presented itself. He couldn't remember when he had caught her with her
eyes closed before. She invariably stayed awake longer than he did at
night, telling him the same thing she had told him the night before, and
in the morning she kicked him out of bed before his eyes were open. Now
here was the golden, long-desired chance. It might never occur again. So
he swung with all his might and main.
Mrs. Fry involuntarily arose from her knees, balanced on her heels for a
second or two and then sat down some distance away with the same heels
in the air.
Then and there Lucius Fry ceased to be a person of no consequence.
Two or three neighbours, bent on rescuing Mrs. Fry, got no nearer than
the barn-lot fence. Lucius, still hopping around on one foot, gathered
up a stick of stove-wood in each hand, and let fly at them with such
determination and precision that they decided to let him go ahead and
murder her.
When Mrs. Fry's daughters hurried into the house a short time afterward,
they found their mother dressing and bandaging Mr. Fry's foot and
chokingly inquiring if she was hurting him. Between sentences she
applied a wet towel to a prodigious, unrecognizable object that had once
been her nose.
Juliet, the elder, planted herself in front of her father and
passionately inquired if it was true that he had dared to strike her
mother.
Lucius, with rare forethought, had provided himself with a stick of
stove-wood before entering the house. He now held it in his right hand.
He was not going to take any chances on his wife's treachery. He was
ready for the slightest sign of an uprising. Without answering his
daughter's question, he took a firm grip on the stick and started to
arise from his chair, upsetting the pail of water that his wife had been
using. Mrs. Fry screeched.
"Don't hit her! Don't kill her, Lucius! For God's----"
"Shut up!" snarled Lucius. "I'm goin' to belt the life out of her if she
comes around here disturbin' the peace. I'm peaceable now, Stella--we've
got perfect peace now, ain't we? But if she tries to--Well, you'll see
what'll happen, young lady. Go an' get a mop and clean up that water.
D'ye hear me? Beat it!"
"For the Lord's sake, Juliet, do what he tells you," begged Mrs. Fry.
"An' do it _quick_," said Mr. Fry.
Having so suddenly--and unintentionally--gained the upper hand in his
household, he was determined if possible to retain it. Temporarily at
least he had his wife scared almost to death and so submissive that he
couldn't think of half enough indignities to heap upon her, no matter
how hard he tried; and his disdainful daughters spoke in hushed voices,
and got up every morning to start the kitchen fire, and carried in the
wood, and waited on him first at meals, and allowed him to read _The
Banner_ before any one else claimed it, and fed the chickens, and
behaved as daughters ought to behave. It was too good to be true. But as
long as it really appeared to be true, he couldn't afford to relax for
an instant; he went about with a perpetual scowl and swore from morning
till night.
Every other week he went out to the stable, and after closing the doors,
proceeded to belabour an old saddle with a pitchfork handle. The sounds
reaching the back porch of the house caused Mrs. Fry to cover her ears
and moan: "Poor old Peggy! O-oh! My gracious! He'll--he'll kill her!"
Occasionally he threw a stove-lid or a hatchet or something else at his
wife, but his aim was singularly bad, for try as he would, he did not
appear to come closer than five or six feet to her with any of the
missiles. Once in a while he displayed the most appalling desire to
destroy everything in sight. On such occasions he smashed chairs, broke
up the crockery or tramped all over the garments that Mrs. Fry had just
hung out to dry. By mistake, he once picked up a hot stove-lid, and then
he swore in earnest. His dutiful wife wrapped his hand up in soda and
called the stove-lid a "nasty old thing!"
In a very short time everybody in Tinkletown was talking about Lucius
Fry. Some one, lying with a little more enterprise than the rest,
started the report that he had gone to Boggs City, the county seat, and
had thrashed a bartender who refused to sell him a drink. This report
grew until Lucius was credited with having polished off a whole bar-room
full of men without so much as sustaining a scratch himself.
When Lucius appeared on Main Street, men who had never noticed him
before went out of their way to be polite and friendly. Women who pitied
Mrs. Fry looked at him with interest and called him, under their breath,
a "big ugly brute." Children stopped playing and ran when they saw
Lucius Fry approaching.
Harry Squires, editor of _The Banner_, in reporting one of Mr. Fry's
most violent eruptions, alluded to him as "vicious Lucius." The name
clung to the little man. It was some time before the general public
could utter it with confidence. Haste was not conducive to accuracy.
Rash assuredness frequently turned Mr. Fry into "Vooshious Lishius" or
"Lishius Vooshious" or even "V'looshious Ooshious."
