chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From
+within a voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained
+voice&mdash;flat and uncultivated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who's there?&rdquo; The major cleared his
+throat. &ldquo;Is it a woman&mdash;or a man?&rdquo; demanded
+the unseen speaker without waiting
+for an answer to the first question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a gentleman,&rdquo; began the major&mdash;&ldquo;a
+gentleman who&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on in!&rdquo; she bade him&mdash;&ldquo;the door
+ain't latched.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And at that the major turned the knob and
+looked into a room that was practically a counterpart
+of his own, except that, instead of a
+trunk, a cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood
+upright on the floor, its sides bulging and
+strained from over-packing. Upon the bed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+fully dressed, was stretched a woman&mdash;or,
+rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from
+the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed
+and widely distended, stared full into his.</p>
+
+<p>What she saw, as she sat up, was a short,
+elderly man with a solicitous, gentle face; the
+coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists
+and his linen shirt jutted out between the
+unfastened upper buttons and buttonholes of
+his waistcoat. What the major saw was a
+girl of perhaps twenty or maybe twenty-two&mdash;in
+her present state it was hard to guess&mdash;with
+hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy
+hair falling in a streaky disarray down over
+her face like unraveled hemp.</p>
+
+<p>It was her face that told her story. Upon
+the drawn cheeks and the drooped, woful lips
+there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the
+professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying,
+was lacking from the characterless mouth,
+yet the major&mdash;sweet-minded, clean-living old
+man though he was&mdash;knew at a glance what
+manner of woman he had found here in this
+lodging house. It was the face of a woman
+who never intentionally does any evil and yet
+rarely gets a chance to do any good&mdash;a weak,
+indecisive, commonplace face; and every line
+in it was a line of least resistance.</p>
+
+<p>That then was what these two saw in each
+other as they stared a moment across the
+intervening space. It was the girl who took
+the initiative.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>&ldquo;Are you one of the police?&rdquo; Then instantly
+on the heels of the query: &ldquo;No; I
+know better'n that&mdash;you ain't no police!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky
+from much weeping. Magically, though, she
+had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard
+gulp that clicked down in her throat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, ma'am,&rdquo; said Major Stone, with a
+grave and respectful courtesy, &ldquo;I am not
+connected with the police department. I am
+a professional man&mdash;associated at this time
+with the practice of journalism. I have the
+apartment or chamber adjoining yours and,
+accidentally overhearing a member of the opposite
+sex in seeming distress, I took it upon
+myself to offer any assistance that might lie
+within my power. If I am intruding I will
+withdraw.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;it ain't no intrusion. I
+wisht, please, sir, you'd come in jest a minute
+anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to
+somebody a minute. I'm sorry, though, if
+I disturbed you by my cryin'&mdash;but I jest
+couldn't help it. Last night and the night
+before&mdash;that was the first night I come here&mdash;I
+cried all night purty near; but I kept my
+head in the bedclothes. But tonight, after it
+got dark up here and me layin' here all alone, I
+felt 's if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest,
+I like to died! Right this minute I'm almost
+plum' distracted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The major advanced a step.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>&ldquo;I assure you I deeply regret to learn of
+your unhappiness,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;If you desire
+it I will be only too glad to summon our
+worthy landlady, Miss&mdash;Miss&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; he paused.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Miss La Mode,&rdquo; she said, divining&mdash;&ldquo;Blanche
+La Mode&mdash;that's my name. I
+come from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please,
+mister, don't call that there woman. I don't
+want to see her. For a while I didn't think
+I wanted to see nobody, and yit I've known all
+along, from the very first, that sooner or later
+I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody.
+I knew I'd jest have to!&rdquo; she repeated with a
+kind of weak intensity. &ldquo;And it might jest
+as well be you as anybody, I guess.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling
+her feet, and subconsciously the major took
+in fuller details of her attire&mdash;the cheap white
+slippers with rickety, worn-down high heels;
+the sleazy stockings; the over-decorated skirt
+of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled
+waist of coarse lace, gaping away from the
+scrawny neck, where the fastenings had pulled
+awry. Looped about her throat and dangling
+down on her flat breast, where they heaved up
+and down with her breathing, was a double
+string of pearls that would have been worth
+ten thousand dollars had they been genuine
+pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and
+thin held a small, moist wad of handkerchief.
+About her there was something unmistakably
+bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>
+flesh and soul. Major Stone bowed with the
+ceremonious detail that was a part of him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My name, ma'am, is Stone&mdash;Major Putnam
+Stone, at your service,&rdquo; he told her.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; she said, seeming not to catch
+either his name or his title. &ldquo;Well, mister,
+I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe
+surprise you. I ain't goin' to ast you not to
+tell anybody, 'cause I guess you will anyhow,
+sooner or later; and it don't make much difference
+if you do. But seems's if I can't hold
+in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feel easier in
+my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that
+door&mdash;jest close it&mdash;the lock is broke&mdash;and
+set down in that chair, please, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The major closed the latchless door and
+took the one tottery chair. The girl remained
+where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered
+feet dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot
+where there was a three-cornered break in the
+dirty-gray plastering.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the
+lawyer, don't you?&mdash;about him bein' found
+shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth
+of that alley?&rdquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, ma'am,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Though I was
+not personally acquainted with the man himself,
+I am familiar with the circumstances you
+mention.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she said, with a sort of jerk behind
+each word, &ldquo;it was me that done it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; he said, half doubting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+whether he had heard aright, &ldquo;but what
+was it you said you did?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Shot him!&rdquo; she answered&mdash;&ldquo;I was the
+one that shot him&mdash;with this thing here.&rdquo;
+She reached one hand under the pillow and
+drew out a short-barreled, stubby revolver
+and extended it to him. Mechanically he
+took it, and thereafter for a space he held it
+in his hands. The girl went straight on, pouring
+out her sentences with a driven, desperate
+eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn't mean to do it, though&mdash;God
+knows I didn't mean to do it! He treated me
+mighty sorry&mdash;it was lowdown and mean all
+the way through, the way he done me&mdash;but I
+didn't mean him no real harm. I was only
+aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing
+by me. It was accidental-like&mdash;it really was,
+mister! In all my life I ain't never intentionally
+done nobody any harm. And yit it seems
+like somebody's forever and a day imposin'
+on me!&rdquo; She quavered with the puny passion
+of her protest against the world that had
+bruised and beaten her as with rods.</p>
+
+<p>Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze,
+making little clucking sounds in his throat.
+For once in his conversational life he couldn't
+think of the right words to say. He fumbled
+the short pistol in his hands.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/illo_facing_p164.jpg" width="372" height="500" alt="illo_facing_p164" title="I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM" />
+<span class="caption">
+&ldquo;I was the one that shot him&mdash;with this thing here.&rdquo;&mdash;Page 164</span>
+<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">To List</a></span></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+&ldquo;I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest
+like it was,&rdquo; she went on in her flat drone; and
+the words she spoke seemed to come to him
+from a long way off. &ldquo;That there Rodney
+Bullard he tricked me somethin' shameful.
+He come to the town where I was livin' to make
+a speech in a political race, and we got acquainted
+and he made up to me. I was workin'
+in a hotel there&mdash;one of the dinin' room help.
+That was two years ago this comin' September.
+Well, the next day, when he left, he got
+me to come 'long with him. He said he'd
+look after me. I liked him some then and he
+talked mighty big about what he was goin'
+to do for me; so I come with him. He told
+me that I could be his&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;His amanuensis, perhaps,&rdquo; suggested the
+old man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;No; it wasn't that
+way&mdash;he didn't say nothin' about marryin' me
+and I didn't expect him to. He told me that
+I should be his girl&mdash;that was all; but he didn't
+keep his word&mdash;no, sir; right from the very
+first he broke his word to me! It wasn't
+more'n a month after I got here before he quit
+comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I
+stayed a spell longer at the house where I was
+livin' and then I went to another house&mdash;Vic
+Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The major half nodded, half shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;By reputation only I know the person in
+question,&rdquo; he answered a bit stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;there ain't so much
+more to tell. I've been sick lately&mdash;I had a
+right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+back yit. I was laid up three weeks, and last
+Monday, when I was up and jest barely able
+to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me
+and told me that I'd have to git out unless
+I could git somebody to stand good for my
+board. I owed her for three weeks already
+and I didn't have but nine dollars to my name.
+I offered her that, but she said she wanted it
+all or nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet
+of me anyway. Mister, I was mighty weak
+and discouraged&mdash;I was so! I didn't know
+what to do.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on
+more than a year, but he was the only one I
+could think of; so I slipped out of the house
+and went acrost the street to a grocery store
+where there was a pay station, and I called
+him up on the telephone and ast him to help
+me out a little. It wasn't no more than right
+that he should, was it, seein' as he was responsible
+for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't
+been for him in the first place I wouldn't never
+'a' got into all that trouble. I talked with
+him over the telephone at his office and he said
+he'd do somethin' for me. He said he'd send
+me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring
+it round himself. But he didn't do neither
+one. And Vic Magner, she kept on doggin'
+after me for her board money.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I telephoned him again the next mornin';
+but before I could say more'n two words to
+him he got mad and told me to quit botherin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+him, and he rung off. That was day before
+yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic
+Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her
+no satisfaction. So about six o'clock in the
+evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I
+didn't have nowheres to go and only eight
+dollars and ninety cents left&mdash;I'd spent a
+dime telephoning so, before I got out I took
+and wrote Rod Bullard a note, and when I got
+outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents
+to take it to him. I told him in the note I
+was out in the street, without nowheres to
+go, and that if he didn't meet me that night
+and do somethin' for me I'd jest have to come
+to his office. I said for him to meet me at
+eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street
+Alley. That give me two hours to wait. I
+walked round and round, packin' my baggage.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a
+lot of pistols in the window, and I went in and
+I bought one for two dollars and a half. The
+pawnstore man he throwed in the shells. But
+I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard&mdash;jest
+to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin'
+myself too. Then I walked round some more
+till I was plum' wore out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When eight o'clock come I was waitin'
+where I said, and purty soon he come along. As
+soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder
+he bulged up to me. He was mighty mad.
+He called me out of my name and said I didn't
+have no claims on him&mdash;a whole lot more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+like that&mdash;and said he didn't purpose to be
+bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him
+notes and callin' on him for money. I said
+somethin' back, and then he made like he
+was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had
+that pistol in my hand all the time, holdin' it
+behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I pointed
+it like I was goin' to shoot&mdash;jest to skeer him,
+though, and make him do the right thing by
+me. I jest simply pointed it at him&mdash;that's
+all. I didn't have no idea it would go off
+without you pulled the hammer back first!</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then it happened! It went off right in
+my hand. And he said to me: 'Now you've
+done it!'&mdash;jest like that. He walked away
+from me about ten feet, and started to lean
+up against a tree, and then he fell down right
+smack on his face. And I grabbed up my
+baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry about
+him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute
+since&mdash;ain't that funny? But I was awful
+skeered!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Rocking her body back and forth from the
+hips, she put her hands up to her face. Major
+Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting
+eddy of confused thoughts. Perhaps it was
+the clearest possible betrayal of his utter unfitness
+for his new vocation in life that not until
+that very moment when the girl had halted her
+narrative did it come to him&mdash;and it came
+then with a sudden jolt&mdash;that here he had
+one of those monumental news stories for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be
+willing to barter his right arm and throw in an
+eye for good measure. It was a scoop, as
+those young fellows had called it&mdash;an exclusive
+confession of a big crime&mdash;a thing that
+would mean much to any paper and to any
+reporter who brought it to his paper. It
+would transform a failure into a conspicuous
+success. It would put more money into a pay
+envelope. And he had it all! Sheer luck had
+brought it to him and flung it into his lap.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was he under any actual pledge of
+secrecy. This girl had told it to him freely,
+of her own volition. It was not in the nature
+of her to keep her secret. She had told it to
+him, a stranger; she would tell it to other
+strangers&mdash;or else somebody would betray
+her. And surely this sickly, slack-twisted
+little wanton would be better off inside the
+strong arm of the law than outside it? No
+jury of Southern men would convict her of
+murder&mdash;the thought was incredible. She
+would be kindly dealt with. In one illuminating
+flash the major divined that these would
+have been the inevitable conclusions of any
+one of those ambitious young men at the
+office. He bent forward.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did you do then, ma'am?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I didn't know what to do,&rdquo; she said, dropping
+her hands into her lap. &ldquo;I run till I
+couldn't run no more, and then I walked and
+walked and walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+ten miles. And then, when I was jest about to
+drop, I come past this house. There was a
+light burnin' on the porch and I could make
+out to read the sign on the door, and it said
+Lodgers Taken.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I walked in and rung the bell, and when
+the woman came I said I'd jest got here from
+the country and wanted a room. She charged
+me two dollars a week, in advance; and I
+paid her two dollars down&mdash;and she showed
+me the way up here.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I've been here ever since, except twice
+when I slipped out to buy me somethin' to eat
+at a grocery store and to git some newspapers.
+At first I figgered the police would be a-comin'
+after me; but they didn't&mdash;there wasn't
+nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And
+I was skeered Vic Magner might tell on me;
+but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of
+gittin' in trouble herself&mdash;that Captain Brennan,
+of the Second Precinct, he's been threatenin'
+to run her out of town the first good
+chance he got. And there wasn't none of the
+other girls there that knowed I ever knew Rod
+Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested
+yit.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin'
+to do but think and cry, I made up my mind
+I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that
+there pistol out and I put it up to my head
+and I said to myself that all I had to do was
+jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+hurt me but a secont&mdash;and maybe not that
+long. But I couldn't do it, mister&mdash;I jest
+couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted
+to die, and yit I wanted to live too. All my
+life I've been jest that way&mdash;first thinkin'
+about doin' one thing and then another, and
+hardly ever doin' either one of 'em.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin'
+if I could jest tell somebody about it that maybe
+after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And
+right that very minute you come and knocked
+on the door, and I knowed it was a sign&mdash;I
+knowed you was the one for me to tell it to.
+And so I've done it, and already I think I
+feel a little bit easier in my mind. And so
+that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd
+take that pistol away with you when you go&mdash;I
+don't never want to see it again as long
+as I live.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon
+the bed. The major's short arm made a gesture
+toward the cheap suitcase.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I observe,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that your portmanteau
+is packed as if for a journey. Were you
+thinking of leaving, may I ask?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My which?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Oh, you mean
+my baggage! Yes; I ain't never unpacked it
+since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to
+my home&mdash;I got a stepsister livin' there and she
+might take me in&mdash;only after payin' for this
+room I ain't got quite enough money to take
+me there; and now I don't know as I want to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+go, either. If I kin git my strength back I
+might stay on here&mdash;I kind of like city life.
+Or I might go up to Cincinnati. A girl that
+I used to know here is livin' there now and
+she wrote to me a couple of times, and I know
+her address&mdash;it was backed on the envelope.
+Still, I ain't sure&mdash;my plans ain't all made
+yit. Sometimes I think I'll give myself up,
+but most generally I think I won't. I've got
+to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or
+another, because I ain't got but a little over
+three dollars left out of what I had.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She sank her head in the pillow wearily,
+with her face turned away from him. The
+major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he
+slipped the revolver that had snuffed out the
+late and unsavory Rodney Bullard's light of
+life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly
+drew forth his supply of ready money. He
+had three silver dollars, one quarter, one dime,
+and a nickel&mdash;three-forty in all. Contemplating
+the disks of metal in the palm of his
+hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic.
+This was Thursday night now. Saturday
+afternoon at two he would draw a pay
+envelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime
+he must eat. Well, if he stinted himself
+closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge
+the gap until Saturday. The major had
+learned a good deal about the noble art of
+stinting these last few weeks.</p>
+
+<p>On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+piled two of the silver dollars and the forty
+cents in change. Then, after a momentary
+hesitation, he put down the third silver dollar,
+gathered up the forty cents, slid it gently
+into his pocket and started for the door, the
+loose planks creaking under his tread. At the
+threshold he halted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good night, Miss La Mode,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+trust your night's repose may be restful and
+refreshing to you, ma'am.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her face from the pillow and
+spoke, without turning to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mister,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I've told you the whole
+truth about that thing and I ain't goin' to lie
+to you about anythin' else. I didn't come
+from Indianapolis, Indiana, like I told you.
+My home is in Swainboro', this state&mdash;a
+little town. You might know where it is?
+And my real name ain't La Mode, neither.
+I taken it out of a book&mdash;the La Mode part&mdash;and
+I always did think Blanche was an awful
+sweet name for a girl. But my real name is
+Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm
+much obliged to you fer listenin', and I ain't
+goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin'
+if I kin help it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As the major gently closed her door behind
+him he heard her give a long, sleepy sigh, like
+a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced
+about him, meanwhile feeling himself over for
+writing material. He found in his pockets a
+pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+knew he needed a big sheaf of copy paper for
+the story he had to write. Anyway, there was
+no place here to do an extended piece of writing&mdash;no
+desk and no comfortable chair. The
+office would be a much better place.</p>
+
+<p>The office was only a matter of two or three
+blocks away. The negro watchman would be
+there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the
+corner of his washstand for a desk, the major
+set down his notes&mdash;names, places, details,
+dates&mdash;upon the backs of his two letters.
+This done, he settled his ancient hat on his
+head, picked up his cane, and in another minute
+was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the
+front doorway. Once outside, his tread took
+on the brisk emphasis of one set upon an
+important task and in a hurry to do it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his
+desk in the empty city room of the Evening
+Press. Except for Henry, the old black night
+watchman, there was no other person in the
+building anywhere. Just over his head an
+incandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong
+relief the major's intent old face, mullioned
+with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newly
+sharpened, was in his fingers; under his right
+hand was a block of clean copy paper. His
+notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed
+pistol serving as a paper weight to hold the
+two wrinkled envelopes flat. Through the loop
+of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+alias Blanche La Mode, showed. Everything
+was ready.</p>
+
+<p>The major hesitated, though. He readjusted
+his paper and fidgeted his pencil. He
+scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft
+of goatee under his lower lip. Like many
+a more experienced author, Major Stone was
+having trouble getting under way. He had his
+own ideas about a fitting introductory paragraph.
+Coming along, he had thought up a
+full sonorous one, with a biblical injunction
+touching on the wages of sin embodied in it;
+but, on the other hand, there was to be borne
+in mind the daily-dinned injunction of Devore
+that every important news item should begin
+with a sentence in which the whole story was
+summed up. Finally Major Stone made a beginning.
+He covered nearly a sheet of paper.</p>
+
+<p>Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with
+it, he tore up what he had written and started
+all over again, only to repeat the same operation.
+Two salty drops rolled down his face
+and fell upon the paper, and instantly little
+twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared
+on its clear surface. They were not tears,
+though&mdash;they were drops of sweat wrung
+from the major's brow by the pains of creation.
+Again he poised his pencil and again he halted
+it in the air&mdash;he needed inspiration. His gaze
+rested absently upon the pistol; absently he
+picked it up and began examining it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+poorly made, but no doubt deadly enough at
+close range. He unbreeched it and spun the
+cylinder with his thumb and spilled the contents
+into his palm&mdash;four loaded shells, suety
+and slick with grease, and one that had been
+recently fired; and it was discolored and
+flattened a trifle. Each of the four loaded
+shells had a small cap like a little round staring
+eye set in the exact center of its flanged
+butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell was
+punched in. He turned the empty weapon in
+his hands, steadying its mechanism, and as
+he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and
+dead, came to him out of the fouled muzzle.
+He wrinkled his nose and sniffed at it.</p>
+
+<p>It had been many a long day since the major
+had had that smell in his nostrils&mdash;many a
+long, long day. But there had been a time
+when it was familiar enough to him. Even
+now it brought the clamoring memories of that
+far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid.
+It stimulated his imagination, quickening his
+mind with big thoughts. It recalled those
+four years when he had fought for a principle,
+and had kept on fighting even when the substance
+of the thing he fought for was gone
+and there remained but the empty husks. It
+recalled those last few hopeless months when
+the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost
+cause; when the forty cents he now carried in
+his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when
+the sorry house where he lodged now would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+have seemed a palace; when, without prospect
+or hope of reward or victory, he had piled
+risk upon risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice,
+and through it all had borne it all without
+whimper or complaint&mdash;fighting the good
+fight like a soldier, keeping the faith like a
+gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!</p>
+
+<p>The major had his inspiration now, right
+enough. He knew just what he would write;
+knew just how he would write it. He laid
+down the pistol and the shells and squared off
+and straightway began writing. For two hours
+nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing
+or erasing a word, stopping only to repoint
+the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a machine
+he covered sheet after sheet with his fine
+old-fashioned script. Never for one instant
+did he hesitate or falter.</p>
+
+<p>Just before one o'clock he finished. The
+completed manuscript, each page of the twenty-odd
+pages properly numbered, lay in a neat
+pile before him. He scooped up the pistol
+shells and stored them in an inner breast
+pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer,
+slipped the emptied revolver well back under
+a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the
+drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into
+squares, and those squares into smaller squares&mdash;and
+so on until the fragments would tear
+no finer, but fluttered out between his fingers
+in a small white shower like stage snow.</p>
+
+<p>He shoved his completed narrative back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+under the roll-top of Devore's desk, where the
+city editor would see it the very first thing
+when he came to work; and as he straightened
+up with a little grunt of satisfaction and
+stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen
+shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the
+plaited front, from collarband almost to waistline.</p>
+
+<p>He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful
+stare, plucking at the gaping tear with his
+graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head
+mournfully. Yet as he stepped out into the
+street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred his
+heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk,
+snapping gait of a man who has tackled a hard
+job and has done it well, and is satisfied with
+the way he has done it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Under a large black head the major's story
+was printed in the Fourth of July edition of
+the Evening Press. It ran full two columns
+and lapped over into a third column. It was
+an exhaustive&mdash;and exhausting&mdash;account of
+the Fall of Vicksburg.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>VI</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">THE EXIT OF ANSE<br />
+DUGMORE</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">W</span>hen a Kentucky mountaineer goes
+to the penitentiary the chances are
+that he gets sore eyes from the
+white walls that enclose him, or
+quick consumption from the thick air that he
+breathes. It was entirely in accordance with
+the run of his luck that Anse Dugmore should
+get them both, the sore eyes first and then the
+consumption.</p>
+
+<p>There is seldom anything that is picturesque
+about the man-killer of the mountain country.
+He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect
+and the delightfully studied vernacular with
+which an inspired school of fiction has invested
+our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle
+of belted accouterment goes with him, no gift
+of deadly humor adorns his equally deadly
+gun-play. He does his killing in an unemotional,
+unattractive kind of way, with absolutely no
+regard for costume or setting. Rarely is he a
+fine figure of a man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>Take Anse Dugmore now. He had a short-waisted,
+thin body and abnormally long, thin
+legs, like the shadow a man casts at sunup.
+He didn't have that steel-gray eye of which
+we so often read. His eyes weren't of any
+particular color, and he had a straggly mustache
+of sandy red and no chin worth mentioning;
+but he could shoot off a squirrel's
+head, or a man's, at the distance of a considerable
+number of yards.</p>
+
+<p>Until he was past thirty he played merely
+an incidental part in the tribal war that had
+raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and
+its principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost,
+since long before the Big War. He was getting
+out timber to be floated down the river on the
+spring rise when word came to him of an
+ambuscade that made him the head of his
+immediate clan and the upholder of his family's
+honor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yore paw an' yore two brothers was laywaid
+this mawnin' comin' 'long Yaller Banks
+togither,&rdquo; was the message brought by a breathless
+bearer of news. &ldquo;The wimmenfolks air
+totin' 'em home now. Talt, he ain't dead yit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>From a dry spot behind a log Anse lifted his
+rifle and started over the ridge with the long,
+shambling gait of the born hill-climber that
+eats up the miles. For this emergency he had
+been schooled years back when he sat by a wood
+fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to
+his crippled-up father reciting the saga of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+feud, with the tally of this one killed and that
+one maimed; for this he had been schooled
+when he practised with rifle and revolver
+until, even as a boy, his aim had become as
+near an infallible thing as anything human
+gets to be; for this he had been schooled still
+more when he rode, armed and watchful, to
+church or court or election. Its coming found
+him ready.</p>
+
+<p>Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his
+chance. The Tranthams were hard to find.
+They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds,
+well guarded in anticipation of expected
+reprisals, and prepared in due season to come
+forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two
+dozen if so many should be needed to establish
+the alibi, that they had no hand in the massacre
+of the Dugmores.</p>
+
+<p>But two days and nights of still-hunting,
+of patiently lying in wait behind brush fences,
+of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likely
+places, brought the survivor of the decimated
+Dugmores his chance. He caught Pegleg Trantham
+riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule.
+Pegleg was only a distant connection of
+the main strain of the enemy. It was probable
+that he had no part in the latest murdering;
+perhaps doubtful that he had any prior knowledge
+of the plot. But by his name and his
+blood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough.</p>
+
+<p>A writer of the Western school would have
+found little in this encounter that was really<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+worth while to write about. Above the place
+of the meeting rose the flank of the mountain,
+scarred with washes and scantily clothed with
+stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed
+through like the hide of a mangy hound. The
+creek was swollen by the April rains and ran
+bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg
+came cantering along with his rifle balanced
+on the sliding withers of his mare-mule, for he
+rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man
+and fat for a mountaineer. A ten-year-old
+nephew rode behind him, with his short arms
+encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man
+wore a dirty white shirt with a tabbed bosom;
+a single shiny white china button held the neckband
+together at the back. Below the button
+the shirt billowed open, showing his naked back.
+His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side,
+its worn brass tip carrying a blob of red mud,
+and his good leg dangled down straight, with
+the trousers hitched half-way up the bare
+shank and a soiled white-yarn sock falling down
+into the wrinkled and gaping top of an ancient
+congress gaiter.</p>
+
+<p>From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore,
+bareheaded, crusted to his knees with dried
+mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping
+down since daybreak. A purpose showed
+in all the lines of his slouchy frame.</p>
+
+<p>Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered
+by the boy's arms about his middle and
+by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+slab-sided mule. The man afoot fired before
+the mounted enemy could swing his gunbarrel
+into line. The bullet ripped away the lower
+part of Pegleg's face and grazed the cheek of
+the crouching youngster behind him. The
+white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping
+mule and instantly scuttled on all
+fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped
+out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward
+on the mule's neck, grabbing out with
+blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped
+two paces forward to free his eyes of the smoke,
+which eddied back from his gunmuzzle into
+his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule
+was bouncing up and down, sideways, in a mild
+panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inert as a sack
+of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with
+his arms wide outspread on the mud. The
+mule galloped off in a restrained and dignified
+style until she was a hundred yards away,
+and then, having snorted the smells of burnt
+powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils,
+she fell to cropping the young leaves off the
+wayside bushes, mouthing the tender green
+shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in
+the narrow footpath, listening. Then he slid
+three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down
+the bank he crossed the creek on a jam of
+driftwood and, avoiding the roads that followed
+the little watercourse, made over the shoulder
+of the mountain for his cabin, two miles down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+on the opposite side. When he was gone
+from sight the nephew of the dead Trantham
+rolled out of his hiding place and fled up the
+road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek
+and whimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild
+boar pig, with his spine arched like the mountains,
+came sniffing slowly down the hill,
+pausing frequently to cock his wedge-shaped
+head aloft and fix a hostile eye on two turkey
+buzzards that began to swing in narrowing
+circles over one particular spot on the bank
+of the creek.</p>
+
+<p>The following day Anse sent word to the
+sheriff that he would be coming in to give
+himself up. It would not have been etiquette
+for the sheriff to come for him. He came
+in, well guarded on the way by certain of his
+clan, pleaded self-defense before a friendly
+county judge and was locked up in a one-cell
+log jail. His own cousin was the jailer and
+ministered to him kindly. He avoided passing
+the single barred window of the jail in the daytime
+or at night when there was a light behind
+him, and he expected to &ldquo;come clear&rdquo; shortly,
+as was customary.</p>
+
+<p>But the Tranthams broke the rules of the
+game. The circuit judge lived half-way across
+the mountains in a county on the Virginia line;
+he was not an active partizan of either side in
+the feud. These Tranthams, disregarding all
+the ethics, went before this circuit judge and
+asked him for a change of venue, and got it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+which was more; so that instead of being tried
+in Clayton County&mdash;and promptly acquitted&mdash;Anse
+Dugmore was taken to Woodbine
+County and there lodged in a shiny new brick
+jail. Things were in process of change in
+Woodbine. A spur of the railroad had nosed
+its way up from the lowlands and on through
+the Gap, and had made Loudon, the county-seat,
+a division terminal. Strangers from the
+North had come in, opening up the mountains
+to mines and sawmills and bringing with them
+many swarthy foreign laborers. A young
+man of large hopes and an Eastern college
+education had started a weekly newspaper and
+was talking big, in his editorial columns, of
+a new order of things. The foundation had
+even been laid for a graded school. Plainly
+Woodbine County was falling out of touch
+with the century-old traditions of her sisters
+to the north and west of her.</p>
+
+<p>In due season, then, Anse Dugmore was
+brought up on a charge of homicide. The
+trial lasted less than a day. A jury of strangers
+heard the stories of Anse himself and of the
+dead Pegleg's white-eyed nephew. In the
+early afternoon they came back, a wooden
+toothpick in each mouth, from the new hotel
+where they had just had a most satisfying
+fifty-cent dinner at the expense of the commonwealth,
+and sentenced the defendant, Anderson
+Dugmore, to state prison at hard labor for the
+balance of his natural life.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>The sheriff of Woodbine padlocked on Anse's
+ankles a set of leg irons that had been made by
+a mountain blacksmith out of log chains and
+led him to the new depot. It was Anse Dugmore's
+first ride on a railroad train; also it
+was the first ride on any train for Wyatt Trantham,
+head of the other clan, who, having been
+elected to the legislature while Anse lay in
+jail, had come over from Clayton, bound for
+the state capital, to draw his mileage and be
+a statesman.</p>
+
+<p>It was not in the breed for the victorious
+Trantham to taunt his hobbled enemy or even
+to look his way, but he sat just across the
+aisle from the prisoner so that his ear might
+catch the jangle of the heavy irons when Dugmore
+moved in his seat. They all left the train
+together at the little blue-painted Frankfort
+station, Trantham turning off at the first
+crossroads to go where the round dome of the
+old capitol showed above the water-maple
+trees, and Dugmore clanking straight ahead,
+with a string of negroes and boys and the
+sheriff following along behind him. Under the
+shadow of a quarried-out hillside a gate opened
+in a high stone wall to admit him into life
+membership with a white-and-black-striped
+brotherhood of shame.</p>
+
+<p>Four years there did the work for the gangling,
+silent mountaineer. One day, just before
+the Christmas holidays, the new governor of
+the state paid a visit to the prison. Only his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+private secretary came with him. The warden
+showed them through the cell houses, the
+workshops, the dining hall and the walled
+yards. It was a Sunday afternoon; the white
+prisoners loafed in their stockade, the blacks
+in theirs. In a corner on the white side, where
+the thin and skimpy winter sunshine slanted
+over the stockade wall, Anse Dugmore was
+squatted; merely a rack of bones enclosed in
+a shapeless covering of black-and-white stripes.
+On his close-cropped head and over his cheekbones
+the skin was stretched so tight it seemed
+nearly ready to split. His eyes, glassy and
+bleared with pain, stared ahead of him with
+a sick man's fixed stare. Inside his convict's
+cotton shirt his chest was caved away almost
+to nothing, and from the collarless neckband
+his neck rose as bony as a plucked fowl's, with
+great, blue cords in it. Lacking a coverlet to
+pick, his fingers picked at the skin on his
+retreating chin.</p>
+
+<p>As the governor stood in an arched doorway
+watching, the lengthening afternoon shadow
+edged along and covered the hunkered-down
+figure by the wall. Anse tottered to his feet,
+moved a few inches so that he might still be
+in the sunshine, and settled down again. This
+small exertion started a cough that threatened
+to tear him apart. He drew his hand across
+his mouth and a red stain came away on the
+knotty knuckles. The warden was a kindly
+enough man in the ordinary relations of life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+but nine years as a tamer of man-beasts in a
+great stone cage had overlaid his sympathies
+with a thickening callus.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One of our lifers that we won't have with
+us much longer,&rdquo; he said casually, noting that
+the governor's eyes followed the sick convict.
+&ldquo;When the con gets one of these hill billies
+he goes mighty fast.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A mountaineer, then?&rdquo; said the governor.
+&ldquo;What's his name?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dugmore,&rdquo; answered the warden; &ldquo;sent
+from Clayton County. One of those Clayton
+County feud fighters.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The governor nodded understandingly.
+&ldquo;What sort of a record has he made here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, fair enough!&rdquo; said the warden. &ldquo;Those
+man-killers from the mountains generally make
+good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow,
+though. All the time he's been here he never,
+so far as I know, had a message or a visitor
+or a line of writing from the outside. Nor
+wrote a letter out himself. Nor made friends
+with anybody, convict or guard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Has he applied for a pardon?&rdquo; asked the
+governor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lord, no!&rdquo; said the warden. &ldquo;When he
+was well he just took what was coming to him,
+the same as he's taking it now. I can look up
+his record, though, if you'd care to see it, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I believe I should,&rdquo; said the governor
+quietly.</p>
+
+<p>A spectacled young wife-murderer, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+worked in the prison office on the prison books,
+got down a book and looked through it until
+he came to a certain entry on a certain page.
+The warden was right&mdash;so far as the black
+marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless
+convict's record showed fair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said the young governor to the
+warden and his secretary when they had moved
+out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper&mdash;&ldquo;I
+think I'll give that poor devil a pardon for
+a Christmas gift. It's no more than a mercy
+to let him die at home, if he has any home to
+go to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I could have him brought in and let you
+tell him yourself, sir,&rdquo; volunteered the warden.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said the governor quickly. &ldquo;I
+don't want to hear that cough again. Nor
+look on such a wreck,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>Two days before Christmas the warden sent
+to the hospital ward for No. 874. No. 874,
+that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in
+and kept himself upright by holding with one
+hand to the door jamb. The warden sat
+rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding
+in his hands a folded-up, blue-backed
+document.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dugmore,&rdquo; he said in his best official
+manner, &ldquo;when His Excellency, Governor
+Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice
+that your general health was not good. So, of his
+own accord, he has sent you an unconditional
+pardon for a Christmas gift, and here it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>The sick convict's eyes, between their festering
+lids, fixed on the warden's face and a sudden
+light flickered in their pale, glazed shallows;
+but he didn't speak. There was a little pause.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said the governor has given you a pardon,&rdquo;
+repeated the warden, staring hard at him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I heered you the fust time,&rdquo; croaked the
+prisoner in his eaten-out voice. &ldquo;When kin
+I go?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that all you've got to say?&rdquo; demanded
+the warden, bristling up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said, when kin I go?&rdquo; repeated No. 874.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go!&mdash;you can go now. You can't go too
+soon to suit me!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The warden swung his chair around and
+showed him the broad of his indignant back.
+When he had filled out certain forms at his
+desk he shoved a pen into the silent consumptive's
+fingers and showed him crossly where to
+make his mark. At a signal from his bent
+forefinger a negro trusty came forward and took
+the pardoned man away and helped him put
+his shrunken limbs into a suit of the prison-made
+slops, of cheap, black shoddy, with the
+taint of a jail thick and heavy on it. A deputy
+warden thrust into Dugmore's hands a railroad
+ticket and the five dollars that the law requires
+shall be given to a freed felon. He took them
+without a word and, still without a word,
+stepped out of the gate that swung open for
+him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With
+the inbred instinct of the hillsman he swung<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+about and headed for the little, light-blue
+station at the head of the crooked street. He
+went slowly, coughing often as the cold air
+struck into his wasted lungs, and sometimes
+staggering up against the fences. Through a
+barred window the wondering warden sourly
+watched the crawling, tottery figure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Damned savage!&rdquo; he said to himself.
+&ldquo;Didn't even say thank you. I'll bet he never
+had any more feelings or sentiments in his life
+than a moccasin snake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Something to the same general effect was
+expressed a few minutes later by a brakeman
+who had just helped a wofully feeble passenger
+aboard the eastbound train and had steered
+him, staggering and gasping from weakness,
+to a seat at the forward end of an odorous red-plush
+day coach.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just a bundle of bones held together by a
+skin,&rdquo; the brakeman was saying to the conductor,
+&ldquo;and the smell of the pen all over him.
+Never said a word to me&mdash;just looked at me
+sort of dumb. Bound for plumb up at the far
+end of the division, accordin' to the way his
+ticket reads. I doubt if he lives to get there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The warden and the brakeman both were
+wrong. The freed man did live to get there.
+And it was an emotion which the warden had
+never suspected that held life in him all that
+afternoon and through the comfortless night in
+the packed and noisome day coach, while the
+fussy, self-sufficient little train went looping,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+like an overgrown measuring worm, up through
+the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the
+foothills, on and on through the great riven
+chasm of the gateway into a bleak, bare clutch
+of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had
+two bad hemorrhages on the way, but he lived.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Under the full moon of a white and flawless
+night before Christmas, Shem Dugmore's
+squatty log cabin made a blot on the thin
+blanket of snow, and inside the one room of
+the cabin Shem Dugmore sat alone by the
+daubed-clay hearth, glooming. Hours passed
+and he hardly moved except to stir the red
+coals or kick back some ambitious ember of
+hickory that leaped out upon the uneven
+floor. Suddenly something heavy fell limply
+against the locked door, and instantly, all
+alertness, the shock-headed mountaineer was
+backed up against the farther wall, out of
+range of the two windows, with his weapons
+drawn, silent, ready for what might come.
+After a minute there was a feeble, faint pecking
+sound&mdash;half knock, half scratch&mdash;at the
+lower part of the door. It might have been
+a wornout dog or any spent wild creature, but
+no line of Shem Dugmore's figure relaxed, and
+under his thick, sandy brows his eyes, in the
+flickering light, had the greenish shine of an
+angry cat-animal's.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whut is it?&rdquo; he called. &ldquo;And whut do
+you want? Speak out peartly!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 379px;">
+<img src="images/illo_facing_p192.jpg" width="379" height="500" alt="illo_facing_p192" title="HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL" />
+<span class="caption">He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so that its butt made a
+crooked furrow in the snow.&mdash;Page 197.</span><br />
+<span class="totoi"><a href="#toi">To List</a></span></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+The answer came through the thick planking
+thinly, in a sort of gasping whine that
+ended in a chattering cough; but even after
+Shem's ear caught the words, and even after
+he recognized the changed but still familiar
+cadence of the voice, he abated none of his
+caution. Carefully he unbolted the door,
+and, drawing it inch by inch slowly ajar, he
+reached out, exposing only his hand and arm,
+and drew bodily inside the shell of a man that
+was fallen, huddled up, against the log door
+jamb. He dropped the wooden crossbar back
+into its sockets before he looked a second time
+at the intruder, who had crawled across the
+floor and now lay before the wide mouth of
+the hearth in a choking spell. Shem Dugmore
+made no move until the fit was over and the
+sufferer lay quiet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How did you git out, Anse?&rdquo; were the first
+words he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>The consumptive rolled his head weakly from
+side to side and swallowed desperately. &ldquo;Pardoned
+out&mdash;in writin'&mdash;yistiddy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You air in purty bad shape,&rdquo; said Shem.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo;&mdash;the words came very slowly&mdash;&ldquo;my
+lungs give out on me&mdash;and my eyes.
+But&mdash;but I got here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You come jist in time,&rdquo; said his cousin;
+&ldquo;this time tomorrer and you wouldn't a' never
+found me here. I'd 'a' been gone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gone!&mdash;gone whar?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Shem slowly, &ldquo;after you was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+sent away it seemed like them Tranthams
+got the upper hand complete. All of our side
+whut ain't dead&mdash;and that's powerful few&mdash;is
+moved off out of the mountings to Winchester,
+down in the settlemints. I'm 'bout the
+last, and I'm a-purposin' to slip out tomorrer
+night while the Tranthams is at their Christmas
+rackets&mdash;they'd layway me too ef&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But my wife&mdash;did she&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought maybe you'd heered tell about
+that whilst you was down yon,&rdquo; said Shem
+in a dulled wonder. &ldquo;The fall after you was
+took away yore woman she went over to the
+Tranthams. Yes, sir; she took up with the
+head devil of 'em all&mdash;old Wyatt Trantham
+hisself&mdash;and she went to live at his house up
+on the Yaller Banks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is she&mdash;&mdash;Did she&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The ex-convict was struggling to his knees.
+His groping skeletons of hands were right in
+the hot ashes. The heat cooked the moisture
+from his sodden garments in little films of
+vapor and filled the cabin with the reek of
+the prison dye.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Did she&mdash;did she&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, she's been dead quite a spell now,&rdquo;
+stated Shem. &ldquo;I would have s'posed you'd
+'a' heered that, too, somewhars. She had a
+kind of a risin' in the breast.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But my young uns&mdash;little Anderson and&mdash;and
+Elviry?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The sick man was clear up on his knees now,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+his long arms hanging and his eyes, behind
+their matted lids, fixed on Shem's impassive
+face. Could the warden have seen him now,
+and marked his attitude and his words, he
+would have known what it was that had brought
+this dying man back to <i>his</i> own mountain
+valley with the breath of life still in him. A
+dumb, unuttered love for the two shock-headed
+babies he had left behind in the split-board
+cabin was the one big thing in Anse Dugmore's
+whole being&mdash;bigger even than his sense of
+allegiance to the feud.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My young uns, Shem?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Wyatt Trantham took 'em and he kep'
+'em&mdash;he's got 'em both now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Does he&mdash;does he use 'em kindly?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I ain't never heered,&rdquo; said Shem simply.
+&ldquo;He never had no young uns of his own, and
+it mout be he uses 'em well. He's the high
+sheriff now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was countin' on gittin' to see 'em agin&mdash;an
+buyin 'em some little Chrismus fixin's,&rdquo;
+the father wheezed. Hopelessness was coming
+into his rasping whisper. &ldquo;I reckon it ain't no
+use to&mdash;to be thinkin'&mdash;of that there now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No 'arthly use at all,&rdquo; said Shem, with
+brutal directness. &ldquo;Ef you had the strength
+to git thar, the Tranthams would shoot you
+down like a fice dog.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Anse nodded weakly. He sank down again
+on the floor, face to the boards, coughing hard.
+It was the droning voice of his cousin that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+brought him back from the borders of the coma
+he had been fighting off for hours.</p>
+
+<p>For, to Shem, the best hater and the poorest
+fighter of all his cleaned-out clan, had come
+a great thought. He shook the drowsing man
+and roused him, and plied him with sips from
+a dipper of the unhallowed white corn whisky
+of a mountain still-house. And as he worked
+over him he told off the tally of the last four
+years: of the uneven, unmerciful war, ticking
+off on his blunt finger ends the grim totals of
+this one ambushed and that one killed in the
+open, overpowered and beaten under by weight
+of odds. He told such details as he knew of
+the theft of the young wife and the young ones,
+Elvira and little Anderson.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anse, did ary Trantham see you a-gittin'
+here tonight?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nobody&mdash;that knowed me&mdash;seed me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Old Wyatt Trantham, he rid into Manchester
+this evenin' 'bout fo' o'clock&mdash;I seed
+him passin' over the ridge,&rdquo; went on Shem.
+&ldquo;He'll be ridin' back 'long Pigeon Roost some
+time before mawnin'. He done you a heap o'
+dirt, Anse.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The prostrate man was listening hard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anse, I got yore old rifle right here in the
+house. Ef you could git up thar on the mounting,
+somewhar's alongside the Pigeon Roost
+trail, you could git him shore. He'll be full
+of licker comin' back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And now a seeming marvel was coming to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+pass, for the caved-in trunk was rising on the
+pipestem legs and the shaking fingers were
+outstretched, reaching for something.</p>
+
+<p>Shem stepped lightly to a corner of the cabin
+and brought forth a rifle and began reloading
+it afresh from a box of shells.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>A wavering figure crept across the small
+stump-dotted &ldquo;dead'ning&rdquo;&mdash;Anse Dugmore
+was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle
+by the barrel, so that its butt made a crooked,
+broken furrow in the new snow like the trail
+of a crippled snake. He fell and got up, and
+fell and rose again. He coughed and up the
+ridge a ranging dog-fox barked back an answer
+to his cough.</p>
+
+<p>From out of the slitted door Shem watched
+him until the scrub oaks at the edge of the
+clearing swallowed him up. Then Shem fastened
+himself in and made ready to start his
+flight to the lowlands that very night.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>Just below the forks of Pigeon Roost Creek
+the trail that followed its banks widened into
+a track wide enough for wagon wheels. On
+one side lay the diminished creek, now filmed
+over with a glaze of young ice. On the other
+the mountain rose steeply. Fifteen feet up
+the bluff side a fallen dead tree projected its
+rotted, broken roots, like snaggled teeth, from
+the clayey bank. Behind this tree's trunk, in
+the snow and half-frozen, half-melted yellow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+mire, Anse Dugmore was stretched on his face.
+The barrel of the rifle barely showed itself
+through the interlacing root ends. It pointed
+downward and northward toward the broad,
+moonlit place in the road. Its stock was
+pressed tightly against Anse Dugmore's fallen-in
+cheek; the trigger finger of his right hand,
+fleshless as a joint of cane, was crooked about
+the trigger guard. A thin stream of blood
+ran from his mouth and dribbled down his chin
+and coagulated in a sticky smear upon the gun
+stock. His lungs, what was left of them, were
+draining away.</p>
+
+<p>He lay without motion, saving up the last
+ounce of his life. The cold had crawled up
+his legs to his hips; he was dead already from
+the waist down. He no longer coughed, only
+gasped thickly. He knew that he was about
+gone; but he knew, too, that he would last,
+clear-minded and clear-eyed, until High Sheriff
+Wyatt Trantham came. His brain would last&mdash;and
+his trigger finger.</p>
+
+<p>Then he heard him coming. Up the trail
+sounded the muffled music of a pacer's hoofs
+single-footing through the snow, and after
+that, almost instantly Trantham rode out into
+sight and loomed larger and larger as he drew
+steadily near the open place under the bank.
+He was wavering in the saddle. He drew nearer
+and nearer, and as he came out on the wide
+patch of moonlit snow, he pulled the single-footer
+down to a walk and halted him and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+began fumbling in the right-hand side of the
+saddlebags that draped his horse's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Up in its covert the rifle barrel moved an
+inch or two, then steadied and stopped, the
+bone-sight at its tip resting full on the broad
+of the drunken rider's breast. The boney
+finger moved inward from the trigger guard
+and closed ever so gently about the touchy, hair-filed
+trigger&mdash;then waited.</p>
+
+<p>For the uncertain hand of Trantham, every
+movement showing plain in the crystal, hard,
+white moon, was slowly bringing from under
+the flap of the right-side saddlebag something
+that was round and smooth and shone with a
+yellowish glassy light, like a fat flask filled
+with spirits. And Anse Dugmore waited, being
+minded now to shoot him as he put the bottle
+to his lips, and so cheat Trantham of his last
+drink on earth, as Trantham had cheated him
+of his liberty and his babies&mdash;as Trantham
+had cheated those babies of the Christmas
+fixings which the state's five dollars might have
+bought.</p>
+
+<p>He waited, waited&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>This was not the first time the high sheriff
+had stopped that night on his homeward ride
+from the tiny county seat, as his befuddlement
+proclaimed; but halting there in the
+open, just past the forks of the Pigeon Roost,
+he was moved by a new idea. He fumbled
+in the right-hand flap of his saddlebags and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+brought out a toy drum, round and smooth,
+with shiny yellow sides. A cheap china doll
+with painted black ringlets and painted blue
+eyes followed the drum, and then a torn paper
+bag, from which small pieces of cheap red-and-green
+dyed candy sifted out between the
+sheriff's fumbling fingers and fell into the snow.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty feet away, in the dead leaves matted
+under the roots of an uptorn dead tree, something
+moved&mdash;something moved; and then
+there was a sound like a long, deep, gurgling
+sigh, and another sound like some heavy,
+lengthy object settling itself down flat upon
+the snow and the leaves.</p>
+
+<p>The first faint rustle cleared Trantham's
+brain of the liquor fumes. He jammed the
+toys and the candy back into the saddlebags
+and jerked his horse sidewise into the protecting
+shadow of the bluff, reaching at the same
+time to the shoulder holster buckled about
+his body under the unbuttoned overcoat. For a
+long minute he listened keenly, the drawn pistol
+in his hand. There was nothing to hear except
+his own breathing and the breathing of his horse.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sho! Some old hawg turnin' over in her
+bed,&rdquo; he said to the horse, and holstering
+the pistol he went racking on down Pigeon
+Roost Creek, with Christmas for Elviry and
+little Anderson in his saddlebags.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>When they found Anse Dugmore in his
+ambush another snow had fallen on his back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+and he was slightly more of a skeleton than
+ever; but the bony finger was still crooked
+about the trigger, the rusted hammer was back
+at full cock and there was a dried brownish
+stain on the gun stock. So, from these facts,
+his finders were moved to conclude that the
+freed convict must have bled to death from
+his lungs before the sheriff ever passed, which
+they held to be a good thing all round and a
+lucky thing for the sheriff.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>VII</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">TO THE EDITOR<br /> OF THE
+SUN</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">T</span>here was a sound, heard in the early
+hours of a Sunday morning, that used
+to bother strangers in our town until
+they got used to it. It started usually
+along about half past five or six o'clock and it
+kept up interminably&mdash;so it seemed to them&mdash;a
+monotonous, jarring thump-thump, thump-thump
+that was like the far-off beating of
+African tomtoms; but at breakfast, when the
+beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing
+off a steamy hot halo of their own goodness,
+these aliens knew what it was that had roused
+them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by
+nature, felt amply recompensed for the lost
+hours of their beauty sleep.</p>
+
+<p>In these degenerate latter days I believe
+there is a machine that accomplishes the same
+purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling and
+crushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but
+it seems somehow to take the poetry out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+the operation. Old Judge Priest, our circuit
+judge, and the reigning black deity of his
+kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, would have
+naught of it. So long as his digestion survived
+and her good right arm held out to endure,
+there would be real beaten biscuits for the
+judge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so,
+having risen with the dawn or a little later,
+Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of
+whittled wood, would pound the dough with
+rhythmic strokes until it was as plastic as
+sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown,
+full of tiny hills and hollows, in which
+small yeasty bubbles rose and spread and burst
+like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets.
