TOWARD morning, after a spell of unusually even-tempered and moderate
weather, it blew up cold, snowed hard for two or three hours, and turned
off to be clear and freezing. The sun, coming up at seven-thirty-five,
according to his curtailed December schedule, peeped out on a universe
that was clothed all in white, whereas when he retired the night before
in his west bedroom he left it wearing a motley of faded yellows and
seasoned greens. Swinging in the east as a pale coppery disk, he blinked
his astonishment through a ragged grey veil of the last of the storm
clouds.
Others beside the sun were taken by surprise. It was the first snowfall
of the year and a good, hard, heavy one. Down our way, some winters, we
had hardly any snows at all; then, again, some winters we had a plenty;
but scarcely ever did we have them before Christmas. This one came as
a profound and an annoying visitation, taking the community at large
unawares and unprepared, and making a great nuisance of itself from the
start. Practically without exception, doorstep hydrants had tight colds
in the head that morning. On being treated with lavings of hot water
they dripped catarrhally from their cast-iron noses for a little while
and then developed the added symptoms of icicles.
Cooks were hours late coming to cook breakfast, and when they did come
uttered despairing moans to find range boilers frozen up and kitchen
taps utterly unresponsive to first-aid measures. At some houses it was
nearly eight o'clock before the milkman got round, with wooden runners
under his milk wagon in place of wheels and rosaries of rusted sleigh
bells on the necks of his smoking team. Last year's rubber boots came
out of the closet and any old year's toy sled came out of the attic.
The old negro man who did whitewashing in the spring, picked
blackberries for his summertime living, and in the fall peddled
corn-shuck doormats and scaly-bark hickory nuts, made the circuit of
his regular patrons, equipped with a shovel over his shoulder and his
venerable feet done up in burlaps, to shovel footpaths for a price.
Where the wind piled the snow in little drifts he left a wake behind him
as though a baby elephant had floundered through there.
In the back yard Sir Rooster squawked his loud disgust as his naked legs
sank shank-deep into the feathery mass. His harem, a row of still and
huddled shapes on the roosts, clamped their chilled toes all the tighter
to their perch and stared out through the chicken-house door at
a transformed and unfamiliar world. With them--except for their
eyes--rigor mortis seemed far advanced. Small boys, rabbit dogs,
plumbers and the few persons in town who owned sleighs rejoiced.
Housewives, house cats and thin-blooded old ladies and gentlemen were
acutely miserable--and showed it.
There were tramps about in numbers. It took a sudden cold snap, with
snow accompaniments such as this one, to fetch the tramps forth from
their sleeping places near the tracks, and make the citizen realise how
many of these southbound soldiers of misfortune the town harboured on
any given date between Thanksgiving Day and New Year's. Judge Priest
did not know it--and probably would not have much cared if he had known
it--but on the right-hand-side post of his front gate, just below
the wooden letter box, was scratched the talismanic sign which, to an
initiated nation-wide brotherhood, signified that here, at this place,
was to be had free and abundant provender, with no stove wood to chop
afterward and no heavy buckets of coal to pack in.
Wherefore and hence, throughout the rising hour and well on into the
forenoon, a succession of ragged and shivering travellers tracked a
straggling path up his walk and round to the back door, coming, with
noses a frostbitten red and hands a frostbitten blue, to beg for
sustenance. It was part and parcel of the judge's creed of hospitality
to turn no stranger away from his door unfed.
“Jedge!” Aunt Dilsey Turner bulged into the old sitting room, where
her master sat with his feet close to the grate toasting his shoesoles.
“Jedge, they's 'nother one of 'em miz'ble wuthless w'ite trash out yere
axin' fur vittles. Tha's de fo'th one inside er hour. Whut you reckin I
best do wid 'im?”
“Well, Aunt Dilsey,” the old man answered, “ef vittles is what he asts
fur, I believe, under the circumstances, I'd give him some.”
