The Briscoe buckboard rattled along the elastic country-road, the roans
setting a sharp pace as they turned eastward on the pike toward home and
supper.
“They'll make the eight miles in three-quarters of an hour,” said the
judge, proudly. He pointed ahead with his whip. “Just beyond that bend
we pass through Six-Cross-Roads.”
Miss Sherwood leaned forward eagerly. “Can we see 'Mr. Wimby's' house
from here?”
“No, it's on the other side, nearer town; we pass it later. It's the
only respectable-looking house in this township.” They reached the turn
of the road, and the judge touched up his colts to a sharper gait. “No
need of dallying,” he observed quietly. “It always makes me a little
sick just to see the place. I'd hate to have a break-down here.”
They came in sight of a squalid settlement, built raggedly about a
blacksmith's shop and a saloon. Half-a-dozen shanties clustered near the
forge, a few roofs scattered through the shiftlessly cultivated fields,
four or five barns propped by fence-rails, some sheds with gaping
apertures through which the light glanced from side to side, a squad of
thin, “razor-back” hogs--now and then worried by gaunt hounds--and
some abused-looking hens, groping about disconsolately in the mire, a
broken-topped buggy with a twisted wheel settling into the mud of the
middle of the road (there was always abundant mud, here, in the dryest
summer), a lowering face sneering from a broken window--Six-Cross-Roads
was forbidding and forlorn enough by day. The thought of what
might issue from it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the
Cross-Roads, together with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the
atmosphere of the place, made Miss Sherwood shiver as though a cold
draught had crossed her.
“It is so sinister!” she exclaimed. “And so unspeakably mean! This is
where they live, the people who hate him, is it? The 'White-Caps'?”
“They are just a lot of rowdies,” replied Briscoe. “You have your rough
corners in big cities, and I expect there are mighty few parts of any
country that don't have their tough neighborhoods, only Six-Cross-Roads
happens to be worse than most. They choose to call themselves
'White-Caps,' but I guess it's just a name they like to give themselves.
Usually White-Caps are a vigilance committee going after rascalities the
law doesn't reach, or won't reach, but these fellows are not that kind.
They got together to wipe out their grudges--and sometimes they didn't
need any grudge and let loose their deviltries just for pure orneriness;
setting haystacks afire and such like; or, where a farmer had offended
them, they would put on their silly toggery and take him out at midnight
and whip him and plunder his house and chase the horses and cattle into
his corn, maybe. They say the women went with them on their raids.”
“And he was the first to try to stop them?”
“Well, you see our folks are pretty long-suffering,” Briscoe replied,
apologetically. “We'd sort of got used to the meanness of the
Cross-Roads. It took a stranger to stir things up--and he did. He sent
eight of 'em to the penitentiary, some for twenty years.”
As they passed the saloon a man stepped into the doorway and looked at
them. He was coatless and clad in garments worn to the color of dust;
his bare head was curiously malformed, higher on one side than on the
other, and though the buckboard passed rapidly, and at a distance, this
singular lopsidedness was plainly visible to the occupants, lending an
ugly significance to his meagre, yellow face. He was tall, lean, hard,
powerfully built. He eyed the strangers with affected languor, and then,
when they had gone by, broke into sudden, loud laughter.
“That was Bob Skillett, the worst of the lot,” said the judge. “Harkless
sent his son and one brother to prison, and it nearly broke his heart
that he couldn't swear to Bob.”
When they were beyond the village and in the open road again. Miss
Sherwood took a deep breath. “I think I breathe more freely,” she said.
“That was a hideous laugh he sent after us. I had heard of places
like this before--and I don't think I care to see many of them. As I
understand it, Six-Cross-Roads is entirely vicious, isn't it; and bears
the same relation to the country that the slums do to a city?'”
“That's about it. They make their own whiskey. I presume; and they have
their own fights amongst themselves, but they settle 'em themselves,
too, and keep their own counsel and hush it up. Lige Willetts, Minnie's
friend--I guess she's told you about Lige?--well, Lige Willetts will go
anywhere when he's following a covey, though mostly the boys leave this
part of the country alone when they're hunting; but Lige got into
a thicket back of the forge one morning, and he came on a crowd of
buzzards quarrelling over a heap on the ground, and he got out in a
hurry. He said he was sure it was a dog; but he ran almost all the way
to Plattville.”