+Then, with her master hand, she would
+roll it thin and cut out the small round disks
+and delicately pink each one with a fork&mdash;and
+then, if you were listening, you could hear
+the stove door slam like the smacking of an
+iron lip.</p>
+
+<p>On a certain Sunday I have in mind, Judge
+Priest woke with the first premonitory thud
+from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed
+in his white linens and out upon the wide front
+porch while the summer day was young and
+unblemished. The sun was not up good yet.
+It made a red glow, like a barn afire, through
+the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abed blackbirds
+were still talking over family matters
+in the maples that clustered round the house,
+and in the back yard Judge Priest's big red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+rooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to
+a certain little brown hen, first crowing out
+the news loudly and then listening, with his
+head on one side, while the rooster in the next
+yard took it up and repeated it to a rooster
+living farther down the road, as is the custom
+among male scandalizers the world over.
+Upon the lawn the little gossamer hammocks
+that the grass spiders had seamed together
+overnight were spangled with dew, so that
+each out-thrown thread was a glittering rosary
+and the center of each web a silken, cushioned
+jewel casket. Likewise each web was outlined
+in white mist, for the cottonwood trees were
+shedding down their podded product so thickly
+that across open spaces the slanting lines of
+the drifting fiber looked like snow. It would
+be hot enough after a while, but now the whole
+world was sweet and fresh and washed clean.</p>
+
+<p>It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered
+his bulk into a rustic chair made of hickory
+withes that gave to his weight, and put his
+thoughts upon breakfast and the goodness of
+the day; but presently, as he sat there, he saw
+something that set a frown between his faded
+blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the
+opposite side, an old man&mdash;a very feeble old
+man&mdash;who was tall and thin and dressed in
+somber black. The man was lame&mdash;he
+dragged one leg along with the hitching gait
+of the paralytic. Traveling with painful slowness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+he came on until he reached the corner
+above. Then automatically he turned at right
+angles and left the narrow wooden sidewalk
+and crossed the dusty road. He passed Judge
+Priest's, looking neither to the right nor the
+left, and so kept on until he reached the corner
+below. Still following an invisible path in
+the deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to
+the other side. Just as he got there his halt
+leg seemed to give out altogether and for a
+minute or two he stood holding himself up by
+a fumbling grip upon the slats of a tree box
+before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain
+and weakness in the early sunshine that was
+now beginning to slant across his path and
+dapple his back with checkerings of shadow
+and light.</p>
+
+<p>This maneuver was inexplicable&mdash;a stranger
+would have puzzled to make it out. The
+shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay
+Street as upon the other; each sagged wooden
+sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother
+over the way. The small, shabby frame
+house, buried in honeysuckles and balsam
+vines, which stood close up to the pavement
+line on the opposite side of Clay Street, facing
+Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home,
+had no flag of pestilence at its door or its
+window. And surely to this lone pedestrian
+every added step must have been an added
+labor. A stranger would never have understood
+it; but Judge Priest understood it&mdash;he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+had seen that same thing repeated countless
+times in the years that stretched behind him.
+Always it had distressed him inwardly, but
+on this particular morning it distressed him
+more than ever. The toiling grim figure in
+black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and
+old.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you
+would call young. With an effort he heaved
+himself up out of the depths of his hickory
+chair and stood at the edge of his porch, polishing
+a pink bald dome of forehead as though
+trying to make up his mind to something.
+Jefferson Poindexter, resplendent in starchy
+white jacket and white apron, came to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Breakfus' served, suh!&rdquo; he said, giving to an
+announcement touching on food that glamour
+of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys the
+splendid secret.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hey?&rdquo; asked the judge absently.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Breakfus'&mdash;hit's on the table waitin',
+suh,&rdquo; stated Jeff. &ldquo;Mizz Polks sent over her
+houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur
+yore breakfus'; and she say to tell you, with
+her and Mistah Polkses' compliments, they is
+fresh picked out of her garden&mdash;specially
+fur you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had
+reference were named Polk, but in speaking of
+white persons for whom he had a high regard
+Jeff always, wherever possible within the limitations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>
+of our speech, tacked on that final s.
+It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment,
+implying that the person referred to
+was worthy of enlargement and pluralization.</p>
+
+<p>Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled
+dining room, Judge Priest ate his breakfast
+mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads
+of sweetness; the young fried chicken was a
+poem in delicate and flaky browns; the spoon
+bread could not have been any better if it had
+tried; and the beaten biscuits were as light as
+snowflakes and as ready to melt on the tongue;
+but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through
+the meal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for
+the last course, said to Aunt Dilsey:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ole boss-man seem lak he's got somethin'
+on his mind worryin' him this mawnin'.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp
+waffles in one hand and a pitcher of cane sirup
+in the other, he stared in surprise, for the
+dining room was empty and he could hear his
+employer creaking down the hall. Jeff just
+naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to
+waste. He ate them himself, standing up; and
+they gave him a zest for his regular breakfast,
+which followed in due course of time.</p>
+
+<p>From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped
+knobs that stood just inside the front
+door, Judge Priest picked up a palmleaf fan;
+and he held the fan slantwise as a shield for
+his eyes and his bare head against the sun's
+glare as he went down the porch steps and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+passed out of his own yard, traversed the
+empty street and strove with the stubborn
+gate latch of the little house that faced his
+own. It was a poor-looking little house, and
+its poorness had extended to its surroundings&mdash;as
+if poverty was a contagion that spread.
+In Judge Priest's yard, now, the grass, though
+uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but
+here, in this small yard, there were bare, shiny
+spots of earth showing through the grass&mdash;as
+though the soil itself was out at elbows and
+the nap worn off its green-velvet coat; but
+the vines about the porch were thick enough
+for an ambuscade and from behind their green
+screen came a voice in hospitable recognition.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that you, judge? Well sir, I'm glad to
+see you! Come right in; take a seat and sit
+down and rest yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The speaker showed himself in the arched
+opening of the vine barrier&mdash;an old man&mdash;not
+quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He
+was in his shirtsleeves. There was a patch
+upon one of the sleeves. His shoes had been
+newly shined, but the job was poorly done;
+the leather showed a dulled black upon the
+toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and
+heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down&mdash;the
+voice of a deaf person who cannot hear
+his own words clearly, so that he pitches them
+in a false key. For added proof of this affliction
+he held a lean and slightly tremulous hand
+cupped behind his ear.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>The other hand he extended in greeting as
+the old judge mounted the step of the low
+porch. The visitor took one of two creaky
+wooden rockers that stood in the narrow space
+behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or
+two he sat without speech, fanning himself.
+Evidently these neighborly calls between these
+two old men were not uncommon; they could
+enjoy the communion of silence together without
+embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>The town clocks struck&mdash;first the one on
+the city hall struck eight times sedately; and
+then, farther away, the one on the county
+courthouse. This one struck five times slowly,
+hesitated a moment, struck eleven times with
+great vigor, hesitated again, struck once with
+a big, final boom, and was through. No
+amount of repairing could cure the courthouse
+clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but
+kept it according to a private way of its own.
+Immediately after it ceased the bell on the
+Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday
+bells, began tolling briskly. Judge Priest
+waited until its clamoring had died away.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Goin' to be good and hot after while,&rdquo; he
+said, raising his voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What say?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little
+later on in the day,&rdquo; repeated Judge Priest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there,&rdquo;
+assented the host. &ldquo;Just a minute ago, before
+you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+it middlin' close in church this morning. She's
+going, though&mdash;runaway horses wouldn't keep
+her away from church! I'm not going myself&mdash;seems
+as though I'm getting more and more
+out of the church habit here lately.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical
+appreciation of this admission. He remembered
+that the other man, during the lifetime of
+his second wife, had been a regular attendant
+at services&mdash;going twice on Sundays and to
+Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but
+the second wife had been dead going on four
+years now&mdash;or was it five? Time sped so!</p>
+
+<p>The deaf man spoke on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I just thought I'd sit here and try to
+keep cool and wait for that Ledbetter boy
+to come round with the Sunday paper. Did
+you read last Sunday's paper, judge? Colonel
+Watterson certainly had a mighty fine piece
+on those Northern money devils. It's round
+here somewhere&mdash;I cut it out to keep it.
+I'd like to have you read it and pass your
+opinion on it. These young fellows do pretty
+well, but there's none of them can write like
+the colonel, in my judgment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ed Tilghman,&rdquo; he said abruptly in his high,
+fine voice, that seemed absurdly out of place,
+coming from his round frame, &ldquo;you and me
+have lived neighbors together a good while,
+haven't we? We've been right acros't the street
+from one another all this time. It kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+jolts me sometimes when I git to thinkin' how
+many years it's really been; because we're
+gittin' along right smartly in years&mdash;all us
+old fellows are. Ten years from now, say,
+there won't be so many of us left.&rdquo; He
+glanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his
+friend. &ldquo;You're younger than some of us;
+but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call
+a young man yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Avoiding the direct, questioning gaze that
+his companion turned on him at this, the judge
+reached forward and touched a ripe balsam
+apple that dangled in front of him. Instantly
+it split, showing the gummed red seeds clinging
+to the inner walls of the sensitive pod.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'm listening to you, judge,&rdquo; said the deaf
+man.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the old judge waited. There
+was about him almost an air of embarrassment.
+Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple,
+he spoke, and it was with a sort of hurried
+anxiety, as though he feared he might be checked
+before he could say what he had to say.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ed,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I was settin' on my porch
+a while ago waitin' for breakfast, and your
+brother came by.&rdquo; He shot a quick, apprehensive
+glance at his silent auditor. Except
+for a tautened flickering of the muscles about
+the mouth, there was no sign that the other
+had heard him. &ldquo;Your brother Abner came
+by,&rdquo; repeated the judge, &ldquo;and I set over there
+on my porch and watched him pass. Ed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+Abner's gittin' mighty feeble! He jest about
+kin drag himself along&mdash;he's had another
+stroke lately, they tell me. He had to hold on
+to that there treebox down yonder, steadyin'
+himself after he crossed back over to this side.
+Lord knows what he was doin' draggin' down-town
+on a Sunday mornin'&mdash;force of habit,
+I reckin. Anyway he certainly did look older
+and more poorly than ever I saw him before.
+He's a failin' man if I'm any judge. Do you
+hear me plain?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hear you,&rdquo; said his neighbor in a curiously
+flat voice. It was Tilghman's turn to avoid
+the glances of his friend. He stared straight
+ahead of him through a rift in the vines.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, then,&rdquo; went on Judge Priest, &ldquo;here's
+what I've got to say to you, Ed Tilghman. You
+know as well as I do that I've never pried into
+your private affairs, and it goes mightily against
+the grain for me to be doin' so now; but, Ed,
+when I think of how old we're all gittin' to be,
+and when the Camp meets and I see you settin'
+there side by side almost, and yet never seemin'
+to see each other&mdash;and this mornin' when I
+saw Abner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick&mdash;and
+it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin' too, and
+everything so quiet and peaceful&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He
+broke off and started anew. &ldquo;I don't seem
+to know exactly how to put my thoughts into
+words&mdash;and puttin' things into words is
+supposed to be my trade too. Anyway I
+couldn't go to Abner. He's not my neighbor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+and you are; and besides, you're the youngest
+of the two. So&mdash;so I came over here to you.
+Ed, I'd like mightily to take some word from
+you to your brother Abner. I'd like to do
+it the best in the world! Can't I go to him
+with a message from you&mdash;today? Tomorrow
+might be too late!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony
+knee of the deaf man; but the hand slipped
+away as Tilghman stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Judge Priest,&rdquo; said Tilghman, looking down
+at him, &ldquo;I've listened to what you've had to
+say; and I didn't stop you, because you are
+my friend and I know you mean well by it.
+Besides, you're my guest, under my own roof.&rdquo;
+He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines
+of the porch. Otherwise he gave no sign
+of any emotion that might be astir within
+him, his face being still set and his voice flat.
+&ldquo;What's between me and my&mdash;what's between
+me and that man you just named always will
+be between us. He's satisfied to let things go
+on as they are. I'm satisfied to let them go on.
+It's in our breed, I guess. Words&mdash;just
+words&mdash;wouldn't help mend this thing. The
+reason for it would be there just the same, and
+neither one of us is going to be able to forget
+that so long as we both live. I'd just as soon
+you never brought this&mdash;this subject up again.
+If you went to him I presume he'd tell you
+the same thing. Let it be, Judge Priest&mdash;it's
+past mending. We two have gone on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+this way for fifty years nearly. We'll keep
+on going on so. I appreciate your kindness,
+Judge Priest; but let it be&mdash;let it be!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was finality miles deep and fixed as
+basalt in his tone. He checked his walk and
+called in at a shuttered window.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Liddie,&rdquo; he said in his natural up-and-down
+voice, &ldquo;before you put off for church, couldn't
+you mix up a couple of lemonades or something?
+Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Judge Priest, getting slowly up,
+&ldquo;I've got to be gittin' back before the sun's up
+too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile
+be shore to come to the next regular meetin'
+of the Camp&mdash;on Friday night,&rdquo; he added.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I'll be there,&rdquo; said Tilghman. &ldquo;And I'll
+try to find that piece of Colonel Watterson's
+and send it over to you. I'd like mightily
+for you to read it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stood at the opening in the vines, with
+one slightly palsied hand fumbling at a loose
+tendril as the judge passed down the short
+yard-walk and out at the gate. Then he went
+back to his chair and sat down again. All
+those little muscles in his jowls were jumping.</p>
+
+<p>Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking
+down its dusty length from beneath the shelter
+of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and
+there groups of children&mdash;the little girls in
+prim and starchy white, the little boys hobbling
+in the Sunday torment of shoes and
+stockings; and all of them were moving toward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+a common center&mdash;Sunday school. Twice
+again that day would the street show life&mdash;a
+little later when grown-ups went their way
+to church, and again just after the noonday
+dinner, when young people and servants,
+carrying trays and dishes under napkins, would
+cross and recross from one house to another.
+The Sunday interchange of special dainties
+between neighbors amounted in our town to a
+ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the
+cool of the evening, the town would simmer
+in quiet, while everybody took Sunday naps.</p>
+
+<p>With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry
+sawing motion in the air, as though trying to
+fend off something disagreeable&mdash;a memory,
+perhaps, or it might have been only a persistent
+midge. There were plenty of gnats and midges
+about, for by now&mdash;even so soon&mdash;the dew
+was dried. The leaves of the silver poplars
+were turning their white under sides up like
+countless frog bellies, and the long, podded
+pendants of the Injun-cigar trees hung dangling
+and still. It would be a hot day, sure enough;
+already the judge felt wilted and worn out.</p>
+
+<p>In our town we had our tragedies that
+endured for years and, in the small-town way,
+finally became institutions. There was the
+case of the Burnleys. For thirty-odd years
+old Major Burnley lived on one side of his
+house and his wife lived on the other, neither
+of them ever crossing an imaginary dividing
+line that ran down the middle of the hall,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+having for their medium of intercourse all that
+time a lean, spinster daughter, in whose gray
+and barren life churchwork and these strange
+home duties took the place that Nature had
+intended to be filled by a husband and by
+babies and grandbabies.</p>
+
+<p>There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of
+a fantastic scarecrow, who was forever starting
+somewhere and never going there&mdash;because,
+as sure as he came to a place where two roads
+crossed, he could not make up his mind which
+turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted
+him, or a bank had failed on him, or a horse
+had kicked him in the head&mdash;or maybe it was
+all three of these things that had addled his
+poor brains. Anyhow he went his pitiable,
+aimless way for years, taunted daily by small
+boys who were more cruel than jungle beasts.
+How he lived nobody knew, but when he died
+some of the men who as boys had jeered him
+turned out to be his volunteer pallbearers.</p>
+
+<p>There was Mr. H. Jackman&mdash;Brother Jackman
+to all the town&mdash;who had been our leading
+hatter once and rich besides, and in the
+days of his affluence had given the Baptist
+church its bells. In his old age, when he was
+dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not
+known by that word, which is at once the
+sweetest and bitterest word in our tongue;
+for Brother Jackman, always primped, always
+plump and well clad, would go through the
+market to take his pick of what was there,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+and to the Richland House bar for his toddies,
+and to Felsburg Brothers for new garments
+when his old ones wore shabby&mdash;and yet
+never paid a cent for anything; a kindly conspiracy
+on the part of the whole town enabling
+him to maintain his self-respect to the last.
+Strangers in our town used to take him for a
+retired banker&mdash;that's a fact!</p>
+
+<p>And there was old man Stackpole, who had
+killed his man&mdash;had killed him in fair fight
+and had been acquitted&mdash;and yet walked quiet
+back streets at all hours, a gray, silent shadow,
+and never slept except with a bright light
+burning in his room.</p>
+
+<p>The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman,
+though, and of Captain Abner G. Tilghman, his
+elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery&mdash;the
+biggest tragedy and the deepest mystery
+our town had ever known or ever would know
+probably. All that anybody knew for certain
+was that for upward of fifty years neither of
+them had spoken to the other, nor by deed or
+look had given heed to the other. As boys,
+back in sixty-one, they had gone out together.
+Side by side, each with his arm over the other's
+shoulder, they had stood up with a hundred
+others to be sworn into the service of the
+Confederate States of America; and on the
+morning they went away Miss Sally May
+Ghoulson had given the older brother her silk
+scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both
+the brothers had liked her; but by this public<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+act she made it plain which of them was her
+choice.</p>
+
+<p>Then the company had marched off to the
+camp on the Tennessee border, where the new
+troops were drilling; and as they marched
+some watchers wept and others cheered&mdash;but
+the cheering predominated, for it was to be
+only a sort of picnic anyhow&mdash;so everybody
+agreed. As the orators&mdash;who mainly stayed
+behind&mdash;had pointed out, the Northern people
+would not fight. And even if they should fight
+could not one Southerner whip four Yankees?
+Certainly he could; any fool knew that much.
+In a month or two months, or at most three
+months, they would all be tramping home again,
+covered with glory and the spoils of war, and
+then&mdash;this by common report and understanding&mdash;Miss
+Sally May Ghoulson and
+Abner Tilghman would be married, with a big
+church wedding.</p>
+
+<p>The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought,
+and it was not a ninety-day picnic after all.
+It was not any kind of a picnic. And
+when it was over, after four years and a
+month, Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner
+Tilghman did not marry. It was just before
+the battle of Chickamauga when the other men
+in the company first noticed that the two
+Tilghmans had become as strangers, and worse
+than strangers, to each other. They quit
+speaking to each other then and there, and to
+any man's knowledge they never spoke again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+They served the war out, Abner rising just
+before the end to a captaincy, Edward serving
+always as a private in the ranks. In a dour,
+grim silence they took the fortunes of those
+last hard, hopeless days and after the surrender
+down in Mississippi they came back with the
+limping handful that was left of the company;
+and in age they were all boys still&mdash;but in
+experience, men, and in suffering, grandsires.</p>
+
+<p>Two months after they got back Miss Sally
+May Ghoulson was married to Edward, the
+younger brother. Within a year she died, and
+after a decent period of mourning Edward
+married a second time&mdash;only to be widowed
+again after many years. His second wife bore
+him children and they died&mdash;all except one,
+a daughter, who grew up and married badly;
+and after her mother's death she came back to
+live with her deaf father and minister to him.
+As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never
+married&mdash;never, so far as the watching eyes
+of the town might tell, looked with favor
+upon another woman. And he never spoke to
+his brother or to any of his brother's family&mdash;or
+his brother to him.</p>
+
+<p>With years the wall of silence they had
+builded up between them turned to ice and the
+ice to stone. They lived on the same street,
+but never did Edward enter Captain Abner's
+bank, never did Captain Abner pass Edward's
+house&mdash;always he crossed over to the opposite
+side. They belonged to the same Veterans'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+Camp&mdash;indeed there was only the one for
+them to belong to; they voted the same ticket&mdash;straight
+Democratic; and in the same
+church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they
+worshiped the same God by the same creed,
+the older brother being an elder and the younger
+a plain member&mdash;and yet never crossed looks.</p>
+
+<p>The town had come to accept this dumb and
+bitter feud as unchangeable and eternal; in
+time people ceased even to wonder what its
+cause had been, and in all the long years only
+one man had tried, before now, to heal it up.
+When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young
+and ardent clergyman, fresh from the Virginia
+theological school, came out to take the vacant
+pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense
+of his holy calling, thought it shameful that
+such a thing should be in the congregation.
+He went to see Captain Tilghman about it.
+He never went but that once. Afterward it
+came out that Captain Tilghman had threatened
+to walk out of church and never darken
+its doors again if the minister ever dared to
+mention his brother's name in his presence.
+So the young minister sorrowed, but obeyed,
+for the captain was rich and a generous giver
+to the church.</p>
+
+<p>And he had grown richer with the years,
+and as he grew richer his brother grew poorer&mdash;another
+man owned the drug store where
+Edward Tilghman had failed. They had grown
+from young to middle-aged men and from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>
+middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first
+the grace of youth and then the solidness of
+maturity had gone out of them and the gnarliness
+of age had come upon them; one was halt
+of step and the other was dull of ear; and the
+town through half a century of schooling had
+accustomed itself to the situation and took it
+as a matter of course. So it was and so it always
+would be&mdash;a tragedy and a mystery. It had
+not been of any use when the minister interfered
+and it was of no use now. Judge Priest,
+with the gesture of a man who is beaten,
+dropped the fan on the porch floor, went
+into his darkened sitting room, stretched
+himself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa
+and called out to Jeff to make him a mild
+toddy&mdash;one with plenty of ice in it.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>On this same Sunday&mdash;or, anyhow, I like
+to fancy it was on this same Sunday&mdash;at a
+point distant approximately nine hundred and
+seventy miles in a northeasterly direction from
+Judge Priest's town, Corporal Jacob Speck,
+late of Sigel's command, sat at the kitchen window
+of the combined Speck and Engel apartment
+on East Eighty-fifth Street in the Borough
+of Manhattan, New York. He was in his shirtsleeves;
+his tender feet were incased in a pair
+of red-and-green carpet slippers. In the angle
+of his left arm he held his youngest grandchild,
+aged one and a half years, while his right
+hand carefully poised a china pipe, with a bowl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+like an egg-cup and a stem like a fishpole.
+The corporal's blue Hanoverian eyes, behind
+their thick-lensed glasses, were fixed upon a
+comprehensive vista of East Eighty-fifth Street
+back yards and clothespoles and fire escapes;
+but his thoughts were very much elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>Reared back there at seeming ease, the
+corporal none the less was not happy in his
+mind. It was not that he so much minded
+being left at home to mind the youngest baby
+while the rest of the family spent the afternoon
+amid the Teutonic splendors of Smeltzer's
+Harlem River Casino, with its acres of gravel
+walks and its whitewashed tree trunks, its
+straggly flower beds and its high-collared beers.
+He was used to that sort of thing. Since a
+plague of multiplying infirmities of the body
+had driven him out of his job in the tax office,
+the corporal had not done much except nurse
+the babies that occurred in the Speck-Engel
+establishment with such unerring regularity.
+Sometimes, it is true, he did slip down to the
+corner for maybe zwei glasses of beer and
+a game of pinocle; but then, likely as not,
+there would come inopportunely a towheaded
+descendant to tell him Mommer needed him
+back at the flat right away to mind the baby
+while she went marketing or to the movies.</p>
+
+<p>He could endure that&mdash;he had to. What
+riled Corporal Jacob Speck on this warm and
+sunny Sunday was a realization that he was
+not doing his share at making the history of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+the period. The week before had befallen the
+fiftieth anniversary of the marching away of
+his old regiment to the front; there had been
+articles in the daily papers about it. Also,
+in patriotic commemoration of the great event
+there had been a parade of the wrinkled survivors&mdash;ninety-odd
+of them&mdash;following their
+tattered and faded battle flag down Fifth
+Avenue past apathetic crowds, nine-tenths of
+whom had been born since the war&mdash;in foreign
+lands mainly; and at least half, if one might
+judge by their looks, did not know what the
+parading was all about, and did not particularly
+care either.</p>
+
+<p>The corporal had not participated in the
+march of the veterans; he had not even attended
+the banquet that followed it. True, the
+youngest grandchild was at the moment cutting
+one of her largest jaw teeth and so had required,
+for the time, an extraordinary and special
+amount of minding; but the young lady's
+dental difficulty was not the sole reason for his
+absence. Three weeks earlier the corporal had
+taken part in Decoration Day, and certainly
+one parade a month was ample strain upon a
+pair of legs such as he owned. He had returned
+home with his game leg behaving more gamely
+then usual and with his sound one full of new
+and painful kinks. Also, in honor of the
+occasion he had committed the error of wearing
+a pair of stiff and inflexible new shoes; wherefore
+he had worn his carpet slippers ever since.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span>Missing the fiftieth anniversary was not
+the main point with the corporal&mdash;that was
+merely the fortune of war, to be accepted with
+fortitude and with no more than a proper and
+natural amount of grumbling by one who had
+been a good soldier and was now a good citizen;
+but for days before the event, and daily ever
+since, divers members of the old regiment had
+been writing pieces to the papers&mdash;the German
+papers and the English-printing papers
+too&mdash;long pieces, telling of the trip to Washington,
+and then on into Virginia and Tennessee,
+speaking of this campaign and that and
+this battle and that. And because there was
+just now a passing wave of interest in Civil
+War matters, the papers had printed these
+contributions, thereby reflecting much glory
+on the writers thereof. But Corporal Speck,
+reading these things, had marveled deeply
+that sane men should have such disgustingly
+bad memories; for his own recollection of these
+stirring and epochal events differed most widely
+from the reminiscent narration of each misguided
+chronicler.</p>
+
+<p>It was, indeed, a shameful thing that the
+most important occurrences of the whole war
+should be so shockingly mangled and mishandled
+in the retelling. They were so grievously
+wrong, those other veterans, and he was
+so absolutely right. He was always right in
+these matters. Only the night before, during
+a merciful respite from his nursing duties, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+had, in Otto Wittenpen's back barroom, spoken
+across the rim of a tall stein with some bitterness
+of certain especially grievous misstatements
+of plain fact on the part of certain
+faulty-minded comrades. In reply Otto had
+said, in a rather sneering tone the corporal
+thought:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Say, then, Jacob, why don't you yourself
+write a piece to the paper telling about this
+regiment of yours&mdash;the way it was?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will. Tomorrow I will do so without
+fail,&rdquo; he had said, the ambition of authorship
+suddenly stirring within him. Now, however,
+as he sat at the kitchen window, he gloomed
+in his disappointment, for he had tried and
+he knew he had not the gift of the written line.
+A good soldier he had been&mdash;yes, none better&mdash;and
+a good citizen, and in his day a capable
+and painstaking doorkeeper in the tax office;
+but he could not write his own story. That
+morning, when the youngest grandchild slept
+and his daughter and his daughter's husband
+and the brood of his older grandchildren
+were all at the Lutheran church over in the
+next block, he sat himself down to compose
+his article to the paper; but the words would
+not come&mdash;or, at least, after the first line or
+two they would not come.</p>
+
+<p>The mental pictures of those stirring great
+days when he marched off on his two good legs&mdash;both
+good legs then&mdash;to fight for the
+country whose language he could not yet speak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+was there in bright and living colors; but
+the sorry part of it was he could not clothe
+them in language. In the trash box under the
+sink a dozen crumpled sheets of paper testified
+to his failure, and now, alone with the youngest
+Miss Engel, he brooded over it and got low in
+his mind and let his pipe go smack out. And
+right then and there, with absolutely no warning
+at all, there came to him, as you might say
+from the clear sky, a great idea&mdash;an idea so
+magnificent that he almost dropped the youngest
+Miss Engel off his lap at the splendid shock
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>With solicitude he glanced down at the
+small, moist, pink, lumpy bundle of prickly
+heat and sore gums. Despite the sudden
+jostle the young lady slept steadily on. Very
+carefully he laid his pipe aside and very carefully
+he got upon his feet, jouncing his charge
+soothingly up and down, and with deftness
+he committed her small person to the crib that
+stood handily by. She stirred fretfully, but
+did not wake. The corporal steered his gimpy
+leg and his rheumatic one out of the kitchen,
+which was white with scouring and as clean
+as a new pin, into the rearmost and smallest
+of the three sleeping rooms that mainly made
+up the Speck-Engel apartment.</p>
+
+<p>The bed, whereon of nights Corporal Speck
+reposed with a bucking bronco of an eight-year-old
+grandson for a bedmate, was jammed
+close against the plastering, under the one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>
+small window set diagonally in a jog in the wall,
+and opening out upon an airshaft, like a chimney.
+Time had been when the corporal had
+a room and a bed all his own; that was before
+the family began to grow so fast in its second
+generation and while he still held a place of
+lucrative employment at the tax office.</p>
+
+<p>As he got down upon his knees beside the
+bed the old man uttered a little groan of discomfort.
+He felt about in the space underneath
+and drew out a small tin trunk, rusted
+on its corners and dented in its sides. He
+made a laborious selection of keys from a
+key-ring he got out of his pocket, unlocked
+the trunk and lifted out a heavy top tray.
+The tray contained, among other things, such
+treasures as his naturalization papers, his pension
+papers, a photograph of his dead wife,
+and a small bethumbed passbook of the East
+Side Germania Savings Bank. Underneath was
+a black fatigue hat with a gold cord round
+its crown, a neatly folded blue uniform coat,
+with the G. A. R. bronze showing in its uppermost
+lapel, and below that, in turn, the suit
+of neat black the corporal wore on high state
+occasions and would one day wear to be buried
+in. Pawing and digging, he worked his hands
+to the very bottom, and then, with a little
+grunt, he heaved out the thing he wanted&mdash;the
+one trophy, except a stiffened kneecap
+and an honorable record, this old man had
+brought home from the South. It was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+captured Confederate knapsack, flattened and
+flabby. Its leather was dry-rotted with age
+and the brass C. S. A. on the outer flap was
+gangrened and sunken in; the flap curled up
+stiffly, like an old shoe sole.</p>
+
+<p>The crooked old fingers undid a buckle
+fastening and from the musty and odorous
+interior of the knapsack withdrew a letter,
+in a queer-looking yellowed envelope, with a
+queer-looking stamp upon the upper right-hand
+corner and a faint superscription upon
+its face. The three sheets of paper he slid
+out of the envelope were too old even to rustle,
+but the close writing upon them in a brownish,
+faded ink was still plainly to be made out.</p>
+
+<p>Corporal Speck replaced the knapsack in
+its place at the very bottom, put the tray back
+in its place, closed the trunk and locked it
+and shoved it under the bed. The trunk
+resisted slightly and he lost one carpet slipper
+and considerable breath in the struggle. Limping
+back to the kitchen and seeing that little
+Miss Engel still slumbered, he eased his frame
+into a chair and composed himself to literary
+composition, not in the least disturbed by the
+shouts of roistering sidewalk comedians that
+filtered up to him from down below in front of
+the house, or by the distant clatter of intermittent
+traffic over the cobbly spine of Second
+Avenue, half a block away. For some time he
+wrote, with a most scratchy pen; and this is
+what he wrote:</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">To the Editor of the Sun, City.</span></p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>Dear Sir</i>: The undersigned would state
+that he served two years and nine months&mdash;until
+wounded in action&mdash;in the Fighting
+Two Hundred and Tenth New York Infantry,
+and has been much interested to see what other
+comrades wrote for the papers regarding same
+in connection with the Rebellion War of North
+and South respectively. I would state that
+during the battle of Chickamauga I was for a
+while lying near by to a Confederate soldier&mdash;name
+unknown&mdash;who was dying on account
+of a wound in the chest. By his request I
+gave him a drink of water from my canteen,
+he dying shortly thereafter. Being myself
+wounded&mdash;right knee shattered by a Minie
+ball&mdash;I was removed to a field hospital; but
+before doing so I brought away this man's
+knapsack for a keepsake of the occasion.
+Some years later I found in said knapsack a
+letter, which previous to then was overlooked
+by me. I inclose herewith a copy of said
+letter, which it may be interesting for reading
+purposes by surviving comrades.</p>
+
+<center>&ldquo;Respectfully yours,</center>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Jacob Speck</span>,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">&ldquo;Late Corporal L Company,</p>
+<p style="text-align: right;">&ldquo;Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A.&rdquo;
+</p></div>
+
+<p>With deliberation and squeaky emphasis
+the pen progressed slowly across the paper,
+while the corporal, with his left hand, held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+flat the dead man's ancient letter before him,
+intent on copying it. Hard words puzzled
+him and long words daunted him, and he was
+making a long job of it when there were steps
+in the hall without. There entered breezily
+Miss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of
+all the multiplying Engels, pretty beyond question
+and every inch American, having the gift
+of wearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs
+in a way to make them seem Upper Fifth
+Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly
+flushed; she had just parted lingeringly
+from her steady company, whose name was
+Mr. Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower
+hallway, which is the trysting place and courting
+place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts,
+and now she had come to make ready the
+family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight of
+her the corporal had another inspiration&mdash;his
+second within the hour. His brow smoothed
+and he fetched a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;'Lo, grosspops!&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How's every
+little thing? The kiddo all right?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed
+like a hearse and slipped on a long apron that
+covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Girl,&rdquo; said her grandfather, &ldquo;would you
+make tomorrow for me at the office a copy of
+this letter on the typewriter machine?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke in German and she answered in
+New-Yorkese, while her nimble fingers wrestled
+with the task of back-buttoning her apron.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>&ldquo;Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute
+to rattle that off. Funny-looking old thing!&rdquo;
+she went on, taking up the creased and faded
+original. &ldquo;Who wrote it? And whatcher
+goin' to do with it, grosspops?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That,&rdquo; he told her, &ldquo;is mine own business!
+It is for you, please, to make the copy
+and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and
+also the copy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So on Monday morning, when the rush of
+taking dictation at the office of the Great
+American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street,
+was well abated, the competent Miss Hortense
+copied the letter, and that same evening her
+grandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied
+by his own introduction. The Sun straightway
+printed it without change and&mdash;what
+was still better&mdash;with the sender's name
+spelled out in capital letters; and that night,
+at the place down by the corner, Corporal
+Jacob Speck was a prophet not without honor
+in his own country&mdash;much honor, in fact,
+accrued.</p>
+
+<p>If you have read certain other stories of
+mine you may remember that, upon a memorable
+occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest
+made a trip to New York and while there had
+dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, a
+promoter of gas and other hot-air propositions;
+and that during the course of his stay in the
+metropolis he made the acquaintance of one
+Malley, a Sun reporter. This had happened<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+some years back, but Malley was still on the
+staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going
+through the paper to clip out and measure up
+his own space, Malley came upon the corporal's
+contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught
+the name, twice or thrice repeated, of the town
+where Judge Priest lived. So he bundled
+together a couple of copies and sent them South
+with a short letter; and therefore it came
+about in due season, through the good offices
+of the United States Post-office Department,
+that these enclosures reached the judge on a
+showery afternoon as he loafed upon his wide
+front porch, waiting for his supper.</p>
+
+<p>First, he read Malley's letter and was glad
+to hear from Malley. With a quickened
+interest he ran a plump thumb under the
+wrappings of the two close-rolled papers, opened
+out one of them at page ten and read the
+opening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck,
+for whom instantly the judge conceived a long-distance
+fondness. Next he came to the
+letter that Miss Hortense Engel had so accurately
+transcribed, and at the very first words
+of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and
+gratified little grunt; for he had known them
+both&mdash;the writer of that letter and its recipient.
+One still lived in his memory as a red-haired
+girl with a pert, malicious face, and the other
+as a stripling youth in a ragged gray uniform.
+And he had known most of those whose names
+studded the printed lines so thickly. Indeed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+some of them he still knew&mdash;only now they
+were old men and old women&mdash;faded, wrinkled
+bucks and belles of a far-distant day.</p>
+
+<p>As he read the first words it came back to
+the judge, almost with the jolting emphasis
+of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days
+of his own youth he had never liked the girl
+who wrote that letter or the man who received
+it. But she was dead this many and many
+a year&mdash;why, she must have died soon after
+she wrote this very letter&mdash;the date proved
+that&mdash;and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga,
+taking his death in front like a soldier;
+and surely that settled everything and
+made all things right! But the letter&mdash;that
+was the main thing. His old blue eyes
+skipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled
+the tip of his plump pink nose, and the
+old judge read it&mdash;just such a letter as he
+himself had received many a time; just such
+a wartime letter as uncounted thousands of
+soldiers North and South received from their
+sweethearts and read and reread by the light
+of flickering campfires and carried afterward
+in their knapsacks through weary miles of
+marching.</p>
+
+<p>It was crammed with the small-town gossip
+of a small town that was but little more than
+a memory now&mdash;telling how, because he would
+not volunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid
+by a dozen high-spirited girls and overpowered,
+and dressed in a woman's shawl and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+a woman's poke bonnet, so that he left town
+with his shame between two suns; how, since
+the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females
+were friendly&mdash;actually friendly, this being
+underscored&mdash;with the more personable of
+the young Yankee officers; how half the town
+was in mourning for a son or brother dead or
+wounded; how a new and sweetly sentimental
+song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was
+being much sung at the time&mdash;and had it
+reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbs
+had been exiled to Canada for seditious acts
+and language and had departed northward
+between two files of bluecoats, reviling the
+Yankees with an unbitted tongue at every step;
+how So-and-So had died or married or gone
+refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely
+Southern territory; how this thing had happened
+and that thing had not.</p>
+
+<p>The old judge read on and on, catching
+gladly at names that kindled a tenderly warm
+glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul,
+until he came to the last paragraph of all;
+and then, as he comprehended the intent of
+it in all its barbed and venomed malice, he
+stood suddenly erect, with the outspread
+paper shaking in his hard grip. For now,
+coming back to him by so strange a way across
+fifty years of silence and misunderstanding, he
+read there the answer to the town's oldest,
+biggest tragedy and knew what it was that all
+this time had festered, like buried thorns, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+the flesh of those two men, his comrades and
+friends. He dropped the paper, and up and
+down the wide, empty porch he stumped on
+his short stout legs, shaking with the shock
+of revelation and with indignation and pity for
+the blind and bitter uselessness of it all.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah hah!&rdquo; he said to himself over and over
+again understandingly. &ldquo;Ah hah!&rdquo; And then:
+&ldquo;Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the
+meanest thing in this whole created world, I
+reckin. I ain't sure but what she's the meanest
+of the two. And to think of what them
+two did between 'em&mdash;she writin' that hellish
+black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin'
+off hotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his
+mind with it and set him like a flint against his
+own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like
+Lon Pike to go and git himself killed the next
+day after he got that there letter! And wasn't
+it jest like her to up and die before the truth
+could be brought home to her! And wasn't
+it like them two stubborn, set, contrary, close-mouthed
+Tilghman boys to go 'long through
+all these years, without neither one of 'em ever
+offerin' to make or take an explanation!&rdquo;
+His tone changed. &ldquo;Oh, ain't it been a pitiful
+thing! And all so useless! But&mdash;oh, thank
+the Lord&mdash;it ain't too late to mend it part
+way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late
+for that!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Exulting now, he caught up the paper he
+had dropped, and with it crumpled in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>
+pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk,
+bound for the little cottage snuggled in its
+vine ambush across Clay Street before a better
+and a bigger inspiration caught up with him
+and halted him midway of an onward stride.</p>
+
+<p>Was not this the second Friday in the month?
+It certainly was. And would not the Camp be
+meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session
+at Kamleiter's Hall? It certainly would.
+For just a moment Judge Priest considered the
+proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank
+gleefully, and his round old face, which had
+been knotted with resolution, broke up into
+a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his
+heel and hurried back into the house and to
+the telephone in the hall. For half an hour,
+more or less, Judge Priest was busy at that
+telephone, calling in a high, excited voice,
+first for one number and then for another.
+While he did this his supper grew cold on
+the table, and in the dining room Jeff, the
+white-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen
+Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned, fumed&mdash;but, at
+Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge
+Priest's industry was in abundant fulness
+rewarded.</p>
+
+<p>Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp
+claimed a full two hundred members, but
+that had been when it was first organized.
+Now there were in good standing less than
+twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on the
+hard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+with his metal spectacle case for order, and
+that fifteen meant all who could travel out at
+nights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant
+Jimmy Bagby, the faithful and inevitable.
+It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had
+in a year.</p>
+
+<p>Far over on one side, cramped down in a
+chair, was Captain Abner Tilghman, feeble
+and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood
+hitched by the curb downstairs. Sergeant
+Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him
+and on the plea of business of vital moment
+had made him come with him. Almost directly
+across the middle aisle on the other side sat
+Mr. Edward Tilghman. Nobody had to go for
+him. He always came to a regular meeting of
+the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings
+only in broken bits.</p>
+
+<p>The adjutant called the roll and those present
+answered, each one to his name; and mainly
+the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the
+bodies of their owners. A keen onlooker might
+have noticed a sort of tremulous, joyous impatience,
+which filled all save two of these old,
+gray men, pushing the preliminaries forward
+with uncommon speed. They fidgeted in their
+places.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of
+a persistent huskiness and stood up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Before we proceed to the regular routine,&rdquo;
+he piped, &ldquo;I desire to present a certain matter
+to a couple of our members.&rdquo; He came down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+off the little platform, where the flags were
+draped, with a step that was almost light,
+and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he
+put a copy of a city paper, turned and folded
+at a certain place, where a column of printed
+matter was scored about with heavy pencil
+bracketings. &ldquo;Cap'n,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;as a personal
+favor to me, suh, would you please read this
+here article?&mdash;the one that's marked&rdquo;&mdash;he
+pointed with his finger&mdash;&ldquo;not aloud&mdash;read
+it to yourself, please.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of the paralytic to say
+nothing. Without a word he adjusted his
+glasses and without a word he began to read.
+So instantly intent was he that he did not see
+what followed next&mdash;and that was Judge Priest
+crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side
+with another copy of a paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ed,&rdquo; he bade him, &ldquo;read this here article,
+won't you? Read it clear through to the end&mdash;it
+might interest you maybe.&rdquo; The deaf
+man looked up at him wonderingly, but took
+the paper in his slightly palsied hand and bent
+his head close above the printed sheet.</p>
+
+<p>Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making
+no move to go back to his own place. He
+watched the two silent readers. All the others
+watched them too. They read on, making
+slow progress, for the light was poor and their
+eyes were poor. And the watchers could
+hardly contain themselves; they could hardly
+wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+up and down like a pudgy jack-in-the-box that
+is slightly stiff in its joints. A small, restrained
+rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the
+folded newspapers held in shaky hands.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers
+read on. Perhaps because he had started first&mdash;perhaps
+because his glasses were the more
+expensive and presumably therefore the more
+helpful&mdash;Captain Abner Tilghman came to
+the concluding paragraph first. He read it
+through&mdash;and then Judge Priest turned his
+head away, for a moment almost regretting he
+had chosen so public a place for this thing.</p>
+
+<p>He looked back again in time to see Captain
+Abner getting upon his feet. Dragging his
+dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the
+bare floor to where his brother's gray head
+was bent to his task. And at his side he halted,
+making no sound or sign, but only waiting.
+He waited there, trembling all over, until the
+sitter came to the end of the column and read
+what was there&mdash;and lifted a face all glorified
+with a perfect understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eddie!&rdquo; said the older man&mdash;&ldquo;Eddie!&rdquo;
+He uttered a name of boyhood affection that
+none there had heard uttered for fifty years
+nearly; and it was as though a stone had
+been rolled away from a tomb&mdash;as though
+out of the grave of a dead past a voice had
+been resurrected. &ldquo;Eddie!&rdquo; he said a third
+time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving
+for forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>&ldquo;Brother Abner!&rdquo; said the other man. &ldquo;Oh,
+Brother Abner!&rdquo; he said&mdash;and that was all
+he did say&mdash;all he had need to say, for he
+was on his feet now, reaching out with wide-spread,
+shaking arms.</p>
+
+<p>Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer,
+but could not make it come out of his throat&mdash;only
+a clicking, squeaking kind of sound
+came. As a cheer it was a miserable failure.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side, each with his inner arm tight
+gripped about the other, the brothers, bareheaded,
+turned their backs upon their friends
+and went away. Slowly they passed out
+through the doorway into the darkness of the
+stair landing, and the members of the Gideon
+K. Irons Camp were all up on their feet.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mind that top step, Abner!&rdquo; they heard
+the younger man say. &ldquo;Wait! I'll help you
+down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That was all that was heard, except a scuffling
+sound of uncertainly placed feet, growing
+fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed
+down the long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and
+out into the night&mdash;that was all, unless you
+would care to take cognizance of a subdued
+little chorus such as might be produced by
+twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling in a
+large bare room. As commandant of the
+Camp it was fitting, perhaps, that Judge
+Priest should speak first.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The trouble with this here Camp is jest
+this,&rdquo; he said: &ldquo;it's got a lot of snifflin' old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+fools in it that don't know no better than to
+bust out cryin' when they oughter be happy!&rdquo;
+And then, as if to show how deeply he felt the
+shame of such weakness on the part of others,
+Judge Priest blew his nose with great violence,
+and for a space of minutes industriously
+mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous
+pocket handkerchief.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 35%;' />
+
+<p>In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter
+waited up for his employer. Jeff expected
+him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was
+actually getting along toward ten-thirty before
+Jeff, who had been dozing lightly in the dim-lit
+hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some
+large mosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard
+the sound of a rambling but familiar step
+clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay
+Street. The latch on the front gate clicked,
+and as Jeff poked his nose out of the front door
+he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered
+the gravel walk, the voice of his master uplifted
+in solitary song.</p>
+
+<p>In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity.