“Whar we goin' git vittles fur 'im?” she demanded.
“Wasn't there anything left over frum breakfast?” He risked the inquiry
mildly--almost timidly.
“Breakfus'!” She sniffed her contempt for masculine ignorance.
“Breakfus'? How long does you think one li'l' batch of breakfus' is
goin' last round yere? I ain't never tek much fur myse'f--jes' swallers
a mossil of hot coffee to stay my stomach, but you's suttinly a mighty
stiddy feeder; and ez fur 'at nigger Jeff of yourn--huh!--he acks lak he
wuz holler cl'ar down to his insteps. Ef dat nigger had de right name,
de name would be Famine! 'Sides, ain't I done tole you they's been three
of dem trafflin', no-'count vagroms here already dis mawnin', a-eatin'
us plum' out of house and home? Naw, suh; dey ain't nary grain of
breakfus' lef'--de platters is done lick' clean!”
“Well, Aunt Dilsey, ez a special favour to me, I'd be mighty much
obliged to you ef you'd cook up a little somethin' fur the pore feller.”
“Po' feller! Po', you sez? Jedge, dat ole tramp out yonder at my kitchen
do' is mighty nigh ez fat ez whut you is. Still, you's de cap'n. Ef you
sez feed 'im, feed 'im I does. Only don't you come round blamin' me w'en
we-all lands in de po'house--tha's all I asts you.”
And out the black tyrant flounced, leaving the judge grinning to
himself. Aunt Dilsey's bark was worse than her bite and there was no
record of her having bitten anybody. Nevertheless, in order to make sure
that no breakfast applicant departed hungry, he lingered on past his
usual time for starting the day's work. It was cozily warm in his
sitting room. Court was not in session either, having adjourned over for
the holidays. It was getting well on toward ten o'clock when, with
Jeff Poindexter's aid, he struggled into his ancient caped overcoat
and buckled his huge red-lined galoshes on over his shoes, and started
downtown.
Midway of the next block a snowball sailed out and over from behind
a hedge fence and knocked his old black slouch hat half off his head.
Showing surprising agility for one of his years and bulk, he ran down
the fleeing sharpshooter who had fired on him; and, while with one hand
he held the struggling youngster fast, with the other he vigorously
washed his captive's face in loose snow until the captive bawled for
mercy. Then the judge gave him a dime to console him for his punishment
and went on his way with a pleasant tingling in his blood and a ruby tip
on his already well-ruddied nose.
His way took him to Soule's Drug Store, the gathering place of his set
in fair weather and in foul. He was almost there before he heard of the
trouble. It was Dave Baum who brought the first word of it. Seeing him
pass, Dave came running, bareheaded, out of his notions store.
“Judge Priest, did you know what's just happened?” Dave was highly
excited. “Why, Beaver Yancy's been cut all to pieces with a dirk knife
by one of those Dagos that was brought on here to work on the new
extension--that's what just happened! It happened just a little bit
ago, down there where they've got those Dagos a-keepin' 'em. Beave, he
must've said somethin; out of the way to him, and he just up with his
dirk knife and cut Beave to ribbons.”
Really it required much less time for little Mr. Baum to make this
statement than it has taken for me to transcribe it or for you to read
it. In his haste he ran the syllables together. Dan Settle came up
behind them in time to catch the last words and he pieced out the
narrative:
“They toted poor old Beaver into Doctor Lake's office--I just came from
there--there's a big crowd waitin' to hear how he comes out. They don't
think he's goin' to live but a little while. They ain't got the one that
did the cuttin'--yet. There's quite a lot of feelin' already.”
“That's what the railroad gets for bringin' all those foreigners down
here.” Mr. Baum, who was born in Bavaria, spoke with bitterness. “Judge,
what do you think ought to be done about this business?”
“Well, son,” said Judge Priest, “to begin with, ef I was you I'd run
back inside of my store and put my hat on before I ketched a bad cold.