Mrs. Fry, in course of time, grew to be very proud of her master, the
despot of Power-house Gully. She revealed her pride every time she fell
in with acquaintances on the way to church. In reply to an oft-repeated
question as to why Mr. Fry did not go to church with her any longer, she
invariably gave the supercilious reply that nowadays when she requested
her husband to go to church, he told her to go to hell instead--and that
was the kind of a man she respected, she said, not one of your
weak-kneed, henpecked cowards who go to church because they are more
afraid of their wives than they are of the devil. And while the
mountainous Mrs. Fry was no longer able to thrash her five-foot-two
husband, she still inspired fear among churchgoers of both sexes and all
ages. She frequently asserted that she could lick any man in Tinkletown
except her husband--and moreover, if any officer of the law ever
attempted to arrest Lucius for what he did to her, she'd beat his head
off--that's what she'd do.
The marshal of Tinkletown, Anderson Crow, on three separate occasions
organized a posse to go out to Power-house Gully to arrest Lucius on the
complaint of neighbours who said they couldn't stand hearing his wife's
howls any longer. On each of these occasions, the marshal got as far as
the Fry front gate, backed by eight or ten of the huskiest men in town.
There they were intercepted by Mrs. Fry, who told them that Lucius was
upstairs peaceably reloading his double-barreled shotgun, or oiling up
his trusty old horse-pistol, as the case may have been, and she didn't
believe he would like to be disturbed.
"Is he ca'am an' quiet, Stella?" Marshal Crow would ask.
"As quiet as a lamb," Mrs. Fry would reply.
"Then I guess we'd better leave him alone," the Marshal would say,
adding: "But if he ever goes on the rampage again, just you send for me,
Stella, an' I'll come as quick as I can."
And the wife of Vicious Lucius would say: "Don't forget to bring the
undertaker with you when you come, Anderson. You won't need a doctor."
At times Lucius would feel his courage slipping. At such times he would
go out to the barn and jostle old Peggy around in the stall, hoping
against hope, but without the desired result. She simply _wouldn't_ step
on his foot.
One bitter cold night just before Christmas, a group of Tinkletown's
foremost citizens sat around the big sheet-iron stove in Lamson's store.
Outside, the wind was blowing a gale; it howled and shrieked around the
corners of the building, banged forgotten window-shutters, slammed
suspended signboards with relentless fury, and afforded unlimited food
for reflection, reminiscence and prophecy. It was long past Mr. Lamson's
customary hour for closing the store, but with rare tact the loungers
permitted him to do most of the talking. It was nice and warm in the
vicinity of the stove, and there were tubs of dried apples and prunes
and a sack of hazel nuts within easy reach.
"I'll never forget the Christmas I spent out in Nebraska," Mr. Lamson
was saying. He was probably the most travelled man in town. Every time
he told a story, he went a little farther West. (Harry Squires
disconcerted him on one occasion by asking in his most ironic manner if
he didn't think it would be a good idea to settle in California when he
got there, and Mr. Lamson, after thinking it over, stopped his
subscription to _The Banner_.) "Yes sir; that was a terrible winter. I
don't know as I ever told you about it, but we had to drive twenty-six
miles in sleighs to get a tree on Christmas Eve. I mean a Christmas
tree. The thermometer registered twenty-six below zero and--"
He was interrupted by the opening of the door. An icy draft swept down
the length of the store.
"Shut that door!" roared out Marshal Crow.
But the door remained open. Whereupon every one craned his neck to see
who was responsible. There was no one in sight.
"That's funny," said Newt Spratt. "I shut it tight when I came in awhile
ago."
"Well, go and shut it again," ordered Mr. Crow. "Do you want us to
freeze our ears right here in sight o' Jim Lamson's stove?"
Newt got up and kicked the door shut, saw that it was latched, and
returned to his place near the stove. Marshal Crow, during his absence,
had bettered his position. He had exchanged a seat on a box of soap for
the cane-bottom chair Newt had been occupying.
"As I was sayin'," resumed Mr. Lamson, "the thermometer registered--"
Again the door flew open, banging against a barrel of sugar. With one
accord the assembled group arose and peered at the open door.
"Well, now, that _is_ funny," said Newt. "I latched her sure that time."
"Acts like ghosts," said Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer.
"If I was a drinking man," said Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, "I'd
think I had 'em."
Marshal Crow stalked to the door, pulling his coat-collar up about his
throat as he encountered the furious blast of the wind.
At the top of the steps leading up to the porch stood a small figure
wrapped in a shawl. The light from within shone full upon the figure. It
was that of a young girl, and she was looking intently up the street.