“Father!” exclaimed his daughter, leaning from the back seat. “Don't
tell such stories to Helen; she'll think we're horrible, and you'll
frighten her, too.”
“Well, it isn't exactly a lady's story,” said the judge. He glanced at
his guest's face and chuckled. “I guess we won't frighten her much,” he
went on. “Young lady, I don't believe you'd be afraid of many things,
would you? You don't look like it. Besides, the Cross-Roads isn't
Plattville, and the White-Caps have been too scared to do anything much,
except try to get even with the 'Herald,' for the last two years; ever
since it went for them. They're laying for Harkless partly for revenge
and partly because they daren't do anything until he's out of the way.”
The girl gave a low cry with a sharp intake of breath. “Ah! One grows
tired of this everlasting American patience! Why don't the Plattville
people do something before they----”
“It's just as I say,” Briscoe answered; “our folks are sort of used to
them. I expect we do about all we can; the boys look after him nights,
and the main trouble is that we can't make him understand he ought to
be more afraid of them. If he'd lived here all his life he would be.
You know there's an old-time feud between the Cross-Roads and our folks;
goes way back into pioneer history and mighty few know anything of it.
Old William Platt and the forefathers of the Bardlocks and Tibbses and
Briscoes and Schofields moved up here from North Carolina a good
deal just to get away from some bad neighbors, mostly Skilletts and
Johnsons--one of the Skilletts had killed old William Platt's two sons.
But the Skilletts and Johnsons followed all the way to Indiana to join
in making the new settlement, and they shot Platt at his cabin door
one night, right where the court-house stands to-day. Then the other
settlers drove them out for good, and they went seven miles west and set
up a still. A band of Indians, on the way to join the Shawnee Prophet at
Tippecanoe, came down on the Cross-Roads, and the Cross-Roaders bought
them off with bad whiskey and sent them over to Plattville. Nearly all
the Plattville men were away, fighting under Harrison, and when they
came back there were only a few half-crazy women and children left.
They'd hid in the woods.
“The men stopped just long enough to hear how it was, and started for
the Cross-Roads; but the Cross-Roads people caught them in an ambush and
not many of our folks got back.
“We really never did get even with them, though all the early settlers
lived and died still expecting to see the day when Plattville would go
over and pay off the score. It's the same now as it was then, good stock
with us, bad stock over here; and all the country riff-raff in creation
come and live with 'em when other places get too hot to hold them. Only
one or two of us old folks know what the original trouble was about; but
you ask a Plattville man, to-day, what he thinks of the Cross-Roads and
he'll be mighty apt to say, 'I guess we'll all have to go over there
some time and wipe those hoodlums out.' It's been coming to that a long
time. The work the 'Herald' did has come nearer bringing us even with
Six-Cross-Roads than anything else ever has. Queer, too--a man that's
only lived in Plattville a few years to be settling such an old score
for us. They'll do their best to get him, and if they do there'll be
trouble of an illegal nature. I think our people would go over there
again, but I expect there wouldn't be any ambush this time; and the
pioneers, might rest easier in--” He broke off suddenly and nodded to a
little old man in a buckboard, who was turning off from the road into a
farm lane which led up to a trim cottage with a honeysuckle vine by the
door. “That's Mrs. Wimby's husband,” said the judge in an undertone.
Miss Sherwood observed that “Mrs. Wimby's husband” was remarkable for
the exceeding plaintiveness of his expression. He was a weazened, blank,
pale-eyed little man, with a thin, white mist of neck whisker; his coat
was so large for him that the sleeves were rolled up from his wrists
with several turns, and, as he climbed painfully to the ground to open
the gate of the lane, it needed no perspicuous eye to perceive that his
trousers had been made for a much larger man, for, as his uncertain foot
left the step of his vehicle, one baggy leg of the garment fell down
over his foot, completely concealing his boot and hanging some inches
beneath. A faintly vexed expression crossed his face as he endeavored
to arrange the disorder, but he looked up and returned Briscoe's bow,
sadly, with an air of explaining that he was accustomed to trouble, and
that the trousers had behaved no worse than he expected.