And ef I was the chief of police of this city I'd find the accused party
and lock him up good and tight. And ef I was everybody else I'd remain
ez ca'm ez I could till I'd heared both sides of the case. There's
nearly always two sides to every case, and sometimes there's likely to
be three or four sides. I expect to impanel a new grand jury along in
January and I wouldn't be surprised ef they looked into the matter purty
thoroughly. They ginerally do.
“It's too bad, though, about Beaver Yancy!” added the judge; “I
certainly trust he pulls through. Maybe he will--he's powerful husky.
There's one consolation--he hasn't got any family, has he?”
And, with that, Judge Priest left them and went on down the snow-piled
street and turned in at Mr. Soule's door. What with reading a Louisville
paper and playing a long game of checkers with Squire Rountree behind
the prescription case, and telephoning to the adjutant regarding that
night's meeting of Gideon K. Irons Camp, and at noontime eating a
cove oyster stew which a darky brought him from Sherill's short-order
restaurant, two doors below, and doing one thing and another, he spent
the biggest part of the day inside of Soule's and so missed his chance
to observe the growing and the mounting of popular indignation.
It would seem Beaver Yancy had more friends than any unprejudiced
observer would have credited him with having. Mainly they were the type
of friends who would not have lent him so much as fifty cents under any
conceivable circumstance, but stood ready to shed human blood on his
account. Likewise, as the day wore on, and the snow, under the melting
influence of the sun, began to run off the eaves and turn to slush
in the streets, a strong prejudice against the presence of alien day
labourers developed with marvellous and sinister rapidity.
Yet, had those who cavilled but stopped long enough to take stock of
things, they might have read this importation as merely one of the
manifestations of the change that was coming over our neck of the
woods--the same change that had been coming for years, and the same that
inevitably would continue coming through years to follow.
Take for example, Legal Row--that short street of stubby little brick
buildings where all the lawyers and some of the doctors had their
offices. Summer after summer, through the long afternoons, the
tenants had sat there in cane-bottomed chairs tilted back against the
housefronts, swapping gossip and waiting for a dog fight or a watermelon
cutting to break the monotony. But Legal Row was gone now and lawyers
did not sit out on the sidewalks any more; it was not dignified. They
were housed, most of them, on the upper floor levels of the sky-scraping
Planters' Bank building. Perhaps Easterners would not have rated it as a
skyscraper; but in our country the skies are low and friendly skies,
and a structure of eight stories, piled one on the other, with a fancy
cornice to top off with, rears mightily high and imposing when about it,
for contrast, are only two and three and four story buildings.
Kettler's wagon yard, where the farmers used to bring their tobacco for
overnight storage, and where they slept on hay beds in the back stalls,
with homemade bedquilts wrapped round them, had been turned into a
garage and smelled now of gasoline, oils and money transactions. A new
brick market house stood on the site of the old wooden one. A Great
White Way that was seven blocks long made the business district almost
as bright as day after dark--almost, but not quite. There was talk of
establishing a civic centre, with a regular plaza, and a fountain in
the middle of the plaza. There was talk of trying the commission form
of government. There was talk of adopting a town slogan; talk of an
automobile club and of a country club. And now white labour, in place of
black, worked on a construction job.
When, after many false alarms, the P. A. & O. V. got its Boaz Ridge
Extension under way the contractors started with negro hands; but the
gang bosses came from up North, whence the capital had likewise
come, and they did not understand the negroes and the negroes did not
understand them, and there was trouble from the go-off. If the bosses
fraternised with the darkies the darkies loafed; if, taking the opposite
tack, the bosses tried to drive the gangs under them with hard words the
gangs grew sullen and insolent.
There was a middle ground, but the perplexed whites could not find it.