+It made no difference what the words
+might be or the theme&mdash;he sang every song
+and all songs to a fine, high, tuneless little
+tune of his own. At this moment Judge
+Priest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide
+range of selection. One second he was announcing
+that his name it was Joe Bowers and he
+was all the way from Pike, and the next he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+was stating, for the benefit of all who might
+care to hear these details, that they&mdash;presumably
+certain horses&mdash;were bound to run all
+night&mdash;bound to run all day; so you could
+bet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the
+bay. Nearer to the porch steps it boastingly
+transpired that somebody had jumped aboard
+the telegraf and steered her by the triggers,
+whereat the lightnin' flew and 'lectrified
+and killed ten thousand niggers! But even
+so general a catastrophe could not weigh
+down the singer's spirits. As he put a
+fumbling foot upon the lowermost step of
+the porch, he threw his head far back and
+shrilly issued the following blanket invitation
+to ladies resident in a far-away district:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Won't you come out tonight?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And dance by the light of the moon?</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin';</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And her heel it kep' a-rockin'&mdash;kep' a-rockin'!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>She was the purtiest gal in the room!</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The
+song stopped and Judge Priest stood in the
+opening, teetering a little on his heels. His
+face was all a blushing pinky glow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Evenin', jedge!&rdquo; greeted Jeff. &ldquo;You're
+late, suh!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>&ldquo;Jeff,&rdquo; said Judge Priest slowly, &ldquo;it's a
+beautiful evenin'.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter
+of fact, the drizzle of the afternoon had changed,
+soon after dark, to a steady downpour. The
+judge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops
+and his shoulders were sopping wet, but Jeff
+had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict
+a prominent white citizen.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yas, suh!&rdquo; he said, half affirmatively, half
+questioningly. &ldquo;Is it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is so!&rdquo; said Judge Priest. &ldquo;Every star
+in the sky shines like a diamond! Jeff, it's the
+most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!&rdquo;</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+<h3><span class="g">FISHHEAD</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">I</span>t goes past the powers of my pen to try to
+describe Reelfoot Lake for you so that
+you, reading this, will get the picture of
+it in your mind as I have it in mine.
+For Reelfoot Lake is like no other lake that
+I know anything about. It is an afterthought
+of Creation.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of this continent was made and
+had dried in the sun for thousands of years&mdash;for
+millions of years for all I know&mdash;before
+Reelfoot came to be. It's the newest
+big thing in nature on this hemisphere probably,
+for it was formed by the great earthquake
+of 1811, just a little more than a hundred
+years ago. That earthquake of 1811 surely
+altered the face of the earth on the then far
+frontier of this country. It changed the
+course of rivers, it converted hills into what
+are now the sunk lands of three states, and it
+turned the solid ground to jelly and made it
+roll in waves like the sea. And in the midst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>
+of the retching of the land and the vomiting
+of the waters it depressed to varying depths
+a section of the earth crust sixty miles long,
+taking it down&mdash;trees, hills, hollows and all;
+and a crack broke through to the Mississippi
+River so that for three days the river ran up
+stream, filling the hole.</p>
+
+<p>The result was the largest lake south of the
+Ohio, lying mostly in Tennessee, but extending
+up across what is now the Kentucky line, and
+taking its name from a fancied resemblance
+in its outline to the splay, reeled foot of a
+cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so
+far away, may have got its name from the same
+man who christened Reelfoot; at least so it
+sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of
+mystery. In places it is bottomless. Other
+places the skeletons of the cypress trees that
+went down when the earth sank still stand
+upright, so that if the sun shines from the
+right quarter and the water is less muddy
+than common, a man peering face downward
+into its depths sees, or thinks he sees, down
+below him the bare top-limbs upstretching
+like drowned men's fingers, all coated with
+the mud of years and bandaged with pennons
+of the green lake slime. In still other places
+the lake is shallow for long stretches, no deeper
+than breast deep to a man, but dangerous
+because of the weed growths and the sunken
+drifts which entangle a swimmer's limbs. Its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+banks are mainly mud, its waters are muddied
+too, being a rich coffee color in the spring and
+a copperish yellow in the summer, and the
+trees along its shore are mud colored clear up to
+their lower limbs after the spring floods, when
+the dried sediment covers their trunks with a
+thick, scrofulous-looking coat.</p>
+
+<p>There are stretches of unbroken woodland
+around it and slashes where the cypress knees
+rise countlessly like headstones and footstones
+for the dead snags that rot in the soft ooze.
+There are deadenings with the lowland corn
+growing high and rank below and the bleached,
+fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren
+of leaf and limb. There are long, dismal flats
+where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn
+clings like patches of white mucus among the
+weed stalks and at night the turtles crawl
+out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white
+eggs with tough, rubbery shells in the sand.
+There are bayous leading off to nowhere
+and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great,
+blind worms, to finally join the big river that
+rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few miles to the
+westward.</p>
+
+<p>So Reelfoot lies there, flat in the bottoms,
+freezing lightly in the winter, steaming torridly
+in the summer, swollen in the spring when the
+woods have turned a vivid green and the
+buffalo gnats by the million and the billion
+fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential
+buzzing, and in the fall ringed about gloriously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+with all the colors which the first frost brings&mdash;gold
+of hickory, yellow-russet of sycamore,
+red of dogwood and ash and purple-black of
+sweet-gum.</p>
+
+<p>But the Reelfoot country has its uses. It
+is the best game and fish country, natural or
+artificial, that is left in the South today. In
+their appointed seasons the duck and the
+geese flock in, and even semi-tropical birds,
+like the brown pelican and the Florida snake-bird,
+have been known to come there to nest.
+Pigs, gone back to wildness, range the ridges,
+each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt,
+savage, slab-sided old boar. By night the
+bull frogs, inconceivably big and tremendously
+vocal, bellow under the banks.</p>
+
+<p>It is a wonderful place for fish&mdash;bass and
+crappie and perch and the snouted buffalo
+fish. How these edible sorts live to spawn
+and how their spawn in turn live to spawn
+again is a marvel, seeing how many of the
+big fish-eating cannibal fish there are in Reelfoot.
+Here, bigger than anywhere else, you
+find the garfish, all bones and appetite and
+horny plates, with a snout like an alligator,
+the nearest link, naturalists say, between the
+animal life of today and the animal life of the
+Reptilian Period. The shovel-nose cat, really
+a deformed kind of freshwater sturgeon, with
+a great fan-shaped membranous plate jutting
+out from his nose like a bowsprit, jumps all
+day in the quiet places with mighty splashing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+sounds, as though a horse had fallen into the
+water. On every stranded log the huge snapping
+turtles lie on sunny days in groups of
+four and six, baking their shells black in the
+sun, with their little snaky heads raised watchfully,
+ready to slip noiselessly off at the first
+sound of oars grating in the row-locks.</p>
+
+<p>But the biggest of them all are the catfish.
+These are monstrous creatures, these catfish of
+Reelfoot&mdash;scaleless, slick things, with corpsy,
+dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and
+long whiskers dangling from the sides of their
+cavernous heads. Six and seven feet long they
+grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds
+or more, and they have mouths wide enough to
+take in a man's foot or a man's fist and strong
+enough to break any hook save the strongest
+and greedy enough to eat anything, living or
+dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master.
+Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell
+wicked tales of them down there. They call
+them man-eaters and compare them, in certain
+of their habits, to sharks.</p>
+
+<p>Fishhead was of a piece with this setting.
+He fitted into it as an acorn fits its cup. All
+his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in
+the one place, at the mouth of a certain slough.
+He had been born there, of a negro father and
+a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now
+dead, and the story was that before his birth
+his mother was frightened by one of the big
+fish, so that the child came into the world<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+most hideously marked. Anyhow, Fishhead
+was a human monstrosity, the veritable embodiment
+of nightmare. He had the body of
+a man&mdash;a short, stocky, sinewy body&mdash;but
+his face was as near to being the face of a
+great fish as any face could be and yet retain
+some trace of human aspect. His skull sloped
+back so abruptly that he could hardly be said
+to have a forehead at all; his chin slanted off
+right into nothing. His eyes were small and
+round with shallow, glazed, pale-yellow pupils,
+and they were set wide apart in his head and
+they were unwinking and staring, like a fish's
+eyes. His nose was no more than a pair of
+tiny slits in the middle of the yellow mask.
+His mouth was the worst of all. It was the
+awful mouth of a catfish, lipless and almost
+inconceivably wide, stretching from side to
+side. Also when Fishhead became a man
+grown his likeness to a fish increased, for the
+hair upon his face grew out into two tightly
+kinked, slender pendants that drooped down
+either side of the mouth like the beards of a
+fish.</p>
+
+<p>If he had any other name than Fishhead,
+none excepting he knew it. As Fishhead he
+was known and as Fishhead he answered.
+Because he knew the waters and the woods of
+Reelfoot better than any other man there,
+he was valued as a guide by the city men who
+came every year to hunt or fish; but there
+were few such jobs that Fishhead would take.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+Mainly he kept to himself, tending his corn
+patch, netting the lake, trapping a little and
+in season pot hunting for the city markets.
+His neighbors, ague-bitten whites and malaria-proof
+negroes alike, left him to himself. Indeed
+for the most part they had a superstitious fear
+of him. So he lived alone, with no kith nor
+kin, nor even a friend, shunning his kind and
+shunned by them.</p>
+
+<p>His cabin stood just below the state line,
+where Mud Slough runs into the lake. It
+was a shack of logs, the only human habitation
+for four miles up or down. Behind it the
+thick timber came shouldering right up to the
+edge of Fishhead's small truck patch, enclosing
+it in thick shade except when the sun stood
+just overhead. He cooked his food in a primitive
+fashion, outdoors, over a hole in the soggy
+earth or upon the rusted red ruin of an old
+cook stove, and he drank the saffron water
+of the lake out of a dipper made of a gourd,
+faring and fending for himself, a master hand
+at skiff and net, competent with duck gun
+and fish spear, yet a creature of affliction and
+loneliness, part savage, almost amphibious, set
+apart from his fellows, silent and suspicious.</p>
+
+<p>In front of his cabin jutted out a long fallen
+cottonwood trunk, lying half in and half out
+of the water, its top side burnt by the sun
+and worn by the friction of Fishhead's bare
+feet until it showed countless patterns of tiny
+scrolled lines, its under side black and rotted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+and lapped at unceasingly by little waves like
+tiny licking tongues. Its farther end reached
+deep water. And it was a part of Fishhead,
+for no matter how far his fishing and trapping
+might take him in the daytime, sunset would
+find him back there, his boat drawn up on the
+bank and he on the outer end of this log.
+From a distance men had seen him there many
+times, sometimes squatted, motionless as the
+big turtles that would crawl upon its dipping
+tip in his absence, sometimes erect and vigilant
+like a creek crane, his misshapen yellow
+form outlined against the yellow sun, the
+yellow water, the yellow banks&mdash;all of them
+yellow together.</p>
+
+<p>If the Reelfooters shunned Fishhead by
+day they feared him by night and avoided him
+as a plague, dreading even the chance of a
+casual meeting. For there were ugly stories
+about Fishhead&mdash;stories which all the negroes
+and some of the whites believed. They said
+that a cry which had been heard just before
+dusk and just after, skittering across the
+darkened waters, was his calling cry to the big
+cats, and at his bidding they came trooping in,
+and that in their company he swam in the lake
+on moonlight nights, sporting with them, diving
+with them, even feeding with them on what
+manner of unclean things they fed. The cry
+had been heard many times, that much was
+certain, and it was certain also that the big
+fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+Fishhead's slough. No native Reelfooter, white
+or black, would willingly wet a leg or an arm
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Here Fishhead had lived and here he was
+going to die. The Baxters were going to kill
+him, and this day in mid-summer was to be the
+time of the killing. The two Baxters&mdash;Jake
+and Joel&mdash;were coming in their dugout to do
+it. This murder had been a long time in the
+making. The Baxters had to brew their hate
+over a slow fire for months before it reached the
+pitch of action. They were poor whites, poor
+in everything&mdash;repute and worldly goods and
+standing&mdash;a pair of fever-ridden squatters who
+lived on whisky and tobacco when they could
+get it, and on fish and cornbread when they
+couldn't.</p>
+
+<p>The feud itself was of months' standing.
+Meeting Fishhead one day in the spring on
+the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at
+Walnut Log, and being themselves far overtaken
+in liquor and vainglorious with a bogus
+alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers
+had accused him, wantonly and without proof,
+of running their trot-line and stripping it of
+the hooked catch&mdash;an unforgivable sin among
+the water dwellers and the shanty boaters of the
+South. Seeing that he bore this accusation
+in silence, only eyeing them steadfastly, they
+had been emboldened then to slap his face,
+whereupon he turned and gave them both the
+beating of their lives&mdash;bloodying their noses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+and bruising their lips with hard blows against
+their front teeth, and finally leaving them,
+mauled and prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in
+the onlookers a sense of the everlasting fitness
+of things had triumphed over race prejudice
+and allowed them&mdash;two freeborn, sovereign
+whites&mdash;to be licked by a nigger.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, they were going to get the nigger.
+The whole thing had been planned out amply.
+They were going to kill him on his log at sundown.
+There would be no witnesses to see it,
+no retribution to follow after it. The very
+ease of the undertaking made them forget
+even their inborn fear of the place of Fishhead's
+habitation.</p>
+
+<p>For more than an hour now they had been
+coming from their shack across a deeply
+indented arm of the lake. Their dugout,
+fashioned by fire and adz and draw-knife from
+the bole of a gum tree, moved through the
+water as noiselessly as a swimming mallard,
+leaving behind it a long, wavy trail on the
+stilled waters. Jake, the better oarsman sat
+flat in the stern of the round-bottomed craft,
+paddling with quick, splashless strokes. Joel,
+the better shot, was squatted forward. There
+was a heavy, rusted duck gun between his
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>Though their spying upon the victim had
+made them certain sure he would not be about
+the shore for hours, a doubled sense of caution
+led them to hug closely the weedy banks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span>
+They slid along the shore like shadows, moving
+so swiftly and in such silence that the watchful
+mud turtles barely turned their snaky
+heads as they passed. So, a full hour before
+the time, they came slipping around the
+mouth of the slough and made for a natural
+ambuscade which the mixed breed had left
+within a stone's jerk of his cabin to his own
+undoing.</p>
+
+<p>Where the slough's flow joined deeper water
+a partly uprooted tree was stretched, prone
+from shore, at the top still thick and green
+with leaves that drew nourishment from the
+earth in which the half-uncovered roots yet
+held, and twined about with an exuberance of
+trumpet vines and wild fox-grapes. All about
+was a huddle of drift&mdash;last year's cornstalks,
+shreddy strips of bark, chunks of rotted weed,
+all the riffle and dunnage of a quiet eddy.
+Straight into this green clump glided the dugout
+and swung, broadside on, against the
+protecting trunk of the tree, hidden from the
+inner side by the intervening curtains of rank
+growth, just as the Baxters had intended it
+should be hidden, when days before in their
+scouting they marked this masked place of
+waiting and included it, then and there, in the
+scope of their plans.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no hitch or mishap. No one
+had been abroad in the late afternoon to mark
+their movements&mdash;and in a little while Fishhead
+ought to be due. Jake's woodman's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+eye followed the downward swing of the sun
+speculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward,
+lengthened and slithered on the small
+ripples. The small noises of the day died out;
+the small noises of the coming night began to
+multiply. The green-bodied flies went away
+and big mosquitoes, with speckled gray legs,
+came to take the places of the flies. The
+sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with
+small mouthing sounds as though it found the
+taste of the raw mud agreeable. A monster
+crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out
+of the top of his dried mud chimney and
+perched himself there, an armored sentinel
+on the watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter
+back and forth above the tops of the trees. A
+pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was
+moved to sidle off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth
+moccasin snake, so fat and swollen with
+summer poison that it looked almost like a legless
+lizard as it moved along the surface of the
+water in a series of slow torpid s's. Directly
+above the head of either of the waiting assassins
+a compact little swarm of midges hung,
+holding to a sort of kite-shaped formation.</p>
+
+<p>A little more time passed and Fishhead came
+out of the woods at the back, walking swiftly,
+with a sack over his shoulder. For a few
+seconds his deformities showed in the clearing,
+then the black inside of the cabin swallowed
+him up. By now the sun was almost down.
+Only the red nub of it showed above the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+timber line across the lake, and the shadows
+lay inland a long way. Out beyond, the big
+cats were stirring, and the great smacking
+sounds as their twisting bodies leaped clear
+and fell back in the water came shoreward in
+a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>But the two brothers in their green covert
+gave heed to nothing except the one thing
+upon which their hearts were set and their
+nerves tensed. Joel gently shoved his gun-barrels
+across the log, cuddling the stock to
+his shoulder and slipping two fingers caressingly
+back and forth upon the triggers. Jake
+held the narrow dugout steady by a grip upon
+a fox-grape tendril.</p>
+
+<p>A little wait and then the finish came.
+Fishhead emerged from the cabin door and
+came down the narrow footpath to the water
+and out upon the water on his log. He was
+barefooted and bareheaded, his cotton shirt
+open down the front to show his yellow neck
+and breast, his dungaree trousers held about
+his waist by a twisted tow string. His broad
+splay feet, with the prehensile toes outspread,
+gripped the polished curve of the log as he
+moved along its swaying, dipping surface until
+he came to its outer end and stood there
+erect, his chest filling, his chinless face lifted
+up and something of mastership and dominion
+in his poise. And then&mdash;his eye caught what
+another's eyes might have missed&mdash;the round,
+twin ends of the gun barrels, the fixed gleams<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span>
+of Joel's eyes, aimed at him through the green
+tracery.</p>
+
+<p>In that swift passage of time, too swift almost
+to be measured by seconds, realization flashed
+all through him, and he threw his head still
+higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a
+mouth, and out across the lake he sent skittering
+and rolling his cry. And in his cry was
+the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow
+of a frog, and the bay of a hound, all the compounded
+night noises of the lake. And in
+it, too, was a farewell and a defiance and an
+appeal. The heavy roar of the duck gun came.</p>
+
+<p>At twenty yards the double charge tore the
+throat out of him. He came down, face forward,
+upon the log and clung there, his trunk
+twisting distortedly, his legs twitching and
+kicking like the legs of a speared frog, his
+shoulders hunching and lifting spasmodically
+as the life ran out of him all in one swift coursing
+flow. His head canted up between the
+heaving shoulders, his eyes looked full on the
+staring face of his murderer, and then the blood
+came out of his mouth and Fishhead, in death
+still as much fish as man, slid flopping, head
+first, off the end of the log and sank, face
+downward, slowly, his limbs all extended out.
+One after another a string of big bubbles came
+up to burst in the middle of a widening reddish
+stain on the coffee-colored water.</p>
+
+<p>The brothers watched this, held by the horror
+of the thing they had done, and the cranky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>
+dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun,
+took water steadily across its gunwale; and
+now there was a sudden stroke from below
+upon its careening bottom and it went over
+and they were in the lake. But shore was only
+twenty feet away, the trunk of the uprooted
+tree only five. Joel, still holding fast to his
+hot gun, made for the log, gaining it with
+one stroke. He threw his free arm over it and
+clung there, treading water, as he shook his
+eyes free. Something gripped him&mdash;some
+great, sinewy, unseen thing gripped him fast
+by the thigh, crushing down on his flesh.</p>
+
+<p>He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out
+and his mouth set in a square shape of agony,
+and his fingers gripped into the bark of the tree
+like grapples. He was pulled down and down,
+by steady jerks, not rapidly but steadily, so
+steadily, and as he went his fingernails tore
+four little white strips in the tree bark. His
+mouth went under, next his popping eyes, then
+his erect hair, and finally his clawing, clutching
+hand, and that was the end of him.</p>
+
+<p>Jake's fate was harder still, for he lived
+longer&mdash;long enough to see Joel's finish. He
+saw it through the water that ran down his
+face, and with a great surge of his whole body
+he literally flung himself across the log and
+jerked his legs up high into the air to save them.
+He flung himself too far, though, for his face
+and chest hit the water on the far side. And
+out of this water rose the head of a great fish,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+with the lake slime of years on its flat, black
+head, its whiskers bristling, its corpsy eyes
+alight. Its horny jaws closed and clamped in
+the front of Jake's flannel shirt. His hand
+struck out wildly and was speared on a poisoned
+fin, and unlike Joel, he went from sight with
+a great yell and a whirling and a churning of
+the water that made the cornstalks circle on
+the edges of a small whirlpool.</p>
+
+<p>But the whirlpool soon thinned away into
+widening rings of ripples and the cornstalks
+quit circling and became still again, and only
+the multiplying night noises sounded about the
+mouth of the slough.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The bodies of all three came ashore on the
+same day near the same place. Except for
+the gaping gunshot wound where the neck
+met the chest, Fishhead's body was unmarked.
+But the bodies of the two Baxters were so
+marred and mauled that the Reelfooters buried
+them together on the bank without ever knowing
+which might be Jake's and which might
+be Joel's.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">Top</a></span>
+<h2>IX</h2>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>
+<h3><span class="g">GUILTY AS CHARGED</span></h3>
+
+
+<p><span class="first">T</span>he Jew, I take it, is essentially temperamental,
+whereas the Irishman is
+by nature sentimental; so that in the
+long run both of them may reach the
+same results by varying mental routes. This,
+however, has nothing to do with the story
+I am telling here, except inferentially.</p>
+
+<p>It was trial day at headquarters. To be
+exact, it was the tail end of trial day at headquarters.
+The mills of the police gods, which
+grind not so slowly but ofttimes exceeding
+fine, were about done with their grinding;
+and as the last of the grist came through the
+hopper, the last of the afternoon sunlight
+came sifting in through the windows at the
+west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after
+another the culprits, patrolmen mainly, had
+been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior
+officer, who was usually a lieutenant
+or a captain, but once in a while an inspector,
+full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+bumblebee. In due turn each offender had
+made his defense; those who were lying about
+it did their lying, as a rule, glibly and easily
+and with a certain bogus frankness very pleasing
+to see. Contrary to a general opinion, the
+Father of Lies is often quite good to his children.
+But those who were telling the truth
+were frequently shamefaced and mumbling of
+speech, making poor impressions.</p>
+
+<p>In due turn, also, each man had been convicted
+or had been acquitted, yet all&mdash;the
+proven innocent and the adjudged guilty alike&mdash;had
+undergone punishment, since they all
+had to sit and listen to lectures on police discipline
+and police manners from the trial
+deputy. It was perhaps as well for the peace
+and good order of the community that the
+public did not attend these s&eacute;ances. Those
+classes now that are the most thoroughly and
+most personally governed&mdash;the pushcart pedlers,
+with the permanent cringing droops in
+their alien backs; the sinful small boys, who
+play baseball in the streets against the statutes
+made and provided; the broken old wrecks,
+who ambush the prosperous passer-by in the
+shadows of dark corners, begging for money
+with which to keep body and soul together&mdash;it
+was just as well perhaps that none of them
+was admitted there to see these large, firm,
+stern men in uniform wriggling on the punishment
+chair, fumbling at their buttons, explaining,
+whining, even begging for mercy under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+the lashing flail of Third Deputy Commissioner
+Donohue's sleety judgments.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The only time old Donny warms up is
+when he's got a grudge against you,&rdquo; a wit of
+headquarters&mdash;Larry Magee by name&mdash;had
+said once as he came forth from the ordeal,
+brushing imaginary hailstones off his shoulders.
+&ldquo;It's always snowing hard in his soul!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third
+Deputy Commissioner Donohue was addicted
+to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound
+of his own voice. Give to Donohue a congenial
+topic, such as some one's official or
+personal shortcomings, and a congenial audience,
+and he excelled mightily in saw-edged
+oratory, rolling his r's until the tortured consonants
+fairly lay on their backs and begged
+for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>This, however, would have to be said for
+Deputy Commissioner Donohue&mdash;he was a
+hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private
+of the force, who had climbed from the ranks
+step by step through slow and devious stages,
+he was coldly aware of every trick and device
+of the delinquent policeman. A new and particularly
+ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted
+of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged
+admiration&mdash;his gray flints of eyes would
+strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but
+then, nearly always, as though to discourage
+originality even in lying, he would plaster on
+the penalty&mdash;and the lecture&mdash;twice as thick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+Wherefore, because of all these things, the
+newspaper men at headquarters viewed this
+elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional
+emotions. Presiding over a trial day, he
+made abundant copy for them, which was very
+good; but if the case were an important one
+he often prolonged it until they missed getting
+the result into their final editions, which, if
+you know anything about final editions, was
+very, very bad.</p>
+
+<p>It was so on this particular afternoon. Here
+it was nearly dusk. The windows toward the
+east showed merely as opaque patches set
+against a wall of thickening gloom, and the
+third deputy commissioner had started in at
+two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse
+and bony, he crouched forward on the edge
+of his chair, with his lean head drawn down
+between his leaner shoulders and his stiff
+stubble of hair erect on his scalp, and he
+looked, perching there, like a broody but
+vigilant old crested cormorant upon a barren
+rock.</p>
+
+<p>Except for one lone figure of misery, the
+anxious bench below him was by now empty.
+Most of the witnesses were gone and most
+of the spectators, and all the newspaper men
+but two. He whetted a lean and crooked
+forefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket
+book, turned the page and called the last case,
+being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan.
+Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+curried. For being on such and such a day,
+at such and such an hour, off his post, where
+he belonged, and in a saloon where he did not
+belong, sitting down, with his blouse unfastened
+and his belt unbuckled; and for having no
+better excuse, or no worse one, than the ancient
+tale of a sudden attack of faintness causing
+him to make his way into the nearest place
+where he might recover himself&mdash;that it
+happened to be a family liquor store was, he
+protested, a sheer accident&mdash;Patrolman Rogan
+was required to pay five days' pay and, moreover,
+to listen to divers remarks in which he
+heard himself likened to several things, none
+of them of a complimentary character.</p>
+
+<p>Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit
+departed thence with his uniform bagged and
+wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the
+third deputy commissioner, well pleased, on
+the whole, with his day's hunting, prepared to
+adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and
+made for the door, intending to telephone in
+to their two shops the grand total and final
+summary of old Donohue's bag of game.</p>
+
+<p>They were at the door, in a little press of
+departing witnesses and late defendants, when
+behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled
+official accents made them halt and turn round.
+The veteran had picked up from his desk a
+sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy,
+thick eyebrows in an effort to read what was
+written there.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>&ldquo;Wan more case to be heard,&rdquo; he announced.
+&ldquo;Keep order there, you men at the door!
+The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil&rdquo;&mdash;he
+grated the name out lingeringly&mdash;&ldquo;charged
+with&mdash;with&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He broke off, peering
+about him for some one to scold. &ldquo;Couldn't
+you be makin' a light here, some of you! I
+can't see to make out these here charges and
+specifications.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Some one bestirred himself and many lights
+popped on, chasing the shadows back into the
+far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman
+doing duty as a bailiff called the name of
+Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice repeated.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at
+last?&rdquo; said La Farge, the older of the reporters,
+half to himself. &ldquo;Say, you know, that
+tickles me! I've been looking this long time
+for something like this to be coming off.&rdquo; Like
+most old headquarters reporters, La Farge
+had his deep-seated prejudices. To judge
+by his present expression, this was a very
+deep-seated one, amounting, you might say,
+to a constitutional infirmity with La
+Farge.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Who's Weil and what's he done?&rdquo; inquired
+Rogers. Rogers was a young reporter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don't know yet&mdash;the charge must be
+newly filed, I guess,&rdquo; said La Farge, answering
+the last question first. &ldquo;But I hope they
+nail him! I don't like him&mdash;never did.
+He's too fresh. He's too smart&mdash;one of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+self-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know.
+Used to be a court interpreter down at Essex
+Market&mdash;knows about steen languages. And
+he&mdash;here he comes now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Weil passed them, going into the trial room&mdash;a
+short, squarely built man with oily black
+hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you
+knew him for one of the effusive Semitic type;
+every angle and turn of his outward aspect
+testified frankly of his breed and his sort.
+And at sight of him entering you could
+almost see the gorge of Deputy Commissioner
+Donohue's race antagonism rising inside
+of him. His gray hackles stiffened and
+his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like
+bits of frosted privet. Again he began whetting
+his forefinger on the leather back of the
+closed docket book. It was generally a bad
+sign for somebody when Donohue whetted his
+forefinger like that, and La Farge would have
+delighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising
+eyes were upon the accused.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; he said under his breath to Rogers.
+&ldquo;I think they must have the goods on Mister
+Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's the cockiest
+person round this building. Now take a look
+at him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement
+about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the
+wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define
+in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence
+and a reluctance manifest in him, as though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural
+conceit and assurance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Rogers,&rdquo; said La Farge, &ldquo;let's hustle out
+and 'phone in what we've got and then come
+back right away. If this fellow's going to get
+the harpoon stuck into him I want to be on
+hand when he starts bleeding.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned
+back to hear the beginning of the case, whatever
+it might be, against the Jew. The rest
+scattered through the corridors, heading mainly
+for the exits, so that the two newspaper men
+had company as they hurried toward the main
+door, making for their offices across the street.
+When they came back the long cross halls were
+almost deserted; it had taken them a little
+longer to finish the job of telephoning than
+they had figured. At the door of the trial
+room stood one bulky blue figure. It was the
+acting bailiff.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How far along have they got?&rdquo; asked
+La Farge as the policeman made way for them
+to pass in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Captain Meagher is the first witness,&rdquo;
+said the policeman. &ldquo;He's the one that's
+makin' the charge.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is the charge?&rdquo; put in Rogers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At this distance I couldn't make out&mdash;Cap
+Meagher, he mumbles so,&rdquo; confessed the
+doorkeeper. &ldquo;Somethin' about misuse of police
+property, I take it to be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; gloated La Farge in his gratification.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+&ldquo;Come on, Rogers&mdash;I don't want to
+miss any of this.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was plain, however, that they had missed
+something; for, to judge by his attitude, Captain
+Meagher was quite through with his testimony.
+He still sat in the witness chair
+alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;
+but he was silent and he stared vacantly at
+vacancy. Captain Meagher was known in the
+department as a man incredibly honest and
+unbelievably dull. He had no more imagination
+than one of his own reports. He had a
+long, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and
+heavy black eyebrows that curved high in the
+middle and arched downward at each end&mdash;circumflexes
+accenting the incurable stupidity
+of his expression. His black mustache drooped
+the same way, too, in the design of an inverted
+magnet. Larry Magee had coined one of his
+best whimsies on the subject of the shape of
+the captain's mustache.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No wonder,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;old Meagher never
+has any luck&mdash;he wears his horseshoe upside
+down on his face!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took
+their seats the trial deputy spoke.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is that all, Captain Meagher?&rdquo; he asked
+sonorously.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That's all,&rdquo; said Meagher.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I note,&rdquo; went on Donohue, glancing about
+him, &ldquo;that the accused does not appear to be
+represented by counsel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>A man on trial at headquarters has the right
+to hire a lawyer to defend him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; spoke up Weil briskly. &ldquo;I've
+got no lawyer, commissioner.&rdquo; His speech
+was the elaborated and painfully emphasized
+English of the self-taught East Sider. It
+carried in it just the bare suggestion of the
+racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to
+the menacing Hibernian purr of Donohue's
+heavier voice. &ldquo;I kind of thought I'd conduct
+my own case myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Donohue merely grunted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask
+Captain Meagher any questions?&rdquo; he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Weil shook his oily head of hair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain
+anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are there any other witnesses?&rdquo; inquired
+Donohue next.</p>
+
+<p>There was no answer. Plainly there were no
+other witnesses.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say
+something in your own behalf?&rdquo; queried the
+deputy commissioner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I'd like to,&rdquo; answered Weil.</p>
+
+<p>He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher
+vacated and sat facing the room, appearing&mdash;so
+La Farge thought&mdash;more shamefaced and
+abashed than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; commanded Donohue impressively,
+&ldquo;what statement, if any, have
+you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+this here charge preferred by your superior
+officer?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that
+this bespoke embarrassment; but, to the biased
+understanding of the hostile La Farge, there
+was something falsely theatrical even in the
+way Weil cleared his throat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Once a grandstander always a grandstander!&rdquo;
+he muttered derisively.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What did you say?&rdquo; whispered Rogers.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nothing,&rdquo; replied La Farge&mdash;&ldquo;just thinking
+out loud. Listen to what Foxy Issy has
+to say for himself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir, commissioner,&rdquo; began the accused,
+&ldquo;this here thing happens last Thursday, just
+as Captain Meagher is telling you.&rdquo; He had
+slipped already into the policeman's trick of
+detailing a past event in the present tense.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It's late in the afternoon&mdash;round five
+o'clock I guess&mdash;and I'm downstairs in the
+Detective Bureau alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Alone, you say?&rdquo; broke in Donohue, emphasizing
+the word as though the admission
+scored a point against the man on trial.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that
+everybody else is out and I'm in temporary
+charge, as you might say. It's getting along
+toward dark when Patrolman Morgan, who's
+on duty out in the hall, comes in and says
+to me there's a woman outside who can't talk
+English and he can't make out what she wants.
+So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+Right away I see she's a Ginney&mdash;an Italian,&rdquo;
+he corrected himself hurriedly. &ldquo;She's got a
+child with her&mdash;a little boy about two years
+old.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Describe this here woman!&rdquo; ordered Donohue,
+who loved to drag in details at a trial,
+not so much for the sake of the details themselves
+as to show his skill as a cross-examiner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; complied Weil, &ldquo;I should say
+she's about twenty-five years old. It's hard
+to tell about those Italian women, but I should
+say she's about twenty-five&mdash;or maybe twenty-six.
+She's got no figure at all and she's dressed
+poor. But she's got a pretty face&mdash;big
+brown eyes and&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That will do,&rdquo; interrupted the deputy
+commissioner&mdash;&ldquo;that will do for that. I
+take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty
+expert, Lieutenant Weil!&rdquo; he added with elaborate
+sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You asked me about her looks, sir,&rdquo; parried
+Weil defensively, &ldquo;and I'm just trying to tell
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Proceed! Proceed!&rdquo; bade Donohue, rumbling
+his consonants.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir. Well, in regard to this woman:
+She's talking so fast I can't figure out at first
+what she's trying to tell me. It's Italian she's
+talking&mdash;or I should say the kind of Italian
+they talk in parts of Sicily. After a little I
+begin to see what she's driving at. It seems
+she's the wife of one Antonio Terranova and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+her name is Maria Terranova. And after I get
+her straightened out and going slow she tells
+me her story.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is this here story got a bearin' on the
+charges pendin'?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think it has. Yes, sir; it helps to explain
+what happens. As near as I can make out
+she comes from some small town down round
+Messina somewhere, and the way she tells
+it to me, her husband leaves there not long
+after they're married and comes over here to
+New York to get work, and when he gets enough
+money saved up ahead he's going to send back
+for her. That's near about three years ago.
+So she stays behind waiting for him, and in
+about four months after he leaves the baby
+is born&mdash;the same baby that she brings in
+here to headquarters with her last Thursday.
+She says neither one of them thinks it'll be
+long before he can save up money for her
+passage, but it seems like he has the bad luck.
+He's sick for a while after he lands, and then
+when he gets a job in a construction gang the
+padrone takes the most of what he makes.
+And just about the time he gets a little saved
+up some other Ginney&mdash;Italian&mdash;in the construction
+camp steals it off of him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So he's up against it, and after a while he
+gets desperate. So he joins in with a Black
+Hander gang&mdash;amateurs operating up in the
+Bronx&mdash;and the very first trick he helps turn
+he does well by it. His share is near about a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+hundred dollars, and he sends her the best
+part of it to bring her and the baby over. She
+don't know at the time, though, how he raises
+all this money&mdash;so she tells me. And I think,
+at that, she's telling the truth&mdash;she ain't got
+sense enough to lie, I think. Anyway it
+sounds truthful to me&mdash;the way she tells it
+to me here last Thursday night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Proceed!&rdquo; prompted Donohue testily.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So she takes this here money and buys
+herself a steerage ticket and comes over here
+with the baby. That, as near as I can figure
+out, is about three months ago. She's not
+seen this husband of hers for going on three
+years&mdash;of course the baby's never seen him.
+And she figures he'll be at the dock to meet
+her. But he's not there. But his cousin is
+there&mdash;another Italian from the same town.
+He gets her through Ellis Island somehow
+and he takes her up to where he's living&mdash;up
+in the Bronx&mdash;and tells her the reason her
+husband ain't there to meet her. The reason
+is, he's at Sing Sing, doing four years.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It seems that after he's sent her this passage
+money the husband gets to thinking Black
+Handing is a pretty soft way to make a living,
+especially compared to day laboring, and he
+tries to raise a stake single-handed. He writes
+a Black Hand letter to an Italian grocer he
+knows has got money laid by, only the grocer
+is foxy and goes to the Tremont Avenue Station
+and shows the letter. They rig up a plant and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+this here Antonio Terranova walks into it.
+He's caught with the marked bills on him.
+So just the week before she lands he takes a
+plea in General Sessions and the judge gives
+him four years. When she gets to where she's
+telling me that part of it she starts crying.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, anyway, that's the situation&mdash;him
+up there at Sing Sing doing his four years and
+her down here in New York with the kid on
+her hands. And she don't ever see him again,
+either, because in about three or four weeks&mdash;something
+like that&mdash;he's working with a
+gang in the rock quarry across the river, where
+they're building the new cell house, and a chunk
+of slate falls down and kills him and two
+others.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Right here and now,&rdquo; interrupted the third
+deputy commissioner, &ldquo;I want to know what's
+all this here stuff got to do with these here
+charges and specifications?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Just a minute, please. I'm coming to
+that right away, commissioner,&rdquo; protested the
+accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous
+agility; yet for all of his promising, he paused
+for a little bit before he continued. And this
+pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening
+La Farge time to discover, with a small
+inward jar of surprise, that somehow, some
+way, he was beginning to lose some of his
+acrid antagonism for Weil; that, by mental
+processes which as yet he could not exactly
+resolve into their proper constituents, it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+beginning to dribble away from him. And
+realization came to him, almost with a shock,
+that the man on the stand was telling the truth.
+Truth or not, though, the narrative thus far
+had been commonplace enough&mdash;people at
+headquarters hear the like of it often; and as
+a seasoned police reporter La Farge's emotions
+by now should be coated over with a calloused
+shell inches deep and hard as horn. Trying
+with half his mind to figure out what it was
+that had quickened these emotions, he listened
+all the harder as Weil went on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So this here big chunk of rock or slate
+or whatever it was falls on him and the two
+others and kills them. Not knowing where
+to send the body, they bury it up there at
+Sing Sing, and she never sees him again,
+living or dead. But here just a few days ago
+it seems she picks up, from overhearing some
+of the other Italians talking, that we've got
+such a thing as a Rogues' Gallery down here
+at headquarters and that her husband's picture
+is liable to be in it. So that's why she's
+here. She's found her way here somehow and
+she asks me won't I&rdquo;&mdash;he caught himself&mdash;&ldquo;won't
+the police please give her her husband's
+picture out of the gallery.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And for why did she want that?&rdquo; rumbled
+Donohue.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That's what I asks her myself. It seems
+she's got no shame about it at all. She tells
+me she wants to hang on to it until she can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+get the money to have it enlarged into a big
+picture, and then she's going to keep it&mdash;till
+the bambino&mdash;that's Italian for baby, commissioner,
+you know&mdash;till the baby grows
+up, so he can see what his dead father looked
+like.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now of a sudden La Farge knew&mdash;or
+thought he knew&mdash;why his interest had
+stirred in him a minute before. Instinctively
+his reporter's sixth sense had scented a good
+news story before the real point of the story
+had come out, even. A curious little silence
+had fallen on the half-lighted, almost empty
+big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this
+silence:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain
+to her what the circumstances are. I tells
+her that, in the first place, on account of the
+mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery
+having gone into effect, it's an even bet her
+husband's picture ain't there anyhow&mdash;that
+it's most likely been destroyed; and in the
+second place, even if it is there, I tells her I've
+got no right to be giving it to her without an
+order from somebody higher up. But either
+she can't understand or she won't. I guess
+my being in uniform makes her think I'm
+running the whole department, and she won't
+seem to listen to what I says.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She cries and she carries on worse than
+ever, and begs and begs me to give it to her.
+I guess you know how excitable those Italian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+women can be, especially when they are
+Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after a lot
+of that sort of thing I tells her to wait where
+she is for a minute. I leaves her and I goes
+across into the Bertillon room, where the
+pictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio
+Terranova. I forget his number now and I
+don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked
+when we're cleaning out the gallery;
+but he's there all right, full face and side view,
+with his gallery number in big white figures
+on his chest. And, commissioner, he's a
+pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney.&rdquo; The
+witness checked an inclination to grin. &ldquo;I
+takes a slant at his picture, and I can't make
+up my own mind which way he'll look the worst
+enlarged into a crayon portrait&mdash;full face or
+side view. I can still hear her crying outside
+the door. She's crying harder than ever.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I puts the picture back, and I goes out
+to where she is and tries to argue with her.
+It's no use. She goes down on her knees and
+holds the baby up, and tells me it ain't for her
+sake she's asking this&mdash;it's for the bambino.
+And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I
+never even heard the names of some of them
+before&mdash;and so on, like that. It's pretty
+tough.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you
+can't help from feeling sorry for her&mdash;nobody
+could.&rdquo; He hesitated a moment as though
+seeking for words of explanation and extenuation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+that were not in his regular vocabulary.
+&ldquo;I got kids of my own, commissioner,&rdquo; he
+said suddenly, and stopped dead short for a
+moment. &ldquo;I'm no Italian, but I got kids of
+my own!&rdquo; he repeated, as though the fact
+constituted a defense.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, well&mdash;what happened then?&rdquo; The
+deputy commissioner's frosty voice seemed to
+have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And
+now then the Semitic face of Weil twisted into
+a grin that was more than shamefaced&mdash;it
+was downright sheepish.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, then,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;when I comes back
+out of the Bertillon room the second time she
+goes back down on her knees again and she
+says to me&mdash;of course she ain't expected to
+know what my religion is&mdash;maybe that explains
+it, commissioner&mdash;she says to me that
+all her life&mdash;every morning and every night&mdash;she's
+going to pray to the Blessed Virgin
+for me. That's what she says anyway. So I
+just lets it go at that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He halted as though he were through.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then do I understand that, without an
+order from any superior authority, you gave
+this here woman certain property belonging
+to the Police Department?&rdquo; Old Donohue's
+voice was gruffer than common, even. He
+whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; owned up the Jew. &ldquo;There's
+nobody there but just us two. And I don't
+know how Captain Meagher comes to find the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+picture is gone and that it was me took it&mdash;but
+it's true, commissioner. She goes away
+kissing it and holding it to the breast of her
+clothes&mdash;that Rogues' Gallery picture! Yes,
+sir; I gives it to her.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded
+right arm was shoved out, with all the lean
+fingers upon the hand at the far end of it
+widely extended. He spoke, and something
+in his throat&mdash;a hard lump perhaps&mdash;husked
+his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Lieutenant Weil,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I congratulate
+you! You're guilty!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<h3><span class="g">THE END</span></h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Escape of Mr. Trimm, by Irvin S. Cobb
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,7016 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Escape of Mr. Trimm, 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: The Escape of Mr. Trimm
+       His Plight and other Plights
+
+Author: Irvin S. Cobb
+
+Release Date: March 11, 2008 [EBook #24799]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Marcia Brooks and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.--_Frontispiece_
+(_Page 18._)]
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE
+OF MR. TRIMM
+
+_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_
+
+BY
+
+IRVIN S. COBB
+
+AUTHOR OF
+OLD JUDGE PRIEST,
+BACK HOME, ETC.
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP
+
+PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913
+
+BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913
+
+BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1913
+
+BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
+
+
+[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added.]
+
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                          PAGE
+
+     I.  THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM                      3
+
+    II.  THE BELLED BUZZARD                          54
+
+   III.  AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET              79
+
+    IV.  ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES       96
+
+     V.  SMOKE OF BATTLE                            142
+
+    VI.  THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE                   179
+
+   VII.  TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN                   202
+
+  VIII.  FISHHEAD                                   244
+
+    IX.  GUILTY AS CHARGED                          260
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM.                   Frontispiece
+
+  "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."             Facing page 70
+
+  "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."      Facing Page 164
+
+  HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT
+    MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.                      Facing Page 193
+
+
+
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM
+
+
+Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, was
+taking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he had
+ever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans and
+even luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rode
+with a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the second
+place, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm would
+have chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-looking
+German-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the third
+place, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in a
+close and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean's
+Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to the
+Federal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking,
+one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to govern
+national banks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, a
+certain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Through
+the seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been always
+at the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watch
+that never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into his
+thoughts and then go away, only to come back again.
+
+When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier who
+got off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him to
+be no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the Thirteenth
+National--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carried
+about Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give the
+young cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley was
+only a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;
+Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal to
+the higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and as
+for Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now.
+
+With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning he
+had held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in with
+their judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncing
+sentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for which
+he stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight to
+beat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr.
+Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named as
+co-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not have
+been more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cell
+had read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hysterical
+outpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man of
+Wall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the mark
+by a thousand miles or two.
+
+Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, for
+money and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even the
+corrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself in
+the airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer from
+outside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learned
+that a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by a
+good appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The warden
+and his underlings had been models of official kindliness; the
+newspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him whenever
+he felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers had
+done all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do.
+Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never been
+able to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who had
+been sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, that
+he, personally, was merely a spectator standing to one side watching the
+fight of another man to dodge the penitentiary.
+
+However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of every
+chance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thing
+had persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in the
+early fall and told him that the court of last possible resort had
+denied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with a
+shake of his head as the other began saying something about the chances
+of a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of letting
+men deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and he
+knew it.
+
+"Never mind that, Walling," he said steadily, when the lawyer offered to
+come to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "If
+you'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us,
+I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. I
+have a good many things to do tonight. Good night."
+
+"Such a man, such a man," said Walling to himself as he climbed into
+his car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock that
+brain up for twelve years. It's a crime," said Walling, and shook his
+head. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of his
+to prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of them
+there. Walling made as high as fifty thousand a year at criminal law.
+Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holes
+in the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and provide
+them and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he had
+lost in a good long time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had made
+as careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, and
+he had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting on
+his hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-gray
+middle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor and
+down the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed to
+the curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of many
+cells; his feet rang briskly on the flags.
+
+The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, a
+tall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache and the
+unmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knew
+without being told that this was the man who would take him to prison.
+The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers.
+
+"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm," said the warden with a nervous
+cordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy Marshal
+Meyers," he added.
+
+Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, but
+caught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neither
+interest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved over
+toward the door.
+
+"Mr. Trimm," he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty of
+calling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out front
+now. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot of
+other people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one of
+my men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway down
+at Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows."
+
+"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you," said Mr. Trimm in that crisp,
+businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all his
+life. He heard a door opening softly behind him, and when he turned to
+look he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassed
+fashion.
+
+"Well," said Meyers, "all ready?"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise.
+
+"Wait one minute," said Meyers.
+
+He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket of
+his ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the least
+little jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all those
+months began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchief
+the man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face.
+
+He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, as
+if it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then,
+thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying in
+his hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had little
+notches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that had
+ticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of these
+steel things with their notched jaws.
+
+Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he had
+ever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward.
+
+"I guess you're new at this kind of thing," said Meyers, grinning. "This
+here way--one at a time."
+
+He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settled
+one of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notched
+jaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automatically
+with a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth on
+Mr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and then
+bringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way.
+Then he stepped back.
+
+Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden.
+
+"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was husky
+and didn't seem to belong to him.
+
+"Yep," said Meyers. "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take no
+chances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pair
+there was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose."
+
+For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by a
+chalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands had
+fallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists a
+little chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled his
+brain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he had
+heard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was a
+headline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr.
+Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets and
+this bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with a
+strange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweat
+beaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet.
+
+He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitched
+border and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttoned
+coat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly like
+crab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding it
+so, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell in
+upon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling the
+room with a smart little sound.
+
+He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raised
+the manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that brought
+it over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon his
+plump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him,
+squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to square
+his shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closely
+together. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimm
+had a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbones
+and his forehead.
+
+"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"
+
+He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffled
+together, one over, then under the other.
+
+"Here's a way," said Meyers. "This'll help."
+
+He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other,
+tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of his
+prisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come.
+
+"There's the notion," he said. "Just do that-a-way and them bracelets
+won't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then."
+
+But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steel
+rings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap of
+chain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your body
+in a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man is
+coming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see the
+cuffs.
+
+Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out of
+the Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open by
+some one whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he and
+his companion were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward the
+subway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal's
+hand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legs
+almost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if the
+warden's well-meant artifice would serve them.
+
+But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evade
+them. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted a
+warning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picket
+stationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs came
+pelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with a
+choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, not
+knowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen halted
+their teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. A
+man-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city like
+New York can offer its people.