"Well, of all the--Say, don't you know it's after nine o'clock?"
exclaimed the old Marshal. "What's a young girl like you doin' out this
time o' night?"
"Is--is that you, Mr. Crow?" quaked the girl without turning her head.
"It is. What's that got to do with it?"
"I--You don't see him anywheres up the street, do you?"
"Come inside if you want to talk to me. I ain't goin' to stand here in
this door an' freeze to death. Come in here, I say."
"I dassent. Maybe he follered me."
"Maybe who follered you?"
"Him."
By this time several other customers had joined the Marshal.
"Why, it's Lucius Fry's girl Elfaretta," said Elmer K. Pratt. "What's
the matter, Elfie?"
"You're sure he ain't follerin' me? Look hard," said the girl.
They all looked hard.
"I don't see anybody, Elfie," said Anderson Crow.
"It's a little early for Santa Claus," said Harry Squires, turning back
to the stove, his eye on the only rocking-chair in the place. "Come
inside and tell us all about it."
The girl entered the store, and some one closed the door. She was
shivering, and not altogether from the cold. Her glance darted hither
and thither, as if in quest of a more enduring protection than that
exemplified by the man-power surrounding her.
"Roll that barrel of sugar over against the door," she ordered quickly.
"I wouldn't have him catch me here for anything."
"You needn't be skeered," said the Marshal. "Ain't we here? Let's see:
there's one, two--eight of us. I guess--"
"He'd clean this bunch up as easy as rolling off a log," said Elfaretta,
edging toward the fire, but all the while casting uneasy apprehensive
glances over her shoulder.
Newt Spratt and Situate M. Jones jointly took it upon themselves to roll
the barrel of sugar up against the door.
"Are you referring to your estimable dad?" inquired Mr. Squires from the
rocking-chair.
"Yes, I am," said Elfaretta somewhat defiantly.
"Is he a little more vicious than usual tonight?" asked the reporter.
"He never was worse," said the girl. "He's just simply awful. I had to
come out to see if I couldn't get Mr. Crow to come up to the house
an'--an' settle him. He seen me just as I was going out the door, and
took after me. Out by the front gate he slipped on the ice and set down
like a ton of bricks. Oh, I never heard such cussing. You got to come up
to the house right away, Mr. Crow. He's just terrible. He--"
"Hold on a minute," interrupted the Marshal. "Go slow, now, an' answer
my questions. Is he--"
"He's throwing things around something awful. Ma's in the pantry with
the door locked, and Juliet's hiding up in the--"
"I know all that," broke in Mr. Crow sharply. "You needn't tell me about
that. What I want to know is, is he or is he not in his own house, under
his own roof?"
"He is, unless he's still setting out there in the front yard--or
follerin' after me," she concluded with a terrified look at the
barricaded door. "Do you think that barrel's heavy enough to stop him?"
"Well, if he's inside his own house, I can't touch him without a
warrant. You'll have to go an' swear out a search-warrant for him,
Elfarettie. It's against the law for me to arrest--"
"But ain't it against the law for him to be trying to murder Ma and
Juliet and me?"
"There ain't no use arguing about it. I can't go an' get him without a
warrant."
"You won't have to go in," said she confidently. "All you got to do is
to let him know you're outside--anywheres--looking for him, and he'll
come out; and he'll come without a warrant--you can bet your life on
that, Mr. Crow. He says he's getting awful sick of having nothing to
lick but women. He--"
"Did he say that?" demanded Marshal Crow, frowning and pulling at his
whiskers.
"He put in some extra words, but I can't say 'em," said Elfaretta.
"I've a notion to--to--" began the Marshal in a somewhat bellicose
manner, and then sadly shook his head. "No, it wouldn't be legal. I'm an
officer of the law. But let me tell you one thing, Elfaretta Fry, if I
_wasn't_ an officer of the law, I'd take your dad by the back of the
neck and shake him till his shoes flew off."
"We're getting away from the main issue," broke in Mr. Squires, the
gadfly. "The point is, Anderson, are you going to let Vicious Lucius
beat his family to death, or are you going up to the Gully and arrest
him?"
The Marshal looked at Harry reproachfully. "You know I ain't empowered
by law to enter a man's house without a warrant, Harry Squires."
"But the girl says you won't have to. She says her father will be only
too glad to step outside."
"How do I know she's telling the truth about all this rumpus? She ain't
under oath, is she? Well, there's got to be an affidavit, properly sworn
to, before I do anything. It's the law, an' you know it. She may be
lyin' like all get-out."