No more inoffensive or harmless figure than this feeble little old man
could be imagined; yet his was the distinction of having received a
terrible visit from his neighbors of the Cross-Roads. Mrs. Wimby was a
widow, who owned a comfortable farm, and she had refused every offer
of the neighboring ill-eligible bachelors to share it. However, a
vagabonding tinker won her heart, and after their marriage she continued
to be known as “Mrs. Wimby”; for so complete was the bridegroom's
insignificance that it extended to his name, which proved quite
unrememberable, and he was usually called “Widder-Woman Wimby's
Husband,” or, more simply, “Mr. Wimby.” The bride supplied the needs of
his wardrobe with the garments of her former husband, and, alleging this
proceeding as the cause of their anger, the Cross-Roads raiders, clad
as “White-Caps,” broke into the farmhouse one night, looted it, tore the
old man from his bed, and compelling his wife, who was tenderly devoted
to him, to watch, they lashed him with sapling shoots till he was near
to death. A little yellow cur, that had followed his master on his
wanderings, was found licking the old man's wounds, and they deluged the
dog with kerosene and then threw the poor animal upon a bonfire they had
made, and danced around it in heartiest enjoyment.
The man recovered, but that was no palliation of the offense to the
mind of a hot-eyed young man from the East, who was besieging the county
authorities for redress and writing brimstone and saltpetre for
his paper. The powers of the county proving either lackadaisical or
timorous, he appealed to those of the State, and he went every night to
sleep at a farmhouse, the owner of which had received a warning from
the “White-Caps.” And one night it befell that he was rewarded, for the
raiders attempted an entrance. He and the farmer and the former's
sons beat off the marauders and did a satisfactory amount of damage in
return. Two of the “White-Caps” they captured and bound, and others they
recognized. Then the State authorities hearkened to the voice of the
“Herald” and its owner; there were arrests, and in the course of time
there was a trial. Every prisoner proved an alibi, could have proved a
dozen; but the editor of the “Herald,” after virtually conducting the
prosecution, went upon the stand and swore to man after man. Eight men
went to the penitentiary on his evidence, five of them for twenty years.
The Plattville Brass Band serenaded the editor of the “Herald” again.
There were no more raids, and the Six-Cross-Roads men who were left kept
to their hovels, appalled and shaken, but, as time went by and left them
unmolested, they recovered a measure of their hardiness and began to
think on what they should do to the man who had brought misfortune
and terror upon them. For a long time he had been publishing their
threatening letters and warnings in a column which he headed: “Humor of
the Day.”
“Harkless don't understand the Cross-Roads,” Briscoe said to Miss
Sherwood as they left the Wimby farm behind; “and then he's like most
of us; hardly any of us realizes that harm's ever going to come to _us_.
Harkless was anxious enough about other people, but----”
The young lady interrupted him, touching his arm. “Look!” she said,
“Didn't you see a child, a little girl, ahead of us on the road?”
“I noticed one a minute ago, but she's not there now,” answered Briscoe.
“There was a child walking along the road just ahead, but she turned and
saw us coming, and she disappeared in the most curious way; she seemed
to melt into the weeds at the roadside, across from the elder-bush
yonder.”
The judge pulled in the horses by the elder-bush. “No child here, now,”
he said, “but you're right; there certainly was one, just before
you spoke.” The young corn was low in the fields, and there was no
hiding-place in sight.
“I'm very superstitious; I am sure it was an imp,” Miss Sherwood said.
“An imp or a very large chameleon; she was exactly the color of the
road.”
“A Cross-Roads imp,” said the judge, lifting the reins, “and in that
case we might as well give up. I never set up to be a match for those
people, and the children are as mean as their fathers, and smarter.”