+
+Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot down
+the winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremost
+pursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
+hand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the tickets, and another
+before a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered
+at, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he was
+stout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
+clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at the
+apex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as the
+scrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward the
+doors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisoner
+into the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with his
+body a barrier against those who came jamming in.
+
+It didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.
+The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, left
+their seats, overflowing the aisles.
+
+There is no crueler thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbid
+curiosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
+Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legs
+shutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What the
+eyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,
+seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on him
+some places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, his
+hat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleeves
+down over a pair of steel bracelets.
+
+Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought he
+had forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,
+shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras had
+been shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttled
+alongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions in
+his ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still ran
+down his face, so that when finally he raised his head in the
+comparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray under
+the jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.
+
+"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private place
+on the train," he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know."
+
+They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyers
+spoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car where
+they had halted.
+
+"No such reservation," said the conductor, running through his sheaf of
+slips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's hands
+and back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the more
+interesting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for some
+other train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes."
+
+"I reckon we better git on the smoker," said Meyers, "if there's room
+there."
+
+Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through a
+double row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps where
+they stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself up
+by the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist.
+Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyers
+headed him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He was
+confused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered,
+too.
+
+The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necks
+and stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men came
+out into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them.
+
+"This here'll do as well as any, I guess," said Meyers. He drew Mr.
+Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongside
+him on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plush
+seat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardest
+part of a not easy job.
+
+"Smoke?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it.
+
+"Them cuffs feel plenty easy?" was the deputy's next question. He lifted
+Mr. Trimm's hands as casually as if they had been his hands and not Mr.
+Trimm's, and looked at them.
+
+"Seem to be all right," he said as he let them fall back. "Don't pinch
+none, I reckon?" There was no answer.
+
+The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache, searching his arid mind. An
+idea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it out
+flat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chained
+wrists. Almost instantly the train was in motion, moving through the
+yards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Be there in two hours more," volunteered Meyers. It was late afternoon.
+They were sliding through woodlands with occasional openings which
+showed meadows melting into wide, flat lands.
+
+"Want a drink?" said the deputy, next. "No? Well, I guess I'll have a
+drop myself. Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust." He got up,
+lurching to the motion of the flying train, and started forward to the
+water cooler behind the car door. He had gone perhaps two-thirds of the
+way when Mr. Trimm felt a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet; it
+was exactly as though the train were trying to go forward and back at
+the same time. Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward end of the
+car slued out of its straight course, at the same time tilting up. There
+was a grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before Mr. Trimm's eyes
+Meyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckled
+under his feet. Then, as everything--the train, the earth, the sky--all
+fused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm, plucked
+from his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar, shot forward
+through the air over the seatbacks, his chained hands aloft, clutching
+wildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the smoker had broken in
+two, flopped gently on the sloping side of the right-of-way and slid
+easily to the bottom, where he lay quiet and still on his back in a bed
+of weeds and wild grass, staring straight up.
+
+How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have been
+the shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought him
+out of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on his
+feet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-face
+into the crowning railroad horror of the year.
+
+There were numbers of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, but
+for the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror and
+shock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, were
+pecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribable
+jumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and from
+which, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides,
+jammed together like fighting bucks that had died with locked horns, a
+tall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of black
+smoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody
+paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. There
+wasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat was
+still on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a sudden
+impulse, he turned round and went running straight away from the
+railroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with his
+arms pumping up and down in front of him and his fingers interlaced. It
+was a grotesque gait, almost like a rabbit hopping on its hindlegs.
+
+Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing down to the edge of the
+fill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among the
+tree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over the
+irregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carry
+him another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leaned
+against a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No sound
+came to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. Trimm
+might judge he had come far into the depths of a considerable woodland.
+Already the shadows under the low limbs were growing thick and confused
+as the hurried twilight of early September came on.
+
+Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of thick green moss between two
+roots of an oak. The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented. For
+some little time he sat there motionless, in a sort of mental haze. Then
+his round body slowly slid down flat upon the moss, his head lolled to
+one side and, the reaction having come, Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxed
+and he went to sleep straightway.
+
+After a while, when the woods were black and still, the half-grown moon
+came up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above,
+shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouth
+open, and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlight
+struck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look like
+quicksilver.
+
+Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which had
+been a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and green
+in another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the sun
+came up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes between
+the tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing for
+the first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy of
+leaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he remembered
+everything; he haunched his shoulders against the tree roots and
+wriggled himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while,
+letting his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought him
+where he was and taking inventory of the situation.
+
+Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him before
+now; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be better
+for him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like an
+animal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought of
+enduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of being
+tagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with a
+nausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store for
+him could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knew
+that. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimm
+desperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hide
+his face and his chained hands.
+
+But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captors
+in some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to him
+before! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two hands
+apart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before.
+
+The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforced
+companionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost him
+some painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm to
+get his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather case
+out of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose he
+subjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel band
+ran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the small
+lock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little rounded
+excrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was a
+small keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in a
+minute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid into
+themselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might be
+tightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blue
+veins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted to
+the cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, giving
+the hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. The
+cuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actual
+discomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened.
+
+But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to be
+got off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase.
+All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain.
+The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of bone
+above the hands would catch and hold them.
+
+Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviously
+hopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fair
+gait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappled
+with lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life was
+stirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that green
+solitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at his
+sleeve ends.
+
+Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of a
+locomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an opposite
+direction from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned around
+and went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet and
+climbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in his
+night from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon the
+railroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. To
+the south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbroken
+woodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge against
+the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--which
+was still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had come
+out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration
+he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish small
+dots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew these
+dots must be men.
+
+A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. He
+faced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north,
+moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps.
+Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on the
+edges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time within
+twelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulses
+normally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcar
+flashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle.
+
+But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted his
+hastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to these
+overalled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slid
+out of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcar
+was a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big,
+wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising and
+falling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fade
+away and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against his
+judgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one of
+the blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and come
+fluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, starting
+doggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried it
+along died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front of
+him. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of that
+morning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:
+"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision."
+
+Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheet
+flat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaring
+captions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a great
+bound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, he
+bounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there with
+the paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps while
+the chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors running
+through him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was his
+own name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken up
+into choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trained
+reporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, but
+telling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which his
+name recurred again and again. The body of the United States deputy
+marshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed, had been taken from the wreckage
+of the smoker--so the double-leaded story ran--and near to Meyers
+another body, with features burned beyond recognition, yet still
+retaining certain distinguishing marks of measurement and contour, had
+been found and identified as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convicted
+banker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen other mangled dead, had
+been removed to a town called Westfield, from which town of Westfield
+the account of the disaster had been telegraphed to the New York paper.
+In another column farther along was more about Banker Trimm; facts about
+his soiled, selfish, greedy, successful life, his great fortune, his
+trial, and a statement that, lacking any close kin to claim his body,
+his lawyers had been notified.
+
+Mr. Trimm read the account through to the end, and as he read the sense
+of dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He got
+up, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods,
+moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take hold
+of problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred,
+grisly thing in the improvised morgue at Westfield, wherever that might
+be, Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity. All his life he had used
+live men to work his will, with no thought of what might come to them
+afterward. The living had served him, why not the dead?
+
+He had other things to think of than this dead proxy of his. He was as
+good as free! There would be no hunt for him now; no alarm out, no
+posses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turned
+fugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get in
+secret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And he
+had the money--four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash that
+had ruined so many others.
+
+He would alter his personal appearance, change his name--he thought of
+Duvall, which was his mother's name--and with Walling's aid he would get
+out of the country and into some other country where a man might live
+like a prince on four millions or the fractional part of it. He thought
+of South America, of South Africa, of a private yacht swinging through
+the little frequented islands of the South Seas. All that the law had
+tried to take from him would be given back. Walling would work out the
+details of the escape--and make it safe and sure--trust Walling for
+those things. On one side was the prison, with its promise of twelve
+grinding years sliced out of the very heart of his life; on the other,
+freedom, ease, security, even power. Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbled
+thoughts of concessions, enterprises, privileges--the back corners of
+the globe were full of possibilities for the right man. And between this
+prospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing in the way, nothing but----
+
+Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands. Snug-fitting, shiny steel
+bands irked his wrists. The Grips of the Law were still upon him.
+
+But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous, unbelievable,
+altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted down
+and stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling with
+the big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luck
+had come to be a byword--and had not it held good even in this last
+emergency?--would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and a
+trumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the gold
+bands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at the
+opera. The chain that joined them was no larger and, probably, no
+stronger than the chains which Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around the
+tires of the touring car in winter to keep the wheels from skidding on
+the slush. There would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free himself
+from these things. There must be--that was all there was to it.
+
+Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes were not badly rumpled; his
+patent-leather boots were scarcely scratched. Without the handcuffs he
+could pass unnoticed anywhere. By night then he must be free of them and
+on his way to some small inland city, to stay quiet there until the
+guarded telegram that he would send in cipher had reached Walling. There
+in the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no longer felt the ignominy of his
+bonds; he felt only the temporary embarrassment of them and the need of
+added precaution until he should have mastered them.
+
+He was once more the unemotional man of affairs who had stood Wall
+Street on its esteemed head and caught the golden streams that trickled
+from its pockets. First making sure that he was in a well-screened
+covert of the woods he set about exploring all his pockets. The coat
+pockets were comparatively easy, now that he had got used to using two
+hands where one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting of
+his body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth the
+contents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as he
+groped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy form
+writhed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced four
+cigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, a
+silver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chicken
+feed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks,
+a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimm
+ranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker setting
+out his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated from
+his design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He kept
+for present employment the match safe, the cigar cutter and the watch.
+
+This place where he had halted would suit his present purpose well, he
+decided. It was where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving bank,
+made a snug little recess that was closed in on three sides. Spreading
+the newspaper on the turf to save his knees from soiling, he knelt and
+set to his task. For the time he felt neither hunger nor thirst. He had
+found out during his earlier experiments that the nails of his little
+fingers, which were trimmed to a point, could invade the keyholes in the
+little steel warts on the backs of his wrists and touch the locks. The
+mechanism had even twitched a little bit under the tickle of the nail
+ends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal match safe under his
+heel, Mr. Trimm selected a slender-pointed bit from among its fragments
+and got to work, the left hand drawn up under the right, the fingers of
+the right busy with the lock of the left, the chain tightening and
+slackening with subdued clinking sounds at each movement.
+
+Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money by
+a higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lock
+picking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had let
+other boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like,
+and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't given
+more heed to the mechanical side of things when he was growing up.
+
+He worked with a deliberate slowness, steadily. Nevertheless, it was hot
+work. The sun rose over the bank and shone on him through the limbs of
+the uprooted tree. His hat was on the ground alongside of him. The sweat
+ran down his face, streaking it and wilting his collar flat. The scrap
+of gun metal kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down would go the
+chained hands to scrabble in the grass for it, and then the picking
+would go on again. This happened a good many times. Birds, nervous with
+the spirit that presages the fall migration, flew back and forth along
+the creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes. A rain crow wove a brown
+thread in the green warp of the bushes above his head. A chattering red
+squirrel sat up on a tree limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly,
+came the cough of laboring trains, showing that the track must have been
+cleared. There were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt the lock
+giving. These times he would work harder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back against the bank, panting. His
+face was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of his
+forehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared tree
+frogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on the
+log; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metal
+match safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp of
+metal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago and
+the broken crystals powdered the earth where Mr. Trimm's toes had
+scraped a smooth patch. The nails of the two little fingers were worn to
+the quick and splintered down into the raw flesh. There were countless
+tiny scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs, and the steel
+wristbands were dulled with blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of new
+rust; but otherwise they were as stanch and strong a pair of Bean's
+Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware store
+anywhere.
+
+The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned things! With an acid oath
+Mr. Trimm raised his hands and brought them down on the log violently.
+There was a double click and the bonds tightened painfully, pressing the
+chafed red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his hands close to his
+near-sighted eyes and looked. One of the little notches on the under
+side of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living things
+that had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air.
+Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fetters
+his wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms.
+His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that he
+drank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. His
+undergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to him
+clammily. His middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called through every
+pore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insides
+called for food.
+
+After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conquered
+his instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness, gathering
+scraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that had
+been in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with its
+tiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughing
+when the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his arms
+in an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to him
+that if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands he
+would be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course.
+
+He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between his
+hunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burned
+almost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled to
+his feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against his
+blistered foot almost made him cry out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly traced
+footpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead of
+him. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell before
+either the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running,
+skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine,
+swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm,
+imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheaded
+until he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on a
+shrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of them
+with his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally.
+Warned instantly by the acrid, burning taste, he spat the crushed
+berries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his best
+judgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic of
+him, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of the
+distinguishing marks of the timber.
+
+Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted some
+little time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacs
+and weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it was
+still. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been a
+shack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare head
+below the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty and
+gained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had once
+formed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncovered
+something. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, red
+fish with the crusted rust of years.
+
+Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old,
+broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crusted
+harrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it would
+go, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward with
+all his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. The
+link had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressure
+had almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowing
+that it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he had
+known all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wrists
+and thinking.
+
+He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion that
+fire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bits
+of the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slender
+and straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holding
+his hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about to
+catch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurable
+too, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded only
+in blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of his
+wrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it.
+
+Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls he
+noticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held to
+half-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part of a
+pen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried the
+wire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaning
+with the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back and
+forth, back and forth along the strand of wire.
+
+Eventually the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shined
+spot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudged
+surface was all the mark that the chain showed.
+
+Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left
+the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the
+railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road winding
+downhill.
+
+To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm and
+a group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a cluster
+of dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two and
+a small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road that
+ran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boy
+came, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted across
+the wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boy
+put the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stone
+to throw at the squirrel.
+
+Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief,
+grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hiding
+the handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping as
+much of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of the
+little chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on his
+bare heel.
+
+"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began.
+
+The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling toward
+him in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr.
+Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legs
+could take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend.
+
+Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curious
+spectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a man
+worth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawing
+with chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then,
+when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which the
+pail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animal
+sounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin and
+splashed down his breast in little, spurting streams.
+
+But the boy didn't look back. He ran all the way home and told his
+mother he had seen a wild man on the road to the village; and later,
+when his father came in from the fields, he was soundly thrashed for
+letting the sight of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket and half a
+gallon of milk worth six cents a quart.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm. He rested the better for
+it during the early part of that night in a haw thicket. Only the
+sharp, darting pains in his wrists kept rousing him to temporary
+wakefulness. In one of those intervals of waking the plan that had been
+sketchily forming in his mind from the time he had quit the clearing in
+the woods took on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he with safety to
+get the sort of aid he needed, and where?
+
+Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he dozed off again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith shop three yokels were
+languidly pitching horseshoes--"quaits" they called them--at a stake
+driven in the earth. Just beyond, the woods shredded out into a long,
+yellow and green peninsula which stretched up almost to the back door of
+the smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of the
+near-most trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme end
+of this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder,
+squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrod
+tops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had been
+there more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail the
+blacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of his
+shop, passing back and forth in front of a smudgy forge fire and
+rattling metal against metal in intermittent fits of professional
+activity.
+
+From where Mr. Trimm watched to where the horseshoe-pitching game went
+on was not more than sixty feet. He could hear what the players said and
+even see the little puffs of dust rise when one of them clapped his
+hands together after a pitch. He judged by the signs of slackening
+interest that they would be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clear
+away.
+
+But the smith loafed out of his shop and, after an exchange of bucolic
+banter with the three of them, he took a hand in their game himself. He
+wore no coat or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his first
+cast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap of
+his suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe,
+the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clump
+of undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. The
+near-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what the
+flat, silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behind
+the rock, holding his hands down between his knees, fearful that a gleam
+from his burnished wristlets might strike through the screen of weed
+growth and catch the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed, not
+daring to move, until a dinner horn sounded somewhere in the cluster of
+cottages beyond, and the smith, closing the doors of his shop, went away
+with the three yokels.
+
+Then Mr. Trimm, stooping low, stole back into the deep woods again. In
+his extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of a
+blacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith who
+wore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against the
+rough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation was
+comforting to the swollen skin. The cuffs, which kept catching on the
+bark and snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed to Mr. Trimm to
+have been a part and parcel of him for a long time--almost as long a
+time as he could remember. But the hands which they clasped so close
+seemed like the hands of somebody else. There was a numbness about them
+that made them feel as though they were a stranger's hands which never
+had belonged to him. As he looked at them with a sort of vague curiosity
+they seemed to swell and grow, these two strange, fettered hands, until
+they measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the thinness
+of piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the hands
+in turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into great, thick
+things as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A voice that Mr.
+Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something about four
+million dollars over and over again.
+
+Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbed
+his eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for him to be
+getting light-headed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which the
+railroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collision
+had occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking something
+in an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals.
+This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale,
+beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, so
+that it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless,
+unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangled
+grotesquely about his spare shanks.
+
+Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame at
+the prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whose
+help he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp of
+smoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp air
+that had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, to
+climb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded in
+the shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in the
+washboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry out
+with eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of the
+halting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboiler
+and glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomer
+his eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin of
+comprehension.
+
+"Well, well, well," he said, leering offensively, "welcome to our city,
+little stranger."
+
+Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out of
+the wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from the
+tramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Then
+slowly: "I'm in trouble," he said, and held out his hands.
+
+"Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it," said the tramp coolly. "That
+purticular kind o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure."
+
+His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm's stooped
+figure down the slope of the hillock.
+
+"Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?" he demanded, his
+manner changing.
+
+"There is no one after me--no one that I know of," explained Mr. Trimm.
+"I am quite alone--I am certain of it."
+
+"Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?" the other persisted
+suspiciously.
+
+"I tell you I am all alone," protested Mr. Trimm. "I want your help in
+getting these--these things off and sending a message to a friend.
+You'll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than you
+ever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise----"
+
+He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stooped
+again to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of the
+washboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly,
+filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he could
+not speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left him
+shaking and gulping.
+
+"Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about yourself," said the freckled
+man. "Wot brings you roamin' round this here railroad cut with them
+bracelets on?"
+
+"I was in the wreck," obeyed Mr. Trimm. "The man with me--the
+officer--was killed. I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods. But
+they think I'm dead too--my name was among the list of dead."
+
+The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment.
+
+"Why, say," he began, "I read all about that there wreck--seen the list
+myself--say, you can't be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wot
+a streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer,
+sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all nice an' snug an' reg'lar!
+Mister Trimm--well, if this ain't rich!"
+
+"My name is Trimm," said the starving banker miserably. "I've been
+wandering about here a great many hours--several days, I think it must
+be--and I need rest and food very much indeed. I don't--don't feel very
+well," he added, his voice trailing off.
+
+At this his self-control gave way again and he began to quake violently
+as if with an ague. The smell of the cooking overcame him.
+
+"You don't look so well an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp,
+resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself at
+home, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bite
+together--you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two."
+
+He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made him appear even more repulsive
+than before.
+
+"But looky here, you wus sayin' somethin' about money," he said
+suddenly. "Le's take a look at all this here money."
+
+He came over to him and went through Mr. Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm said
+nothing and stood quietly, making no resistance. The tramp finished a
+workmanlike search of the banker's pockets. He looked at the result as
+it lay in his grimy palm--a moist little wad of bills and some
+chicken-feed change--and spat disgustedly with a nasty oath.
+
+"Well, Trimm," he said, "fur a Wall Street guy seems to me you travel
+purty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all this
+pile of wealth?"
+
+"You will be well paid," said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend will
+see to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have there
+in your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cut
+these things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certain
+gentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get an
+answer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it."
+
+He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in the
+rusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through his
+red-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with his
+toe.
+
+"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm," he said.
+"'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat the
+cops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mighty
+kind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you never
+toted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's his
+name?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with you
+in yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over the
+road to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides," he added
+cunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I notice
+you ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by is
+yore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts."
+
+"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly," burst out Mr. Trimm, the
+words falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I've
+endured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now." He pleaded
+fast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as he
+stretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them.
+Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. His
+tormentor checked him with a gesture.
+
+"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand," he chuckled, hugging his slack
+frame, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An',
+anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwise
+not on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow, I
+will."
+
+"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"
+
+"I mean this," said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under his
+loose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about his
+waist. "If I turn you over to the Government I know wot you'll be worth,
+purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an' besides, it'll maybe help to
+square me up fur one or two little matters. If I turn you loose I ain't
+got nothin' only your word--an' I've got an idea how much faith I kin
+put in that."
+
+Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There was no escape. He was fast in
+a trap which he himself had sprung. The thought of being led to jail,
+all foul of body and fettered as he was, by this filthy, smirking wretch
+made him crazy. He stumbled backward with some insane idea of running
+away.
+
+"No hurry, no hurry a-tall," gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture of
+this helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' to
+hurt you none--only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurt
+yourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself;
+you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'll
+just back you up agin one of these trees an' then we'll jest slip this
+here belt through yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at the back;
+an' I kinder guess you'll stay right there till I go down yonder to that
+station that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind of a bargain I kin
+strike up with the marshal. Come on, now," he threatened with a show of
+bluster, reading the resolution that was mounting in Mr. Trimm's face.
+"Come on peaceable, if you don't want to git hurt."
+
+Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive man. He was filled with those
+elemental emotions that make a man see in spatters of crimson. Gathering
+strength from passion out of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward at
+the tramp. He struck at him with his head, his shoulders, his knees, his
+manacled wrists, all at once. Not really hurt by the puny assault, but
+caught by surprise, the freckled man staggered back, clawing at the air,
+tripped on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell vanished below
+the smooth edge of the cut.
+
+Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over the bluff. Half-way down the
+cliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward,
+motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into his
+clothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoat
+in a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg looked
+flattened and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at him he saw a red stain
+spreading on the rock under the still, silent figure's head.
+
+Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the last
+of its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. He
+stared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliff
+edge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went.
+Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, then
+hard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he was
+soon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched along
+without sense of direction or, indeed, without any active realization of
+what he was doing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour.
+A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about the
+house-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed for
+losing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, the
+figure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up,
+painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. He
+moved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because of
+the slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and that
+through the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen.
+
+The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were looming
+dead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a small
+terrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward,
+kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out with
+short, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such motions as the
+terrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backing
+away, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh,
+Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of the
+breaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing and
+cutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt the
+terrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, to
+where it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and a
+half-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled,
+half fell out of sight behind the woodpile.
+
+Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, with
+the whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners with
+the muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming had
+aroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the east
+Mr. Trimm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating down
+on him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting at
+the bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in the
+air. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat his
+arms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone and
+the force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that they
+pressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones.
+
+When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmer
+went shivering back indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the groveling
+figure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirring
+a little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morning
+following the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the day
+police force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place where
+the collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking at
+the front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The door
+was a Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half might
+be opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this top
+half back.
+
+A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterably
+weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble
+on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of
+its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows,
+hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps of
+broken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids as
+colorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthy
+with plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet.
+
+"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What do
+you want?"
+
+With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came up
+off the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from a
+dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, as
+big as a pigeon's egg.
+
+"I have come," said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which the
+chief could hardly hear--"I have come to surrender myself. I am Hobart
+W. Trimm."
+
+"I guess you got another thing comin'," said the chief, who was by way
+of being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W. Trimm was only
+fifty-two years old. Besides which, he's dead and buried. I guess maybe
+you'd better think agin, grandpap, and see if you ain't Methus'lah or
+the Wanderin' Jew."
+
+"I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker," whispered the stranger with a sort
+of wan stubbornness.
+
+"Go on and prove it," suggested the chief, more than willing to prolong
+the enjoyment of the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield that
+wandering lunatics came a-calling.
+
+"Got any way to prove it?" he repeated as the visitor stared at him.
+
+"Yes," came the creaking, rusted hinge of a voice, "I have."
+
+Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised his hands into the chief's
+sight. They were horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood where
+they were not black with the dried dirt; the fingers puffed up out of
+shape; the nails broken; they were like the skinned paws of a bear. And
+at the wrists, almost buried in the bloated folds of flesh, blackened,
+rusted, battered, yet still strong and whole, was a tightly-locked pair
+of Bean's Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs.
+
+"Great God!" cried the chief, transfixed at the sight. He drew the bolt
+and jerked open the lower half of the door.
+
+"Come in," he said, "and lemme get them irons off of you--they must hurt
+something terrible."
+
+"They can wait," said Mr. Trimm very feebly, very slowly and very
+humbly. "I have worn them a long, long while--I am used to them.
+Wouldn't you please get me some food first?"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE BELLED BUZZARD
+
+
+There was a swamp known as Little Niggerwool, to distinguish it from Big
+Niggerwool, which lay across the river. It was traversable only by those
+who knew it well--an oblong stretch of tawny mud and tawny water,
+measuring maybe four miles its longest way and two miles roughly at its
+widest; and it was full of cypress and stunted swamp oak, with edgings
+of canebrake and rank weeds; and in one place, where a ridge crossed it
+from side to side, it was snaggled like an old jaw with dead tree
+trunks, rising close-ranked and thick as teeth. It was untenanted of
+living things--except, down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes, and
+a few wading and swimming fowl; and up above, those big woodpeckers that
+the country people called logcocks--larger than pigeons, with flaming
+crests and spiky tails--swooping in their long, loping flight from snag
+to snag, always just out of gunshot of the chance invader, and uttering
+a strident cry which matched those surroundings so fitly that it might
+well have been the voice of the swamp itself.
+
+On one side little Niggerwool drained its saffron waters off into a
+sluggish creek, where summer ducks bred, and on the other it ended
+abruptly at a natural bank of high ground, along which the county
+turnpike ran. The swamp came right up to the road and thrust its fringe
+of reedy, weedy undergrowth forward as though in challenge to the good
+farm lands that were spread beyond the barrier. At the time I am
+speaking of it was mid-summer, and from these canes and weeds and
+waterplants there came a smell so rank as almost to be overpowering.
+They grew thick as a curtain, making a blank green wall taller than a
+man's head.
+
+Along the dusty stretch of road fronting the swamp nothing living had
+stirred for half an hour or more. And so at length the weed-stems
+rustled and parted, and out from among them a man came forth silently
+and cautiously. He was an old man--an old man who had once been fat, but
+with age had grown lean again, so that now his skin was by odds too
+large for him. It lay on the back of his neck in folds. Under the chin
+he was pouched like a pelican and about the jowls was wattled like a
+turkey gobbler.
+
+He came out upon the road slowly and stopped there, switching his legs
+absently with the stalk of a horseweed. He was in his shirtsleeves--a
+respectable, snuffy old figure; evidently a man deliberate in words and
+thoughts and actions. There was something about him suggestive of an old
+staid sheep that had been engaged in a clandestine transaction and was
+afraid of being found out.
+
+He had made amply sure no one was in sight before he came out of the
+swamp, but now, to be doubly certain, he watched the empty road--first
+up, then down--for a long half minute, and fetched a sighing breath of
+satisfaction. His eyes fell upon his feet, and, taken with an idea, he
+stepped back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wiped
+his shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color and
+texture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathers
+had been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful on
+this summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settled
+his white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road,
+he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went plodding
+sedately across a weedfield and up a slight slope toward his house, half
+a mile away, upon the crest of the little hill.
+
+He felt perfectly natural--not like a man who had just taken a
+fellowman's life--but natural and safe, and well satisfied with himself
+and with his morning's work. And he was safe; that was the main
+thing--absolutely safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done the thing
+for which he had been planning and waiting and longing all these months.
+There had been no slip or mischance; the whole thing had worked out as
+plainly and simply as two and two make four. No living creature except
+himself knew of the meeting in the early morning at the head of Little
+Niggerwool, exactly where the squire had figured they should meet; none
+knew of the device by which the other man had been lured deeper and
+deeper in the swamp to the exact spot where the gun was hidden. No one
+had seen the two of them enter the swamp; no one had seen the squire
+emerge, three hours later, alone.
+
+The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden again, in a place no
+mortal eye would ever discover. Face downward, with a hole between his
+shoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscovered
+for months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried in
+the mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. He
+would never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihood
+that inquiry would ever be made for him--let alone a search. He was a
+stranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goings
+made no great stir in the neighborhood, and whose failure to come again
+would be taken as a matter of course--just one of those shiftless,
+wandering Dagoes, here today and gone tomorrow. That was one of the best
+things about it--these Dagoes never had any people in this country to
+worry about them or look for them when they disappeared. And so it was
+all over and done with, and nobody the wiser. The squire clapped his
+hands together briskly with the air of a man dismissing a subject from
+his mind for good, and mended his gait.
+
+He felt no stabbings of conscience. On the contrary, a glow of
+gratification filled him. His house was saved from scandal; his present
+wife would philander no more--before his very eyes--with these young
+Dagoes, who came from nobody knew where, with packs on their backs and
+persuasive, wheedling tongues in their heads. At this thought the squire
+raised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him--the
+small white cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives and flower
+beds about it; the tidy whitewashed fence; the sound outbuildings at the
+back, and the well-tilled acres roundabout.
+
+At the fence he halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, and
+looked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it should
+be--the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching along
+the crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it,
+massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was all
+right, but----The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowed
+and squinted. Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small black dot
+had resolved itself and was swinging to and fro, like a mote. A
+buzzard--hey? Well, there were always buzzards about on a clear day like
+this. Buzzards were nothing to worry about--almost any time you could
+see one buzzard, or a dozen buzzards if you were a mind to look for
+them.
+
+But this particular buzzard now--wasn't he making for Little Niggerwool?
+The squire did not like the idea of that. He had not thought of the
+buzzards until this minute. Sometimes when cattle strayed the owners had
+been known to follow the buzzards, knowing mighty well that if the
+buzzards led the way to where the stray was, the stray would be past the
+small salvage of hide and hoofs--but the owner's doubts would be set at
+rest for good and all.
+
+There was a grain of disquiet in this. The squire shook his head to
+drive the thought away--yet it persisted, coming back like a midge
+dancing before his face. Once at home, however, Squire Gathers deported
+himself in a perfectly normal manner. With the satisfied proprietorial
+eye of an elderly husband who has no rivals, he considered his young
+wife, busied about her household duties. He sat in an easy-chair upon
+his front gallery and read his yesterday's Courier-Journal which the
+rural carrier had brought him; but he kept stepping out into the yard
+to peer up into the sky and all about him. To the second Mrs. Gathers he
+explained that he was looking for weather signs. A day as hot and still
+as this one was a regular weather breeder; there ought to be rain before
+night.
+
+"Maybe so," she said; "but looking's not going to bring rain."
+
+Nevertheless the squire continued to look. There was really nothing to
+worry about; still at midday he did not eat much dinner, and before his
+wife was half through with hers he was back on the gallery. His paper
+was cast aside and he was watching. The original buzzard--or, anyhow, he
+judged it was the first one he had seen--was swinging back and forth in
+great pendulum swings, but closer down toward the swamp--closer and
+closer--until it looked from that distance as though the buzzard flew
+almost at the level of the tallest snags there. And on beyond this first
+buzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards. Were there four of
+them? No; there were five--five in all.
+
+Such is the way of the buzzard--that shifting black question mark which
+punctuates a Southern sky. In the woods a shoat or a sheep or a horse
+lies down to die. At once, coming seemingly out of nowhere, appears a
+black spot, up five hundred feet or a thousand in the air. In broad
+loops and swirls this dot swings round and round and round, coming a
+little closer to earth at every turn and always with one particular spot
+upon the earth for the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other moving
+spots emerge and grow larger as they tack and jib and drop nearer,
+coming in their leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There is no
+haste--the feast will wait. If it is a dumb creature that has fallen
+stricken the grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled about it
+and alongside it, scrouging ever closer and closer to the dying thing,
+with awkward out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raising
+flaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks high
+and stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are too
+tight--but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the last
+tremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. To
+humans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect--he hangs aloft longer;
+but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, ever
+chambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this big
+charnel bird. Such is the way of the buzzard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The squire missed his afternoon nap, a thing that had not happened in
+years. He stayed on the front gallery and kept count. Those moving
+distant black specks typified uneasiness for the squire--not fear
+exactly, or panic or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging kind
+of uneasiness. Time and again he said to himself that he would not think
+about them any more; but he did--unceasingly.
+
+By supper time there were seven of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He slept light and slept badly. It was not the thought of that dead man
+lying yonder in Little Niggerwool that made him toss and fume while his
+wife snored gently alongside him. It was something else altogether.
+Finally his stirrings roused her and she asked him drowsily what ailed
+him. Was he sick? Or bothered about anything?
+
+Irritated, he answered her snappishly. Certainly nothing was bothering
+him, he told her. It was a hot enough night--wasn't it? And when a man
+got a little along in life he was apt to be a light sleeper--wasn't that
+so? Well, then? She turned upon her side and slept again with her light,
+purring snore. The squire lay awake, thinking hard and waiting for day
+to come.
+
+At the first faint pink-and-gray glow he was up and out upon the
+gallery. He cut a comic figure standing there in his shirt in the half
+light, with the dewlap at his throat dangling grotesquely in the neck
+opening of the unbuttoned garment, and his bare bowed legs showing,
+splotched and varicose. He kept his eyes fixed on the skyline below, to
+the south. Buzzards are early risers too. Presently, as the heavens
+shimmered with the miracle of sunrise, he could make them out--six or
+seven, or maybe eight.
+
+An hour after breakfast the squire was on his way down through the
+weedfield to the county road. He went half eagerly, half unwillingly. He
+wanted to make sure about those buzzards. It might be that they were
+aiming for the old pasture at the head of the swamp. There were sheep
+grazing there--and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards were
+notoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for the
+swamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. He
+was at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road,
+drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field the
+man pulled up.
+
+"Hi, squire!" he saluted. "Goin' somewheres?"
+
+"No; jest knockin' about," the squire said--"jest sorter lookin' the
+place over."
+
+"Hot agin--ain't it?" said the other.
+
+The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces of
+gossip followed this--county politics and a neighbor's wife sick of
+breakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeeded
+inevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regretted
+it, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre,
+cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds.
+
+"Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin' yonder, squire," he said,
+pointing upward with his whipstock.
+
+"Whut buzzards--where?" asked the squire with an elaborate note of
+carelessness in his voice.
+
+"Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool--see 'em there?"
+
+"Oh, yes," the squire made answer. "Now I see 'em. They ain't doin'
+nothin', I reckin--jest flyin' round same as they always do in clear
+weather."
+
+"Must be somethin' dead over there!" speculated the man in the buggy.
+
+"A hawg probably," said the squire promptly--almost too promptly.
+"There's likely to be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on the
+other side from here--he's got a big drove of hawgs."
+
+"Well, mebbe so," said the man; "but hawgs is a heap more apt to be
+feedin' on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin' along
+towards town. G'day, squire." And he slapped the lines down on the
+mare's flank and jogged off through the dust.
+
+He could not have suspected anything--that man couldn't. As the squire
+turned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulated
+himself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yet
+there remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzards
+flying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, made
+people curious--made them ask questions.
+
+He was half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life,
+above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to his
+ear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head to
+one side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was a
+thin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking--an eery
+ghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer--tonk-tonk-tonk;
+then the tonks all running together briskly.
+
+A sheep bell or a cowbell--that was it; but why did it seem to come from
+overhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptly
+from one quarter to another--from left to right and back again to left?
+And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even the
+breachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle a
+cowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and the
+sky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny.
+He had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not anything that went on
+four legs.
+
+One of the loathly flock had left the others. The orbit of his swing had
+carried him across the road and over Squire Gathers' land. He was
+sailing right toward and over the squire now. Craning his flabby neck,
+the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. He
+could see the ragged black wings--a buzzard's wings are so often ragged
+and uneven--and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feet
+folded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too--an
+undersized cowbell--that dangled at the creature's breast and jangled
+incessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing about
+the Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him.
+
+Once, years and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, and
+before freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with a
+cowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seen
+a hundred times--and heard oftener--over an area as wide as half the
+continent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now in
+North Carolina--now anywhere between the Ohio River and the Gulf.
+Crossroads correspondents take their pens in hand to write to the
+country papers that on such and such a date, at such a place, So-and-So
+saw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the Belled Buzzard, never a belled
+buzzard. The Belled Buzzard is an institution.
+
+There must be more than one of them. It seems hard to believe that one
+bird, even a buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in every
+Southern state and known to be a bird of great age, could live so long
+and range so far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time! Probably
+other jokers have emulated the original joker; probably if the truth
+were known there have been a dozen such; but the country people will
+have it that there is only one Belled Buzzard--a bird that bears a
+charmed life and on his neck a never silent bell.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward thing that the Belled Buzzard
+should have come just at this time. The movements of ordinary, unmarked
+buzzards mainly concerned only those whose stock had strayed; but almost
+anybody with time to spare might follow this rare and famous visitor,
+this belled and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing now that some
+one followed it today--maybe followed it even to a certain thick clump
+of cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!
+
+But at this particular moment the Belled Buzzard was heading directly
+away from that quarter. Could it be following him? Of course not! It was
+just by chance that it flew along the course the squire was taking. But,
+to make sure, he veered off sharply, away from the footpath into the
+high weeds so that the startled grasshoppers sprayed up in front of him
+in fan-like flights.
+
+He was right; it was only a chance. The Belled Buzzard swung off too,
+but in the opposite direction, with a sharp tonking of its bell, and,
+flapping hard, was in a minute or two out of hearing and sight, past
+the trees to the westward.
+
+Again the squire skimped his dinner, and again he spent the long drowsy
+afternoon upon his front gallery. In all the sky there were now no
+buzzards visible, belled or unbelled--they had settled to earth
+somewhere; and this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pestered
+mind. This does not mean, though, that he was by any means easy in his
+thoughts. Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative judicial air
+befitting the oldest justice of the peace in the county; but, within
+him, a little something gnawed unceasingly at his nerves like one of
+those small white worms that are to be found in seemingly sound nuts.
+About once in so long a tiny spasm of the muscles would contract the
+dewlap under his chin. The squire had never heard of that play, made
+famous by a famous player, wherein the murdered victim was a pedler
+too, and a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable remorse in the
+murderer's ear. As a strict churchgoer the squire had no use for players
+or for play actors, and so was spared that added canker to his
+conscience. It was bad enough as it was.
+
+That night, as on the night before, the old man's sleep was broken and
+fitful and disturbed by dreaming, in which he heard a metal clapper
+striking against a brazen surface. This was one dream that came true.
+Just after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed, with a flop of his
+broad bare feet upon the floor, and stepped to the window and peered
+out. Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard flapped directly
+over his roof and flew due south, right toward the swamp--drawing a
+direct line through the air between the slayer and the victim--or,
+anyway, so it seemed to the watcher, grown suddenly tremulous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Knee deep in yellow swamp water the squire squatted, with his shotgun
+cocked and loaded and ready, waiting to kill the bird that now typified
+for him guilt and danger and an abiding great fear. Gnats plagued him
+and about him frogs croaked. Almost overhead a log-cock clung lengthwise
+to a snag, watching him. Snake doctors, limber, long insects with bronze
+bodies and filmy wings, went back and forth like small living shuttles.
+Other buzzards passed and repassed, but the squire waited, forgetting
+the cramps in his elderly limbs and the discomfort of the water in his
+shoes.
+
+At length he heard the bell. It came nearer and nearer, and the Belled
+Buzzard swung overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair target
+against the blue. He aimed and fired, both barrels bellowing at once and
+a fog of thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through the smoke he saw the
+bird careen and its bell jangled furiously; then the buzzard righted
+itself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the sound of its bell was
+hushed almost instantly. Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;
+torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green scraps of leaves descended
+about the squire in a little shower.
+
+He cast his empty gun from him so that it fell in the water and
+disappeared; and he hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky legs
+would take him, splashing himself with mire and water to his eyebrows.
+Mucked with mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a suspicious
+figure to any eye, he burst through the weed curtain and staggered into
+the open, his caution all gone and a vast desperation fairly choking
+him--but the gray road was empty and the field beyond the road was
+empty; and, except for him, the whole world seemed empty and silent.
+
+As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed himself. With plucked
+handfuls of grass he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire that
+coated him over; but the little white worm that gnawed at his nerves had
+become a cold snake that was coiled about his heart, squeezing it
+tighter and tighter!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN."--_Page 70._]
+
+This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled Buzzard occurred in the
+afternoon of the third day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weather
+being still hot, with cloudless skies and no air stirring, there was a
+rattle of warped wheels in the squire's lane and a hail at his yard
+fence. Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost darkened room of his
+house, where he had been stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded his
+eyes from the glare and saw the constable of his own magisterial
+district sitting in a buggy at the gate waiting.
+
+The old man went down the dirtpath slowly, almost reluctantly, with his
+head twisted up side wise, listening, watching; but the constable sensed
+nothing strange about the other's gait and posture; the constable was
+full of the news he brought. He began to unload the burden of it without
+preamble.
+
+"Mornin', Squire Gathers. There's been a dead man found in Little
+Niggerwool--and you're wanted."
+
+He did not notice that the squire was holding on with both hands to the
+gate; but he did notice that the squire had a sick look out of his eyes
+and a dead, pasty color in his face; and he noticed--but attached no
+meaning to it--that when the squire spoke his voice seemed flat and
+hollow.
+
+"Wanted--fur--whut?" The squire forced the words out of his throat,
+pumped them out fairly.
+
+"Why, to hold the inquest," explained the constable. "The coroner's sick
+abed, and he said you bein' the nearest jestice of the peace you should
+serve."
+
+"Oh," said the squire with more ease. "Well, where is it--the body?"
+
+"They taken it to Bristow's place and put it in his stable for the
+present. They brought it out over on that side and his place was the
+nearest. If you'll hop in here with me, squire, I'll ride you right over
+there now. There's enough men already gathered to make up a jury, I
+reckin."
+
+"I--I ain't well," demurred the squire. "I've been sleepin' porely these
+last few nights. It's the heat," he added quickly.
+
+"Well, suh, you don't look very brash, and that's a fact," said the
+constable; "but this here job ain't goin' to keep you long. You see it's
+in such shape--the body is--that there ain't no way of makin' out who
+the feller was nor whut killed him. There ain't nobody reported missin'
+in this county as we know of, either; so I jedge a verdict of a unknown
+person dead from unknown causes would be about the correct thing. And we
+kin git it all over mighty quick and put him underground right away,
+suh--if you'll go along now."
+
+"I'll go," agreed the squire, almost quivering in his newborn eagerness.
+"I'll go right now." He did not wait to get his coat or to notify his
+wife of the errand that was taking him. In his shirtsleeves he climbed
+into the buggy, and the constable turned his horse and clucked him into
+a trot. And now the squire asked the question that knocked at his lips
+demanding to be asked--the question the answer to which he yearned for
+and yet dreaded.
+
+"How did they come to find--it?"
+
+"Well, suh, that's a funny thing," said the constable. "Early this
+mornin' Bristow's oldest boy--that one they call Buddy--he heared a
+cowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, as
+you know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin'
+after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part of
+them cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there he
+run acrost it--this body.
+
+"But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all. No, suh; it was a buzzard
+with a cowbell on his neck--that's whut it was. Yes, suh; that there
+same old Belled Buzzard he's come back agin and is hangin' round. They
+tell me he ain't been seen round here since the year of the yellow
+fever--I don't remember myself, but that's whut they tell me. The
+niggers over on the other side are right smartly worked up over it. They
+say--the niggers do--that when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign of
+bad luck for somebody, shore!"
+
+The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. The
+squire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only to
+those busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Even
+so, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels the
+far-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about half-way to Bristow's place
+then. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps half a minute before his
+companion heard it too.
+
+The constable jerked the horse to a standstill and craned his neck over
+his shoulder.
+
+"Well, by doctors!" he cried, "if there ain't the old scoundrel now,
+right here behind us! I kin see him plain as day--he's got an old
+cowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a couple of feathers out of
+one wing. By doctors, that's somethin' you won't see every day! In all
+my born days I ain't never seen the beat of that!"
+
+Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered back farther under the
+buggy top. In the pleasing excitement of the moment his companion took
+no heed, though, of anything except the Belled Buzzard.
+
+"Is he followin' us?" asked the squire in a curiously flat, weighted
+voice.
+
+"Which--him?" answered the constable, still stretching his neck. "No,
+he's gone now--gone off to the left--jest a-zoomin', like he'd done
+forgot somethin'."
+
+And Bristow's place was to the left! But there might still be time. To
+get the inquest over and the body underground--those were the main
+things. Ordinarily humane in his treatment of stock, Squire Gathers
+urged the constable to greater speed. The horse was lathered and his
+sides heaved wearily as they pounded across the bridge over the creek
+which was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from a patch of woods in
+sight of Bristow's farm buildings.
+
+The house was set on a little hill among cleared fields and was in other
+respects much like the squire's own house except that it was smaller and
+not so well painted. There was a wide yard in front with shade trees and
+a lye hopper and a well-box, and a paling fence with a stile in it
+instead of a gate. At the rear, behind a clutter of outbuildings--a
+barn, a smokehouse and a corncrib--was a little peach orchard, and
+flanking the house on the right there was a good-sized cowyard, empty of
+stock at this hour, with feedracks ranged in a row against the fence. A
+two-year-old negro child, bareheaded and barefooted and wearing but a
+single garment, was grubbing busily in the dirt under one of these
+feedracks.
+
+To the front fence a dozen or more riding horses were hitched, flicking
+their tails at the flies; and on the gallery men in their shirtsleeves
+were grouped. An old negro woman, with her head tied in a bandanna and a
+man's old slouch hat perched upon the bandanna, peeped out from behind a
+corner. There were gaunt hound dogs wandering about, sniffing uneasily.
+
+Before the constable had the horse hitched the squire was out of the
+buggy and on his way up the footpath, going at a brisker step than the
+squire usually traveled. The men on the porch hailed him gravely and
+ceremoniously, as befitting an occasion of solemnity. Afterward some of
+them recalled the look in his eye; but at the moment they noted it--if
+they noted it at all--subconsciously.
+
+For all his haste the squire, as was also remembered later, was almost
+the last to enter the door; and before he did enter he halted and
+searched the flawless sky as though for signs of rain. Then he hurried
+on after the others, who clumped single file along a narrow little hall,
+the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly under their heavy farm shoes,
+and entered a good-sized room that had in it, among other things, a
+high-piled feather bed and a cottage organ--Bristow's best room, now to
+be placed at the disposal of the law's representatives for the inquest.
+The squire took the largest chair and drew it to the very center of the
+room, in front of a fireplace, where the grate was banked with withering
+asparagus ferns. The constable took his place formally at one side of
+the presiding official. The others sat or stood about where they could
+find room--all but six of them, whom the squire picked for his coroner's
+jury, and who backed themselves against the wall.
+
+The squire showed haste. He drove the preliminaries forward with a sort
+of tremulous insistence. Bristow's wife brought a bucket of fresh
+drinking water and a gourd, and almost before she was out of the room
+and the door closed behind her the squire had sworn his jurors and was
+calling the first witness, who it seemed likely would also be the only
+witness--Bristow's oldest boy. The boy wriggled in confusion as he sat
+on a cane-bottomed chair facing the old magistrate. All there, barring
+one or two, had heard his story a dozen times already, but now it was to
+be repeated under oath; and so they bent their heads, listening as
+though it were a brand-new tale. All eyes were on him; none were
+fastened on the squire as he, too, gravely bent his head,
+listening--listening.
+
+The witness began--but had no more than started when the squire gave a
+great, screeching howl and sprang from his chair and staggered backward,
+his eyes popped and the pouch under his chin quivering as though it had
+a separate life all its own. Startled, the constable made toward him and
+they struck together heavily and went down--both on their all
+fours--right in front of the fireplace.
+
+The constable scrambled free and got upon his feet, in a squat of
+astonishment, with his head craned; but the squire stayed upon the
+floor, face downward, his feet flopping among the rustling asparagus
+greens--a picture of slavering animal fear. And now his gagging screech
+resolved itself into articulate speech.
+
+"I done it!" they made out his shrieked words. "I done it! I own up--I
+killed him! He aimed fur to break up my home and I tolled him off into
+Niggerwool and killed him! There's a hole in his back if you'll look
+fur it. I done it--oh, I done it--and I'll tell everything jest like it
+happened if you'll jest keep that thing away from me! Oh, my Lawdy!
+Don't you hear it? It's a-comin' clos'ter and clos'ter--it's a-comin'
+after me! Keep it away----" His voice gave out and he buried his head in
+his hands and rolled upon the gaudy carpet.