A Southem-born overseer or a Southem-born steamboat mate could have
harried the crews with loud profanity, with dire threats of mutilation
and violent death, and they would have grinned back at him cheerfully
and kept right on at their digging and their shovelling. But when a
grading expert named Flaherty, from Chicago, Illinois, shook a freckled
fist under the nose of one Dink Bailey, coloured, for whom, just the
night before, he had bought drinks in a groggery, the aforesaid Dink
Bailey tried to disarticulate him with a razor and made very fair
headway toward the completion of the undertaking, considering he was so
soon interrupted.
Having a time limit ever before their pestered eyes, it sorely irked the
contractors that, whereas five hundred black, brown and yellow men might
drop their tools Saturday night at six o'clock, a scant two hundred or
so answered when the seven-o'clock whistle blew on Monday morning.
The others came straggling back on Tuesday or Wednesday, or even on
Thursday, depending on how long their wages held out.
“Whut I wants to go to work fur, Mist' W'ite Man? I got 'most two
dollars lef.' Come round to see me w'en all dat's done spent and mebbe
we kin talk bus'ness 'en.”
The above statement, made by a truant grading hand to an inquiring
grading boss, was typical of a fairly common point of view on the side
of Labour. And this one, below, which sprang from the exasperated soul
of a visiting contractor, was just as typical, for it was the cry of
outraged Capital:
“It takes two white men, standing over every black man, to make the
black man work--and then he won't! I never was a Southern sympathiser
before, but I am now--you bet!”
The camel's back broke entirely at the end of the third week. It was a
green paymaster from the Chicago offices who furnished the last straw.
He tried to pay off with paper money. Since those early postbellum days,
when the black brother, being newly freed from servitude and innocently
devoid of the commercial instinct, thought the white man's money,
whether stamped on metal disks or printed on parchment rectangulars,
was always good money, and so accepted much Confederate currency, to his
sorrow at the time and to his subsequent enlightenment, he has nourished
a deep suspicion of all cash except the kind that jingles; in fact, it
is rarely that he will accept any other sort.
Give him the hard round silver and he is well-content. That is good
money--money fit to buy things with. He knows it is, because it rattles
in the pocket and it rings on the bar; but for him no greenbacks, if you
please. So when this poor ignorant paymaster opened up his satchel and
spread out his ones and his twos, his fives and his tens, his treasury
certificates and his national bank notes, there was a riot.
Then the contractors just fired the whole outfit bodily; and they
suspended operations, leaving the fills half-filled and the cuts
half-dug until they could fetch new shifts of labourers from the North.
They fetched them--a trainload of overalled Latins, and some of these
were tall and swarthy men, and more were short, fair men; but all were
capable of doing a full day's work.
Speedily enough, the town lost its first curious interest in the
newcomers. Indeed, there was about them nothing calculated to hold
the public interest long. They played no guitars, wore no handkerchief
headdresses, offered to kidnap no small children, and were in no respect
a picturesque race of beings. They talked their own outlandish language,
dined on their own mysterious messes, slept in their bunks in the long
barracks the company knocked together for them in the hollow down by the
Old Fort, hived their savings, dealt with their employers through a paid
translator, and beautifully minded their own business, which was the
putting through of the Boaz Ridge Extension. Sundays a few came clunking
in their brogans to early mass in Father Minor's church; the rest of the
time they spent at the doing of their daily stint or in camp at their
own peculiar devices.
Tony Palassi, who ran the biggest fruit stand in town, paid them one
brief visit--and one only--and came away, spitting his disgust on the
earth. It appeared that they were not his kind of people at all, these
being but despised Sicilians and he by birth a haughty Roman, and by
virtue of naturalisation processes a stalwart American; but everybody
knew already, without being told, that there was a difference, and a big
difference. A blind man could see it.