When the buckboard had rattled on a hundred yards or so, a little figure
clad in a tattered cotton gown rose up from the weeds, not ten feet from
where the judge had drawn rein, and continued its march down the road
toward Plattville, capering in the dust and pursuing the buckboard with
malignant gestures till the clatter of the horses was out of hearing,
the vehicle out of sight.
Something over two hours later, as Mr. Martin was putting things to
rights in his domain, the Dry-Goods Emporium, previous to his departure
for the evening's gossip and checkers at the drug-store, he stumbled
over something soft, lying on the floor behind a counter. The thing
rose, and would have evaded him, but he put out his hands and pinioned
it and dragged it to the show-window where the light of the fading
day defined his capture. The capture shrieked and squirmed and fought
earnestly. Grasped by the shoulder he held a lean, fierce-eyed,
undersized girl of fourteen, clad in one ragged cotton garment, unless
the coat of dust she wore over all may be esteemed another. Her cheeks
were sallow, and her brow was already shrewdly lined, and her eyes were
as hypocritical as they were savage. She was very thin and little, but
old Tom's brown face grew a shade nearer white when the light fell upon
her.
“You're no Plattville girl,” he said sharply.
“You lie!” cried the child. “You lie! I am! You leave me go, will you?
I'm lookin' fer pap and you're a liar!”
“You crawled in here to sleep, after your seven-mile walk, didn't you?”
Martin went on.
“You're a liar,” she screamed again.
“Look here,” said Martin, slowly, “you go back to Six-Cross-Roads and
tell your folks that if anything happens to a hair of Mr. Harkless's
head every shanty in your town will burn, and your grandfather and
your father and your uncles and your brothers and your cousins and your
second-cousins and your third-cousins will never have the good luck to
see the penitentiary. Reckon you can remember that message? But before
I let you go to carry it, I guess you might as well hand out the paper
they sent you over here with.”
His prisoner fell into a paroxysm of rage, and struck at him.
“I'll git pap to kill ye,” she shrieked. “I don' know nothin' 'bout yer
Six-Cross-Roads, ner no papers, ner yer dam Mister Harkels neither, ner
_you_, ye razor-backed ole devil! Pap'll kill ye; leave me go--leave
me _go_!--Pap'll kill ye; I'll git him to _kill_ ye!” Suddenly her
struggles ceased; her eyes closed; her tense little muscles relaxed and
she drooped toward the floor; the old man shifted his grip to support
her, and in an instant she twisted out of his hands and sprang out of
reach, her eyes shining with triumph and venom.
“Ya-hay, Mister Razor-back!” she shrilled. “How's that fer hi? Pap'll
kill ye, Sunday. You'll be screechin' in hell in a week, an' we 'ull set
up an' drink our apple-jack an' laff!” Martin pursued her lumberingly,
but she was agile as a monkey, and ran dodging up and down the counters
and mocked him, singing “Gran' mammy Tipsy-Toe,” till at last she tired
of the game and darted out of the door, flinging back a hoarse laugh at
him as she went. He followed; but when he reached the street she was
a mere shadow flitting under the courthouse trees. He looked after her
forebodingly, then turned his eyes toward the Palace Hotel. The editor
of the “Herald” was seated under the awning, with his chair tilted back
against a post, gazing dreamily at the murky red afterglow in the west.
“What's the use of tryin' to bother him with it?” old Tom asked himself.
“He'd only laugh.” He noted that young William Todd sat near the editor,
whittling absently. Martin chuckled. “William's turn to-night,” he
muttered. “Well, the boys take mighty good care of him.” He locked the
doors of the Emporium, tried them, and dropped the keys in his pocket.
As he crossed the Square to the drug-store, where his cronies awaited
him, he turned again to look at the figure of the musing journalist. “I
hope he'll go out to the judge's,” he said, and shook his head, sadly.
“I don't reckon Plattville's any too spry for that young man. Five years
he's be'n here. Well, it's a good thing for us folks, but I guess it
ain't exactly high-life for him.” He kicked a stick out of his way
impatiently. “Now, where'd that imp run to?” he grumbled.