+
+And now they all heard what he had heard first--they heard the
+tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along
+the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was
+no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards--and the bell jangled
+faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to
+the door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the chair legs.
+
+The door swung open. In the doorway stood a negro child, barefooted and
+naked except for a single garment, eyeing them with serious, rolling
+eyes--and, with all the strength of his two puny arms, proudly but
+solemnly tolling a small rusty cowbell he had found in the cowyard.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET
+
+
+"See if he's still there, will you?" said the man listlessly, as if
+knowing in advance what the answer would be.
+
+The woman, who, like the man, was in her stocking feet, crossed the
+room, closing the door with all softness behind her. She felt her way
+silently through the darkness of a small hallway, putting first her ear
+and then her eye to a tiny cranny in some thick curtains at a front
+window.
+
+She looked downward and outward upon one of those New York side streets
+that is precisely like forty other New York side streets: two unbroken
+lines of high-shouldered, narrow-chested brick-and-stone houses, rising
+in abrupt, straight cliffs; at the bottom of the canyon a narrow river
+of roadway with manholes and conduit covers dotting its channel
+intermittently like scattered stepping stones; and on either side wide,
+flat pavements, as though the stream had fallen to low-water mark and
+left bare its shallow banks. Daylight would have shown most of the
+houses boarded up, with diamond-shaped vents, like leering eyes, cut in
+the painted planking of the windows and doors; but now it was night
+time--eleven o'clock of a wet, hot, humid night of the late summer--and
+the street was buttoned down its length in the double-breasted fashion
+of a bandmaster's coat with twin rows of gas lamps evenly spaced. Under
+each small circle of lighted space the dripping, black asphalt had a
+slimy, slick look like the sides of a newly caught catfish. Elsewhere
+the whole vista lay all in close shadow, black as a cave mouth under
+every stoop front and blacker still in the hooded basement areas. Only,
+half a mile to the eastward a dim, distant flicker showed where Broadway
+ran, a broad, yellow streak down the spine of the city, and high above
+the broken skyline of eaves and cornices there rolled in cloudy waves
+the sullen red radiance, born of a million electrics and the flares from
+gas tanks and chimneys, which is only to be seen on such nights as this,
+giving to the heaven above New York that same color tone you find in an
+artist's conception of Babylon falling or Rome burning.
+
+From where the woman stood at the window she could make out the round,
+white, mushroom top of a policeman's summer helmet as its wearer leaned
+back, half sheltered under the narrow portico of the stoop just below
+her; and she could see his uniform sleeve and his hand, covered with a
+white cotton glove, come up, carrying a handkerchief, and mop the hidden
+face under the helmet's brim. The squeak of his heavy shoes was plainly
+audible to her also. While she stayed there, watching and listening, two
+pedestrians--and only two--passed on her side of the street: a messenger
+boy in a glistening rubber poncho going west and a man under an umbrella
+going east. Each was hurrying along until he came just opposite her, and
+then, as though controlled by the same set of strings, each stopped
+short and looked up curiously at the blind, dark house and at the figure
+lounging in the doorway, then hurried on without a word, leaving the
+silent policeman fretfully mopping his moist face and tugging at the
+wilted collar about his neck.
+
+After a minute or two at her peephole behind the window curtains above,
+the woman passed back through the door to the inner, middle room where
+the man sat.
+
+"Still there," she said lifelessly in the half whisper that she had come
+to use almost altogether these last few days; "still there and sure to
+stay there until another one just like him comes to take his place. What
+else did you expect?"
+
+The man only nodded absently and went on peeling an overripe peach,
+striking out constantly, with the hand that held the knife, at the
+flies. They were green flies--huge, shiny-backed, buzzing, persistent
+vermin. There were a thousand of them; there seemed to be a million of
+them. They filled the shut-in room with their vile humming; they swarmed
+everywhere in the half light. They were thickest, though, in a corner at
+the back, where there was a closed, white door. Here a great knot of
+them, like an iridescent, shimmering jewel, was clustered about the
+keyhole. They scrolled the white enameled panels with intricate,
+shifting patterns, and in pairs and singly they promenaded busily on the
+white porcelain knob, giving it the appearance of being alive and having
+a motion of its own.
+
+It was stiflingly hot and sticky in the room. The sweat rolled down the
+man's face as he peeled his peach and pared some half-rotted spots out
+of it. He protected it with a cupped palm as he bit into it. One huge
+green fly flipped nimbly under the fending hand and lit on the peach.
+With a savage little snarl of disgust and loathing the man shook the
+clinging insect off and with the knife carved away the place where its
+feet had touched the soft fruit. Then he went on munching, meanwhile
+furtively watching the woman. She was on the opposite side of a small
+center-table from him, with her face in her hands, shaking her head with
+a little shuddering motion whenever one of the flies settled on her
+close-cropped hair or brushed her bare neck.
+
+He was a smallish man, with a suggestion of something dapper about him
+even in his present unkempt disorder; he might have been handsome, in a
+weakly effeminate way, had not Nature or some mishap given his face a
+twist that skewed it all to one side, drawing all of his features out of
+focus, like a reflection viewed in a flawed mirror. He was no heavier
+than the woman and hardly as tall. She, however, looked less than her
+real height, seeing that she was dressed, like a half-grown boy, in a
+soft-collared shirt open at the throat and a pair of loose trousers. She
+had large but rather regular features, pouting lips, a clear brown skin
+and full, prominent brown eyes; and one of them had a pronounced cast in
+it--an imperfection already made familiar by picture and printed
+description to sundry millions of newspaper readers. For this was Ella
+Gilmorris, the woman in the case of the Gilmorris murder, about which
+the continent of North America was now reading and talking. And the
+little man with the twisted face, who sat across from her, gnawing a
+peach stone clean, was the notorious "Doctor" Harris Devine, alias
+Vanderburg, her accomplice, and worth more now to society in his present
+untidy state than ever before at any one moment of his whole
+discreditable life, since for his capture the people of the state of New
+York stood willing to pay the sum of one thousand dollars, which tidy
+reward one of the afternoon papers had increased by another thousand.
+
+Everywhere detectives--amateurs and the kind who work for hire--were
+seeking the pair who at this precise moment faced each other across a
+little center-table in the last place any searcher would have suspected
+or expected them to be--on the second floor of the house in which the
+late Cassius Gilmorris had been killed. This, then, was the situation:
+inside, these two fugitives, watchful, silent, their eyes red-rimmed for
+lack of sleep, their nerves raw and tingling as though rasped with
+files, each busy with certain private plans, each fighting off
+constantly the touch of the nasty scavenger flies that flickered and
+flitted iridescently about them; outside, in the steamy, hot drizzle,
+with his back to the locked and double-locked door, a leg-weary
+policeman, believing that he guarded a house all empty except for such
+evidences as yet remained of the Gilmorris murder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of those small, chancy things that so often disarrange the
+best laid plots of murderers that had dished their hope of a clean
+getaway and brought them back, at the last, to the starting point. If
+the plumber's helper, who was sent to cure a bathtub of leaking in the
+house next door, had not made a mistake and come to the wrong number;
+and if they, in the haste of flight, had not left an area door
+unfastened; and if this young plumbing apprentice, stumbling his way
+upstairs on the hunt for the misbehaving drain, had not opened the white
+enameled door and found inside there what he did find--if this small
+sequence of incidents had not occurred as it did and when it did, or if
+only it had been delayed another twenty-four hours, or even twelve,
+everything might have turned out differently. But fate, to call it by
+its fancy name--coincidence, to use its garden one--interfered, as it
+usually does in cases such as this. And so here they were.
+
+The man had been on his way to the steamship office to get the tickets
+when an eruption of newsboys boiled out of Mail Street into Broadway,
+with extras on their arms, all shouting out certain words that sent him
+scurrying back in a panic to the small, obscure family hotel in the
+lower thirties where the woman waited. From that moment it was she,
+really, who took the initiative in all the efforts to break through the
+doubled and tripled lines that the police machinery looped about the
+five boroughs of the city.
+
+At dark that evening "Mr. and Mrs. A. Thompson, of Jersey City," a quiet
+couple who went closely muffled up, considering that it was August, and
+carrying heavy valises, took quarters at a dingy furnished room house on
+a miscalled avenue of Brooklyn not far from the Wall Street ferries and
+overlooking the East River waterfront from its bleary back windows. Two
+hours later a very different-looking pair issued quietly from a side
+entrance of this place and vanished swiftly down toward the docks. The
+thing was well devised and carried out well too; yet by morning the
+detectives, already ranging and quartering the town as bird-dogs quarter
+a brier-field, had caught up again and pieced together the broken ends
+of the trail; and, thanks to them and the newspapers, a good many
+thousand wide awake persons were on the lookout for a plump,
+brown-skinned young woman with a cast in her right eye, wearing a boy's
+disguise and accompanied by a slender little man carrying his head
+slightly to one side, who when last seen wore smoked glasses and had his
+face extensively bandaged, as though suffering from a toothache.
+
+Then had followed days and nights of blind twisting and dodging and
+hiding, with the hunt growing warmer behind them all the time. Through
+this they were guided and at times aided by things printed in the very
+papers that worked the hardest to run them down. Once they ventured as
+far as the outer entrance of the great, new uptown terminal, and turned
+away, too far gone and sick with fear to dare run the gauntlet of the
+waiting room and the train-shed. Once--because they saw a made-up
+Central Office man in every lounging long-shoreman, and were not so far
+wrong either--they halted at the street end of one of the smaller piers
+and from there watched a grimy little foreign boat that carried no
+wireless masts and that might have taken them to any one of half a dozen
+obscure banana ports of South America--watched her while she hiccoughed
+out into midstream and straightened down the river for the open
+bay--watched her out of sight and then fled again to their newest hiding
+place in the lower East Side in a cold sweat, with the feeling that
+every casual eye glance from every chance passer-by carried suspicion
+and recognition in its flash, that every briskening footstep on the
+pavement behind them meant pursuit.
+
+Once in that tormented journey there was a sudden jingle of metal, like
+rattling handcuffs, in the man's ear and a heavy hand fell detainingly
+on his shoulder--and he squeaked like a caught shore-bird and shrunk
+away from under the rough grips of a truckman who had yanked him clear
+of a lurching truck horse tangled in its own traces. Then, finally, had
+come a growing distrust for their latest landlord, a stolid Russian Jew
+who read no papers and knew no English, and saw in his pale pair of
+guests only an American lady and gentleman who kept much to their room
+and paid well in advance for everything; and after that, in the hot
+rainy night, the flight afoot across weary miles of soaking cross
+streets and up through ill-lighted, shabby avenues to the one place of
+refuge left open to them. They had learned from the newspapers, at once
+a guide and a bane, a friend and a dogging enemy, that the place was
+locked up, now that the police had got through searching it, and that
+the coroner's people held the keys. And the woman knew of a faulty catch
+on a rear cellar window, and so, in a fit of stark desperation bordering
+on lunacy, back they ran, like a pair of spent foxes circling to a
+burrow from which they have been smoked out.
+
+Again it was the woman who picked for her companion the easiest path
+through the inky-black alley, and with her own hands she pulled down
+noiselessly the broken slats of the rotting wooden wall at the back of
+the house. And then, soon, they were inside, with the reeking heat of
+the boxed-up house and the knowledge that at any moment discovery might
+come bursting in upon them--inside with their busy thoughts and the busy
+green flies. How persistent the things were--shake them off a hundred
+times and back they came buzzing! And where had they all come from?
+There had been none of them about before, surely, and now their
+maddening, everlasting droning filled the ear. And what nasty creatures
+they were, forever cleaning their shiny wings and rubbing the ends of
+their forelegs together with the loathsome suggestion of little
+grave-diggers anointing their palms. To the woman, at least, these flies
+almost made bearable the realization that, at best, this stopping point
+could be only a temporary one, and that within a few hours a fresh start
+must somehow be made, with fresh dangers to face at every turning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was during this last hideous day of flight and terror that the thing
+which had been growing in the back part of the brain of each of them
+began to assume shape and a definite aspect. The man had the craftier
+mind, but the woman had a woman's intuition, and she already had read
+his thoughts while yet he had no clue to hers. For the primal instinct
+of self-preservation, blazing up high, had burned away the bond of bogus
+love that held them together while they were putting her drunkard of a
+husband out of the way, and now there only remained to tie them fast
+this partnership of a common guilt.
+
+In these last few hours they had both come to know that together there
+was no chance of ultimate escape; traveling together the very disparity
+of their compared appearances marked them with a fatal and unmistakable
+conspicuousness, as though they were daubed with red paint from the same
+paint brush; staying together meant ruin--certain, sure. Now, then,
+separated and going singly, there might be a thin strand of hope. Yet
+the man felt that, parted a single hour from the woman, and she still
+alive, his wofully small prospect would diminish and shrink to the
+vanishing point--New York juries being most notoriously easy upon women
+murderers who give themselves up and turn state's evidence; and, by the
+same mistaken processes of judgment, notoriously hard upon their male
+accomplices--half a dozen such instances had been playing in flashes
+across his memory already.
+
+Neither had so much as hinted at separating. The man didn't speak,
+because of a certain idea that had worked itself all out hours before
+within his side-flattened skull. The woman likewise had refrained from
+putting in words the suggestion that had been uppermost in her brain
+from the time they broke into the locked house. Some darting look of
+quick, malignant suspicion from him, some inner warning sense, held her
+mute at first; and later, as the newborn hate and dread of him grew and
+mastered her and she began to canvass ways and means to a certain end,
+she stayed mute still.
+
+Whatever was to be done must be done quietly, without a struggle--the
+least sound might arouse the policeman at the door below. One thing was
+in her favor--she knew he was not armed; he had the contempt and the
+fear of a tried and proved poisoner for cruder lethal tools.
+
+It was characteristic also of the difference between these two that
+Devine should have had his plan stage-set and put to motion long before
+the woman dreamed of acting. It was all within his orderly scheme of the
+thing proposed that he, a shrinking coward, should have set his squirrel
+teeth hard and risked detection twice in that night: once to buy a
+basket of overripe fruit from a dripping Italian at a sidewalk stand,
+taking care to get some peaches--he just must have a peach, he had
+explained to her; and once again when he entered a dark little store on
+Second Avenue, where liquors were sold in their original packages, and
+bought from a sleepy, stupid clerk two bottles of a cheap domestic
+champagne--"to give us the strength for making a fresh start," he told
+her glibly, as an excuse for taking this second risk. So, then, with the
+third essential already resting at the bottom of an inner waistcoat
+pocket, he was prepared; and he had been waiting for his opportunity
+from the moment when they crept in through the basement window and felt
+their way along, she resolutely leading, to the windowless, shrouded
+middle room here on the second floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How she hated him, feared him too! He could munch his peaches and uncork
+his warm, cheap wine in this very room, with that bathroom just yonder
+and these flies all about. From under her fingers, interlaced over her
+forehead, her eyes roved past him, searching the littered room for the
+twentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking--and suddenly they fell on
+something--a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner's
+masterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on a
+couch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, round
+black button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown.
+She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin--a
+steel hatpin--that was ten inches long and maybe longer.
+
+She looked and looked at the round, dull knob, like a mystic held by a
+hypnotist's crystal ball, and she began to breathe a little faster; she
+could feel her resolution tighten within her like a turning screw.
+
+Beneath her brows, heavy and thick for a woman's, her eyes flitted back
+to the man. With the careful affectation of doing nothing at all, a
+theatricalism that she detected instantly, but for which she could guess
+no reason, he was cutting away at the damp, close-gnawed seed of the
+peach, trying apparently to fashion some little trinket--a toy basket,
+possibly--from it. His fingers moved deftly over its slick, wet surface.
+He had already poured out some of the champagne. One of the pint bottles
+stood empty, with the distorted button-headed cork lying beside it, and
+in two glasses the yellow wine was fast going flat and dead in that
+stifling heat. It still spat up a few little bubbles to the surface, as
+though minute creatures were drowning in it down below. The man was
+sweating more than ever, so that, under the single, low-turned gas jet,
+his crooked face had a greasy shine to it. A church clock down in the
+next block struck twelve slowly. The sleepless flies buzzed evilly.
+
+"Look out again, won't you?" he said for perhaps the tenth time in two
+hours. "There's a chance, you know, that he might be gone--just a bare
+chance. And be sure you close the door into the hall behind you," he
+added as if by an afterthought. "You left it ajar once--this light might
+show through the window draperies."
+
+At his bidding she rose more willingly than at any time before. To reach
+the door she passed within a foot of the end of the couch, and watching
+over her shoulder at his hunched-up back she paused there for the
+smallest fraction of time. The damaged picture hat slid off on the floor
+with a soft little thud, but he never turned around.
+
+The instant, though, that the hall door closed behind her the man's
+hands became briskly active. He fumbled in an inner pocket of his
+unbuttoned waistcoat; then his right hand, holding a small cylindrical
+vial of a colorless liquid, passed swiftly over one of the two glasses
+of slaking champagne and hovered there a second. A few tiny globules
+fell dimpling into the top of the yellow wine, then vanished; a heavy
+reek, like the smell of crushed peach kernels, spread through the whole
+room. In the same motion almost he recorked the little bottle, stowed it
+out of sight, and with a quick, wrenching thrust that bent the small
+blade of his penknife in its socket he split the peach seed in two
+lengthwise and with his thumb-nail bruised the small brown kernel lying
+snugly within. He dropped the knife and the halved seed and began
+sipping at the undoctored glass of champagne, not forgetting even then
+to wave his fingers above it to keep the winged green tormentors out.
+
+The door at the front reopened and the woman came in. Her thoughts were
+not upon smells, but instinctively she sniffed at the thick scent on the
+poisoned air.
+
+"I accidentally split this peach seed open," he said quickly, with an
+elaborate explanatory air. "Stenches up the whole place, don't it? Come,
+take that other glass of champagne--it will do you good to----"
+
+Perhaps it was some subtle sixth sense that warned him; perhaps the
+lightning-quick realization that she had moved right alongside him,
+poised and set to strike. At any rate he started to fling up his
+head--too late! The needle point of the jet-headed hatpin entered
+exactly at the outer corner of his right eye and passed backward for
+nearly its full length into his brain--smoothly, painlessly, swiftly. He
+gave a little surprised gasp, almost like a sob, and lolled his head
+back against the chair rest, like a man who has grown suddenly tired.
+The hand that held the champagne glass relaxed naturally and the glass
+turned over on its side with a small tinkling sound and spilled its thin
+contents on the table.
+
+It had been easier than she had thought it would be. She stepped back,
+still holding the hatpin. She moved around from behind him, and then she
+saw his face, half upturned, almost directly beneath the low light.
+There was no blood, no sign even of the wound, but his jaw had dropped
+down unpleasantly, showing the ends of his lower front teeth, and his
+eyes stared up unwinkingly with a puzzled, almost a disappointed, look
+in them. A green fly lit at the outer corner of his right eye; more
+green flies were coming. And he didn't put up his hand to brush it away.
+He let it stay--he let it stay there.
+
+With her eyes still fixed on his face, the woman reached out, feeling
+for her glass of the champagne. She felt that she needed it now, and at
+a gulp she took a good half of it down her throat.
+
+She put the glass down steadily enough on the table; but into her eyes
+came the same puzzled, baffled look that his wore, and almost gently she
+slipped down into the chair facing him.
+
+Then her jaw lolled a little too, and some of the other flies came
+buzzing toward her.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES
+
+
+The first time I saw Major Putnam Stone I didn't see him first. To be
+exact, I heard him first, and then I walked round the end of a
+seven-foot partition and saw him.
+
+I had just gone to work for the Evening Press. As I recall now it was my
+second day, and I hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and probably
+was more sensitive to outside sights and noises than I would ever again
+be in that place. Generally speaking, when a reporter settles down to
+his knitting, which in his case is his writing, he becomes impervious to
+all disturbances excepting those that occur inside his own brainpan. If
+he couldn't, he wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good,
+live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nine
+minutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines,
+and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a couple
+of copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. He
+may not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of being
+distracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of the
+shop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and efficiency. I've
+often thought that, when I was handling a good, bloody murder story,
+say, it would tone up my style to have a phonograph about ten feet away
+grinding out The Last Ravings of John McCullough. Anyway, I am sure it
+wouldn't do any harm. A brass band playing a John Philip Sousa march
+makes fine accompaniment to write copy to. I've done it before now,
+covering parades and conventions, and I know.
+
+But on this particular occasion I was, as I say, new to the job and
+maybe a little nervous to boot, and as I sat there, trying to frame a
+snappy opening paragraph for the interview I had just brought back with
+me from one of the hotels, I became aware of a voice somewhere in the
+immediate vicinity, a voice that didn't jibe in with my thoughts. At the
+moment I stopped to listen it was saying: "As for me, sir, I have always
+contended that the ultimate fate of the cause was due in great measure
+to the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh on the evening of the
+first day's fight. Now then, what would have been the final result if
+Albert Sidney Johnston had lived? I ask you, gentlemen, what would have
+been the final result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?"
+
+Across the room from me I heard Devore give a hollow groan. His desk was
+backed right up against the cross partition, and the partition was built
+of thin pine boards and was like a sounding board in his ear. Devore was
+city editor.
+
+"Oh, thunder!" he said, half under his breath, "I'll be the goat! What
+would have been the result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?" He
+looked at me and gave a wink of serio-comic despair, and then he ran his
+blue pencil up through his hair and left a blue streak like a scar on
+his scalp. Devore was one of the few city editors I have ever seen who
+used that tool which all of them are popularly supposed to handle so
+murderously--a blue pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was flustered
+or annoyed--and that was most of the time--of scratching his head with
+the point end of it, his forehead under the hair roots was usually
+streaked with purplish-blue tracings, like a fly-catcher's egg.
+
+The voice, which had a deep and space-filling quality to it, continued
+to come through and over the partition that divided off our cubby-hole
+of a workroom--called a city room by courtesy--from the space where
+certain other members of the staff had their desks. I got up from my
+place and stepped over to where the thin wall ended in a doorway, being
+minded to have a look at the speaker. The voice sounded as though it
+must belong to a big man with a barrel-organ chest. I was surprised to
+find that it didn't.
+
+Its owner was sitting in a chair in the middle of a little space
+cluttered up with discarded exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather a
+small man, short but compact. He had his hat off and his hair, which was
+thin but fine as silk floss, was combed back over his ears and sprayed
+out behind in a sort of mane effect. It had been red hair once, but was
+now so thickly streaked with white that it had become a faded brindle
+color. I took notice of this first because his back was toward me; in a
+second or two he turned his head sideways and I saw that he had exactly
+the face to match the hair. It was a round, plump, elderly face, with a
+short nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, and
+just under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-red
+goatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of a
+sandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, I
+took note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chest
+and ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolled
+majestically and Byronically clear up under his ears. Under the collar
+was loosely knotted a black-silk tie such as sailors wear. His vest was
+unbuttoned, all except the two lowermost buttons, and the sleeves of
+his coat were turned back neatly off his wrists. This, though, could
+not have been on account of the heat, because the weather wasn't very
+hot yet. I learned later that, winter or summer, he always kept his coat
+sleeves turned back and the upper buttons of his vest unfastened. His
+hands were small and plump, and his feet were small too and daintily
+shod in low, square-toed shoes. About the whole man there was an air
+somehow of full-bloomed foppishness gone to tassel--as though having
+been a dandy once, he was now merely neat and precise in his way of
+dress.
+
+He was talking along with the death of Albert Sidney Johnston for his
+subject, not seeming to notice that his audience wasn't deeply
+interested. He had, it seemed, a way of stating a proposition as a fact,
+as an indisputable, everlasting, eternal fact, an immutable thing. It
+became immutable through his way of stating it. Then he would frame it
+in the form of a question and ask it. Then he would answer it himself
+and go right ahead.
+
+Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled up at his desk, wearing a look
+of patient endurance on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor, was
+trying to do his work--trying, I say, because the orator was booming
+away like a bittern within three feet of him and Harty plainly was
+pestered and fretful. Really the only person in sight who seemed
+entertained was Sidley, the exchange editor, a young man with hair that
+had turned white before its time and in his eye the devil-driven look of
+a man who drinks hard, not because he wants to drink but because he
+can't help drinking. Sidley, as I was to find out later, had less cause
+to care for the old man than anybody about the shop, for he used to
+disarrange Sidley's neatly piled exchanges, pawing through them for his
+favorite papers. But Sidley could forget his own grievances in watchful
+enjoyment of the dumb sufferings of Harty, whom he hated, as I came to
+know, with the blind hate a dipsomaniac often has for any mild and
+perfectly harmless individual.
+
+As I stood there taking in the picture, the speaker, sensing a
+stranger's presence, faced clear about and saw me. He nodded with a
+grave courtesy, and then paused a moment as though expecting that one of
+the others would introduce us. None of the others did introduce us
+though, so he went ahead talking about Albert Sidney Johnston's death,
+and I turned away. I stopped by Devore's desk.
+
+"Who is he?" I asked.
+
+"That," he said, with a kind of leashed and restrained ferocity in his
+voice, "is Major Putnam P. Stone--and the P stands for Pest, which is
+his middle name--late of the Southern Confederacy."
+
+"Picturesque-looking old fellow, isn't he?" I said.
+
+"Picturesque old nuisance," he said, and jabbed at his scalp with his
+pencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've been
+here a few weeks and you'll have another name for him."
+
+"Well, anyway, he's got a good carrying voice," I said, rather at a loss
+to understand Devore's bitterness.
+
+"Great," he mocked venomously; "you can hear it a mile. I hear it in my
+sleep. So will you when you get to know him, the old bore!"
+
+In due time I did get to know Major Stone well. He was dignified,
+tiresome, conversational, gentle mannered and, I think, rather lonely.
+By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap there, I learned something about
+his private life. He came from the extreme eastern end of the state. He
+belonged to an old family. His grandfather--or maybe it was his
+great-grand-uncle--had been one of the first United States senators that
+went to Washington after our state was admitted into the Union. He had
+never married. He had no business or profession. From some property or
+other he drew an income, small, but enough to keep him in a sort of
+simple and genteel poverty. He belonged to the best club in town and the
+most exclusive, the Shawnee Club, and he had served four years in the
+Confederate army. That last was the one big thing in his life. To the
+major's conceptions everything that happened before 1861 had been of a
+preparatory nature, leading up to and paving the way for the main
+event; and what had happened since 1865 was of no consequence, except in
+so far as it reflected the effects of the Civil War.
+
+Daily, as methodically as a milkwagon horse, he covered the same route.
+First he sat in the reading room of the old Gaunt House, where by an
+open fire in winter or by an open window in summer he discussed the
+blunders of Braxton Bragg and similar congenial topics with a little
+group of aging, fading, testy veterans. On his way to the Shawnee Club
+he would come by the Evening Press office and stay an hour, or two
+hours, or three hours, to go away finally with a couple of favored
+exchanges tucked under his arm, and leave us with our ears still dinned
+and tingling. Once in a while of a night, passing the Gaunt House on my
+way to the boarding house where I lived--for four dollars a week--I
+would see him through the windows, sometimes sitting alone, sometimes
+with one of his cronies.
+
+Round the office he sometimes bothered us and sometimes he interfered
+with our work; but mainly all the men on the staff liked him, I think,
+or at least we put up with him. In our home town each of us had known
+somebody very much like him--there used to be at least one Major Stone
+in every community in the South, although most of them are dead now, I
+guess--so we all could understand him. When I say all I mean all but
+Devore. The major's mere presence would poison Devore's whole day for
+him. The major's blaring notes would cross-cut Devore's nerves as with a
+dull and haggling saw. He--Devore I mean--disliked the major with a
+dislike almost too deep for words. It had got to be an obsession with
+him.
+
+"You fellows that were born down here have to stand for him," he said
+once, when the major had stumped out on his short legs after an
+unusually long visit. "It's part of the penalty you pay for belonging in
+this country. But I don't have to venerate him and fuss over him and
+listen to him. I'm a Yankee, thank the Lord!" Devore came from Michigan
+and had worked on papers in Cleveland and Detroit before he drifted
+South. "Oh, we've got his counterpart up my way," he went on. "Up there
+he'd be a pension-grabbing old kicker, ready to have a fit any time
+anybody wearing a gray uniform got within ninety miles of him, and
+writing red-hot letters of protest to the newspapers every time the
+state authorities sent a captured battle flag back down South. Down here
+he's a pompous, noisy old fraud, too proud to work for a living--or too
+lazy--and too poor to count for anything in this world. The difference
+is that up in my country we've squelched the breed--we got good and
+tired of these professional Bloody Shirt wavers a good while ago; but
+here you fuss over this man, and you'll sit round and pretend to listen
+while he drools away about things that happened before any one of you
+was born. Do you fellows know what I've found out about your Major
+Putnam Stone? He's a life member of the Shawnee Club--a life member,
+mind you! And here I've been living in this town over a year, and nobody
+ever so much as invited me inside its front door!"
+
+All of which was, perhaps, true, even though Devore had an unnecessarily
+harsh way of stating the case; the part about the Shawnee Club was true,
+at any rate, and I used to think it possibly had something to do with
+Devore's feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore gave open utterance
+to his feelings to the major's face. To the major he was always silently
+polite, with a little edging of ice on his politeness; he saved up his
+spleen to spew it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther than that he
+couldn't well afford to go anyhow. The Chief, owner of the paper and its
+editor, was the major's friend. As for the major himself, he seemed
+never to notice Devore's attitude. For a fact, I believe he actually
+felt a sort of pity for Devore, seeing that Devore had been born in the
+North. Not to have been born in the South was, from the major's way of
+looking at the thing, a great and regrettable misfortune for which the
+victim could not be held responsible, since the fault lay with his
+parents and not with him. By way of a suitable return for this, Devore
+spent many a spare moment thinking up grotesque yet wickedly
+appropriate nicknames for the major. He called him Old First and Second
+Manassas and Old Hardee's Tactics and Old Valley of Virginia. He called
+him an old bluffer too.
+
+He was wrong there, though, certainly. Though the major talked pretty
+exclusively about the war, I took notice that he rarely talked about the
+part he himself had played in it. Indeed, he rarely discussed anybody
+below the rank of brigadier. The errors of Hood's campaign concerned him
+more deeply than the personal performances of any individual. Campaigns
+you might say were his specialty, campaigns and strategy. About such
+things as these he could talk for hours--and he did.
+
+I've known other men--plenty of them--not nearly so well educated as the
+major, who could tell you tales of the war that would make you see
+it--yes, and smell it too--the smoke of the campfires, the unutterable
+fatigue of forced marches when the men, with their tongues lolling out
+of their mouths like dogs, staggered along, panting like dogs; the
+bloody prints of unshod feet on flinty, frozen clods; the shock and
+fearful joy of the fighting; the shamed numbness of retreats; artillery
+horses, their hides all blood-boltered and their tails clubbed and
+clotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns;
+dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics--all of it. But
+when the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, in
+whiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring over
+maps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud of
+the vanished past it certainly was mighty dry chewing.
+
+There came a day, a few weeks after I went to work for the Evening
+Press, when for once anyway the major didn't seem to have anything to
+say. It was in the middle of a blistering, smothering hot forenoon in
+early June, muggy and still and close, when a fellow breathing felt as
+though he had his nose buried in layers of damp cotton waste. The city
+room was a place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing room at the
+back the stenches of melting metals and stale machine oils came rolling
+in to us in nasty waves. With his face glistening through the trickling
+sweat, the major came in about ten o'clock, fanning himself with his
+hat, and when he spoke his greeting the booming note seemed all melted
+and gone out of his voice. He went through the city room into the room
+behind the partition, and passing through a minute later I saw him
+sitting there with one of Sidley's exchanges unfolded across his knee,
+but he wasn't reading it. Presently I saw him climbing laboriously up
+the stairs to the second floor where the chief had his office. At
+quitting time that afternoon I dropped into the place on the corner for
+a beer, and I was drinking it, as close to an electric fan as I could
+get, when Devore came in and made for where I was standing. I asked him
+to have something.
+
+"I'll take the same," he said to the man behind the bar, and then to me
+with a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resign
+this rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the business
+long enough to know that the average newspaper man is forever
+threatening to resign. Most of them--to hear them talk--are always just
+on the point of throwing up their jobs and buying a good-paying country
+weekly somewhere and taking things easy for the rest of their lives, or
+else they're going into magazine work. Only they hardly ever do it. So
+Devore's threat didn't jar me much. I'd heard it too often.
+
+"What's the trouble?" I asked. "Heat getting on your nerves?"
+
+"No, it's not the heat," he said peevishly; "it's worse than the heat.
+Do you know what's happened? The chief has saddled Old Signal Corps on
+me. Yes, sir, I've got to take his old pet, the major, on the city
+staff. It seems he's succeeded in losing what little property he
+had--the chief told me some rigmarole about sudden financial
+reverses--and now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've got to take
+him on as a reporter--a cub reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, who
+hasn't heard of anything worth while since Robert E. Lee surrendered!"
+
+The pathos of the situation--if you could call it that--hit me with a
+jolt; but it hadn't hit Devore, that was plain. He saw only the annoying
+part of it.
+
+"What's he going to do?" I asked--"assignments, or cover a route like
+the district men?"
+
+"Lord knows," said Devore. "Because the old bore knows a lot of big
+people in this town and is friendly with all the old-timers in the
+state, the chief has a wild delusion that he can pick up a lot of stuff
+that an ordinary reporter wouldn't get. Rats!
+
+"Come on, let's take another beer," he said, and then he added: "Well,
+I'll just make you two predictions. He'll be a total loss as a
+reporter--that's one prediction; and the other is that he'll have a hard
+time buying his provender and his toddies over at the Shawnee Club on
+the salary he'll draw down from the Evening Press."
+
+Devore was not such a very great city editor, as I know now in the light
+of fuller experience, but I must say that as a prophet he was fairly
+accurate. The major did have a hard time living on his salary--it was
+twelve a week, I learned--and as a reporter he certainly was not what
+you would call a dazzling success. He came on for duty at eight the next
+morning, the same as the rest of us, and sorry as I felt for him I had
+to laugh. He had bought himself a leather-backed notebook as big as a
+young ledger, just as a green kid just out of high school would have
+done, and he had a long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencil
+sticking out of the breast pocket of his coat. He tried to come in
+smartly with a businesslike air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blind
+man, because he was as nervous as a debutante. It struck me as one of
+the funniest things--and one of the most pathetic--I had ever seen.
+
+I'll say this for Devore--he tried out the major on nearly every kind of
+job; and surely it wasn't Devore's fault that the major failed on every
+single one of them. His first attempt was as typical a failure as any of
+them. That first morning Devore assigned him to cover a wedding at high
+noon, high noon being the phrase we always used for a wedding that took
+place round twelve o'clock in the day. The daughter of one of the
+wealthiest merchants in the town, and also one of our largest
+advertisers, was going to be married to the first deputy cotillion
+leader of the German Club, or something of that nature. Anyhow the groom
+was what is known as prominent in society, and the chief wanted a spread
+made of it. Devore sent the major out to cover the wedding, and when he
+came back told him to write about half a column.
+
+He wrote half a column before he mentioned the bride's name. He started
+off with an eight-line quotation from Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake,
+and then he went into a long, flowery dissertation on the sacred rite or
+ceremony of matrimony, proving conclusively and beyond the peradventure
+of a doubt that it was handed down to us from remote antiquity. And he
+forgot altogether to tell the minister's name, and he got the groom's
+middle initial wrong--he was the kind of groom who would make a fuss
+over a wrong middle initial, too--and along toward the end of his story
+he devoted about three closely-written pages to the military history of
+the young woman's father. It seems that her parent had served with
+distinction as colonel of a North Carolina regiment. And he wound up
+with a fancy flourish and handed it in. I know all these details of his
+story, because it fell to me to rewrite it.
+
+Devore didn't say a word when the old major reverently laid that armload
+of copy down in front of him. He just sat and waited in silence until
+the major had gone out to get a bite to eat, and then he undertook to
+edit it. But there wasn't any way to edit it, except to throw it away. I
+suppose that kind of literature went very well indeed back along about
+1850; I remember having read such accounts in the back files of old
+weeklies, printed before the war. But we were getting out a live, snappy
+paper. Devore tried to pattern the local side after the New York and
+Chicago models. As yet we hadn't reached the point where we spoke of any
+white woman without the prefix Mrs. or Miss before her name, but we were
+up-to-date in a good many other particulars. Why, it was even against
+the office rule to run "beauty and chivalry" into a story when
+describing a mixed assemblage of men and women; and when a Southern
+newspaper bars out that ancient and honorable standby among phrases it
+is a sign that the old order has changed.
+
+For ten minutes or so Devore, cursing softly to himself, cut and chopped
+and gutted his way through the major's introduction, and between
+slashing strokes made a war map of the Balkans in his scalp with his
+blue pencil. Then he lost patience altogether.
+
+"Here," he said to me, "you're not doing anything, are you? Well, take
+this awful bunch of mushy slush and read it through, and then try to
+make a decent half-column story out of it. And rush it over a page at a
+time, will you? We've got to hustle to catch the three o'clock edition
+with it."
+
+Long before three o'clock the major was back in the shop, waiting for
+the first run of papers to come off the press. Furtively I watched him
+as he hunted through the sticky pages to find his first story. I guess
+he had the budding pride of authorship in him, just as all the rest of
+us have it in us. But he didn't find his story, he found mine. He didn't
+say anything, but he looked crushed and forlorn as he got up and went
+away. It was like him not to ask for any explanations, and it was like
+Devore not to offer him any.
+
+So it went. Even if he had grown up in the business I doubt whether
+Major Putnam Stone would ever have made a newspaper man; and now he was
+too far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. He
+didn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the most
+amazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he could
+always be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequential
+detail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point lace
+adjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig up
+a long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a story
+without a quotation from one of the poets. It never was a modern poet
+either. Excepting for Sidney Lanier and Father Ryan, apparently he
+hadn't heard of any poet worth while since Edgar Allan Poe died. And
+everything that happened seemed to remind him--at great length--of
+something else that had happened between 1861 and 1865. When it came to
+lugging the Civil War into a tale, he was as bad as that character in
+one of Dickens' novels who couldn't keep the head of King Charles the
+First out of his literary productions. With that reared-back,
+flat-heeled, stiff-spined gait of his, he would go rummaging round the
+hotels and the Shawnee Club, meeting all sorts of people and hearing all
+sorts of things that a real reporter would have snatched at like a
+hungry dog snatching at a T-bone, and then he would remember that it
+was the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain, or
+something, and, forgetting everything else, would come bulging and
+bustling back to the office, all worked up over the prospect of writing
+two or three columns about that. He just simply couldn't get the
+viewpoint; yet I think he tried hard enough. I guess the man who said
+you couldn't teach an old dog new tricks had particular reference to an
+old war dog.
+
+I remember mighty well one incident that illustrates the point I am
+trying to make. We had a Sunday edition. We were rather vain of our
+Sunday edition. It carried a colored comic supplement and a section full
+of special features, and we all took a more or less righteous pride in
+it and tried hard to make it alive and attractive. We didn't always
+succeed, but we tried all right. One Saturday night we put the Sunday to
+bed, and about one o'clock, when the last form was locked, three or four
+of us dropped into Tony's place at the corner for a bite to eat and a
+drink. We hadn't been there very long when in came the old major, and at
+my invitation he joined us at one of Tony's little round tables at the
+back of the place. As a general thing the major didn't patronize Tony's.
+I had never heard him say so--probably he wouldn't have said it for fear
+of hurting our feelings--but I somehow had gathered the impression that
+the major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all, should drink at his
+club. But it was long after midnight now and the Shawnee Club would be
+closed. Ike Webb spoke up presently.
+
+"It's a pity we couldn't dig up the governor tonight," he said.
+
+The governor had come down from the state capital about noon, and all
+the afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying to
+find him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webb
+could have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring his
+toddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent an
+hour with the governor tonight--at my club. In fact, I supped with him
+in one of the private dining rooms." We looked up, startled, but the
+major went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to know
+that every time I see our worthy governor I am struck more and more by
+his resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that gallant soldier and
+gentleman looked when I last saw him----"
+
+Devore, who had been sitting next to the major, with his shoulder half
+turned from the old man, swung round sharply and interrupted him.
+
+"Major," he said, with a thin icy stream of sarcasm trickling through
+his words, "did you and the governor by any remote chance discuss
+anything so brutally new and fresh as the present political
+complications in this state?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the major blandly. "We discussed them quite at some
+length--or at least the governor did. Personally I do not take a great
+interest in these matters, not so great an interest as I should,
+perhaps, take. However, I did feel impelled to take issue with him on
+one point. Our governor is an honest gentleman--more than that, he was a
+brave soldier--but I fear he is mistaken in some of his attitudes. I
+regard him as being badly advised. For example, he told me that no
+longer ago than this afternoon he affixed his official signature to a
+veto of Senator Stickney's measure in regard to the warehouses of our
+state----"
+
+As Devore jumped up he overturned the major's toddy right in the major's
+lap. He didn't stop to beg pardon, though; in fact, none of us stopped.
+But at the door I threw one glance backward over my shoulder. The major
+was still sitting reared back in his chair, with his wasted toddy
+seeping all down the front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishing
+figures with amazement and a mild reproof in his eyes. In the one quick
+glance that I took I translated his expression to mean something like
+this:
+
+"Good Heavens, is this any way for a party of gentlemen to break up!
+This could never happen at a gentlemen's club."
+
+It was a foot-race back to the office, and Devore, who had the start,
+won by a short length. Luckily the distance was short, not quite half a
+block, and the presses hadn't started yet. Working like the crew of a
+sinking ship, we snatched the first page form back off the steam table
+and pried it open and gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of the
+last column--Devore blistered his fingers doing it. A couple of linotype
+operators who were on the late trick threw together the stick or two of
+copy that Webb and I scribbled off a line at a time. And while we were
+doing this Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head. So we missed
+only one mail.
+
+The first page had a ragged, sloppy look, but anyway we were saved from
+being scooped to death on the most important story of the year. The
+vetoing of the Stickney Bill vitally affected the tobacco interests, and
+they were the biggest interests in the state, and half the people of the
+state had been thinking about nothing else and talking about nothing
+else for two months--ever since the extra session of the legislature
+started. It was well for us too that we did save our faces, because the
+opposition sheet had managed to find the governor--he was stopping for
+the night at the house of a friend out in the suburbs--and over the
+telephone at a late hour he had announced his decision to them. But by
+Monday morning the major seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. I
+think he had even forgiven Devore for spilling his toddy and not
+stopping to apologize.
+
+As for Devore, he didn't say a word to the major--what would have been
+the use? To Devore's credit also I will say that he didn't run to the
+chief, bearing complaints of the major's hopeless incompetency. He kept
+his tongue between his teeth and his teeth locked; and that must have
+been hard on Devore, for he was a flickery, high-tempered man, and
+nervous as a cat besides. To my knowledge, the only time he ever broke
+out was when we teetotally missed the Castleton divorce story. So far as
+the major's part in it was concerned, it was the Stickney veto story all
+over again, with variations. The Castletons were almost the richest
+people in town, and socially they stood way up. That made the scandal
+that had been brewing and steeping and simmering for months all the
+bigger when finally it came to a boil. When young Buford Castleton got
+his eyes open and became aware of what everybody else had known for a
+year or more, and when the rival evening paper came out in its last
+edition with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening Press shop,
+were plastered with shame, for we didn't have a line of it.
+
+A stranger dropping in just about that time would have been justified in
+thinking there was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere, and that
+all the members of the city staff were sitting up with the remains. As
+luck would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped in on our grand
+lodge of sorrow. It was Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the door
+he caught the tag end of what one of us was saying.
+
+"I gather," he said in that large round voice of his, "that you young
+gentlemen are discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is mentioned
+with such signally poor taste in the columns of our sensational
+contemporary. I may state that I knew of this contemplated divorce
+action yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton, Senior, was my informant."
+
+"What!" Devore almost yelled it. He had the love of a true city editor
+for his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for his
+gold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about this
+thing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of a
+tuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You knew it
+yesterday?"
+
+"Certainly," said the major. "The elder Mr. Castleton bared the truly
+distressing details to me at the Shawnee Club."
+
+"In confidence though--he told you about it in confidence, didn't he,
+major?" said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow.
+
+But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved.
+
+"Absolutely not," he said. "There were several of us present, at least
+three other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castleton
+made the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among his
+friends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that he
+was entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law."
+
+Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat on
+himself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voice
+ran up and down the scales quiveringly.
+
+"Major," he said, "don't you think it would be a good idea if you would
+admit that the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned your
+attention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn't
+you write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it?
+Why didn't----Oh, what's the use!"
+
+The major straightened himself up.
+
+"Sir," he said, "allow me to correct you in regard to a plain
+misstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated.
+It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted--because our
+devastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed upon
+this paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. I
+would be the last to give circulation in the public prints to another
+gentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that a
+gentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under any
+circumstances."
+
+And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leaving
+Devore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to hold
+himself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for my
+boarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped one
+of his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes.
+
+"Our city editor means well, no doubt," he said, "but he doesn't
+understand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. He
+was born on the other side of the river, you know," he said as though
+that explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept into
+it. "Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return to
+him and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner of
+speech I used just now?"
+
+I told him no--I didn't know what might happen if he went back in there
+then--and I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect any apology; and
+with that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood there
+watching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away from
+me, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant,
+cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. And
+right then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understanding
+of a thing that had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I had
+wondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided in
+my own mind that he must be blind to it, else he would have shown
+resentment. But now I knew the answer. The major wasn't blind, he was
+afraid; as the saying goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it; he
+needed the little scrap of money it brought him every Saturday night.
+That was it, I knew now.
+
+Knowing it made me sorrier than ever for the old man. Dimly I began to
+realize, I think, what his own mental attitude toward his position must
+be. Here he was, a mere cub reporter--and a remarkably bad one, a proven
+failure--skirmishing round for small, inconsequential items, running
+errands really, at an age when most of the men he knew were getting
+ready to retire from business. Yet he didn't dare quit. He didn't dare
+even to rebel against the slights of the man over him, because he needed
+that twelve dollars a week. It was all, no doubt, that stood between him
+and actual want. His pride was bleeding to death internally. On top of
+all that he was being forced into a readjustment of his whole scheme of
+things, at a time of life when its ordered routine was almost as much a
+part of him as his hands and feet. As I figured it, he had long before
+adjusted his life to his income, cunningly fitting in certain small
+luxuries and all the small comforts; and now this income was cut to a
+third or a quarter perhaps of its former dimensions. It seemed a pretty
+hard thing for the major. It was fierce.
+
+Perhaps my vision was clouded by my sympathy, but I thought Major Stone
+aged visibly that summer. Maybe you have noticed how it is with men who
+have gone along, hale and stanch, until they reach a certain age. When
+they do start to break they break fast. He lost some of his flesh and
+most of his rosiness. The skin on his face loosened a little and became
+a tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like a winter-killed apple.
+
+His wardrobe suffered. One day one of his short little shoes was split
+across the top just back of the toe cap, and the next morning it was
+patched. Pretty soon the other shoe followed suit--first a crack in the
+leather, then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore his black slouch
+hat until it was as green in spots as a gage plum; and late in August he
+supplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished brown-straw hats that
+cost about thirty-five cents apiece and look it.
+
+His linen must have been one of his small extravagances. Those
+majestically collared garments with the tremendous plaited bosoms and
+the hand worked eyelets, where the three big flat gold studs went in,
+never came ready made from any shop. They must have been built to his
+measure and his order. Now he wore them until there were gaped places
+between the plaits where the fine, fragile linen had ripped lengthwise,
+and the collars were frayed down and broken across and caved in limply.
+Finally he gave them up too, and one morning came to work wearing a
+flimsy, sleazy, negligee shirt. I reckon you know the kind of shirt I
+mean--always it fits badly, and the sleeves are always short and the
+bosom is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper. After his
+old full-bosomed grandeur this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned on
+to it and overriding the neckband, and gaping away in the front so that
+the major's throat showed, seemed to typify more than anything else the
+days upon which he had fallen. About this time I thought his voice took
+on a changed tone permanently. It was still hollow, but it no longer
+rang.
