I WAS too much upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though
Dodovah Vose had given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of
fried chicken.
So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell!
But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff
that was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home
town, packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to
do himself destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat
broke. The fact that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose
to take any chances on failure.
His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered.
The fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen
decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped
that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke
myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a
little appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and
crowbar on the intimacy proposition!
It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me
from that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard
to Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling
rather like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing
condescension to that man who had loomed so largely before my
admiration. At any rate, no Sidney had ever committed suicide or had
tried to, unless it might be hinted that it mightily resembled suicide
when my father ran the ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down
the occasion with a quart or so of hard cider.
I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next
morning. I had his secret--I had manhandled him to save his life. A
man might make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be
particularly and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some
chap happened along at the right time and stopped him before he had made
a fool of himself.