The imp was lying under the court-house steps. When the sound of
Martin's footsteps had passed away, she crept cautiously from her
hiding-place and stole through the ungroomed grass to the fence opposite
the hotel. Here she stretched herself flat in the weeds and took from
underneath the tangled masses of her hair, where it was tied with a
string, a rolled-up, crumpled slip of greasy paper. With this in
her fingers, she lay peering under the fence, her fierce eyes fixed
unwinkingly on Harkless and the youth sitting near him.
The street ran flat and gray in the slowly gathering dusk, straight
to the western horizon where the sunset embers were strewn in long,
dark-red streaks; the maple trees were clean-cut silhouettes against the
pale rose and pearl tints of the sky above, and a tenderness seemed to
tremble in the air. Harkless often vowed to himself he would watch no
more sunsets in Plattville; he realized that their loveliness lent a
too unhappy tone to the imaginings and introspections upon which he was
thrown by the loneliness of the environment, and he considered that he
had too much time in which to think about himself. For five years
his introspections had monotonously hurled one word at him: “Failure;
Failure! Failure!” He thought the sunsets were making him morbid. Could
he have shared them, that would have been different.
His long, melancholy face grew longer and more melancholy in the
twilight, while William Todd patiently whittled near by. Plattville
had often discussed the editor's habit of silence, and Mr. Martin had
suggested that possibly the reason Mr. Harkless was such a quiet man was
that there was nobody for him to talk to. His hearers did not agree, for
the population of Carlow County was a thing of pride, being greater
than that of several bordering counties. They did agree, however, that
Harkless's quiet was not unkind, whatever its cause, and that when it
was broken it was usually broken to conspicuous effect. Perhaps it was
because he wrote so much that he hated to talk.
A bent figure came slowly down the street, and William hailed it
cheerfully: “Evening, Mr. Fisbee.”
“A good evening, Mr. Todd,” answered the old man, pausing. “Ah, Mr.
Harkless, I was looking for you.” He had not seemed to be looking for
anything beyond the boundaries of his own dreams, but he approached
Harkless, tugging nervously at some papers in his pocket. “I have
completed my notes for our Saturday edition. It was quite easy; there is
much doing.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fisbee,” said Harkless, as he took the manuscript. “Have
you finished your paper on the earlier Christian symbolism? I hope the
'Herald' may have the honor of printing it.” This was the form they
used.
“I shall be the recipient of honor, sir,” returned Fisbee. “Your kind
offer will speed my work; but I fear, Mr. Harkless, I very much fear,
that your kindness alone prompts it, for, deeply as I desire it,
I cannot truthfully say that my essays appear to increase our
circulation.” He made an odd, troubled gesture as he went on: “They do
not seem to read them here, Mr. Harkless, although Mr. Martin assures me
that he carefully peruses my article on Chaldean decoration whenever he
rearranges his exhibition windows, and I bear in mind the clipping from
a Rouen paper you showed me, commenting generously upon the scholarship
of the 'Herald.' But for fifteen years I have tried to improve the art
feeling in Plattville, and I may say that I have worked in the face
of no small discouragement. In fact,” (there was a slight quaver in
Fisbee's voice), “I cannot remember that I ever received the slightest
word or token of encouragement till you came, Mr. Harkless. Since then
I have labored with refreshed energy; still, I cannot claim that our
architecture shows a change for the better, and I fear the engravings
upon the walls of our people exhibit no great progress in selection.
And--I--I wish also to say, Mr. Harkless, if you find it necessary to
make some alterations in the form of my reportorial items for Saturday's
issue, I shall perfectly understand, remembering your explanation that
journalism demands it. Good-evening, Mr. Harkless. Good-evening, Mr.
Todd.” He plodded on a few paces, then turned, irresolutely.
“What is it, Fisbee?” asked Harkless.