+
+A good many men similarly placed would have taken to drink, but Major
+Putnam Stone plainly was never born to be a drunkard and hard times
+couldn't make one of him. With a sort of gentle, stupid persistence he
+hung fast to his poor job, blundering through some way, struggling
+constantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade--the a, b, c's of
+it--and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and the
+war into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devore
+maintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly to
+accept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a better
+footing with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold the
+old man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room,
+and he would chew on his under lip and viciously lance his scalp with
+his pencil point.
+
+Well, aside from the major, Devore had his troubles that summer. That
+was the summer of the biggest, bitterest campaign that the state had
+seen, so old-timers said, since Breckinridge ran against Douglas and
+both of them against Lincoln. If you have ever lived in the South,
+probably you know something of political fights that will divide a state
+into two armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until old slumbering
+animosities come crawling out into the open, like poison snakes from
+under a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the shell every hour or so
+in a multiplying adder brood.
+
+This was like that, only worse. Stripped of a lot of embroidery in the
+shape of side issues and local complications, it resolved itself in a
+last-ditch, last-stand, back-to-the-wall fight of the old regime of the
+party against the new. On one side were the oldsters, bearers of famous
+names some of them, who had learned politics as a trade and followed it
+as a profession. Almost to a man they were professional office holders,
+professional handshakers, professional silver tongues. And against them
+were pitted a greedy, hungry group of younger men, less showy perhaps in
+their persons, less picturesque in their manner of speech, but filled
+each one with a great yearning for office and power; and they brought to
+the aid of their vaulting ambitions a new and a faultlessly running
+machine. From the outset the Evening Press had championed the cause of
+the old crowd--the state-house ring as the enemy called it, when they
+didn't call it something worse. We championed it not as a Northern or an
+Eastern paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but fiercely and
+wholly and blindly--so blindly that we could see nothing in our own
+faction but what was good and high and pure, nothing in the other but
+what was smutted with evil intent. In daily double-leaded editorial
+columns the chief preached a Holy War, and in the local pages we fought
+the foe tooth and nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they gouged
+and clawed back at us like catamounts. That was where the hard work fell
+upon Devore. He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politics
+while the other half tried to cover the run of the news.
+
+If I live to be a thousand years old I am not going to forget the state
+convention that began at two o'clock that muggy September afternoon at
+Lyric Hall up on Washington Street in the old part of the town. Once
+upon a time, twenty or thirty years before, Lyric Hall had been the
+biggest theater in town. The stage was still there and the boxes, and at
+the back there were miles--they seemed miles anyway--of ancient,
+crumbling, dauby scenery stacked up and smelling of age and decay. Booth
+and Barrett had played there, and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence.
+Now, having fallen from its high estate, it served altered
+purposes--conventions were held at Lyric Hall and cheap masquerade balls
+and the like.
+
+The press tables that had been provided were not, strictly speaking,
+press tables at all. They were ordinary unpainted kitchen tables, ranged
+two on one side and two on the other side at the front of the stage,
+close up to the old gas-tipped footlights; and when we came in by the
+back way that afternoon and found our appointed places I was struck by
+certain sinister facts. Usually women flocked to a state convention. By
+rights there should have been ladies in the boxes and in the balcony.
+Now there wasn't a woman in sight anywhere, only men, row after row of
+them. And there wasn't any cheering, or mighty little of it. When I tell
+you the band played Dixie all the way through with only a stray whoop
+now and then, you will understand better the temper of that crowd.
+
+The situation, you see, was like this: One side had carried the mountain
+end of the state; the other had carried the lowlands. One side had swept
+the city; that meant a solid block of more than a hundred delegates. The
+other side had won the small towns and the inland counties. So it stood
+lowlander against highlander, city man against country man, and the
+bitter waters of those ancient feuds have their wellsprings back a
+thousand years in history, they tell me. One side led slenderly on
+instructed vote. The other side had enough contesting delegations on
+hand to upset the result if these contestants or any considerable
+proportion of them should be recognized in the preliminary organization.
+
+One side held a majority of the delegates who sat upon the floor; the
+other side had packed the balcony and the aisles and the corners with
+its armed partizans. One side was in the saddle and determined; the
+other afoot and grimly desperate. And it was our side, as I shall call
+it, meaning by that the state-house ring, that for the moment had the
+whiphand; and it was the other side, led in person by State Senator
+Stickney, god of the new machine, that stood ready to wade hip deep
+through trouble to unhorse us.
+
+Just below me, stretching across the hall from side to side in favored
+front places, sat the city delegates--Stickney men all of them. And as
+my eye swept the curved double row of faces it seemed to me I saw there
+every man in town with a reputation as a gun-fighter or a knife-fighter
+or a fist-fighter; and every one of them wore, pinning his delegate's
+badge to his breast, a Stickney button that was round and bright red,
+like a clot of blood on his shirt front.
+
+They made a contrast, these half-moon lines of blocky men, to the lank,
+slouch-hatted, low-collared country delegates--farmers, school
+teachers, country doctors and country lawyers--who filled the seats
+behind them and on beyond them. To the one group politics was a business
+in which there was money to be made and excitement to be had; to the
+other group it was a passion, veritably a sacredly high and serious
+thing, which they took as they did their religion, with a solemn,
+intolerant, Calvinistic sincerity. There was one thing, though, they all
+shared in common. Whether a man's coat was of black alpaca or striped
+flannel, the right-hand pocket sagged under the weight of unseen
+ironmongery; or if the coat pocket didn't sag there was a bulging clump
+back under the skirts on the right hip. For all the heat, hardly a man
+there was in his shirtsleeves; and it would have been funny to watch how
+carefully this man or that eased himself down into his seat, favoring
+his flanks against the pressure of his hardware--that is to say, it
+would have been funny if it all hadn't been so deadly earnest.
+
+You could fairly smell trouble cooking in that hall. In any corner
+almost there were the potential makings of half a dozen prominent
+funerals. There was scarce a man, I judged, but nursed a private grudge
+against some other man; and then besides these there was the big issue
+itself, which had split the state apart lengthwise as a butcher's
+cleaver splits a joint. Looking out over that convention, you could
+read danger spelled out everywhere, in everything, as plain as print.
+
+I was where I could read it with particular and uncomfortable
+distinctness, too, for I had the second place at the table that had been
+assigned to the Evening Press crew. There were four of us in
+all--Devore, who had elected to be in direct charge of the detail; Ike
+Webb, our star man, who was to handle the main story; I who was to write
+the running account--and, fourthly and lastly, Major Putnam Stone. The
+major hadn't been included in the assignment originally, but little
+Pinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning, and the chief decided the
+major should come along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief had a
+deluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission and
+pick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was a
+convention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be picked
+up--curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but not
+gossip--everything focused and was summed up in the one main point:
+Should the majority rule the machine or should the machine rule the
+majority? So the major sat there at the far inside corner of the table
+doing nothing at all--Devore saw to that--and was rather in the way. For
+the time I forgot all about him.
+
+The clash wasn't long in coming. It came on the first roll call of the
+counties. Later we found out that the Stickney forces had been
+counting, all along, on throwing the convention into a disorder of such
+proportions as to force an adjournment, trusting then to their
+acknowledged superiority at organization to win some strong strategic
+advantage in the intervening gap of time. Failing there they meant to
+raise a cry of unfairness and walk out. That then was their
+program--first the riot and then, as a last resort, the bolt. But they
+had men in their ranks, high-tempered men who, like so many skittish
+colts, wouldn't stand without hitching. The signals crossed and the
+thunder cracked across that calm-before-the-storm situation before there
+was proper color of excuse either for attack or for retreat.
+
+It came with scarcely any warning at all. Old Judge Marcellus Barbee,
+the state chairman, called the convention to order, he standing at a
+little table in the center of the stage. Although counted as our man,
+the judge was of such uncertain fiber as to render it doubtful whose man
+he really was. He was a kindly, wind-blown old gentleman, who very much
+against his will had been drawn unawares, as it were, into the middle of
+this fight, and he was bewildered by it all--and not only bewildered but
+unhappy and frightened. His gavel seemed to quaver its raps out
+timorously.
+
+A pastor of one of the churches, a reverend man with a bleak, worried
+face, prayed the Good Lord that peace and good-will and wise counsel
+might rule these deliberations, and then fled away as though fearing the
+mocking echoes of his own Amen. Summoning his skulking voice out of his
+lower throat, Judge Barbee bade the secretary of the state committee
+call the counties. The secretary got as far as Blanton, the third county
+alphabetically down the list. And Blanton was one of the contested
+counties. So up rose two rival chairmen of delegations, each waving
+aloft his credentials, each demanding the right to cast the vote of free
+and sovereign Blanton, each shaking a clenched fist at the other. Up got
+the rival delegations from Blanton. Up got everybody. Judge Barbee, with
+a gesture, recognized the rights of the anti-Stickney delegation. Jeers
+and yells broke out, spattering forth like a skirmish fire, then almost
+instantly were merged into a vast, ominous roar. Chairs began to
+overturn. Not twenty feet from me the clattering of the chairman's
+gavel, as he vainly beat for order, sounded like the clicking of a
+telegraph instrument in a cyclone.
+
+I saw the sergeant-at-arms--who was our man too--start down the middle
+aisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and I
+saw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to the
+floor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under my
+feet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeous
+blue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, a little round German, put
+his foot through the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge Barbee
+overturn the white china pitcher of ice water that sweated on the table
+at his elbow, and as the cold stream of its contents spattered down the
+legs of his trousers saw him staring downward, contemplating his
+drenched limbs as though that mattered greatly.
+
+All in a flash I saw these things, and in that same flash I saw, taking
+shape and impulse, a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons,
+rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad men of the city wards for
+its crest; and out of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out from
+the rear of the stage, a small, compact wedge of men wearing those same
+red buttons; and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave Dancy, the
+official bad man of a bad county, a man who packed a gun on each hip and
+carried a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man who would shoot
+you at the drop of a hat and provide the hat himself--or at least so it
+was said of him.
+
+And I realized that the enemy, coming by concerted agreement from front
+and rear at once, had nipped those of us who were upon the stage as
+between two closing walls, and I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. I
+ducked my head low, waiting for the shooting to begin. Afterward we
+figured it out that nobody fired the first shot because everybody knew
+the first shot would mean a massacre, where likely enough a man would
+kill more friends than foes.
+
+What happened now in the space of the next few seconds I saw with
+particular clarity of vision, because it happened right alongside me and
+in part right over me. I recall in especial Mink Satterlee. Mink
+Satterlee was one of the worst men in town, and he ran the worst saloon
+and prevailed mightily in ward politics. He had been sitting just below
+our table in the front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man,
+fat-necked, but this day he showed himself quick on his feet as any
+toe-dancer. Leading his own forces by a length, he vaulted the orchestra
+rail and lit lightly where a scared oboe player had been squatted a
+moment before; Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of the footlights and
+leaped upward, teetering a moment in space. One of his hands grabbed out
+for a purchase and closed on the leg of our table and jerked it almost
+from under us.
+
+At that Devore either lost his head or else indignation made him
+reckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at his
+feet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was a
+puny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from where
+he clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and,
+before any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the throat with his left
+hand and jammed him back, face upward, on the table until I thought
+Devore's spine would crack. His right hand shot into his coat pocket,
+then, quick as a snake, came out again, showing the fat fist armed with
+a set of murderously heavy brass knucks, and he bent his arm in a
+crooked sickle-like stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple. I've always
+been satisfied--and so has Devore--that if the blow had landed true his
+skull would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it never landed.
+
+Above me a shadow of something hung for the hundredth part of a second,
+something white flashed over me and by me, moving downward whizzingly;
+something cracked on something; and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentle
+little grunt right in Devore's face and then relaxed and slid down on
+the floor, lying half under the table and half in the tin trough where
+the stubby gas jets of the footlights stood up, with his legs protruding
+stiffly out over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously I noted
+that his socks were not mates, one of them being blue and one black;
+also that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split place in it just between
+and above his half-closed eyes. All this, though, couldn't have taken
+one-fifth of the time it has required for me to tell it. It couldn't
+have taken more than a brace of seconds, but even so it was time enough
+for other things to happen; and I looked back again toward the center of
+the stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized startled old Judge Barbee
+by the middle from behind and flung him aside so roughly that the old
+man spun round twice, clutching at nothing, and then sat down very hard,
+yards away from where he started spinning.
+
+Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had fallen from the judge's hand,
+being minded, I think, to run the convention awhile in the interest of
+his own crowd. But his greedy fingers never closed over its black-walnut
+handle, because, facing him, he saw just then what made him freeze solid
+where he was.
+
+Out from behind the Evening Press table and through a scattering huddle
+of newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly as
+a puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back off
+his wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so that
+the tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like a
+little burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright,
+glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalry
+revolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivory
+handle, and as I saw that ivory handle I knew what the white thing was
+that had flashed by me only a moment before to fell Mink Satterlee so
+expeditiously.
+
+Writing this, I've been trying to think of the one word that would best
+describe how Major Putnam Stone looked to me as he advanced on Dave
+Dancy. I think now that the proper word is competent, for indeed the old
+major did look most competent--the tremendous efficiency he radiated
+filled him out and made him seem sundry sizes larger than he really was.
+A great emergency acts upon different men as chemical processes act upon
+different metals. Some it melts like lead, so that their resolution
+softens and runs away from them; and some it hardens to tempered steel.
+There was the old major now. Always before this he had seemed to me to
+be but pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert, ready--a
+wire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus blade of a man--all changed and
+transformed and glorified, he was coming down on Dave Dancy, finger on
+trigger, thumb on hammer, eye on target, dominating the whole scene.
+
+Ten feet from him he halted and there was nobody between them. Somehow
+everybody else halted too, some even giving back a little. Over the edge
+of the stage a ring of staring faces, like a high-water mark, showed
+where the onward rushing swell of the Stickney city delegates had
+checked itself. Seemingly to all at once came the realization that the
+destinies of the fight had by the chances of the fight been entrusted to
+these two men--to Dancy and the major--and that between them the issue
+would be settled one way or the other.
+
+Still at a half crouch, Dancy's right hand began to steal back under the
+skirt of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle of
+his weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at his
+side in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of dueling scenes of
+olden times.
+
+"I am waiting, sir, for you to draw," said the major quite briskly. "I
+will shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall control
+this convention." And his heels clicked together like castanets.
+
+Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and farther back. And then you
+could mark by the change of his skin and by the look out of his eyes how
+his courage was clabbering to whey inside him, making his face a milky,
+curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred emulsion, and then he
+quit--he quit cold--his hand came out again from under his coat tails
+and it was an empty hand and wide open. It was from that moment on that
+throughout our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to be Fighting Dave and
+became instead Yaller Dave.
+
+"Then, sir," said the major, "as you do not seem to care to shoot it out
+with me, man to man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw from this
+stage and allow the business of this convention to proceed in an orderly
+manner."
+
+And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody laughed. In another second we
+were all laughing and the danger was over. When an American crowd
+begins laughing the danger is always over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Newspaper men down in that town still talk about the story that Ike Webb
+wrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was a
+great story, as Ike Webb told it--how, still sitting on the floor, old
+Judge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned the
+major a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men to
+close and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn't
+get out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how the
+convention, catching the spirit of the moment, elected the major its
+temporary chairman, and how even after that, for quite a spell, until
+some of his friends bethought to remove him, Mink Satterlee slept
+peacefully under our press table with his mismated legs bridged across
+the tin trough of the footlights.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In rapid succession a number of unusual events occurred in the Evening
+Press shop the next morning. To begin with, the chief came down early.
+He had a few words in private with Devore and went upstairs. When the
+major came at eight as usual, Devore was waiting for him at the door of
+the city room; and as they went upstairs together, side by side, I saw
+Devore's arm steal timidly out and rest a moment on the major's
+shoulder.
+
+The major was the first to descend. Walking unusually erect, even for
+him, he bustled into the telephone booth. Jessie, our operator, told us
+afterward that he called up a haberdasher, and in a voice that boomed
+like a bell ordered fourteen of those plaited-bosom shirts of his, the
+same to be made up and delivered as soon as possible. Then he stalked
+out. And in a minute or two more Devore came down looking happy and
+unhappy and embarrassed and exalted, all of them at once. On his way to
+his desk he halted midway of the floor.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said huskily--"fellows, I mean--I've got an announcement
+to make, or rather two announcements. One is this: Right here before you
+fellows who heard most of them I want to take back all the mean things I
+ever said about him--about Major Stone--and I want to say I'm sorry for
+all the mean things I've done to him. I've tried to beg his pardon, but
+he wouldn't listen--he wouldn't let me beg his pardon--he--he said
+everything was all right. That's one announcement. Here's the other: The
+major is going to have a new job with this paper. He's going to leave
+the city staff. Hereafter he's going to be upstairs in the room next to
+the chief. He's gone out now to pick out his own desk. He's going to
+write specials for the Sunday--specials about the war. And he's going
+to do it on a decent salary too."
+
+I judge by my own feelings that we all wanted to cheer, but didn't
+because we thought it might sound theatrical and foolish. Anyhow, I know
+that was how I felt. So there was a little awkward pause.
+
+"What's his new title going to be?" asked somebody then.
+
+"The title is appropriate--I suggested it myself," said Devore. "Major
+Stone is going to be war editor."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SMOKE OF BATTLE
+
+
+This befell during the period that Major Putnam Stone, at the age of
+sixty-two, held a job as cub reporter on the Evening Press and worked at
+it until his supply of fine linen and the patience of City Editor
+Wilbert Devore frazzled out practically together. The episode to which I
+would here direct attention came to pass in the middle of a particularly
+hot week in the middle of that particularly hot and grubby summer, at a
+time when the major was still wearing the last limp survivor of his once
+adequate stock of frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when Devore's
+scanty stock of endurance had already worn perilously near the snapping
+point.
+
+As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a life of comparative leisure from
+the day he came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned veteran, until
+the day he joined the staff of the Evening Press, a rank beginner; and
+of these two employments one lay a matter of four decades back in a
+half-forgotten past, while the other was of pressing moment, having to
+do with Major Stone's enjoyment of his daily bread and other elements of
+nutrition regarded as essential to the sustenance of human life. In his
+military career he might have been more or less of a success. Certainly
+he must have acquitted himself with some measure of personal credit; the
+rank he had attained in the service and the standing he had subsequently
+enjoyed among his comrades abundantly testified to that.
+
+As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth
+in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and
+speech--hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing;
+and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the
+things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very
+naturally--and very frequently--forgot that to a newspaper reporter
+every day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday always is
+or always should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnished
+yesterdays of forty-odd years ago. Indeed I doubt whether the major ever
+comprehended that first commandment of the prentice reporter's
+catechism.
+
+Devore, himself no grand and glittering success as a newspaper man,
+nevertheless had mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous old
+major. Devore did not believe that bricks could be made without straw.
+He considered it a waste of time and raw material to try. Through that
+summer he kept the major on the payroll solely because the chief so
+willed it. But, though he might not discharge the major, at least he
+could bait him--and bait him Devore did--not, mind you, with words, but
+with a silent, sublimated contempt more bitter and more biting than any
+words.
+
+So there, on the occasion in question, the situation stood--the major
+hanging on tooth and nail to his small job, because he needed most
+desperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editor
+regarding him and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission,
+commission and remission with a corrosive, speechless venom; and the
+rest of us in the city room divided in our sympathies as between those
+two. We sympathized with Devore for having to carry so woful an
+incompetent upon his small and overworked crew; we sympathized with the
+kindly, gentle, tiresome old major for his bungling, vain attempts to
+creditably cover the small and piddling assignments that came his way.
+
+I remember the date mighty well--the third of July. For three days now
+the Democratic party, in national convention assembled at Chicago, had
+been in the throes of labor. It had been expected--in fact had been as
+good as promised--that by ten o'clock that evening the deadlock would
+melt before a sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and the head of
+the presidential ticket would be named, wherefore in the Evening Press
+shop a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an extra. Back in the
+press-room the press was dressed. A front page form was made up and
+ready, all but the space where the name of the nominee would be inserted
+when the flash came; and in the alley outside a picked squad of
+newsboys, renowned for speed of the leg and carrying quality of the
+voice, awaited their wares, meanwhile skylarking under the eye of a
+circulation manager.
+
+Besides, there was no telling when an arrest might be made in the
+Bullard murder case--that just by itself would provide ample excuse for
+an extra. Two days had passed and two nights since the killing of
+Attorney-at-Law Rodney G. Bullard, and still the killing, to quote a
+favorite line of the local descriptive writers, "remained shrouded in
+impenetrable mystery." If the police force, now busily engaged in
+running clues into theories and theories into the ground, should by any
+blind chance of fortune be lucky enough to ascertain the identity and
+lay hands upon the person of Bullard's assassin, the whole town,
+regardless of the hour, would rise up out of bed to read the news of it.
+It was the biggest crime story that town had known for ten years; one of
+the biggest crime stories it had ever known.
+
+In the end our waiting all went for nothing. There were no developments
+at Central Station or elsewhere in the Bullard case, and at Chicago
+there was no nomination. At nine-thirty a bulletin came over our leased
+wire saying that Tammany, having been beaten before the Resolutions
+Committee, was still battling on the floor for its candidate; so that
+finally the convention had adjourned until morning, and now the
+delegates were streaming out of the hall, too tired to cheer and almost
+too tired to jeer--all of which was sad news to us, because it meant
+that, instead of taking a holiday on the Fourth, we must work until noon
+at least, and very likely until later. Down that way the Fourth was not
+observed with quite the firecrackery and skyrockety enthusiasm that
+marked its celebration in most of the states to the north of us;
+nevertheless, a day off was a day off and we were deeply disgusted at
+the turn affairs had taken. It was almost enough to make a fellow feel
+friendly toward the Republicans.
+
+Following the tension there was a snapback; a feeling of languor and
+disappointment possessed us. Devore slammed down the lid of his desk and
+departed, cursing the luck as he went. Harty, the telegraph editor, and
+Wilbur, the telegraph operator, rolled down their shirtsleeves and,
+taking their coats over their arms, departed in company for Tony's place
+up at the corner, where cool beers were to be found and electric fans,
+and a business men's lunch served at all hours.
+
+That left in the city room four or five men. Sprawled upon battered
+chairs and draped over battered desks, they inhaled the smells of rancid
+greases that floated in to them from the back of the building; they
+coddled their disappointment to keep it warm and they talked shop. When
+it comes to talking shop in season and out of season, neither stock
+actors nor hospital surgeons are worse offenders than newspaper
+reporters--especially young newspaper reporters, as all these men were
+except only Major Stone.
+
+It was inevitable that the talk should turn upon the Bullard murder, and
+that the failure of the police force to find the killer or even to find
+a likely suspect should be the hinge for its turning. For the moment Ike
+Webb had the floor, expounding his own pet theories. Ike was a good
+talker--a mighty good reporter too, let me tell you. Across the room
+from Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall, sat the major,
+looking shabby and a bit forlorn. For a month now shabbiness had been
+seizing on the major, spreading over him like a mildew. It started first
+with his shoes, which turned brown and then cracked across the toes, it
+extended to his hat, which sagged in its brim and became a moldy green
+in its crown, and now it had touched his coat lapels, his waistcoat
+front, his collar--his rolling Lord Byron collar--and his sleeve ends.
+
+The major's harmlessly pompous manner was all gone from him that night.
+Of late his self-assurance had seemed to be fraying and frazzling away,
+along with those old-timey, full-bosomed shirts of which he had in times
+gone by been so tremendously proud. It was as though the passing of the
+one marked the passing of the other--symbolic as you might say.
+Formerly, too, the major had also excelled mightily in miscellaneous
+conversation, dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness. Now he sat
+silent while these youngsters with their unthatched lips--born, most of
+them, after he reached middle age--babbled the jargon of their trade. He
+considered a little ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously.
+
+Ike Webb was saying this--that the biggest thing in the whole created
+world was a big scoop--an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up scoop of
+a scoop. Nothing that could possibly come into a reporter's life was
+one-half so big and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to his theme:
+
+"Gee! fellows, but wouldn't it be great to get a scoop on a thing like
+this Bullard murder! Just suppose now that one of us, all by himself,
+found the person who did the shooting and got a full confession from
+him, whoever he was; and got the gun that it was done with--got the
+whole thing--and then turned it loose all over the front page before
+that big stiff of a Chief Gotlieb down at Central Station knew a thing
+about it. Beating the police to it would be the best part of that job.
+That's the way they do things in New York. In New York it's the
+newspapers that do the real work on big murder mysteries, and the police
+take their tips from them. Why, some of the best detectives in New York
+are reporters. Look what they did in that Guldensuppe case! Look at what
+they've done in half a dozen other big cases! Down here we just follow
+along, like sheep, behind a bunch of fat-necked cops, taking their
+leavings. Up there a paper turns a man loose, with an unlimited expense
+account and all the time he needs, and tells him to go to it. That's the
+right way too!"
+
+By that the others knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had told
+him. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from the
+metropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do--unawares--two
+weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty
+right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and
+then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change he
+could and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown,
+leaving us dazzled by the careless, somewhat patronizing brilliance of
+his manner, and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of the splendid,
+adventurous, bohemian lives that newspaper men in New York lived.
+
+"Well, I know this," put in little Pinky Gilfoil, who was red-headed,
+red-freckled and red-tempered: "I'd give my right leg to pull off that
+Bullard story as a scoop. No, not my right leg--a reporter needs all the
+legs he's got; but I'd give my right arm and throw in an eye for good
+measure. It would be the making of a reporter in this town--he'd have
+'em all eating out of his hand after that." He licked his lips. Even the
+bare thought of the thing tasted pretty good to Pinky.
+
+"Now you're whistling!" chimed Ike Webb. "The fellow who single-handed
+got that tale would have a job on this paper as long as he lived. The
+chief would just naturally have to hand him more money. In New York,
+though, he'd get a big cash bonus besides, an award they call it up
+there. I'd go anywhere and do anything and take any kind of a chance to
+land that story as an exclusive--yes, or any other big story."
+
+To all this the major, it appeared, had been listening, for now he spoke
+up in a pretty fair imitation of his old impressive manner:
+
+"But, young gentlemen--pardon me--do you seriously think--any of
+you--that any honorarium, however large, should or could be sufficient
+temptation to induce one in your--in our profession--to give utterance
+in print to a matter that he had learned, let us say, in confidence?
+And suppose also that by printing it he brought suffering or disgrace
+upon innocent parties. Unless one felt that he was serving the best ends
+of society--unless one, in short, were actuated by the highest of human
+motives--could one afford to do such a thing? And, under any
+circumstances, could one violate a trust--could one violate the common
+obligation of a gentleman's rules of deportment----"
+
+"Major," broke in Ike Webb earnestly, "the way I look at it, a reporter
+can't afford too many of the luxuries you're mentioning. His duty, it
+seems to me, is to his paper first and the rest of the world afterward.
+His paper ought to be his mother and his father and all his family. If
+he gets a big scoop--no matter how he gets it or where he gets it--he
+ought to be able to figure out some way of getting it into print. It's
+not alone what he owes his paper--it's what he owes himself. Personally
+I wouldn't be interested for a minute in bringing the person that killed
+Rod Bullard to justice--that's not the point. He was a pretty shady
+person--Rod Bullard. By all accounts he got what was coming to him. It's
+the story itself that I'd want."
+
+"Say, listen here, major," put in Pinky Gilfoil, suddenly possessed of a
+strengthening argument; "I reckon back yonder in the Civil War, when you
+all got the smoke of battle in your noses, you didn't stop to consider
+that you were about to make a large crop of widows and orphans and
+cause suffering to a whole slue of innocent people that'd never done you
+any harm! You didn't stop then, did you? I'll bet you didn't--you just
+sailed in! It was your duty--the right thing to do--and you just went
+and did it. 'War is hell!' Sherman said. Well, so is newspaper work
+hell--in a way. And smelling out a big story ought to be the same to a
+reporter that the smoke of battle is to a soldier. That's right--I'll
+leave it to any fellow here if that ain't right!" he wound up,
+forgetting in his enthusiasm to be grammatical.
+
+It was an unfortunate simile to be making and Pinky should have known
+better, for at Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye widened and,
+expanding himself, he brought his chair legs down to the floor with a
+thump.
+
+"Ah, yes!" he said, and his voice took on still more of its old ringing
+quality. "Speaking of battles, I am just reminded, young gentlemen, that
+tomorrow is the anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg. Though
+Northern-born, General Pemberton was a gallant officer--none of our own
+Southern leaders was more gallant--but it has always seemed to me that
+his defense of Vicksburg was marked by a series of the most lamentable
+and disastrous mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain further."
+And he squared himself forward, with one short, plump hand raised, ready
+to tick off his points against Pemberton upon his fingers.
+
+By experience dearly bought at the expense of our ear-drums, the members
+of the Evening Press staff knew what that meant; for as you already
+know, the major's conversational specialty was the Civil War--it and its
+campaigns. Describing it, he made even war a commonplace and a tiresome
+topic. In his hands an account of the hardest fought battle became a
+tremendously uninteresting thing. He weeded out all the thrills and in
+their places planted hedges of dusty, deadly dry statistics. When the
+major started on the war it was time to be going. One by one the
+youngsters got up and slipped out. Presently the major, booming away
+like a bell buoy, became aware that his audience had dwindled. Only Ike
+Webb remained, and Ike was getting upon his feet and reaching for the
+peg where his coat swung.
+
+"I'm sorry to leave you right in the middle of your story, major; but,
+honestly, I've got to be going," apologized Ike. "Good night, and don't
+forget this, major"--Ike had halted at the door--"when a big story comes
+your way freeze to it with both hands and slam it across the plate as a
+scoop. Do that and you can give 'em all the laugh. Good night again--see
+you in the morning, major!"
+
+He grinned to himself as he turned away. The major was a mighty decent,
+tender-hearted little old scout, a gentleman by birth and breeding,
+even if he was down and out and dog-poor. It was a shame that Devore
+kept him skittering round on little picayunish jobs--running errands,
+that was really what it was. Still, at that, the old major was no
+reporter and never would be. He wouldn't know a big story if he ran into
+it on the big road--it would have to burst right in his face before he
+recognized it. And even then the chances were that he wouldn't know what
+to do with it. It was enough to make a fellow grin.
+
+Deserted by the last of his youthful compatriots--which was what he
+himself generally called them--the major lingered a moment in heavy
+thought. He glanced about the cluttered city room, now suddenly grown
+large and empty. This was the theater where his own little drama of
+unfitness and failure and private mortification had been staged and
+acted. It had run nearly a month now, and a month is a long run for a
+small tragedy in a newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook his head.
+He shook it as though he were trying to shake it clear of a job lot of
+old-fashioned, antiquated ideals--as though he were trying to make room
+for newer, more useful, more modern conceptions. Then he settled his
+aged and infirm slouch hat more firmly upon his round-domed skull,
+straightened his shoulders and stumped out.
+
+At the second turning up the street from the office an observant
+onlooker might have noticed a small, an almost imperceptible change in
+the old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky bone in the major's
+body--he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; but
+before he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk in
+a quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street a
+trifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait.
+It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod.
+
+The street he had now entered was a badly lighted street, with long
+stretches of murkiness between small patches of gas-lamped brilliance.
+By day the houses that walled it would have showed themselves as shabby
+and gone to seed--the sort of houses that second cousins move into after
+first families have moved out. Two-thirds of the way along the block the
+major turned in at a sagged gate. He traversed a short walk of seamed
+and decrepit flagging, where tufts of rank grass sprouted between the
+fractures in the limestone slabs, and mounted the front porch of a house
+that had cheap boarding house written all over it.
+
+When the major opened the front door the tepid smell that gushed out to
+greet him was the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you know what
+I mean--a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage, dust-in-the-corners smell.
+Once upon a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry way had
+exhibited a vivid and violent pattern of green octagons upon a red and
+yellow background, but that had been in some far distant day of its
+youth and freshness. Now it was worn to a scaly, crumbly color of
+nothing at all, and it was frayed into fringes at the door and in places
+scuffed clear through, so that the knot-holes of the naked planking
+showed like staring eyes.
+
+Standing just inside the hall, the major glanced down first at the floor
+and then up to where in a pendent nub a pinprick of light like a captive
+lightning-bug flickered up and down feebly as the air pumped through the
+pipe; and out of his chest the major fetched a small sigh. It was a sigh
+of resignation, but it had loneliness in it too. Well, it was a
+come-down, after all these peaceful and congenial years spent among the
+marble-columned, red-plushed glories of the old Gaunt House, to be
+living in this place.
+
+The major had been here now almost a month. Very quietly, almost
+secretly, he had come hither when he found that by no amount of
+stretching could his pay as a reporter on the Evening Press be made to
+cover the cost of living as he had been accustomed to live prior to that
+disastrous day when the major waked up in the morning to find that all
+his inherited investments had vanished over night--and, vanishing so,
+had taken with them the small but sufficient income that had always been
+ample for his needs.
+
+In that month the major had seen but one or two of his fellow lodgers,
+slouching forms that passed him by in the gloom of the half-lighted
+hallways or on the creaky stairs. His landlady he saw but once a
+week--on Saturday, which was settlement day. She was a forlorn, gray
+creature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droop
+in her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered from
+holding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that she
+had been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took to
+keeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent old
+major knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quiet
+by-street, and for his purposes that was sufficient.
+
+He heaved another small sigh and passed slowly up the worn steps of the
+stairwell until he came to the top of the house. His room was on the
+attic floor, the middle room of the three that lined the bare hall on
+one side. The door-knob was broken off; only its iron center remained.
+His fingers slipped as he fumbled for a purchase upon the metal core;
+but finally, after two attempts, he gripped it and it turned, admitting
+him into the darkness of a stuffy interior. The major made haste to open
+the one small window before he lit the single gas jet. Its guttery flare
+exposed a bed, with a thin mattress and a skimpy cover, shoved close up
+under the sloping wall; a sprained chair on its last legs; an old
+horsehide trunk; a shaky washstand of cheap yellow pine, garnished forth
+with an ewer and a basin; a limp, frayed towel; and a minute segment of
+pale pink soap.
+
+Major Stone was in the act of removing his coat when he became aware of
+a certain sound, occurring at quick intervals. In the posture of a plump
+and mature robin he cocked his head on one side to listen; and now he
+remembered that he had heard the same sound the night before, and the
+night before that. These times, though, he had heard it intermittently
+and dimly, as he tossed about half awake and half asleep, trying to
+accommodate his elderly bones to the irregularities of his hot and
+uncomfortable bed. But now he heard it more plainly, and at once he
+recognized it for what it was--the sound of a woman crying; a wrenching
+succession of deep, racking gulps, and in between them little moaning,
+panting breaths, as of utter exhaustion--a sound such as might be
+distilled from the very dregs of a grief too great to be borne.
+
+He looked about him, his eyes and ears searching for further explanation
+of this. He had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall of his
+room--a door bolted and nailed up. It had a transom over it and against
+the dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected, and through the
+door and the transom the sound came. The person in trouble, whoever it
+might be, was in that next room--and that person was a woman and she was
+in dire distress. There was a compelling note in her sobbing.
+
+Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with a
+small forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. He
+slipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish gray
+hair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicately
+with a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was no
+answer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itself
+and broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within a
+voice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice--flat and uncultivated.
+
+"Who's there?" The major cleared his throat. "Is it a woman--or a man?"
+demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the first
+question.
+
+"It is a gentleman," began the major--"a gentleman who----"
+
+"Come on in!" she bade him--"the door ain't latched."
+
+And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that was
+practically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, a
+cheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sides
+bulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed,
+was stretched a woman--or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising from
+the crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended,
+stared full into his.
+
+What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous,
+gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and his
+linen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons and
+buttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhaps
+twenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard to
+guess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in a
+streaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp.
+
+It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and the
+drooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; the
+professional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking from
+the characterless mouth, yet the major--sweet-minded, clean-living old
+man though he was--knew at a glance what manner of woman he had found
+here in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who never
+intentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do any
+good--a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was a
+line of least resistance.
+
+That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a moment
+across the intervening space. It was the girl who took the initiative.
+
+"Are you one of the police?" Then instantly on the heels of the query:
+"No; I know better'n that--you ain't no police!"
+
+Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically,
+though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp that
+clicked down in her throat.
+
+"No, ma'am," said Major Stone, with a grave and respectful courtesy, "I
+am not connected with the police department. I am a professional
+man--associated at this time with the practice of journalism. I have the
+apartment or chamber adjoining yours and, accidentally overhearing a
+member of the opposite sex in seeming distress, I took it upon myself to
+offer any assistance that might lie within my power. If I am intruding I
+will withdraw."
+
+"No," she said; "it ain't no intrusion. I wisht, please, sir, you'd come
+in jest a minute anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to somebody a
+minute. I'm sorry, though, if I disturbed you by my cryin'--but I jest
+couldn't help it. Last night and the night before--that was the first
+night I come here--I cried all night purty near; but I kept my head in
+the bedclothes. But tonight, after it got dark up here and me layin'
+here all alone, I felt as if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest, I
+like to died! Right this minute I'm almost plum' distracted."
+
+The major advanced a step.
+
+"I assure you I deeply regret to learn of your unhappiness," he said.
+"If you desire it I will be only too glad to summon our worthy landlady,
+Miss--Miss----" he paused.
+
+"Miss La Mode," she said, divining--"Blanche La Mode--that's my name. I
+come from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please, mister, don't call that
+there woman. I don't want to see her. For a while I didn't think I
+wanted to see nobody, and yit I've known all along, from the very first,
+that sooner or later I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody. I knew
+I'd jest have to!" she repeated with a kind of weak intensity. "And it
+might jest as well be you as anybody, I guess."
+
+She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her feet, and subconsciously
+the major took in fuller details of her attire--the cheap white slippers
+with rickety, worn-down high heels; the sleazy stockings; the
+over-decorated skirt of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled waist
+of coarse lace, gaping away from the scrawny neck, where the fastenings
+had pulled awry. Looped about her throat and dangling down on her flat
+breast, where they heaved up and down with her breathing, was a double
+string of pearls that would have been worth ten thousand dollars had
+they been genuine pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and thin held a
+small, moist wad of handkerchief. About her there was something
+unmistakably bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too, flesh and
+soul. Major Stone bowed with the ceremonious detail that was a part of
+him.
+
+"My name, ma'am, is Stone--Major Putnam Stone, at your service," he told
+her.
+
+"Yes, sir," she said, seeming not to catch either his name or his title.
+"Well, mister, I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe surprise
+you. I ain't goin' to ast you not to tell anybody, 'cause I guess you
+will anyhow, sooner or later; and it don't make much difference if you
+do. But seems's if I can't hold in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feel
+easier in my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that door--jest close
+it--the lock is broke--and set down in that chair, please, sir."
+
+The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. The
+girl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feet
+dangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-cornered
+break in the dirty-gray plastering.
+
+"You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don't you?--about him
+bein' found shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth of that
+alley?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, ma'am," he said. "Though I was not personally acquainted with the
+man himself, I am familiar with the circumstances you mention."
+
+"Well," she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, "it was me that
+done it!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, half doubting whether he had heard
+aright, "but what was it you said you did?"
+
+"Shot him!" she answered--"I was the one that shot him--with this thing
+here." She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out a
+short-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically he
+took it, and thereafter for a space he held it in his hands. The girl
+went straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperate
+eagerness.
+
+"I didn't mean to do it, though--God knows I didn't mean to do it! He
+treated me mighty sorry--it was lowdown and mean all the way through,
+the way he done me--but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was only
+aimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It was
+accidental-like--it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't never
+intentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody's
+forever and a day imposin' on me!" She quavered with the puny passion of
+her protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as with
+rods.
+
+Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking sounds
+in his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think of
+the right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands.
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE."
+--_Page 164._]
+
+"I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was," she went on
+in her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from a
+long way off. "That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin'
+shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in a
+political race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I was
+workin' in a hotel there--one of the dinin' room help. That was two
+years ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, he
+got me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked him
+some then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me;
+so I come with him. He told me that I could be his----" She hesitated.
+
+"His amanuensis, perhaps," suggested the old man.
+
+"Which?" she said. "No; it wasn't that way--he didn't say nothin' about
+marryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be his
+girl--that was all; but he didn't keep his word--no, sir; right from the
+very first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I got
+here before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed a
+spell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to another
+house--Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?"
+
+The major half nodded, half shook his head.
+
+"By reputation only I know the person in question," he answered a bit
+stiffly.
+
+"Well," she went on, "there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sick
+lately--I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all back yit.
+I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jest
+barely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me that
+I'd have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for my
+board. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn't have but nine
+dollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it all
+or nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I was
+mighty weak and discouraged--I was so! I didn't know what to do.
+
+"I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on more than a year, but he was the
+only one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrost
+the street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and I
+called him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. It
+wasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he was
+responsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him in
+the first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talked
+with him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin'
+for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bring
+it round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kept
+on doggin' after me for her board money.
+
+"I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'n
+two words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and he
+rung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house Vic
+Magner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about six
+o'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't have
+nowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left--I'd spent a
+dime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard a
+note, and when I got outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents to
+take it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, without
+nowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and do
+somethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him to
+meet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That give
+me two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage.
+
+"Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, and
+I went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The pawnstore man
+he throwed in the shells. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard--jest
+to skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walked
+round some more till I was plum' wore out.
+
+"When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon he
+come along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulged
+up to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said I
+didn't have no claims on him--a whole lot more like that--and said he
+didn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notes
+and callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he made
+like he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in my
+hand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and I
+pointed it like I was goin' to shoot--jest to skeer him, though, and
+make him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it at
+him--that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without you
+pulled the hammer back first!
+
+"Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Now
+you've done it!'--jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet,
+and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smack
+on his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorry
+about him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since--ain't that
+funny? But I was awful skeered!"
+
+Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up to
+her face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy of
+confused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of his
+utter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that very
+moment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him--and it
+came then with a sudden jolt--that here he had one of those monumental
+news stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing to
+barter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was a
+scoop, as those young fellows had called it--an exclusive confession of
+a big crime--a thing that would mean much to any paper and to any
+reporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure into
+a conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. And
+he had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into his
+lap.
+
+Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it to
+him freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keep
+her secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it to
+other strangers--or else somebody would betray her. And surely this
+sickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside the
+strong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men would
+convict her of murder--the thought was incredible. She would be kindly
+dealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these would
+have been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious young
+men at the office. He bent forward.
+
+"What did you do then, ma'am?" he asked.
+
+"I didn't know what to do," she said, dropping her hands into her lap.
+"I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked and
+walked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jest
+about to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on the
+porch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it said
+Lodgers Taken.
+
+"So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'd
+jest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me two
+dollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down--and she
+showed me the way up here.
+
+"I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy me
+somethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At first
+I figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't--there
+wasn't nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered Vic
+Magner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk of
+gittin' in trouble herself--that Captain Brennan, of the Second
+Precinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first good
+chance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there that
+knowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit.
+
+"Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, I
+made up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that there
+pistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all I
+had to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurt
+me but a secont--and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it,
+mister--I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die,
+and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way--first
+thinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin'
+either one of 'em.
+
+"Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tell
+somebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. And
+right that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed it
+was a sign--I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I've
+done it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. And
+so that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol away
+with you when you go--I don't never want to see it again as long as I
+live."
+
+She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's short
+arm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase.
+
+"I observe," he said, "that your portmanteau is packed as if for a
+journey. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?"
+
+"My which?" she said. "Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't never
+unpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home--I got
+a stepsister livin' there and she might take me in--only after payin'
+for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now I
+don't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back I
+might stay on here--I kind of like city life. Or I might go up to
+Cincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and she
+wrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address--it was backed on
+the envelope. Still, I ain't sure--my plans ain't all made yit.
+Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think I
+won't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another,
+because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what I
+had."
+
+She sank her head in the pillow wearily, with her face turned away from
+him. The major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he slipped the
+revolver that had snuffed out the late and unsavory Rodney Bullard's
+light of life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly drew forth his
+supply of ready money. He had three silver dollars, one quarter, one
+dime, and a nickel--three-forty in all. Contemplating the disks of metal
+in the palm of his hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. This
+was Thursday night now. Saturday afternoon at two he would draw a pay
+envelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime he must eat. Well, if he
+stinted himself closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge the gap
+until Saturday. The major had learned a good deal about the noble art of
+stinting these last few weeks.
+
+On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly piled two of the silver
+dollars and the forty cents in change. Then, after a momentary
+hesitation, he put down the third silver dollar, gathered up the forty
+cents, slid it gently into his pocket and started for the door, the
+loose planks creaking under his tread. At the threshold he halted.
+
+"Good night, Miss La Mode," he said. "I trust your night's repose may be
+restful and refreshing to you, ma'am."
+
+She lifted her face from the pillow and spoke, without turning to look
+at him.
+
+"Mister," she said, "I've told you the whole truth about that thing and
+I ain't goin' to lie to you about anythin' else. I didn't come from
+Indianapolis, Indiana, like I told you. My home is in Swainboro', this
+state--a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain't
+La Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book--the La Mode part--and I
+always did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my real
+name is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you fer
+listenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if I
+kin help it."
+
+As the major gently closed her door behind him he heard her give a long,
+sleepy sigh, like a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced about
+him, meanwhile feeling himself over for writing material. He found in
+his pockets a pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he knew he
+needed a big sheaf of copy paper for the story he had to write. Anyway,
+there was no place here to do an extended piece of writing--no desk and
+no comfortable chair. The office would be a much better place.
+
+The office was only a matter of two or three blocks away. The negro
+watchman would be there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the corner
+of his washstand for a desk, the major set down his notes--names,
+places, details, dates--upon the backs of his two letters. This done, he
+settled his ancient hat on his head, picked up his cane, and in another
+minute was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the front doorway. Once
+outside, his tread took on the brisk emphasis of one set upon an
+important task and in a hurry to do it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his desk in the empty city room of
+the Evening Press. Except for Henry, the old black night watchman, there
+was no other person in the building anywhere. Just over his head an
+incandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong relief the major's
+intent old face, mullioned with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newly
+sharpened, was in his fingers; under his right hand was a block of clean
+copy paper. His notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed pistol
+serving as a paper weight to hold the two wrinkled envelopes flat.
+Through the loop of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer, alias
+Blanche La Mode, showed. Everything was ready.
+
+The major hesitated, though. He readjusted his paper and fidgeted his
+pencil. He scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft of goatee
+under his lower lip. Like many a more experienced author, Major Stone
+was having trouble getting under way. He had his own ideas about a
+fitting introductory paragraph. Coming along, he had thought up a full
+sonorous one, with a biblical injunction touching on the wages of sin
+embodied in it; but, on the other hand, there was to be borne in mind
+the daily-dinned injunction of Devore that every important news item
+should begin with a sentence in which the whole story was summed up.
+Finally Major Stone made a beginning. He covered nearly a sheet of
+paper.
+
+Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with it, he tore up what he had
+written and started all over again, only to repeat the same operation.
+Two salty drops rolled down his face and fell upon the paper, and
+instantly little twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared on its
+clear surface. They were not tears, though--they were drops of sweat
+wrung from the major's brow by the pains of creation. Again he poised
+his pencil and again he halted it in the air--he needed inspiration. His
+gaze rested absently upon the pistol; absently he picked it up and began
+examining it.
+
+It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing, poorly made, but no doubt
+deadly enough at close range. He unbreeched it and spun the cylinder
+with his thumb and spilled the contents into his palm--four loaded
+shells, suety and slick with grease, and one that had been recently
+fired; and it was discolored and flattened a trifle. Each of the four
+loaded shells had a small cap like a little round staring eye set in the
+exact center of its flanged butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell was
+punched in. He turned the empty weapon in his hands, steadying its
+mechanism, and as he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and dead,
+came to him out of the fouled muzzle. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed
+at it.
+
+It had been many a long day since the major had had that smell in his
+nostrils--many a long, long day. But there had been a time when it was
+familiar enough to him. Even now it brought the clamoring memories of
+that far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid. It stimulated his
+imagination, quickening his mind with big thoughts. It recalled those
+four years when he had fought for a principle, and had kept on fighting
+even when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and there
+remained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless months
+when the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the forty
+cents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when the
+sorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when,
+without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk upon
+risk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borne
+it all without whimper or complaint--fighting the good fight like a
+soldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!
+
+The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what he
+would write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistol
+and the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For two
+hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word,
+stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a
+machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script.
+Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter.
+
+Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each page
+of the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile before
+him. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breast
+pocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptied
+revolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed the
+drawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squares
+into smaller squares--and so on until the fragments would tear no finer,
+but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stage
+snow.