The girl flared up. "I'm going to tell Pa you called me a liar. He'll
bust your jaw if--"
"I didn't _call_ you a liar," snapped Anderson. "I only said _maybe_
you're lyin'. I leave it to anybody here if I said you was a liar; an'
besides, your pa ain't man enough to bust my jaw anyhow. You go home an'
tell him I said--"
"Let's get the facts about this present embroglio, Anderson, before we
make arrangements for another," put in Mr. Squires.
"I've no objection to that," said Anderson, a note of relief in his
voice. "She can't swear out a warrant till tomorrow morning anyhow, so
there's no particular hurry."
"But he's killin' Ma tonight!" burst in the girl.
"Keep cool now, my girl; don't get excited," cautioned the Marshal.
"What was he plannin' to kill her with? A gun?"
"No, sir. He had a hammer in one hand and a flatiron in the other, the
last I saw of him."
"Well, go on--tell us all about it."
"It was awful sudden. We were all setting around the kitchen stove, and
Pa was cracking hickory-nuts, just as nice and peaceful as anything. He
was joking with Ma and telling her he couldn't help it if the women up
our way were going plumb crazy over him--specially that Mrs. Banks,
whose husband works at the tanyard. Every time Pa goes out in the back
yard, she comes and leans on her fence and talks to him, making eyes and
grinning like a cat. She's worse than Mrs. Elam Crippen and Mrs.
Ducker--and Ma's been noticing it too. She's worried about Pa.
"Up to three months ago there wasn't a woman in town that'd look at him,
and now they can't seem to look at anybody else. Mrs. Banks came out in
her back yard yesterday and gave Pa a good pair of overshoes and a fur
cap that belonged to her husband. Pa didn't want to take 'em, but she
said she didn't care if Mr. Banks _did_ get mad; he wasn't much of a man
anyhow and she wouldn't take any back talk off'n him. Juliet heard Mrs.
Crippen say to Pa the other day that if he'd give her one of his
photographs, she'd be the happiest mortal alive. And Mrs. Ducker calls
to see Ma nearly every washday now, just when she's busiest, and so Pa
has to sit and entertain her.
"Yesterday a couple of women that Ma don't even know stopped out in
front of the house and giggled at everything Pa said, and one of 'em
said: 'Oh, you naughty man!' When Pa came into the house, Ma asked him
what he was saying to those strange women that made 'em call him a
naughty man, and Pa looked awful worried and wouldn't tell her. He said
it wasn't his fault if women acted like fools. He's all swelled-up, Pa
is. Wears his best clothes every day and has taken to smoking cigarettes
instead of a pipe when he's outside the house. Ma was counting up the
other day just to see how much the cigarettes cost her, and--But that
wasn't what I started to tell you. I--"
"I seen him walkin' down Cutler Street day before yesterday with a
woman," said Alf Reesling. "Fat sort of a woman with a pink hat on."
"That's Mrs. Banks. She--"
"Never mind about Mrs. Banks," interrupted the Marshal. "Confine
yourself to the evidence in this case, an' nothing else."
"Well, as I was saying, Pa was peaceful and quiet, cracking nuts on the
flatiron. He got hold of a tough hickor'-nut, and it wouldn't crack very
easy. So he had to hit it as hard as he could. Somehow he missed it, and
smack went the hammer right on his thumb. My goodness! You'd ought to
have heard him yell. He hopped up and began dancing around the kitchen,
sucking his thumb and trying to swear with his mouth full. Ma
says,--this is all she said,--Ma says: 'Did you hit your finger,
Lucius?' Pa let fly the hammer. It didn't miss her head a foot. Then he
fired the flatiron at her feet. Ma screamed and started to run to'ards
the back stairs. Pa knocked over the kitchen table trying to head her
off. She stumbled and fell down on her hands and knees. Then while he
was looking for something to beat her brains out with, she got up and
run into the pantry and locked the door.
"Juliet was squealing her head off. Pa picked up the hammer and started
to'ard her. Juliet made a break for the stairs, and Pa let go with the
hammer. He missed her, but he knocked a big hole in the ceiling. Then he
grabbed the tea-kettle off the stove and threw it at the cat. He got
some of the boiling water on his legs, I guess, because he grabbed 'em
in his hands and yelled like an Indian. He swore he'd kill everybody in
the house. So I beat it. He was hunting for the flatiron and the hammer,
and I was outside before he noticed me. I grabbed this old red
tablecloth as I went out and put it around me. When I saw a light in
your store, Mr. Lamson, I knowed Mr. Crow would be here, so up I came.
Now, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Crow?"
The Marshal pondered. "You say your Ma's safely locked in the pantry?"