Fisbee stood for a moment, as though about to speak, then he smiled
faintly, shook his head, and went his way. Harkless stared after him,
surprised. It suddenly struck him, with a feeling of irritation, that
if Fisbee had spoken it would have been to advise him to call at Judge
Briscoe's. He laughed impatiently at the notion, and, drawing his pencil
and a pad from his pocket, proceeded to injure his eyes in the waning
twilight by the editorial perusal of the items his staff had just
left in his hands. When published, the manuscript came under a flaring
heading, bequeathed by Harkless's predecessor in the chair of the
“Herald,” and the alteration of which he felt Plattville would refuse to
sanction: “Happenings of Our City.” Below, was printed in smaller type:
“Improvements in the World of Business,” and, beneath that, came the
rubric: “Also, the Cradle, the Altar, and the Tomb.”
The first of Fisbee's items was thus recorded: “It may be noted that
the new sign-board of Mr. H. Miller has been put in place. We cannot but
regret that Mr. Miller did not instruct the painter to confine himself
to a simpler method of lettering.”
“Ah, Fisbee,” murmured the editor, reproachfully, “that new sign-board
is almost the only improvement in the World of Business Plattville has
seen this year. I wonder how many times we have used it from the first,
'It is rumored in business circles that Herve Miller contemplates'--to
the exciting, 'Under Way,' and, 'Finishing Touches.' My poor White
Knight, are five years of training wasted on you? Sometimes you make me
fear it. Here is Plattville panting for our story of the hanging of
the sign, and you throw away the climax like that!” He began to write
rapidly, bending low over the pad in the half darkness. His narrative
was an amplification of the interesting information (already possessed
by every inhabitant) that Herve Miller had put up a new sign. After a
paragraph of handsome description, “Herve is always enterprising,” wrote
the editor. “This is a move in the right direction. Herve, keep it up.”
He glanced over the other items meditatively, making alterations here
and there. The last two Fisbee had written as follows:
“There is noticeable in the new (and somewhat incongruous) portico
erected by Solomon Tibbs at the residence of Mr. Henry Tibbs Willetts,
an attempt at rococo decoration which cannot fail to sadden the
passer-by.”
“Miss Sherwood of Rouen, whom Miss Briscoe knew at the Misses Jennings'
finishing-school in New York, is a guest of Judge Briscoe's household.”
Fisbee's items were written in ink; and there was a blank space beneath
the last. At the bottom of the page something had been scribbled in
pencil. Harkless tried vainly to decipher it, but the twilight had
fallen too deep, and the writing was too faint, so he struck a match
and held it close to the paper. The action betokened only a languid
interest, but when he caught sight of the first of the four subscribed
lines he sat up straight in his chair with an ejaculation. At the bottom
of Fisbee's page was written in a dainty, feminine hand, of a type he
had not seen for years:
“'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
And cabbages--and kings--'”
He put the paper in his pocket, and set off rapidly down the village
street.
At his departure William Todd looked up quickly; then he got upon his
feet and quietly followed the editor. In the dusk a tattered little
figure rose up from the weeds across the way, and stole noiselessly
after William. He was in his shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned and
loose. On the nearest corner Mr. Todd encountered a fellow-townsman,
who had been pacing up and down in front of a cottage, crooning to a
protestive baby held in his arms. He had paused in his vigil to stare
after Harkless.
“Whereas he bound for, William?” inquired the man with the baby.
“Briscoes',” answered William, pursuing his way.
“I reckoned he would be,” commented the other, turning to his wife, who
sat on the doorstep, “I reckoned so when I see that lady at the lecture
last night.”
The woman rose to her feet. “Hi, Bill Todd!” she said. “What you got
onto the back of your vest?” William paused, put his hand behind him and
encountered a paper pinned to the dangling strap of his waistcoat. The
woman ran to him and unpinned the paper. It bore a writing. They took it
to where the yellow lamp-light shone through the open door, and read:
“der Sir
“FoLer harkls aL yo ples an gaRd him yoR
best venagesn is closteR, harkls not Got 3 das to liv
“We come in Wite.”
“What ye think, William?” asked the man with the baby, anxiously. But
the woman gave the youth a sharp push with her hand. “They never dast to
do it!” she cried. “Never in the world! You hurry, Bill Todd. Don't you
leave him out of your sight one second.”