+
+He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore's
+desk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when he
+came to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt of
+satisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linen
+shirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, from
+collarband almost to waistline.
+
+He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gaping
+tear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully.
+Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarred
+his heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a man
+who has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied with
+the way he has done it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under a large black head the major's story was printed in the Fourth of
+July edition of the Evening Press. It ran full two columns and lapped
+over into a third column. It was an exhaustive--and exhausting--account
+of the Fall of Vicksburg.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE EXIT OF ANSE DUGMORE
+
+
+When a Kentucky mountaineer goes to the penitentiary the chances are
+that he gets sore eyes from the white walls that enclose him, or quick
+consumption from the thick air that he breathes. It was entirely in
+accordance with the run of his luck that Anse Dugmore should get them
+both, the sore eyes first and then the consumption.
+
+There is seldom anything that is picturesque about the man-killer of the
+mountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and the
+delightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fiction
+has invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of belted
+accouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equally
+deadly gun-play. He does his killing in an unemotional, unattractive
+kind of way, with absolutely no regard for costume or setting. Rarely is
+he a fine figure of a man.
+
+Take Anse Dugmore now. He had a short-waisted, thin body and abnormally
+long, thin legs, like the shadow a man casts at sunup. He didn't have
+that steel-gray eye of which we so often read. His eyes weren't of any
+particular color, and he had a straggly mustache of sandy red and no
+chin worth mentioning; but he could shoot off a squirrel's head, or a
+man's, at the distance of a considerable number of yards.
+
+Until he was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in the
+tribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and its
+principal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. He
+was getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring rise
+when word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of his
+immediate clan and the upholder of his family's honor.
+
+"Yore paw an' yore two brothers was laywaid this mawnin' comin' 'long
+Yaller Banks togither," was the message brought by a breathless bearer
+of news. "The wimmenfolks air totin' 'em home now. Talt, he ain't dead
+yit."
+
+From a dry spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over the
+ridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eats
+up the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when he
+sat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his
+crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of
+this one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled when
+he practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim had
+become as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; for
+this he had been schooled still more when he rode, armed and watchful,
+to church or court or election. Its coming found him ready.
+
+Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his chance. The Tranthams were
+hard to find. They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds, well
+guarded in anticipation of expected reprisals, and prepared in due
+season to come forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two dozen if so
+many should be needed to establish the alibi, that they had no hand in
+the massacre of the Dugmores.
+
+But two days and nights of still-hunting, of patiently lying in wait
+behind brush fences, of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likely
+places, brought the survivor of the decimated Dugmores his chance. He
+caught Pegleg Trantham riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule. Pegleg
+was only a distant connection of the main strain of the enemy. It was
+probable that he had no part in the latest murdering; perhaps doubtful
+that he had any prior knowledge of the plot. But by his name and his
+blood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough.
+
+A writer of the Western school would have found little in this encounter
+that was really worth while to write about. Above the place of the
+meeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantily
+clothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed through
+like the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rains
+and ran bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg came cantering
+along with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule,
+for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for a
+mountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short arms
+encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with
+a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband
+together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing
+his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn
+brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down
+straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a
+soiled white-yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top of
+an ancient congress gaiter.
+
+From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore, bareheaded, crusted to his
+knees with dried mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping down
+since daybreak. A purpose showed in all the lines of his slouchy frame.
+
+Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered by the boy's arms about
+his middle and by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the slab-sided
+mule. The man afoot fired before the mounted enemy could swing his
+gunbarrel into line. The bullet ripped away the lower part of Pegleg's
+face and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. The
+white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule and
+instantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped
+out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck,
+grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two paces
+forward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from his
+gunmuzzle into his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule was bouncing
+up and down, sideways, in a mild panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inert
+as a sack of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with his arms wide
+outspread on the mud. The mule galloped off in a restrained and
+dignified style until she was a hundred yards away, and then, having
+snorted the smells of burnt powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils,
+she fell to cropping the young leaves off the wayside bushes, mouthing
+the tender green shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly.
+
+For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in the narrow footpath, listening.
+Then he slid three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down the bank
+he crossed the creek on a jam of driftwood and, avoiding the roads that
+followed the little watercourse, made over the shoulder of the mountain
+for his cabin, two miles down on the opposite side. When he was gone
+from sight the nephew of the dead Trantham rolled out of his hiding
+place and fled up the road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek and
+whimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild boar pig, with his spine arched
+like the mountains, came sniffing slowly down the hill, pausing
+frequently to cock his wedge-shaped head aloft and fix a hostile eye on
+two turkey buzzards that began to swing in narrowing circles over one
+particular spot on the bank of the creek.
+
+The following day Anse sent word to the sheriff that he would be coming
+in to give himself up. It would not have been etiquette for the sheriff
+to come for him. He came in, well guarded on the way by certain of his
+clan, pleaded self-defense before a friendly county judge and was locked
+up in a one-cell log jail. His own cousin was the jailer and ministered
+to him kindly. He avoided passing the single barred window of the jail
+in the daytime or at night when there was a light behind him, and he
+expected to "come clear" shortly, as was customary.
+
+But the Tranthams broke the rules of the game. The circuit judge lived
+half-way across the mountains in a county on the Virginia line; he was
+not an active partizan of either side in the feud. These Tranthams,
+disregarding all the ethics, went before this circuit judge and asked
+him for a change of venue, and got it, which was more; so that instead
+of being tried in Clayton County--and promptly acquitted--Anse Dugmore
+was taken to Woodbine County and there lodged in a shiny new brick jail.
+Things were in process of change in Woodbine. A spur of the railroad had
+nosed its way up from the lowlands and on through the Gap, and had made
+Loudon, the county-seat, a division terminal. Strangers from the North
+had come in, opening up the mountains to mines and sawmills and bringing
+with them many swarthy foreign laborers. A young man of large hopes and
+an Eastern college education had started a weekly newspaper and was
+talking big, in his editorial columns, of a new order of things. The
+foundation had even been laid for a graded school. Plainly Woodbine
+County was falling out of touch with the century-old traditions of her
+sisters to the north and west of her.
+
+In due season, then, Anse Dugmore was brought up on a charge of
+homicide. The trial lasted less than a day. A jury of strangers heard
+the stories of Anse himself and of the dead Pegleg's white-eyed nephew.
+In the early afternoon they came back, a wooden toothpick in each mouth,
+from the new hotel where they had just had a most satisfying fifty-cent
+dinner at the expense of the commonwealth, and sentenced the defendant,
+Anderson Dugmore, to state prison at hard labor for the balance of his
+natural life.
+
+The sheriff of Woodbine padlocked on Anse's ankles a set of leg irons
+that had been made by a mountain blacksmith out of log chains and led
+him to the new depot. It was Anse Dugmore's first ride on a railroad
+train; also it was the first ride on any train for Wyatt Trantham, head
+of the other clan, who, having been elected to the legislature while
+Anse lay in jail, had come over from Clayton, bound for the state
+capital, to draw his mileage and be a statesman.
+
+It was not in the breed for the victorious Trantham to taunt his hobbled
+enemy or even to look his way, but he sat just across the aisle from the
+prisoner so that his ear might catch the jangle of the heavy irons when
+Dugmore moved in his seat. They all left the train together at the
+little blue-painted Frankfort station, Trantham turning off at the first
+crossroads to go where the round dome of the old capitol showed above
+the water-maple trees, and Dugmore clanking straight ahead, with a
+string of negroes and boys and the sheriff following along behind
+him. Under the shadow of a quarried-out hillside a gate opened
+in a high stone wall to admit him into life membership with a
+white-and-black-striped brotherhood of shame.
+
+Four years there did the work for the gangling, silent mountaineer. One
+day, just before the Christmas holidays, the new governor of the state
+paid a visit to the prison. Only his private secretary came with him.
+The warden showed them through the cell houses, the workshops, the
+dining hall and the walled yards. It was a Sunday afternoon; the white
+prisoners loafed in their stockade, the blacks in theirs. In a corner on
+the white side, where the thin and skimpy winter sunshine slanted over
+the stockade wall, Anse Dugmore was squatted; merely a rack of bones
+enclosed in a shapeless covering of black-and-white stripes. On his
+close-cropped head and over his cheekbones the skin was stretched so
+tight it seemed nearly ready to split. His eyes, glassy and bleared with
+pain, stared ahead of him with a sick man's fixed stare. Inside his
+convict's cotton shirt his chest was caved away almost to nothing, and
+from the collarless neckband his neck rose as bony as a plucked fowl's,
+with great, blue cords in it. Lacking a coverlet to pick, his fingers
+picked at the skin on his retreating chin.
+
+As the governor stood in an arched doorway watching, the lengthening
+afternoon shadow edged along and covered the hunkered-down figure by the
+wall. Anse tottered to his feet, moved a few inches so that he might
+still be in the sunshine, and settled down again. This small exertion
+started a cough that threatened to tear him apart. He drew his hand
+across his mouth and a red stain came away on the knotty knuckles. The
+warden was a kindly enough man in the ordinary relations of life, but
+nine years as a tamer of man-beasts in a great stone cage had overlaid
+his sympathies with a thickening callus.
+
+"One of our lifers that we won't have with us much longer," he said
+casually, noting that the governor's eyes followed the sick convict.
+"When the con gets one of these hill billies he goes mighty fast."
+
+"A mountaineer, then?" said the governor. "What's his name?"
+
+"Dugmore," answered the warden; "sent from Clayton County. One of those
+Clayton County feud fighters."
+
+The governor nodded understandingly. "What sort of a record has he made
+here?"
+
+"Oh, fair enough!" said the warden. "Those man-killers from the
+mountains generally make good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow,
+though. All the time he's been here he never, so far as I know, had a
+message or a visitor or a line of writing from the outside. Nor wrote a
+letter out himself. Nor made friends with anybody, convict or guard."
+
+"Has he applied for a pardon?" asked the governor.
+
+"Lord, no!" said the warden. "When he was well he just took what was
+coming to him, the same as he's taking it now. I can look up his record,
+though, if you'd care to see it, sir."
+
+"I believe I should," said the governor quietly.
+
+A spectacled young wife-murderer, who worked in the prison office on
+the prison books, got down a book and looked through it until he came to
+a certain entry on a certain page. The warden was right--so far as the
+black marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless convict's
+record showed fair.
+
+"I think," said the young governor to the warden and his secretary when
+they had moved out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper--"I think I'll
+give that poor devil a pardon for a Christmas gift. It's no more than a
+mercy to let him die at home, if he has any home to go to."
+
+"I could have him brought in and let you tell him yourself, sir,"
+volunteered the warden.
+
+"No, no," said the governor quickly. "I don't want to hear that cough
+again. Nor look on such a wreck," he added.
+
+Two days before Christmas the warden sent to the hospital ward for No.
+874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kept
+himself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The warden
+sat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands a
+folded-up, blue-backed document.
+
+"Dugmore," he said in his best official manner, "when His Excellency,
+Governor Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice that your general
+health was not good. So, of his own accord, he has sent you an
+unconditional pardon for a Christmas gift, and here it is."
+
+The sick convict's eyes, between their festering lids, fixed on the
+warden's face and a sudden light flickered in their pale, glazed
+shallows; but he didn't speak. There was a little pause.
+
+"I said the governor has given you a pardon," repeated the warden,
+staring hard at him.
+
+"I heered you the fust time," croaked the prisoner in his eaten-out
+voice. "When kin I go?"
+
+"Is that all you've got to say?" demanded the warden, bristling up.
+
+"I said, when kin I go?" repeated No. 874.
+
+"Go!--you can go now. You can't go too soon to suit me!"
+
+The warden swung his chair around and showed him the broad of his
+indignant back. When he had filled out certain forms at his desk he
+shoved a pen into the silent consumptive's fingers and showed him
+crossly where to make his mark. At a signal from his bent forefinger a
+negro trusty came forward and took the pardoned man away and helped him
+put his shrunken limbs into a suit of the prison-made slops, of cheap,
+black shoddy, with the taint of a jail thick and heavy on it. A deputy
+warden thrust into Dugmore's hands a railroad ticket and the five
+dollars that the law requires shall be given to a freed felon. He took
+them without a word and, still without a word, stepped out of the gate
+that swung open for him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With the
+inbred instinct of the hillsman he swung about and headed for the
+little, light-blue station at the head of the crooked street. He went
+slowly, coughing often as the cold air struck into his wasted lungs, and
+sometimes staggering up against the fences. Through a barred window the
+wondering warden sourly watched the crawling, tottery figure.
+
+"Damned savage!" he said to himself. "Didn't even say thank you. I'll
+bet he never had any more feelings or sentiments in his life than a
+moccasin snake."
+
+Something to the same general effect was expressed a few minutes later
+by a brakeman who had just helped a wofully feeble passenger aboard the
+eastbound train and had steered him, staggering and gasping from
+weakness, to a seat at the forward end of an odorous red-plush day
+coach.
+
+"Just a bundle of bones held together by a skin," the brakeman was
+saying to the conductor, "and the smell of the pen all over him. Never
+said a word to me--just looked at me sort of dumb. Bound for plumb up at
+the far end of the division, accordin' to the way his ticket reads. I
+doubt if he lives to get there."
+
+The warden and the brakeman both were wrong. The freed man did live to
+get there. And it was an emotion which the warden had never suspected
+that held life in him all that afternoon and through the comfortless
+night in the packed and noisome day coach, while the fussy,
+self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuring
+worm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of the
+foothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into a
+bleak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two bad
+hemorrhages on the way, but he lived.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Under the full moon of a white and flawless night before Christmas, Shem
+Dugmore's squatty log cabin made a blot on the thin blanket of snow, and
+inside the one room of the cabin Shem Dugmore sat alone by the
+daubed-clay hearth, glooming. Hours passed and he hardly moved except to
+stir the red coals or kick back some ambitious ember of hickory that
+leaped out upon the uneven floor. Suddenly something heavy fell limply
+against the locked door, and instantly, all alertness, the shock-headed
+mountaineer was backed up against the farther wall, out of range of the
+two windows, with his weapons drawn, silent, ready for what might come.
+After a minute there was a feeble, faint pecking sound--half knock, half
+scratch--at the lower part of the door. It might have been a wornout dog
+or any spent wild creature, but no line of Shem Dugmore's figure
+relaxed, and under his thick, sandy brows his eyes, in the flickering
+light, had the greenish shine of an angry cat-animal's.
+
+"Whut is it?" he called. "And whut do you want? Speak out peartly!"
+
+[Illustration: HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADE
+A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW.--_Page 197._]
+
+The answer came through the thick planking thinly, in a sort of gasping
+whine that ended in a chattering cough; but even after Shem's ear caught
+the words, and even after he recognized the changed but still familiar
+cadence of the voice, he abated none of his caution. Carefully he
+unbolted the door, and, drawing it inch by inch slowly ajar, he reached
+out, exposing only his hand and arm, and drew bodily inside the shell of
+a man that was fallen, huddled up, against the log door jamb. He dropped
+the wooden crossbar back into its sockets before he looked a second time
+at the intruder, who had crawled across the floor and now lay before the
+wide mouth of the hearth in a choking spell. Shem Dugmore made no move
+until the fit was over and the sufferer lay quiet.
+
+"How did you git out, Anse?" were the first words he spoke.
+
+The consumptive rolled his head weakly from side to side and swallowed
+desperately. "Pardoned out--in writin'--yistiddy."
+
+"You air in purty bad shape," said Shem.
+
+"Yes,"--the words came very slowly--"my lungs give out on me--and my
+eyes. But--but I got here."
+
+"You come jist in time," said his cousin; "this time tomorrer and you
+wouldn't a' never found me here. I'd 'a' been gone."
+
+"Gone!--gone whar?"
+
+"Well," said Shem slowly, "after you was sent away it seemed like them
+Tranthams got the upper hand complete. All of our side whut ain't
+dead--and that's powerful few--is moved off out of the mountings to
+Winchester, down in the settlemints. I'm 'bout the last, and I'm
+a-purposin' to slip out tomorrer night while the Tranthams is at their
+Christmas rackets--they'd layway me too ef----"
+
+"But my wife--did she----"
+
+"I thought maybe you'd heered tell about that whilst you was down yon,"
+said Shem in a dulled wonder. "The fall after you was took away yore
+woman she went over to the Tranthams. Yes, sir; she took up with the
+head devil of 'em all--old Wyatt Trantham hisself--and she went to live
+at his house up on the Yaller Banks."
+
+"Is she----Did she----"
+
+The ex-convict was struggling to his knees. His groping skeletons of
+hands were right in the hot ashes. The heat cooked the moisture from his
+sodden garments in little films of vapor and filled the cabin with the
+reek of the prison dye.
+
+"Did she--did she----"
+
+"Oh, she's been dead quite a spell now," stated Shem. "I would have
+s'posed you'd 'a' heered that, too, somewhars. She had a kind of a
+risin' in the breast."
+
+"But my young uns--little Anderson and--and Elviry?"
+
+The sick man was clear up on his knees now, his long arms hanging and
+his eyes, behind their matted lids, fixed on Shem's impassive face.
+Could the warden have seen him now, and marked his attitude and his
+words, he would have known what it was that had brought this dying man
+back to _his_ own mountain valley with the breath of life still in him.
+A dumb, unuttered love for the two shock-headed babies he had left
+behind in the split-board cabin was the one big thing in Anse Dugmore's
+whole being--bigger even than his sense of allegiance to the feud.
+
+"My young uns, Shem?"
+
+"Wyatt Trantham took 'em and he kep' 'em--he's got 'em both now."
+
+"Does he--does he use 'em kindly?"
+
+"I ain't never heered," said Shem simply. "He never had no young uns of
+his own, and it mout be he uses 'em well. He's the high sheriff now."
+
+"I was countin' on gittin' to see 'em agin--an buyin 'em some little
+Chrismus fixin's," the father wheezed. Hopelessness was coming into his
+rasping whisper. "I reckon it ain't no use to--to be thinkin'--of that
+there now?"
+
+"No 'arthly use at all," said Shem, with brutal directness. "Ef you had
+the strength to git thar, the Tranthams would shoot you down like a fice
+dog."
+
+Anse nodded weakly. He sank down again on the floor, face to the boards,
+coughing hard. It was the droning voice of his cousin that brought him
+back from the borders of the coma he had been fighting off for hours.
+
+For, to Shem, the best hater and the poorest fighter of all his
+cleaned-out clan, had come a great thought. He shook the drowsing man
+and roused him, and plied him with sips from a dipper of the unhallowed
+white corn whisky of a mountain still-house. And as he worked over him
+he told off the tally of the last four years: of the uneven, unmerciful
+war, ticking off on his blunt finger ends the grim totals of this one
+ambushed and that one killed in the open, overpowered and beaten under
+by weight of odds. He told such details as he knew of the theft of the
+young wife and the young ones, Elvira and little Anderson.
+
+"Anse, did ary Trantham see you a-gittin' here tonight?"
+
+"Nobody--that knowed me--seed me."
+
+"Old Wyatt Trantham, he rid into Manchester this evenin' 'bout fo'
+o'clock--I seed him passin' over the ridge," went on Shem. "He'll be
+ridin' back 'long Pigeon Roost some time before mawnin'. He done you a
+heap o' dirt, Anse."
+
+The prostrate man was listening hard.
+
+"Anse, I got yore old rifle right here in the house. Ef you could git up
+thar on the mounting, somewhar's alongside the Pigeon Roost trail, you
+could git him shore. He'll be full of licker comin' back."
+
+And now a seeming marvel was coming to pass, for the caved-in trunk was
+rising on the pipestem legs and the shaking fingers were outstretched,
+reaching for something.
+
+Shem stepped lightly to a corner of the cabin and brought forth a rifle
+and began reloading it afresh from a box of shells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A wavering figure crept across the small stump-dotted "dead'ning"--Anse
+Dugmore was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so that
+its butt made a crooked, broken furrow in the new snow like the trail of
+a crippled snake. He fell and got up, and fell and rose again. He
+coughed and up the ridge a ranging dog-fox barked back an answer to his
+cough.
+
+From out of the slitted door Shem watched him until the scrub oaks at
+the edge of the clearing swallowed him up. Then Shem fastened himself in
+and made ready to start his flight to the lowlands that very night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Just below the forks of Pigeon Roost Creek the trail that followed its
+banks widened into a track wide enough for wagon wheels. On one side lay
+the diminished creek, now filmed over with a glaze of young ice. On the
+other the mountain rose steeply. Fifteen feet up the bluff side a fallen
+dead tree projected its rotted, broken roots, like snaggled teeth, from
+the clayey bank. Behind this tree's trunk, in the snow and half-frozen,
+half-melted yellow mire, Anse Dugmore was stretched on his face. The
+barrel of the rifle barely showed itself through the interlacing root
+ends. It pointed downward and northward toward the broad, moonlit place
+in the road. Its stock was pressed tightly against Anse Dugmore's
+fallen-in cheek; the trigger finger of his right hand, fleshless as a
+joint of cane, was crooked about the trigger guard. A thin stream of
+blood ran from his mouth and dribbled down his chin and coagulated in a
+sticky smear upon the gun stock. His lungs, what was left of them, were
+draining away.
+
+He lay without motion, saving up the last ounce of his life. The cold
+had crawled up his legs to his hips; he was dead already from the waist
+down. He no longer coughed, only gasped thickly. He knew that he was
+about gone; but he knew, too, that he would last, clear-minded and
+clear-eyed, until High Sheriff Wyatt Trantham came. His brain would
+last--and his trigger finger.
+
+Then he heard him coming. Up the trail sounded the muffled music of a
+pacer's hoofs single-footing through the snow, and after that, almost
+instantly Trantham rode out into sight and loomed larger and larger as
+he drew steadily near the open place under the bank. He was wavering in
+the saddle. He drew nearer and nearer, and as he came out on the wide
+patch of moonlit snow, he pulled the single-footer down to a walk and
+halted him and began fumbling in the right-hand side of the saddlebags
+that draped his horse's shoulder.
+
+Up in its covert the rifle barrel moved an inch or two, then steadied
+and stopped, the bone-sight at its tip resting full on the broad of the
+drunken rider's breast. The boney finger moved inward from the trigger
+guard and closed ever so gently about the touchy, hair-filed
+trigger--then waited.
+
+For the uncertain hand of Trantham, every movement showing plain in the
+crystal, hard, white moon, was slowly bringing from under the flap of
+the right-side saddlebag something that was round and smooth and shone
+with a yellowish glassy light, like a fat flask filled with spirits. And
+Anse Dugmore waited, being minded now to shoot him as he put the bottle
+to his lips, and so cheat Trantham of his last drink on earth, as
+Trantham had cheated him of his liberty and his babies--as Trantham had
+cheated those babies of the Christmas fixings which the state's five
+dollars might have bought.
+
+He waited, waited----
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This was not the first time the high sheriff had stopped that night on
+his homeward ride from the tiny county seat, as his befuddlement
+proclaimed; but halting there in the open, just past the forks of the
+Pigeon Roost, he was moved by a new idea. He fumbled in the right-hand
+flap of his saddlebags and brought out a toy drum, round and smooth,
+with shiny yellow sides. A cheap china doll with painted black ringlets
+and painted blue eyes followed the drum, and then a torn paper bag, from
+which small pieces of cheap red-and-green dyed candy sifted out between
+the sheriff's fumbling fingers and fell into the snow.
+
+Thirty feet away, in the dead leaves matted under the roots of an uptorn
+dead tree, something moved--something moved; and then there was a sound
+like a long, deep, gurgling sigh, and another sound like some heavy,
+lengthy object settling itself down flat upon the snow and the leaves.
+
+The first faint rustle cleared Trantham's brain of the liquor fumes. He
+jammed the toys and the candy back into the saddlebags and jerked his
+horse sidewise into the protecting shadow of the bluff, reaching at the
+same time to the shoulder holster buckled about his body under the
+unbuttoned overcoat. For a long minute he listened keenly, the drawn
+pistol in his hand. There was nothing to hear except his own breathing
+and the breathing of his horse.
+
+"Sho! Some old hawg turnin' over in her bed," he said to the horse, and
+holstering the pistol he went racking on down Pigeon Roost Creek, with
+Christmas for Elviry and little Anderson in his saddlebags.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When they found Anse Dugmore in his ambush another snow had fallen on
+his back and he was slightly more of a skeleton than ever; but the bony
+finger was still crooked about the trigger, the rusted hammer was back
+at full cock and there was a dried brownish stain on the gun stock. So,
+from these facts, his finders were moved to conclude that the freed
+convict must have bled to death from his lungs before the sheriff ever
+passed, which they held to be a good thing all round and a lucky thing
+for the sheriff.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN
+
+
+There was a sound, heard in the early hours of a Sunday morning, that
+used to bother strangers in our town until they got used to it. It
+started usually along about half past five or six o'clock and it kept up
+interminably--so it seemed to them--a monotonous, jarring thump-thump,
+thump-thump that was like the far-off beating of African tomtoms; but at
+breakfast, when the beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing off a
+steamy hot halo of their own goodness, these aliens knew what it was
+that had roused them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by nature, felt
+amply recompensed for the lost hours of their beauty sleep.
+
+In these degenerate latter days I believe there is a machine that
+accomplishes the same purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling and
+crushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems somehow to take
+the poetry out of the operation. Old Judge Priest, our circuit judge,
+and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, would
+have naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good right
+arm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for the
+judge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn or
+a little later, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittled
+wood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was as
+plastic as sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown, full of
+tiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spread
+and burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then,
+with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small round
+disks and delicately pink each one with a fork--and then, if you were
+listening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of an
+iron lip.
+
+On a certain Sunday I have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the first
+premonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in his
+white linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day was
+young and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow,
+like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abed
+blackbirds were still talking over family matters in the maples that
+clustered round the house, and in the back yard Judge Priest's big red
+rooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to a certain little brown
+hen, first crowing out the news loudly and then listening, with his head
+on one side, while the rooster in the next yard took it up and repeated
+it to a rooster living farther down the road, as is the custom among
+male scandalizers the world over. Upon the lawn the little gossamer
+hammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight were
+spangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glittering
+rosary and the center of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket.
+Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood trees
+were shedding down their podded product so thickly that across open
+spaces the slanting lines of the drifting fiber looked like snow. It
+would be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet and
+fresh and washed clean.
+
+It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered his bulk into a rustic chair
+made of hickory withes that gave to his weight, and put his thoughts
+upon breakfast and the goodness of the day; but presently, as he sat
+there, he saw something that set a frown between his faded blue eyes.
+
+He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the opposite side, an old man--a
+very feeble old man--who was tall and thin and dressed in somber black.
+The man was lame--he dragged one leg along with the hitching gait of the
+paralytic. Traveling with painful slowness, he came on until he reached
+the corner above. Then automatically he turned at right angles and left
+the narrow wooden sidewalk and crossed the dusty road. He passed Judge
+Priest's, looking neither to the right nor the left, and so kept on
+until he reached the corner below. Still following an invisible path in
+the deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to the other side. Just as he
+got there his halt leg seemed to give out altogether and for a minute or
+two he stood holding himself up by a fumbling grip upon the slats of a
+tree box before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain and weakness in
+the early sunshine that was now beginning to slant across his path and
+dapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light.
+
+This maneuver was inexplicable--a stranger would have puzzled to make it
+out. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon the
+other; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother
+over the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles and
+balsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the opposite
+side of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home,
+had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to this
+lone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. A
+stranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understood
+it--he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the years
+that stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but on
+this particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toiling
+grim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old.
+
+Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With an
+effort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair and
+stood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink bald dome of forehead
+as though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter,
+resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door.
+
+"Breakfus' served, suh!" he said, giving to an announcement touching on
+food that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys the
+splendid secret.
+
+"Hey?" asked the judge absently.
+
+"Breakfus'--hit's on the table waitin', suh," stated Jeff. "Mizz Polks
+sent over her houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yore
+breakfus'; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses'
+compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden--specially fur you."
+
+The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, but
+in speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always,
+wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on that
+final s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implying
+that the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralization.
+
+Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priest
+ate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads of
+sweetness; the young fried chicken was a poem in delicate and flaky
+browns; the spoon bread could not have been any better if it had tried;
+and the beaten biscuits were as light as snowflakes and as ready to melt
+on the tongue; but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through the
+meal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for the last course, said to Aunt
+Dilsey:
+
+"Ole boss-man seem lak he's got somethin' on his mind worryin' him this
+mawnin'."
+
+When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp waffles in one hand and a
+pitcher of cane sirup in the other, he stared in surprise, for the
+dining room was empty and he could hear his employer creaking down the
+hall. Jeff just naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to waste.
+He ate them himself, standing up; and they gave him a zest for his
+regular breakfast, which followed in due course of time.
+
+From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped knobs that stood just
+inside the front door, Judge Priest picked up a palmleaf fan; and he
+held the fan slantwise as a shield for his eyes and his bare head
+against the sun's glare as he went down the porch steps and passed out
+of his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborn
+gate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-looking
+little house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings--as if
+poverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest's yard, now, the
+grass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in this
+small yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through the
+grass--as though the soil itself was out at elbows and the nap worn off
+its green-velvet coat; but the vines about the porch were thick enough
+for an ambuscade and from behind their green screen came a voice in
+hospitable recognition.
+
+"Is that you, judge? Well sir, I'm glad to see you! Come right in; take
+a seat and sit down and rest yourself."
+
+The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier--an
+old man--not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in his
+shirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes had
+been newly shined, but the job was poorly done; the leather showed a
+dulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides and
+heels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down--the voice of a deaf person
+who cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in a
+false key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean and
+slightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear.
+
+The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the step
+of the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers that
+stood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or
+two he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborly
+calls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy the
+communion of silence together without embarrassment.
+
+The town clocks struck--first the one on the city hall struck eight
+times sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the county
+courthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment,
+struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once with
+a big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could cure
+the courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept it
+according to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased the
+bell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells,
+began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had died
+away.
+
+"Goin' to be good and hot after while," he said, raising his voice.
+
+"What say?"
+
+"I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,"
+repeated Judge Priest.
+
+"Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there," assented the host. "Just a
+minute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find it
+middlin' close in church this morning. She's going, though--runaway
+horses wouldn't keep her away from church! I'm not going myself--seems
+as though I'm getting more and more out of the church habit here
+lately."
+
+Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of this
+admission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of his
+second wife, had been a regular attendant at services--going twice on
+Sundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wife
+had been dead going on four years now--or was it five? Time sped so!
+
+The deaf man spoke on:
+
+"So I just thought I'd sit here and try to keep cool and wait for that
+Ledbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read last
+Sunday's paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty fine
+piece on those Northern money devils. It's round here somewhere--I cut
+it out to keep it. I'd like to have you read it and pass your opinion on
+it. These young fellows do pretty well, but there's none of them can
+write like the colonel, in my judgment."
+
+Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.
+
+"Ed Tilghman," he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemed
+absurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, "you and me have
+lived neighbors together a good while, haven't we? We've been right
+acros't the street from one another all this time. It kind of jolts me
+sometimes when I git to thinkin' how many years it's really been;
+because we're gittin' along right smartly in years--all us old fellows
+are. Ten years from now, say, there won't be so many of us left." He
+glanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. "You're
+younger than some of us; but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call a
+young man yourself."
+
+Avoiding the direct, questioning gaze that his companion turned on him
+at this, the judge reached forward and touched a ripe balsam apple that
+dangled in front of him. Instantly it split, showing the gummed red
+seeds clinging to the inner walls of the sensitive pod.
+
+"I'm listening to you, judge," said the deaf man.
+
+For a moment the old judge waited. There was about him almost an air of
+embarrassment. Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple, he spoke,
+and it was with a sort of hurried anxiety, as though he feared he might
+be checked before he could say what he had to say.
+
+"Ed," he said, "I was settin' on my porch a while ago waitin' for
+breakfast, and your brother came by." He shot a quick, apprehensive
+glance at his silent auditor. Except for a tautened flickering of the
+muscles about the mouth, there was no sign that the other had heard him.
+"Your brother Abner came by," repeated the judge, "and I set over there
+on my porch and watched him pass. Ed, Abner's gittin' mighty feeble! He
+jest about kin drag himself along--he's had another stroke lately, they
+tell me. He had to hold on to that there treebox down yonder, steadyin'
+himself after he crossed back over to this side. Lord knows what he was
+doin' draggin' down-town on a Sunday mornin'--force of habit, I reckin.
+Anyway he certainly did look older and more poorly than ever I saw him
+before. He's a failin' man if I'm any judge. Do you hear me plain?" he
+asked.
+
+"I hear you," said his neighbor in a curiously flat voice. It was
+Tilghman's turn to avoid the glances of his friend. He stared straight
+ahead of him through a rift in the vines.
+
+"Well, then," went on Judge Priest, "here's what I've got to say to you,
+Ed Tilghman. You know as well as I do that I've never pried into your
+private affairs, and it goes mightily against the grain for me to be
+doin' so now; but, Ed, when I think of how old we're all gittin' to be,
+and when the Camp meets and I see you settin' there side by side almost,
+and yet never seemin' to see each other--and this mornin' when I saw
+Abner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick--and it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin'
+too, and everything so quiet and peaceful----" He broke off and started
+anew. "I don't seem to know exactly how to put my thoughts into
+words--and puttin' things into words is supposed to be my trade too.
+Anyway I couldn't go to Abner. He's not my neighbor and you are; and
+besides, you're the youngest of the two. So--so I came over here to you.
+Ed, I'd like mightily to take some word from you to your brother Abner.
+I'd like to do it the best in the world! Can't I go to him with a
+message from you--today? Tomorrow might be too late!"
+
+He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony knee of the deaf man; but the
+hand slipped away as Tilghman stood up.
+
+"Judge Priest," said Tilghman, looking down at him, "I've listened to
+what you've had to say; and I didn't stop you, because you are my friend
+and I know you mean well by it. Besides, you're my guest, under my own
+roof." He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch.
+Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him,
+his face being still set and his voice flat. "What's between me and
+my--what's between me and that man you just named always will be between
+us. He's satisfied to let things go on as they are. I'm satisfied to let
+them go on. It's in our breed, I guess. Words--just words--wouldn't help
+mend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, and
+neither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we both
+live. I'd just as soon you never brought this--this subject up again. If
+you went to him I presume he'd tell you the same thing. Let it be, Judge
+Priest--it's past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty years
+nearly. We'll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, Judge
+Priest; but let it be--let it be!"
+
+There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. He
+checked his walk and called in at a shuttered window.
+
+"Liddie," he said in his natural up-and-down voice, "before you put off
+for church, couldn't you mix up a couple of lemonades or something?
+Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me."
+
+"No," said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, "I've got to be gittin' back
+before the sun's up too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile be
+shore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night,"
+he added.
+
+"I'll be there," said Tilghman. "And I'll try to find that piece of
+Colonel Watterson's and send it over to you. I'd like mightily for you
+to read it."
+
+He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied hand
+fumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walk
+and out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again.
+All those little muscles in his jowls were jumping.
+
+Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length from
+beneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and there
+groups of children--the little girls in prim and starchy white, the
+little boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; and
+all of them were moving toward a common center--Sunday school. Twice
+again that day would the street show life--a little later when grown-ups
+went their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, when
+young people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins,
+would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sunday
+interchange of special dainties between neighbors amounted in our town
+to a ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the cool of the
+evening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took Sunday
+naps.
+
+With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry sawing motion in the air, as
+though trying to fend off something disagreeable--a memory, perhaps, or
+it might have been only a persistent midge. There were plenty of gnats
+and midges about, for by now--even so soon--the dew was dried. The
+leaves of the silver poplars were turning their white under sides up
+like countless frog bellies, and the long, podded pendants of the
+Injun-cigar trees hung dangling and still. It would be a hot day, sure
+enough; already the judge felt wilted and worn out.
+
+In our town we had our tragedies that endured for years and, in the
+small-town way, finally became institutions. There was the case of the
+Burnleys. For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side of
+his house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossing
+an imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, having
+for their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter,
+in whose gray and barren life churchwork and these strange home duties
+took the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and by
+babies and grandbabies.
+
+There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, who
+was forever starting somewhere and never going there--because, as sure
+as he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up his
+mind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bank
+had failed on him, or a horse had kicked him in the head--or maybe it
+was all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow he
+went his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boys
+who were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, but
+when he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to be
+his volunteer pallbearers.
+
+There was Mr. H. Jackman--Brother Jackman to all the town--who had been
+our leading hatter once and rich besides, and in the days of his
+affluence had given the Baptist church its bells. In his old age, when
+he was dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not known by that
+word, which is at once the sweetest and bitterest word in our tongue;
+for Brother Jackman, always primped, always plump and well clad, would
+go through the market to take his pick of what was there, and to the
+Richland House bar for his toddies, and to Felsburg Brothers for new
+garments when his old ones wore shabby--and yet never paid a cent for
+anything; a kindly conspiracy on the part of the whole town enabling him
+to maintain his self-respect to the last. Strangers in our town used to
+take him for a retired banker--that's a fact!
+
+And there was old man Stackpole, who had killed his man--had killed him
+in fair fight and had been acquitted--and yet walked quiet back streets
+at all hours, a gray, silent shadow, and never slept except with a
+bright light burning in his room.
+
+The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman, though, and of Captain Abner G.
+Tilghman, his elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery--the
+biggest tragedy and the deepest mystery our town had ever known or ever
+would know probably. All that anybody knew for certain was that for
+upward of fifty years neither of them had spoken to the other, nor by
+deed or look had given heed to the other. As boys, back in sixty-one,
+they had gone out together. Side by side, each with his arm over the
+other's shoulder, they had stood up with a hundred others to be sworn
+into the service of the Confederate States of America; and on the
+morning they went away Miss Sally May Ghoulson had given the older
+brother her silk scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both the
+brothers had liked her; but by this public act she made it plain which
+of them was her choice.
+
+Then the company had marched off to the camp on the Tennessee border,
+where the new troops were drilling; and as they marched some watchers
+wept and others cheered--but the cheering predominated, for it was to be
+only a sort of picnic anyhow--so everybody agreed. As the orators--who
+mainly stayed behind--had pointed out, the Northern people would not
+fight. And even if they should fight could not one Southerner whip four
+Yankees? Certainly he could; any fool knew that much. In a month or two
+months, or at most three months, they would all be tramping home again,
+covered with glory and the spoils of war, and then--this by common
+report and understanding--Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman
+would be married, with a big church wedding.
+
+The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought, and it was not a ninety-day
+picnic after all. It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it was over,
+after four years and a month, Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghman
+did not marry. It was just before the battle of Chickamauga when the
+other men in the company first noticed that the two Tilghmans had become
+as strangers, and worse than strangers, to each other. They quit
+speaking to each other then and there, and to any man's knowledge they
+never spoke again. They served the war out, Abner rising just before
+the end to a captaincy, Edward serving always as a private in the ranks.
+In a dour, grim silence they took the fortunes of those last hard,
+hopeless days and after the surrender down in Mississippi they came back
+with the limping handful that was left of the company; and in age they
+were all boys still--but in experience, men, and in suffering,
+grandsires.
+
+Two months after they got back Miss Sally May Ghoulson was married to
+Edward, the younger brother. Within a year she died, and after a decent
+period of mourning Edward married a second time--only to be widowed
+again after many years. His second wife bore him children and they
+died--all except one, a daughter, who grew up and married badly; and
+after her mother's death she came back to live with her deaf father and
+minister to him. As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never married--never,
+so far as the watching eyes of the town might tell, looked with favor
+upon another woman. And he never spoke to his brother or to any of his
+brother's family--or his brother to him.
+
+With years the wall of silence they had builded up between them turned
+to ice and the ice to stone. They lived on the same street, but never
+did Edward enter Captain Abner's bank, never did Captain Abner pass
+Edward's house--always he crossed over to the opposite side. They
+belonged to the same Veterans' Camp--indeed there was only the one for
+them to belong to; they voted the same ticket--straight Democratic; and
+in the same church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they worshiped the
+same God by the same creed, the older brother being an elder and the
+younger a plain member--and yet never crossed looks.
+
+The town had come to accept this dumb and bitter feud as unchangeable
+and eternal; in time people ceased even to wonder what its cause had
+been, and in all the long years only one man had tried, before now, to
+heal it up. When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young and ardent
+clergyman, fresh from the Virginia theological school, came out to take
+the vacant pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense of his holy
+calling, thought it shameful that such a thing should be in the
+congregation. He went to see Captain Tilghman about it. He never went
+but that once. Afterward it came out that Captain Tilghman had
+threatened to walk out of church and never darken its doors again if the
+minister ever dared to mention his brother's name in his presence. So
+the young minister sorrowed, but obeyed, for the captain was rich and a
+generous giver to the church.
+
+And he had grown richer with the years, and as he grew richer his
+brother grew poorer--another man owned the drug store where Edward
+Tilghman had failed. They had grown from young to middle-aged men and
+from middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first the grace of youth
+and then the solidness of maturity had gone out of them and the
+gnarliness of age had come upon them; one was halt of step and the other
+was dull of ear; and the town through half a century of schooling had
+accustomed itself to the situation and took it as a matter of course. So
+it was and so it always would be--a tragedy and a mystery. It had not
+been of any use when the minister interfered and it was of no use now.
+Judge Priest, with the gesture of a man who is beaten, dropped the fan
+on the porch floor, went into his darkened sitting room, stretched
+himself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa and called out to Jeff to
+make him a mild toddy--one with plenty of ice in it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On this same Sunday--or, anyhow, I like to fancy it was on this same
+Sunday--at a point distant approximately nine hundred and seventy miles
+in a northeasterly direction from Judge Priest's town, Corporal Jacob
+Speck, late of Sigel's command, sat at the kitchen window of the
+combined Speck and Engel apartment on East Eighty-fifth Street in the
+Borough of Manhattan, New York. He was in his shirtsleeves; his tender
+feet were incased in a pair of red-and-green carpet slippers. In the
+angle of his left arm he held his youngest grandchild, aged one and a
+half years, while his right hand carefully poised a china pipe, with a
+bowl like an egg-cup and a stem like a fishpole. The corporal's blue
+Hanoverian eyes, behind their thick-lensed glasses, were fixed upon a
+comprehensive vista of East Eighty-fifth Street back yards and
+clothespoles and fire escapes; but his thoughts were very much
+elsewhere.
+
+Reared back there at seeming ease, the corporal none the less was not
+happy in his mind. It was not that he so much minded being left at home
+to mind the youngest baby while the rest of the family spent the
+afternoon amid the Teutonic splendors of Smeltzer's Harlem River Casino,
+with its acres of gravel walks and its whitewashed tree trunks, its
+straggly flower beds and its high-collared beers. He was used to that
+sort of thing. Since a plague of multiplying infirmities of the body
+had driven him out of his job in the tax office, the corporal had not
+done much except nurse the babies that occurred in the Speck-Engel
+establishment with such unerring regularity. Sometimes, it is true, he
+did slip down to the corner for maybe zwei glasses of beer and a game of
+pinocle; but then, likely as not, there would come inopportunely a
+towheaded descendant to tell him Mommer needed him back at the flat
+right away to mind the baby while she went marketing or to the movies.
+
+He could endure that--he had to. What riled Corporal Jacob Speck on this
+warm and sunny Sunday was a realization that he was not doing his share
+at making the history of the period. The week before had befallen the
+fiftieth anniversary of the marching away of his old regiment to the
+front; there had been articles in the daily papers about it. Also, in
+patriotic commemoration of the great event there had been a parade of
+the wrinkled survivors--ninety-odd of them--following their tattered and
+faded battle flag down Fifth Avenue past apathetic crowds, nine-tenths
+of whom had been born since the war--in foreign lands mainly; and at
+least half, if one might judge by their looks, did not know what the
+parading was all about, and did not particularly care either.
+
+The corporal had not participated in the march of the veterans; he had
+not even attended the banquet that followed it. True, the youngest
+grandchild was at the moment cutting one of her largest jaw teeth and so
+had required, for the time, an extraordinary and special amount of
+minding; but the young lady's dental difficulty was not the sole reason
+for his absence. Three weeks earlier the corporal had taken part in
+Decoration Day, and certainly one parade a month was ample strain upon a
+pair of legs such as he owned. He had returned home with his game leg
+behaving more gamely then usual and with his sound one full of new and
+painful kinks. Also, in honor of the occasion he had committed the error
+of wearing a pair of stiff and inflexible new shoes; wherefore he had
+worn his carpet slippers ever since.
+
+Missing the fiftieth anniversary was not the main point with the
+corporal--that was merely the fortune of war, to be accepted with
+fortitude and with no more than a proper and natural amount of grumbling
+by one who had been a good soldier and was now a good citizen; but for
+days before the event, and daily ever since, divers members of the old
+regiment had been writing pieces to the papers--the German papers and
+the English-printing papers too--long pieces, telling of the trip to
+Washington, and then on into Virginia and Tennessee, speaking of this
+campaign and that and this battle and that. And because there was just
+now a passing wave of interest in Civil War matters, the papers had
+printed these contributions, thereby reflecting much glory on the
+writers thereof. But Corporal Speck, reading these things, had marveled
+deeply that sane men should have such disgustingly bad memories; for his
+own recollection of these stirring and epochal events differed most
+widely from the reminiscent narration of each misguided chronicler.
+
+It was, indeed, a shameful thing that the most important occurrences of
+the whole war should be so shockingly mangled and mishandled in the
+retelling. They were so grievously wrong, those other veterans, and he
+was so absolutely right. He was always right in these matters. Only the
+night before, during a merciful respite from his nursing duties, he
+had, in Otto Wittenpen's back barroom, spoken across the rim of a tall
+stein with some bitterness of certain especially grievous misstatements
+of plain fact on the part of certain faulty-minded comrades. In reply
+Otto had said, in a rather sneering tone the corporal thought:
+
+"Say, then, Jacob, why don't you yourself write a piece to the paper
+telling about this regiment of yours--the way it was?"
+
+"I will. Tomorrow I will do so without fail," he had said, the ambition
+of authorship suddenly stirring within him. Now, however, as he sat at
+the kitchen window, he gloomed in his disappointment, for he had tried
+and he knew he had not the gift of the written line. A good soldier he
+had been--yes, none better--and a good citizen, and in his day a capable
+and painstaking doorkeeper in the tax office; but he could not write his
+own story. That morning, when the youngest grandchild slept and his
+daughter and his daughter's husband and the brood of his older
+grandchildren were all at the Lutheran church over in the next block, he
+sat himself down to compose his article to the paper; but the words
+would not come--or, at least, after the first line or two they would not
+come.
+
+The mental pictures of those stirring great days when he marched off on
+his two good legs--both good legs then--to fight for the country whose
+language he could not yet speak was there in bright and living colors;
+but the sorry part of it was he could not clothe them in language. In
+the trash box under the sink a dozen crumpled sheets of paper testified
+to his failure, and now, alone with the youngest Miss Engel, he brooded
+over it and got low in his mind and let his pipe go smack out. And right
+then and there, with absolutely no warning at all, there came to him, as
+you might say from the clear sky, a great idea--an idea so magnificent
+that he almost dropped the youngest Miss Engel off his lap at the
+splendid shock of it.
+
+With solicitude he glanced down at the small, moist, pink, lumpy bundle
+of prickly heat and sore gums. Despite the sudden jostle the young lady
+slept steadily on. Very carefully he laid his pipe aside and very
+carefully he got upon his feet, jouncing his charge soothingly up and
+down, and with deftness he committed her small person to the crib that
+stood handily by. She stirred fretfully, but did not wake. The corporal
+steered his gimpy leg and his rheumatic one out of the kitchen, which
+was white with scouring and as clean as a new pin, into the rearmost and
+smallest of the three sleeping rooms that mainly made up the Speck-Engel
+apartment.
+
+The bed, whereon of nights Corporal Speck reposed with a bucking bronco
+of an eight-year-old grandson for a bedmate, was jammed close against
+the plastering, under the one small window set diagonally in a jog in
+the wall, and opening out upon an airshaft, like a chimney. Time had
+been when the corporal had a room and a bed all his own; that was before
+the family began to grow so fast in its second generation and while he
+still held a place of lucrative employment at the tax office.