"She was--unless he busted the door down."
"And Julie is up in the attic?"
"Yes, and she's probably dead by this time. There ain't any lock on the
attic door."
"Well, seems to me they're perfectly safe till morning. Julie could jump
out of the attic window if the worst come to the worst. The thing that's
worryin' me is you. Where are you going to sleep tonight, Elfie?"
"Right here in Mr. Lamson's rocking-chair," said the girl promptly.
"I'll take her up to my house," said Alf Reesling. "She can crawl in
with my daughter Queenie."
"That's out of the question," said Harry Squires, arising and looking
around for his overcoat. "We will need you, Alf. The Marshal is going to
organize a posse and go up to Power-house Gully and capture Vicious
Lucius dead or alive, before he's half an hour older."
"What's that?" demanded the Marshal, startled.
"You heard what I said. Get into your overcoats and goloshes, gentlemen.
The Marshal instructs me to say that we will be leaving here in five
minutes."
"Well, I'll be dog-goned!" oozed from Marshal Crow's lips. He was
staring quite hopelessly at Harry Squires.
"Isn't that a fact, Mr. Crow?" inquired Harry, fixing him with a most
disconcerting look.
Anderson indulged in a short fit of coughing. "Yes," he said, after
recovering himself, "it _is_ a fact, but I'd like to know how you got
onto it."
"I am a mental telegrapher, Mr. Crow," said the reporter, carefully
placing a hat upon Mr. Reesling's head. "There's your hat, Alf. Now be
sure and pick out a good coat."
* * * * *
The Marshal's posse eventually resolved itself into a party of
two--Anderson Crow and Harry Squires. Elmer K. Pratt remembered that his
youngest child had the croup, and he couldn't leave her; Situate M.
Jones complained of a sudden and violent attack of lumbago; Newt Spratt
loudly demanded the flaxseed his wife had asked him to bring home so
that she could make a poultice for a terrible toothache she was enjoying
that evening; Alf Reesling refused to desert poor little Elfie; and two
other gentlemen succeeded in sneaking out the back way while the
Marshal's view was obstructed by the aforesaid slackers. Storekeeper
Lamson had a perfectly sound excuse. He was a pacifist. However, he was
willing to lend his revolver to the Marshal and a pair of brass "knucks"
to Harry Squires.
Approaching Power-house Gully, the two adventurers observed shadowy
forms moving about in the darkness at the foot of the slope. They
paused.
"Mostly women, I should say," remarked the Marshal.
"Probably hoping that Lucius is a widower by this time," said the
reporter.
"So's they c'n send flowers an' victuals to him all the time he's in
jail," said Anderson. "S'pose you go down an' talk to 'em, Harry, while
I sneak around the back way and reconnoitre."
"That's a good idea," said Harry. "I'll just rush in through the front
door, and he'll make a break to escape by the rear, so you'll be right
there to head him off."
"Come to think of it," said Anderson hastily, "maybe we'd better see if
he's out in the front yard first. Come on."
Eight or ten people were congregated in front of the Fry house,
conversing in a hushed, excited manner. The Marshal and his companion
bore down upon them. As the former had remarked, they were "mostly"
women. There was but one man in the group. He turned out to be no other
than Vicious Lucius himself.
[Illustration: _Eight or ten people were congregated in front of the Fry
house_]
"What's this I hear about you, Lucius Fry?" demanded Anderson Crow.
"Don't you dare arrest Mr. Fry, Anderson Crow," cried one of the ladies.
"He ain't done anything but give her what she deserves, and----"
"Can I speak to you private, Mr. Crow?" interrupted Vicious Lucius in a
hurried manner. He was wearing an overcoat that came down to his heels,
and a derby hat that rested rather firmly upon his ears.
Anderson stared at him in horror.
"Good gosh, Lucius, have you--have you had your hands cut off?" he
gasped, looking hard at the flapping coat-sleeves.
"Course I ain't," said Mr. Fry, lifting his arms on high, allowing the
sleeves to slip down a half a foot or more and revealing his hands.
"This ain't my coat. It's Jim Banks'. A little too big fer me--and the
hat too, I reckon."
"I just couldn't let him catch his death o' cold," explained the buxom
Mrs. Banks.
"He just simply won't go back into the house," said Mrs. Ducker. "And I
don't blame him, either. He's afraid he might throw her out of a window
and--and break her neck, didn't you say, Lucius?"
"No, I didn't. I said I was afraid I'd break the winder," said Lucius,
glaring at Mrs. Ducker from beneath the rim of Mr. Banks' hat.
"Where is your wife?" demanded Anderson.