+
+As he got down upon his knees beside the bed the old man uttered a
+little groan of discomfort. He felt about in the space underneath and
+drew out a small tin trunk, rusted on its corners and dented in its
+sides. He made a laborious selection of keys from a key-ring he got out
+of his pocket, unlocked the trunk and lifted out a heavy top tray. The
+tray contained, among other things, such treasures as his naturalization
+papers, his pension papers, a photograph of his dead wife, and a small
+bethumbed passbook of the East Side Germania Savings Bank. Underneath
+was a black fatigue hat with a gold cord round its crown, a neatly
+folded blue uniform coat, with the G. A. R. bronze showing in its
+uppermost lapel, and below that, in turn, the suit of neat black the
+corporal wore on high state occasions and would one day wear to be
+buried in. Pawing and digging, he worked his hands to the very bottom,
+and then, with a little grunt, he heaved out the thing he wanted--the
+one trophy, except a stiffened kneecap and an honorable record, this old
+man had brought home from the South. It was a captured Confederate
+knapsack, flattened and flabby. Its leather was dry-rotted with age and
+the brass C. S. A. on the outer flap was gangrened and sunken in; the
+flap curled up stiffly, like an old shoe sole.
+
+The crooked old fingers undid a buckle fastening and from the musty and
+odorous interior of the knapsack withdrew a letter, in a queer-looking
+yellowed envelope, with a queer-looking stamp upon the upper right-hand
+corner and a faint superscription upon its face. The three sheets of
+paper he slid out of the envelope were too old even to rustle, but the
+close writing upon them in a brownish, faded ink was still plainly to be
+made out.
+
+Corporal Speck replaced the knapsack in its place at the very bottom,
+put the tray back in its place, closed the trunk and locked it and
+shoved it under the bed. The trunk resisted slightly and he lost one
+carpet slipper and considerable breath in the struggle. Limping back to
+the kitchen and seeing that little Miss Engel still slumbered, he eased
+his frame into a chair and composed himself to literary composition, not
+in the least disturbed by the shouts of roistering sidewalk comedians
+that filtered up to him from down below in front of the house, or by the
+distant clatter of intermittent traffic over the cobbly spine of Second
+Avenue, half a block away. For some time he wrote, with a most scratchy
+pen; and this is what he wrote:
+
+     "TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN, CITY.
+
+     "_Dear Sir:_ The undersigned would state that he served two years
+     and nine months--until wounded in action--in the Fighting Two
+     Hundred and Tenth New York Infantry, and has been much interested
+     to see what other comrades wrote for the papers regarding same in
+     connection with the Rebellion War of North and South respectively.
+     I would state that during the battle of Chickamauga I was for a
+     while lying near by to a Confederate soldier--name unknown--who
+     was dying on account of a wound in the chest. By his request I
+     gave him a drink of water from my canteen, he dying shortly
+     thereafter. Being myself wounded--right knee shattered by a
+     Minie ball--I was removed to a field hospital; but before doing
+     so I brought away this man's knapsack for a keepsake of the
+     occasion. Some years later I found in said knapsack a letter,
+     which previous to then was overlooked by me. I inclose herewith a
+     copy of said letter, which it may be interesting for reading
+     purposes by surviving comrades.
+
+     "Respectfully yours,
+
+              "JACOB SPECK,
+
+     "Late Corporal L Company,
+
+     "Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A."
+
+With deliberation and squeaky emphasis the pen progressed slowly across
+the paper, while the corporal, with his left hand, held flat the dead
+man's ancient letter before him, intent on copying it. Hard words
+puzzled him and long words daunted him, and he was making a long job of
+it when there were steps in the hall without. There entered breezily
+Miss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of all the multiplying Engels,
+pretty beyond question and every inch American, having the gift of
+wearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs in a way to make them seem
+Upper Fifth Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly flushed; she
+had just parted lingeringly from her steady company, whose name was Mr.
+Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower hallway, which is the trysting
+place and courting place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts, and now she
+had come to make ready the family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight of
+her the corporal had another inspiration--his second within the hour.
+His brow smoothed and he fetched a sigh of relief.
+
+"'Lo, grosspops!" she said. "How's every little thing? The kiddo all
+right?"
+
+She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed like a hearse and slipped on
+a long apron that covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem.
+
+"Girl," said her grandfather, "would you make tomorrow for me at the
+office a copy of this letter on the typewriter machine?"
+
+He spoke in German and she answered in New-Yorkese, while her nimble
+fingers wrestled with the task of back-buttoning her apron.
+
+"Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute to rattle that off.
+Funny-looking old thing!" she went on, taking up the creased and faded
+original. "Who wrote it? And whatcher goin' to do with it, grosspops?"
+
+"That," he told her, "is mine own business! It is for you, please, to
+make the copy and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and also the
+copy."
+
+So on Monday morning, when the rush of taking dictation at the office of
+the Great American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street, was well abated,
+the competent Miss Hortense copied the letter, and that same evening her
+grandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied by his own introduction.
+The Sun straightway printed it without change and--what was still
+better--with the sender's name spelled out in capital letters; and that
+night, at the place down by the corner, Corporal Jacob Speck was a
+prophet not without honor in his own country--much honor, in fact,
+accrued.
+
+If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that,
+upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip to
+New York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, a
+promoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during the
+course of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of one
+Malley, a Sun reporter. This had happened some years back, but Malley
+was still on the staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going through
+the paper to clip out and measure up his own space, Malley came upon the
+corporal's contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught the name,
+twice or thrice repeated, of the town where Judge Priest lived. So he
+bundled together a couple of copies and sent them South with a short
+letter; and therefore it came about in due season, through the good
+offices of the United States Post-office Department, that these
+enclosures reached the judge on a showery afternoon as he loafed upon
+his wide front porch, waiting for his supper.
+
+First, he read Malley's letter and was glad to hear from Malley. With a
+quickened interest he ran a plump thumb under the wrappings of the two
+close-rolled papers, opened out one of them at page ten and read the
+opening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck, for whom instantly the judge
+conceived a long-distance fondness. Next he came to the letter that Miss
+Hortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very first
+words of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified little
+grunt; for he had known them both--the writer of that letter and its
+recipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with a
+pert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a ragged
+gray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded the
+printed lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew--only now
+they were old men and old women--faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of a
+far-distant day.
+
+As he read the first words it came back to the judge, almost with the
+jolting emphasis of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days of his
+own youth he had never liked the girl who wrote that letter or the man
+who received it. But she was dead this many and many a year--why, she
+must have died soon after she wrote this very letter--the date proved
+that--and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga, taking his death in
+front like a soldier; and surely that settled everything and made all
+things right! But the letter--that was the main thing. His old blue eyes
+skipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled the tip of his plump pink
+nose, and the old judge read it--just such a letter as he himself had
+received many a time; just such a wartime letter as uncounted thousands
+of soldiers North and South received from their sweethearts and read and
+reread by the light of flickering campfires and carried afterward in
+their knapsacks through weary miles of marching.
+
+It was crammed with the small-town gossip of a small town that was but
+little more than a memory now--telling how, because he would not
+volunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid by a dozen high-spirited
+girls and overpowered, and dressed in a woman's shawl and a woman's
+poke bonnet, so that he left town with his shame between two suns;
+how, since the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females were
+friendly--actually friendly, this being underscored--with the more
+personable of the young Yankee officers; how half the town was in
+mourning for a son or brother dead or wounded; how a new and sweetly
+sentimental song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was being much
+sung at the time--and had it reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbs
+had been exiled to Canada for seditious acts and language and had
+departed northward between two files of bluecoats, reviling the Yankees
+with an unbitted tongue at every step; how So-and-So had died or married
+or gone refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely Southern
+territory; how this thing had happened and that thing had not.
+
+The old judge read on and on, catching gladly at names that kindled a
+tenderly warm glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul, until he came
+to the last paragraph of all; and then, as he comprehended the intent of
+it in all its barbed and venomed malice, he stood suddenly erect, with
+the outspread paper shaking in his hard grip. For now, coming back to
+him by so strange a way across fifty years of silence and
+misunderstanding, he read there the answer to the town's oldest, biggest
+tragedy and knew what it was that all this time had festered, like
+buried thorns, in the flesh of those two men, his comrades and friends.
+He dropped the paper, and up and down the wide, empty porch he stumped
+on his short stout legs, shaking with the shock of revelation and with
+indignation and pity for the blind and bitter uselessness of it all.
+
+"Ah hah!" he said to himself over and over again understandingly. "Ah
+hah!" And then: "Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the meanest thing
+in this whole created world, I reckin. I ain't sure but what she's the
+meanest of the two. And to think of what them two did between 'em--she
+writin' that hellish black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin' off
+hotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his mind with it and set him like a
+flint against his own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like Lon Pike
+to go and git himself killed the next day after he got that there
+letter! And wasn't it jest like her to up and die before the truth could
+be brought home to her! And wasn't it like them two stubborn, set,
+contrary, close-mouthed Tilghman boys to go 'long through all these
+years, without neither one of 'em ever offerin' to make or take an
+explanation!" His tone changed. "Oh, ain't it been a pitiful thing! And
+all so useless! But--oh, thank the Lord--it ain't too late to mend it
+part way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late for that!"
+
+Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with it
+crumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound for
+the little cottage snuggled in its vine ambush across Clay Street before
+a better and a bigger inspiration caught up with him and halted him
+midway of an onward stride.
+
+Was not this the second Friday in the month? It certainly was. And would
+not the Camp be meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session at
+Kamleiter's Hall? It certainly would. For just a moment Judge Priest
+considered the proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank gleefully,
+and his round old face, which had been knotted with resolution, broke up
+into a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his heel and hurried back into
+the house and to the telephone in the hall. For half an hour, more or
+less, Judge Priest was busy at that telephone, calling in a high,
+excited voice, first for one number and then for another. While he did
+this his supper grew cold on the table, and in the dining room Jeff, the
+white-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned,
+fumed--but, at Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge Priest's
+industry was in abundant fulness rewarded.
+
+Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp claimed a full two hundred
+members, but that had been when it was first organized. Now there were
+in good standing less than twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on the
+hard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped with his metal spectacle
+case for order, and that fifteen meant all who could travel out at
+nights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, the faithful
+and inevitable. It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had in a year.
+
+Far over on one side, cramped down in a chair, was Captain Abner
+Tilghman, feeble and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood hitched by the
+curb downstairs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him and
+on the plea of business of vital moment had made him come with him.
+Almost directly across the middle aisle on the other side sat Mr. Edward
+Tilghman. Nobody had to go for him. He always came to a regular meeting
+of the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings only in broken bits.
+
+The adjutant called the roll and those present answered, each one to his
+name; and mainly the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the bodies of
+their owners. A keen onlooker might have noticed a sort of tremulous,
+joyous impatience, which filled all save two of these old, gray men,
+pushing the preliminaries forward with uncommon speed. They fidgeted in
+their places.
+
+Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of a persistent huskiness and
+stood up.
+
+"Before we proceed to the regular routine," he piped, "I desire to
+present a certain matter to a couple of our members." He came down off
+the little platform, where the flags were draped, with a step that was
+almost light, and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he put a copy of a
+city paper, turned and folded at a certain place, where a column of
+printed matter was scored about with heavy pencil bracketings. "Cap'n,"
+he said, "as a personal favor to me, suh, would you please read this
+here article?--the one that's marked"--he pointed with his finger--"not
+aloud--read it to yourself, please."
+
+It was characteristic of the paralytic to say nothing. Without a word he
+adjusted his glasses and without a word he began to read. So instantly
+intent was he that he did not see what followed next--and that was Judge
+Priest crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side with another copy of
+a paper in his hand.
+
+"Ed," he bade him, "read this here article, won't you? Read it clear
+through to the end--it might interest you maybe." The deaf man looked up
+at him wonderingly, but took the paper in his slightly palsied hand and
+bent his head close above the printed sheet.
+
+Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making no move to go back to his
+own place. He watched the two silent readers. All the others watched
+them too. They read on, making slow progress, for the light was poor and
+their eyes were poor. And the watchers could hardly contain themselves;
+they could hardly wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing up and down
+like a pudgy jack-in-the-box that is slightly stiff in its joints. A
+small, restrained rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the folded
+newspapers held in shaky hands.
+
+Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers read on. Perhaps because he
+had started first--perhaps because his glasses were the more expensive
+and presumably therefore the more helpful--Captain Abner Tilghman came
+to the concluding paragraph first. He read it through--and then Judge
+Priest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he had
+chosen so public a place for this thing.
+
+He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet.
+Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floor
+to where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his side
+he halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there,
+trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column and
+read what was there--and lifted a face all glorified with a perfect
+understanding.
+
+"Eddie!" said the older man--"Eddie!" He uttered a name of boyhood
+affection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; and
+it was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb--as though out
+of the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. "Eddie!" he
+said a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving for
+forgiveness.
+
+"Brother Abner!" said the other man. "Oh, Brother Abner!" he said--and
+that was all he did say--all he had need to say, for he was on his feet
+now, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms.
+
+Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it come
+out of his throat--only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As a
+cheer it was a miserable failure.
+
+Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, the
+brothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and went
+away. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness of
+the stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were all
+up on their feet.
+
+"Mind that top step, Abner!" they heard the younger man say. "Wait! I'll
+help you down."
+
+That was all that was heard, except a scuffling sound of uncertainly
+placed feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed down
+the long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night--that was
+all, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorus
+such as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling in
+a large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps,
+that Judge Priest should speak first.
+
+"The trouble with this here Camp is jest this," he said: "it's got a lot
+of snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust out
+cryin' when they oughter be happy!" And then, as if to show how deeply
+he felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Priest
+blew his nose with great violence, and for a space of minutes
+industriously mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous pocket
+handkerchief.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter waited up for his employer.
+Jeff expected him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was actually
+getting along toward ten-thirty before Jeff, who had been dozing lightly
+in the dim-lit hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some large
+mosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard the sound of a rambling but
+familiar step clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay Street. The
+latch on the front gate clicked, and as Jeff poked his nose out of the
+front door he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered the gravel
+walk, the voice of his master uplifted in solitary song.
+
+In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no difference
+what the words might be or the theme--he sang every song and all songs
+to a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment Judge
+Priest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. One
+second he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was all
+the way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of all
+who might care to hear these details, that they--presumably certain
+horses--were bound to run all night--bound to run all day; so you could
+bet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the bay. Nearer to the porch
+steps it boastingly transpired that somebody had jumped aboard the
+telegraf and steered her by the triggers, whereat the lightnin' flew and
+'lectrified and killed ten thousand niggers! But even so general a
+catastrophe could not weigh down the singer's spirits. As he put a
+fumbling foot upon the lowermost step of the porch, he threw his head
+far back and shrilly issued the following blanket invitation to ladies
+resident in a far-away district:
+
+    _Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight?
+    Won't you come out tonight?
+    Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight,
+    And dance by the light of the moon?
+    I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin';
+    And her heel it kep' a-rockin'--kep' a-rockin'!
+    She was the purtiest gal in the room!_
+
+Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The song stopped and Judge Priest
+stood in the opening, teetering a little on his heels. His face was all
+a blushing pinky glow.
+
+"Evenin', jedge!" greeted Jeff. "You're late, suh!"
+
+"Jeff," said Judge Priest slowly, "it's a beautiful evenin'."
+
+Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter of fact, the drizzle of the
+afternoon had changed, soon after dark, to a steady downpour. The
+judge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops and his shoulders were
+sopping wet, but Jeff had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict a
+prominent white citizen.
+
+"Yas, suh!" he said, half affirmatively, half questioningly. "Is it?"
+
+"It is so!" said Judge Priest. "Every star in the sky shines like a
+diamond! Jeff, it's the most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!"
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+FISHHEAD
+
+
+It goes past the powers of my pen to try to describe Reelfoot Lake for
+you so that you, reading this, will get the picture of it in your mind
+as I have it in mine. For Reelfoot Lake is like no other lake that I
+know anything about. It is an afterthought of Creation.
+
+The rest of this continent was made and had dried in the sun for
+thousands of years--for millions of years for all I know--before
+Reelfoot came to be. It's the newest big thing in nature on this
+hemisphere probably, for it was formed by the great earthquake of 1811,
+just a little more than a hundred years ago. That earthquake of 1811
+surely altered the face of the earth on the then far frontier of this
+country. It changed the course of rivers, it converted hills into what
+are now the sunk lands of three states, and it turned the solid ground
+to jelly and made it roll in waves like the sea. And in the midst of
+the retching of the land and the vomiting of the waters it depressed to
+varying depths a section of the earth crust sixty miles long, taking it
+down--trees, hills, hollows and all; and a crack broke through to the
+Mississippi River so that for three days the river ran up stream,
+filling the hole.
+
+The result was the largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly in
+Tennessee, but extending up across what is now the Kentucky line, and
+taking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay,
+reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so far away, may
+have got its name from the same man who christened Reelfoot; at least so
+it sounds.
+
+Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of mystery. In places it is
+bottomless. Other places the skeletons of the cypress trees that went
+down when the earth sank still stand upright, so that if the sun shines
+from the right quarter and the water is less muddy than common, a man
+peering face downward into its depths sees, or thinks he sees, down
+below him the bare top-limbs upstretching like drowned men's fingers,
+all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the green
+lake slime. In still other places the lake is shallow for long
+stretches, no deeper than breast deep to a man, but dangerous because of
+the weed growths and the sunken drifts which entangle a swimmer's limbs.
+Its banks are mainly mud, its waters are muddied too, being a rich
+coffee color in the spring and a copperish yellow in the summer, and the
+trees along its shore are mud colored clear up to their lower limbs
+after the spring floods, when the dried sediment covers their trunks
+with a thick, scrofulous-looking coat.
+
+There are stretches of unbroken woodland around it and slashes where the
+cypress knees rise countlessly like headstones and footstones for the
+dead snags that rot in the soft ooze. There are deadenings with the
+lowland corn growing high and rank below and the bleached,
+fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb.
+There are long, dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawn
+clings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at night
+the turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white eggs
+with tough, rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off to
+nowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great, blind worms, to
+finally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a few
+miles to the westward.
+
+So Reelfoot lies there, flat in the bottoms, freezing lightly in the
+winter, steaming torridly in the summer, swollen in the spring when the
+woods have turned a vivid green and the buffalo gnats by the million and
+the billion fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential buzzing,
+and in the fall ringed about gloriously with all the colors which the
+first frost brings--gold of hickory, yellow-russet of sycamore, red of
+dogwood and ash and purple-black of sweet-gum.
+
+But the Reelfoot country has its uses. It is the best game and fish
+country, natural or artificial, that is left in the South today. In
+their appointed seasons the duck and the geese flock in, and even
+semi-tropical birds, like the brown pelican and the Florida snake-bird,
+have been known to come there to nest. Pigs, gone back to wildness,
+range the ridges, each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt, savage,
+slab-sided old boar. By night the bull frogs, inconceivably big and
+tremendously vocal, bellow under the banks.
+
+It is a wonderful place for fish--bass and crappie and perch and the
+snouted buffalo fish. How these edible sorts live to spawn and how their
+spawn in turn live to spawn again is a marvel, seeing how many of the
+big fish-eating cannibal fish there are in Reelfoot. Here, bigger than
+anywhere else, you find the garfish, all bones and appetite and horny
+plates, with a snout like an alligator, the nearest link, naturalists
+say, between the animal life of today and the animal life of the
+Reptilian Period. The shovel-nose cat, really a deformed kind of
+freshwater sturgeon, with a great fan-shaped membranous plate jutting
+out from his nose like a bowsprit, jumps all day in the quiet places
+with mighty splashing sounds, as though a horse had fallen into the
+water. On every stranded log the huge snapping turtles lie on sunny days
+in groups of four and six, baking their shells black in the sun, with
+their little snaky heads raised watchfully, ready to slip noiselessly
+off at the first sound of oars grating in the row-locks.
+
+But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrous
+creatures, these catfish of Reelfoot--scaleless, slick things, with
+corpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskers
+dangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feet
+long they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and they
+have mouths wide enough to take in a man's foot or a man's fist and
+strong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough to
+eat anything, living or dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master.
+Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell wicked tales of them down
+there. They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of their
+habits, to sharks.
+
+Fishhead was of a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acorn
+fits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the one
+place, at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there, of a
+negro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead, and
+the story was that before his birth his mother was frightened by one of
+the big fish, so that the child came into the world most hideously
+marked. Anyhow, Fishhead was a human monstrosity, the veritable
+embodiment of nightmare. He had the body of a man--a short, stocky,
+sinewy body--but his face was as near to being the face of a great fish
+as any face could be and yet retain some trace of human aspect. His
+skull sloped back so abruptly that he could hardly be said to have a
+forehead at all; his chin slanted off right into nothing. His eyes were
+small and round with shallow, glazed, pale-yellow pupils, and they were
+set wide apart in his head and they were unwinking and staring, like a
+fish's eyes. His nose was no more than a pair of tiny slits in the
+middle of the yellow mask. His mouth was the worst of all. It was the
+awful mouth of a catfish, lipless and almost inconceivably wide,
+stretching from side to side. Also when Fishhead became a man grown his
+likeness to a fish increased, for the hair upon his face grew out into
+two tightly kinked, slender pendants that drooped down either side of
+the mouth like the beards of a fish.
+
+If he had any other name than Fishhead, none excepting he knew it. As
+Fishhead he was known and as Fishhead he answered. Because he knew the
+waters and the woods of Reelfoot better than any other man there, he was
+valued as a guide by the city men who came every year to hunt or fish;
+but there were few such jobs that Fishhead would take. Mainly he kept
+to himself, tending his corn patch, netting the lake, trapping a little
+and in season pot hunting for the city markets. His neighbors,
+ague-bitten whites and malaria-proof negroes alike, left him to himself.
+Indeed for the most part they had a superstitious fear of him. So he
+lived alone, with no kith nor kin, nor even a friend, shunning his kind
+and shunned by them.
+
+His cabin stood just below the state line, where Mud Slough runs into
+the lake. It was a shack of logs, the only human habitation for four
+miles up or down. Behind it the thick timber came shouldering right up
+to the edge of Fishhead's small truck patch, enclosing it in thick shade
+except when the sun stood just overhead. He cooked his food in a
+primitive fashion, outdoors, over a hole in the soggy earth or upon the
+rusted red ruin of an old cook stove, and he drank the saffron water of
+the lake out of a dipper made of a gourd, faring and fending for
+himself, a master hand at skiff and net, competent with duck gun and
+fish spear, yet a creature of affliction and loneliness, part savage,
+almost amphibious, set apart from his fellows, silent and suspicious.
+
+In front of his cabin jutted out a long fallen cottonwood trunk, lying
+half in and half out of the water, its top side burnt by the sun and
+worn by the friction of Fishhead's bare feet until it showed countless
+patterns of tiny scrolled lines, its under side black and rotted and
+lapped at unceasingly by little waves like tiny licking tongues. Its
+farther end reached deep water. And it was a part of Fishhead, for no
+matter how far his fishing and trapping might take him in the daytime,
+sunset would find him back there, his boat drawn up on the bank and he
+on the outer end of this log. From a distance men had seen him there
+many times, sometimes squatted, motionless as the big turtles that would
+crawl upon its dipping tip in his absence, sometimes erect and vigilant
+like a creek crane, his misshapen yellow form outlined against the
+yellow sun, the yellow water, the yellow banks--all of them yellow
+together.
+
+If the Reelfooters shunned Fishhead by day they feared him by night and
+avoided him as a plague, dreading even the chance of a casual meeting.
+For there were ugly stories about Fishhead--stories which all the
+negroes and some of the whites believed. They said that a cry which had
+been heard just before dusk and just after, skittering across the
+darkened waters, was his calling cry to the big cats, and at his bidding
+they came trooping in, and that in their company he swam in the lake on
+moonlight nights, sporting with them, diving with them, even feeding
+with them on what manner of unclean things they fed. The cry had been
+heard many times, that much was certain, and it was certain also that
+the big fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of Fishhead's slough.
+No native Reelfooter, white or black, would willingly wet a leg or an
+arm there.
+
+Here Fishhead had lived and here he was going to die. The Baxters were
+going to kill him, and this day in mid-summer was to be the time of the
+killing. The two Baxters--Jake and Joel--were coming in their dugout to
+do it. This murder had been a long time in the making. The Baxters had
+to brew their hate over a slow fire for months before it reached the
+pitch of action. They were poor whites, poor in everything--repute and
+worldly goods and standing--a pair of fever-ridden squatters who lived
+on whisky and tobacco when they could get it, and on fish and cornbread
+when they couldn't.
+
+The feud itself was of months' standing. Meeting Fishhead one day in the
+spring on the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at Walnut Log,
+and being themselves far overtaken in liquor and vainglorious with a
+bogus alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers had accused him,
+wantonly and without proof, of running their trot-line and stripping it
+of the hooked catch--an unforgivable sin among the water dwellers and
+the shanty boaters of the South. Seeing that he bore this accusation in
+silence, only eyeing them steadfastly, they had been emboldened then to
+slap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating of
+their lives--bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hard
+blows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled and
+prone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of the
+everlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice and
+allowed them--two freeborn, sovereign whites--to be licked by a nigger.
+
+Therefore, they were going to get the nigger. The whole thing had been
+planned out amply. They were going to kill him on his log at sundown.
+There would be no witnesses to see it, no retribution to follow after
+it. The very ease of the undertaking made them forget even their inborn
+fear of the place of Fishhead's habitation.
+
+For more than an hour now they had been coming from their shack across a
+deeply indented arm of the lake. Their dugout, fashioned by fire and adz
+and draw-knife from the bole of a gum tree, moved through the water as
+noiselessly as a swimming mallard, leaving behind it a long, wavy trail
+on the stilled waters. Jake, the better oarsman sat flat in the stern of
+the round-bottomed craft, paddling with quick, splashless strokes. Joel,
+the better shot, was squatted forward. There was a heavy, rusted duck
+gun between his knees.
+
+Though their spying upon the victim had made them certain sure he would
+not be about the shore for hours, a doubled sense of caution led them to
+hug closely the weedy banks. They slid along the shore like shadows,
+moving so swiftly and in such silence that the watchful mud turtles
+barely turned their snaky heads as they passed. So, a full hour before
+the time, they came slipping around the mouth of the slough and made for
+a natural ambuscade which the mixed breed had left within a stone's jerk
+of his cabin to his own undoing.
+
+Where the slough's flow joined deeper water a partly uprooted tree was
+stretched, prone from shore, at the top still thick and green with
+leaves that drew nourishment from the earth in which the half-uncovered
+roots yet held, and twined about with an exuberance of trumpet vines and
+wild fox-grapes. All about was a huddle of drift--last year's
+cornstalks, shreddy strips of bark, chunks of rotted weed, all the
+riffle and dunnage of a quiet eddy. Straight into this green clump
+glided the dugout and swung, broadside on, against the protecting trunk
+of the tree, hidden from the inner side by the intervening curtains of
+rank growth, just as the Baxters had intended it should be hidden, when
+days before in their scouting they marked this masked place of waiting
+and included it, then and there, in the scope of their plans.
+
+There had been no hitch or mishap. No one had been abroad in the late
+afternoon to mark their movements--and in a little while Fishhead ought
+to be due. Jake's woodman's eye followed the downward swing of the sun
+speculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward, lengthened and slithered
+on the small ripples. The small noises of the day died out; the small
+noises of the coming night began to multiply. The green-bodied flies
+went away and big mosquitoes, with speckled gray legs, came to take the
+places of the flies. The sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with small
+mouthing sounds as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. A
+monster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top of
+his dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armored sentinel on
+the watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter back and forth above the tops
+of the trees. A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidle
+off briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollen
+with summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as it
+moved along the surface of the water in a series of slow torpid s's.
+Directly above the head of either of the waiting assassins a compact
+little swarm of midges hung, holding to a sort of kite-shaped formation.
+
+A little more time passed and Fishhead came out of the woods at the
+back, walking swiftly, with a sack over his shoulder. For a few seconds
+his deformities showed in the clearing, then the black inside of the
+cabin swallowed him up. By now the sun was almost down. Only the red nub
+of it showed above the timber line across the lake, and the shadows lay
+inland a long way. Out beyond, the big cats were stirring, and the great
+smacking sounds as their twisting bodies leaped clear and fell back in
+the water came shoreward in a chorus.
+
+But the two brothers in their green covert gave heed to nothing except
+the one thing upon which their hearts were set and their nerves tensed.
+Joel gently shoved his gun-barrels across the log, cuddling the stock to
+his shoulder and slipping two fingers caressingly back and forth upon
+the triggers. Jake held the narrow dugout steady by a grip upon a
+fox-grape tendril.
+
+A little wait and then the finish came. Fishhead emerged from the cabin
+door and came down the narrow footpath to the water and out upon the
+water on his log. He was barefooted and bareheaded, his cotton shirt
+open down the front to show his yellow neck and breast, his dungaree
+trousers held about his waist by a twisted tow string. His broad splay
+feet, with the prehensile toes outspread, gripped the polished curve of
+the log as he moved along its swaying, dipping surface until he came to
+its outer end and stood there erect, his chest filling, his chinless
+face lifted up and something of mastership and dominion in his poise.
+And then--his eye caught what another's eyes might have missed--the
+round, twin ends of the gun barrels, the fixed gleams of Joel's eyes,
+aimed at him through the green tracery.
+
+In that swift passage of time, too swift almost to be measured by
+seconds, realization flashed all through him, and he threw his head
+still higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and out
+across the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his cry
+was the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bay
+of a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, too,
+was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duck
+gun came.
+
+At twenty yards the double charge tore the throat out of him. He came
+down, face forward, upon the log and clung there, his trunk twisting
+distortedly, his legs twitching and kicking like the legs of a speared
+frog, his shoulders hunching and lifting spasmodically as the life ran
+out of him all in one swift coursing flow. His head canted up between
+the heaving shoulders, his eyes looked full on the staring face of his
+murderer, and then the blood came out of his mouth and Fishhead, in
+death still as much fish as man, slid flopping, head first, off the end
+of the log and sank, face downward, slowly, his limbs all extended out.
+One after another a string of big bubbles came up to burst in the middle
+of a widening reddish stain on the coffee-colored water.
+
+The brothers watched this, held by the horror of the thing they had
+done, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun,
+took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a sudden
+stroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and they
+were in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, the trunk of the
+uprooted tree only five. Joel, still holding fast to his hot gun, made
+for the log, gaining it with one stroke. He threw his free arm over it
+and clung there, treading water, as he shook his eyes free. Something
+gripped him--some great, sinewy, unseen thing gripped him fast by the
+thigh, crushing down on his flesh.
+
+He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out and his mouth set in a square
+shape of agony, and his fingers gripped into the bark of the tree like
+grapples. He was pulled down and down, by steady jerks, not rapidly but
+steadily, so steadily, and as he went his fingernails tore four little
+white strips in the tree bark. His mouth went under, next his popping
+eyes, then his erect hair, and finally his clawing, clutching hand, and
+that was the end of him.
+
+Jake's fate was harder still, for he lived longer--long enough to see
+Joel's finish. He saw it through the water that ran down his face, and
+with a great surge of his whole body he literally flung himself across
+the log and jerked his legs up high into the air to save them. He flung
+himself too far, though, for his face and chest hit the water on the far
+side. And out of this water rose the head of a great fish, with the
+lake slime of years on its flat, black head, its whiskers bristling, its
+corpsy eyes alight. Its horny jaws closed and clamped in the front of
+Jake's flannel shirt. His hand struck out wildly and was speared on a
+poisoned fin, and unlike Joel, he went from sight with a great yell and
+a whirling and a churning of the water that made the cornstalks circle
+on the edges of a small whirlpool.
+
+But the whirlpool soon thinned away into widening rings of ripples and
+the cornstalks quit circling and became still again, and only the
+multiplying night noises sounded about the mouth of the slough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bodies of all three came ashore on the same day near the same place.
+Except for the gaping gunshot wound where the neck met the chest,
+Fishhead's body was unmarked. But the bodies of the two Baxters were so
+marred and mauled that the Reelfooters buried them together on the bank
+without ever knowing which might be Jake's and which might be Joel's.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+GUILTY AS CHARGED
+
+
+The Jew, I take it, is essentially temperamental, whereas the Irishman
+is by nature sentimental; so that in the long run both of them may reach
+the same results by varying mental routes. This, however, has nothing to
+do with the story I am telling here, except inferentially.
+
+It was trial day at headquarters. To be exact, it was the tail end of
+trial day at headquarters. The mills of the police gods, which grind not
+so slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with their
+grinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the last
+of the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at the
+west, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits,
+patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superior
+officer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a while
+an inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue bumblebee.
+In due turn each offender had made his defense; those who were lying
+about it did their lying, as a rule, glibly and easily and with a
+certain bogus frankness very pleasing to see. Contrary to a general
+opinion, the Father of Lies is often quite good to his children. But
+those who were telling the truth were frequently shamefaced and mumbling
+of speech, making poor impressions.
+
+In due turn, also, each man had been convicted or had been acquitted,
+yet all--the proven innocent and the adjudged guilty alike--had
+undergone punishment, since they all had to sit and listen to lectures
+on police discipline and police manners from the trial deputy. It was
+perhaps as well for the peace and good order of the community that the
+public did not attend these seances. Those classes now that are the most
+thoroughly and most personally governed--the pushcart pedlers, with the
+permanent cringing droops in their alien backs; the sinful small boys,
+who play baseball in the streets against the statutes made and provided;
+the broken old wrecks, who ambush the prosperous passer-by in the
+shadows of dark corners, begging for money with which to keep body and
+soul together--it was just as well perhaps that none of them was
+admitted there to see these large, firm, stern men in uniform wriggling
+on the punishment chair, fumbling at their buttons, explaining, whining,
+even begging for mercy under the lashing flail of Third Deputy
+Commissioner Donohue's sleety judgments.
+
+"The only time old Donny warms up is when he's got a grudge against
+you," a wit of headquarters--Larry Magee by name--had said once as he
+came forth from the ordeal, brushing imaginary hailstones off his
+shoulders. "It's always snowing hard in his soul!"
+
+Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third Deputy Commissioner Donohue
+was addicted to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound of his own
+voice. Give to Donohue a congenial topic, such as some one's official or
+personal shortcomings, and a congenial audience, and he excelled
+mightily in saw-edged oratory, rolling his r's until the tortured
+consonants fairly lay on their backs and begged for mercy.
+
+This, however, would have to be said for Deputy Commissioner Donohue--he
+was a hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, who
+had climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages,
+he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquent
+policeman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted
+of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration--his gray flints
+of eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearly
+always, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he would
+plaster on the penalty--and the lecture--twice as thick. Wherefore,
+because of all these things, the newspaper men at headquarters viewed
+this elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional emotions. Presiding
+over a trial day, he made abundant copy for them, which was very good;
+but if the case were an important one he often prolonged it until they
+missed getting the result into their final editions, which, if you know
+anything about final editions, was very, very bad.
+
+It was so on this particular afternoon. Here it was nearly dusk. The
+windows toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against a
+wall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had started
+in at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouched
+forward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down between
+his leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp,
+and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crested
+cormorant upon a barren rock.
+
+Except for one lone figure of misery, the anxious bench below him was by
+now empty. Most of the witnesses were gone and most of the spectators,
+and all the newspaper men but two. He whetted a lean and crooked
+forefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket book, turned the page
+and called the last case, being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan.
+Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon curried. For being on such
+and such a day, at such and such an hour, off his post, where he
+belonged, and in a saloon where he did not belong, sitting down, with
+his blouse unfastened and his belt unbuckled; and for having no better
+excuse, or no worse one, than the ancient tale of a sudden attack of
+faintness causing him to make his way into the nearest place where he
+might recover himself--that it happened to be a family liquor store was,
+he protested, a sheer accident--Patrolman Rogan was required to pay five
+days' pay and, moreover, to listen to divers remarks in which he heard
+himself likened to several things, none of them of a complimentary
+character.
+
+Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with his
+uniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the third
+deputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting,
+prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for the
+door, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total and
+final summary of old Donohue's bag of game.
+
+They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and late
+defendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled official
+accents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up from
+his desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrows
+in an effort to read what was written there.
+
+"Wan more case to be heard," he announced. "Keep order there, you men at
+the door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name out
+lingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about him
+for some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some of
+you! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications."
+
+Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing the
+shadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doing
+duty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice
+repeated.
+
+"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, the
+older of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that tickles
+me! I've been looking this long time for something like this to be
+coming off." Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had his
+deep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was a
+very deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutional
+infirmity with La Farge.
+
+"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a young
+reporter.
+
+"I don't know yet--the charge must be newly filed, I guess," said La
+Farge, answering the last question first. "But I hope they nail him! I
+don't like him--never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart--one of those
+self-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a court
+interpreter down at Essex Market--knows about steen languages. And
+he--here he comes now."
+
+Weil passed them, going into the trial room--a short, squarely built man
+with oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew him
+for one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of his
+outward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sight
+of him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy Commissioner
+Donohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hackles
+stiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits of
+frosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leather
+back of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebody
+when Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would have
+delighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon the
+accused.
+
+"Listen!" he said under his breath to Rogers. "I think they must have
+the goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's the cockiest person
+round this building. Now take a look at him."
+
+Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil
+as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words;
+yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him,
+as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit and
+assurance.
+
+"Rogers," said La Farge, "let's hustle out and 'phone in what we've got
+and then come back right away. If this fellow's going to get the harpoon
+stuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding."
+
+Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned back to hear the beginning of
+the case, whatever it might be, against the Jew. The rest scattered
+through the corridors, heading mainly for the exits, so that the two
+newspaper men had company as they hurried toward the main door, making
+for their offices across the street. When they came back the long cross
+halls were almost deserted; it had taken them a little longer to finish
+the job of telephoning than they had figured. At the door of the trial
+room stood one bulky blue figure. It was the acting bailiff.
+
+"How far along have they got?" asked La Farge as the policeman made way
+for them to pass in.
+
+"Captain Meagher is the first witness," said the policeman. "He's the
+one that's makin' the charge."
+
+"What is the charge?" put in Rogers.
+
+"At this distance I couldn't make out--Cap Meagher, he mumbles so,"
+confessed the doorkeeper. "Somethin' about misuse of police property, I
+take it to be."
+
+"Aha!" gloated La Farge in his gratification. "Come on, Rogers--I don't
+want to miss any of this."
+
+It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge by
+his attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. He
+still sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;
+but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher was
+known in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievably
+dull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had a
+long, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and heavy black eyebrows that
+curved high in the middle and arched downward at each end--circumflexes
+accenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustache
+drooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. Larry
+Magee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape of
+the captain's mustache.
+
+"No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears his
+horseshoe upside down on his face!"
+
+Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trial
+deputy spoke.
+
+"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously.
+
+"That's all," said Meagher.
+
+"I note," went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused does
+not appear to be represented by counsel."
+
+A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defend
+him.
+
+"No, sir," spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner."
+His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the
+self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the
+racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian
+purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my own
+case myself."
+
+Donohue merely grunted.
+
+"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher any
+questions?" he demanded.
+
+Weil shook his oily head of hair.
+
+"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything."
+
+"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next.
+
+There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses.
+
+"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your own
+behalf?" queried the deputy commissioner.
+
+"I think I'd like to," answered Weil.
+
+He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing the
+room, appearing--so La Farge thought--more shamefaced and abashed than
+ever.
+
+"Now, then," commanded Donohue impressively, "what statement, if any,
+have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here charge
+preferred by your superior officer?"
+
+Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment;
+but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there was
+something falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat.
+
+"Once a grandstander always a grandstander!" he muttered derisively.
+
+"What did you say?" whispered Rogers.
+
+"Nothing," replied La Farge--"just thinking out loud. Listen to what
+Foxy Issy has to say for himself."
+
+"Well, sir, commissioner," began the accused, "this here thing happens
+last Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you." He had slipped
+already into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in the
+present tense.
+
+"It's late in the afternoon--round five o'clock I guess--and I'm
+downstairs in the Detective Bureau alone."
+
+"Alone, you say?" broke in Donohue, emphasizing the word as though the
+admission scored a point against the man on trial.
+
+"Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that everybody else is out and I'm in
+temporary charge, as you might say. It's getting along toward dark when
+Patrolman Morgan, who's on duty out in the hall, comes in and says to me
+there's a woman outside who can't talk English and he can't make out
+what she wants. So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in. Right
+away I see she's a Ginney--an Italian," he corrected himself hurriedly.
+"She's got a child with her--a little boy about two years old."
+
+"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag in
+details at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselves
+as to show his skill as a cross-examiner.
+
+"Well, sir," complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five years
+old. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she's
+about twenty-five--or maybe twenty-six. She's got no figure at all and
+she's dressed poor. But she's got a pretty face--big brown eyes and----"
+
+"That will do," interrupted the deputy commissioner--"that will do for
+that. I take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty expert,
+Lieutenant Weil!" he added with elaborate sarcasm.
+
+"You asked me about her looks, sir," parried Weil defensively, "and I'm
+just trying to tell you."
+
+"Proceed! Proceed!" bade Donohue, rumbling his consonants.
+
+"Yes, sir. Well, in regard to this woman: She's talking so fast I can't
+figure out at first what she's trying to tell me. It's Italian she's
+talking--or I should say the kind of Italian they talk in parts of
+Sicily. After a little I begin to see what she's driving at. It seems
+she's the wife of one Antonio Terranova and her name is Maria
+Terranova. And after I get her straightened out and going slow she tells
+me her story."
+
+"Is this here story got a bearin' on the charges pendin'?"
+
+"I think it has. Yes, sir; it helps to explain what happens. As near as
+I can make out she comes from some small town down round Messina
+somewhere, and the way she tells it to me, her husband leaves there not
+long after they're married and comes over here to New York to get work,
+and when he gets enough money saved up ahead he's going to send back for
+her. That's near about three years ago. So she stays behind waiting for
+him, and in about four months after he leaves the baby is born--the same
+baby that she brings in here to headquarters with her last Thursday. She
+says neither one of them thinks it'll be long before he can save up
+money for her passage, but it seems like he has the bad luck. He's sick
+for a while after he lands, and then when he gets a job in a
+construction gang the padrone takes the most of what he makes. And just
+about the time he gets a little saved up some other Ginney--Italian--in
+the construction camp steals it off of him.
+
+"So he's up against it, and after a while he gets desperate. So he joins
+in with a Black Hander gang--amateurs operating up in the Bronx--and the
+very first trick he helps turn he does well by it. His share is near
+about a hundred dollars, and he sends her the best part of it to bring
+her and the baby over. She don't know at the time, though, how he raises
+all this money--so she tells me. And I think, at that, she's telling the
+truth--she ain't got sense enough to lie, I think. Anyway it sounds
+truthful to me--the way she tells it to me here last Thursday night."
+
+"Proceed!" prompted Donohue testily.
+
+"So she takes this here money and buys herself a steerage ticket and
+comes over here with the baby. That, as near as I can figure out, is
+about three months ago. She's not seen this husband of hers for going on
+three years--of course the baby's never seen him. And she figures he'll
+be at the dock to meet her. But he's not there. But his cousin is
+there--another Italian from the same town. He gets her through Ellis
+Island somehow and he takes her up to where he's living--up in the
+Bronx--and tells her the reason her husband ain't there to meet her. The
+reason is, he's at Sing Sing, doing four years.
+
+"It seems that after he's sent her this passage money the husband gets
+to thinking Black Handing is a pretty soft way to make a living,
+especially compared to day laboring, and he tries to raise a stake
+single-handed. He writes a Black Hand letter to an Italian grocer he
+knows has got money laid by, only the grocer is foxy and goes to the
+Tremont Avenue Station and shows the letter. They rig up a plant and
+this here Antonio Terranova walks into it. He's caught with the marked
+bills on him. So just the week before she lands he takes a plea in
+General Sessions and the judge gives him four years. When she gets to
+where she's telling me that part of it she starts crying.
+
+"Well, anyway, that's the situation--him up there at Sing Sing doing his
+four years and her down here in New York with the kid on her hands. And
+she don't ever see him again, either, because in about three or four
+weeks--something like that--he's working with a gang in the rock quarry
+across the river, where they're building the new cell house, and a chunk
+of slate falls down and kills him and two others."
+
+"Right here and now," interrupted the third deputy commissioner, "I want
+to know what's all this here stuff got to do with these here charges and
+specifications?"
+
+"Just a minute, please. I'm coming to that right away, commissioner,"
+protested the accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous agility;
+yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before he
+continued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening La
+Farge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, that
+somehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of his acrid antagonism
+for Weil; that, by mental processes which as yet he could not exactly
+resolve into their proper constituents, it was beginning to dribble
+away from him. And realization came to him, almost with a shock, that
+the man on the stand was telling the truth. Truth or not, though, the
+narrative thus far had been commonplace enough--people at headquarters
+hear the like of it often; and as a seasoned police reporter La Farge's
+emotions by now should be coated over with a calloused shell inches deep
+and hard as horn. Trying with half his mind to figure out what it was
+that had quickened these emotions, he listened all the harder as Weil
+went on.
+
+"So this here big chunk of rock or slate or whatever it was falls on him
+and the two others and kills them. Not knowing where to send the body,
+they bury it up there at Sing Sing, and she never sees him again, living
+or dead. But here just a few days ago it seems she picks up, from
+overhearing some of the other Italians talking, that we've got such a
+thing as a Rogues' Gallery down here at headquarters and that her
+husband's picture is liable to be in it. So that's why she's here. She's
+found her way here somehow and she asks me won't I"--he caught
+himself--"won't the police please give her her husband's picture out of
+the gallery."
+
+"And for why did she want that?" rumbled Donohue.
+
+"That's what I asks her myself. It seems she's got no shame about it at
+all. She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get the
+money to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going to
+keep it--till the bambino--that's Italian for baby, commissioner, you
+know--till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father looked
+like."
+
+Now of a sudden La Farge knew--or thought he knew--why his interest had
+stirred in him a minute before. Instinctively his reporter's sixth sense
+had scented a good news story before the real point of the story had
+come out, even. A curious little silence had fallen on the half-lighted,
+almost empty big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this silence:
+
+"Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain to her what the
+circumstances are. I tells her that, in the first place, on account of
+the mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery having gone into
+effect, it's an even bet her husband's picture ain't there anyhow--that
+it's most likely been destroyed; and in the second place, even if it is
+there, I tells her I've got no right to be giving it to her without an
+order from somebody higher up. But either she can't understand or she
+won't. I guess my being in uniform makes her think I'm running the whole
+department, and she won't seem to listen to what I says.
+
+"She cries and she carries on worse than ever, and begs and begs me to
+give it to her. I guess you know how excitable those Italian women can
+be, especially when they are Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after a
+lot of that sort of thing I tells her to wait where she is for a minute.
+I leaves her and I goes across into the Bertillon room, where the
+pictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio Terranova. I forget his
+number now and I don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked when
+we're cleaning out the gallery; but he's there all right, full face and
+side view, with his gallery number in big white figures on his chest.
+And, commissioner, he's a pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney." The
+witness checked an inclination to grin. "I takes a slant at his picture,
+and I can't make up my own mind which way he'll look the worst enlarged
+into a crayon portrait--full face or side view. I can still hear her
+crying outside the door. She's crying harder than ever.
+
+"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries to
+argue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds the
+baby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's for
+the bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never even
+heard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It's
+pretty tough.
+
+"She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorry
+for her--nobody could." He hesitated a moment as though seeking for
+words of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regular
+vocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner," he said suddenly, and
+stopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of my
+own!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense.
+
+"Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voice
+seemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then the
+Semitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more than
+shamefaced--it was downright sheepish.
+
+"Why, then," he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room the
+second time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--of
+course she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe that
+explains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--every
+morning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin for
+me. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that."
+
+He halted as though he were through.
+
+"Then do I understand that, without an order from any superior
+authority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to the
+Police Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even.
+He whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top.
+
+"Yes, sir," owned up the Jew. "There's nobody there but just us two. And
+I don't know how Captain Meagher comes to find the picture is gone and
+that it was me took it--but it's true, commissioner. She goes away
+kissing it and holding it to the breast of her clothes--that Rogues'
+Gallery picture! Yes, sir; I gives it to her."
+
+The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded right arm was shoved out,
+with all the lean fingers upon the hand at the far end of it widely
+extended. He spoke, and something in his throat--a hard lump
+perhaps--husked his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice.
+
+"Lieutenant Weil," he said, "I congratulate you! You're guilty!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Escape of Mr. Trimm, by Irvin S. Cobb
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