Tony, now, was a good fellow--one with sporting blood in his veins. Tony
was a member of the Elks and of the Knights of Columbus. He owned and
he drove one of the smartest trotting horses in the county. He played a
brisk game of poker. Once a month he sent a barrel of apples or a bunch
of bananas or a box of oranges, as a freewill offering, to the children
out at the Home for the Friendless--in short, Tony belonged. Nobody ever
thought of calling Tony a Dago, and nobody ever had--more than once; but
these other fellows, plainly, were Dagos and to be regarded as such. For
upward of a month now their presence in the community had meant little
or nothing to the community, one way or the other, until one of them so
far forgot himself as to carve up Beaver Yancy.
The railroad made a big mistake when it hired Northern bosses to handle
black natives; it made another when it continued to retain Beaver Yancy,
of our town, in its employ after the Sicilians came, he being a person
long of the arm and short of the temper. Even so, things might have gone
forward to a conclusion without misadventure had it not been that on
the day before the snow fell the official padrone of the force, who was
likewise the official interpreter, went North on some private business
of his own, leaving his countrymen without an intermediary during his
absence. It came to pass, therefore, that on the December morning when
this account properly begins, Beaver Yancy found himself in sole command
of a battalion whose tongue he did not speak and whose ways he did not
know.
At starting time he ploughed his way through the drifts to the long
plank shanty in the bottoms and threw open a door. Instead of being up
and stirring, his charges lay in their bunks against the walls, all
of them stretched out comfortably there, except a half dozen or so who
brewed garlicky mixtures on the big stoves that stood at intervals in
a row down the middle of the barracks. Employing the only language he
knew, which was a profanely emphatic language, he ordered them to get
up, get out and get to work. By shakes of the head, by words of smiling
dissent and by gestures they made it plain to his understanding that for
this one day at least they meant to do no labour in the open.
One more tolerant than Beaver Yancy, or perhaps one more skilled at
translating signs, would have divined their reasons readily enough. They
had come South expecting temperate weather. They did not like snow. They
were not clad for exposure to snow. Their garments were thin and their
shoes leaked. Therefore would they abide where they were until the snow
had melted and the cold had moderated. Then they would work twice as
hard to make up for this holiday.
The burly, big, overbearing man in the doorway was of a different frame
of mind. In the absence of his superior officers and the padrone, his
duty was to see that they pushed that job to a conclusion. He'd show
'em! He would make an example of one and the others would heed the
lesson. He laid violent grasp on a little man who appeared to be a
leader of opinion among his fellows and, with a big, mittened hand
in the neckband of the other's shirt, dragged him, sputtering and
expostulating, across the threshold and, with hard kicks of a heavy
foot, heavily booted, propelled him out into the open.
The little man fell face forward into the snow. He bounced up like a
chunk of new rubber. He had been wounded most grievously in his honour,
bruised most painfully and ignominiously elsewhere. He jumped for the
man who had mishandled him, his knifeblade licking out like a snake's
tongue. He jabbed three times, hard and quick--then fled back indoors;
and for a while, until help came in the guise of two children of a
shanty-boater's family on their way to the railroad yards to pick
up bits of coal, Beaver Yancy lay in the snow where he had dropped,
bleeding like a stuck pig. He was not exactly cut to ribbons. First
accounts had been exaggerated as first accounts so frequently are. But
he had two holes in his right lung and one in the right side of his
neck, and it was strongly presumptive that he would never again kick a
Sicilian day labourer--or, for that matter, anybody else.
Judge Priest, speaking dispassionately from the aloof heights of the
judicial temperament, had said it would be carrying out an excellent and
timely idea if the chief of police found the knife-using individual
and confined him in a place that was safe and sound; which, on being
apprised of the occurrence, was exactly what the chief of police
undertook to do. Accompanied by two dependable members of his day shift,
he very promptly set out to make an arrest and an investigation; but
serious obstacles confronted him.
To begin with, he had not the faintest notion of the criminal's identity
or the criminal's appearance. The man he wanted was one among two
hundred; but which one was he? Beaver Yancy, having been treated in
Doctor Lake's office, was now at the city hospital in no condition to
tell the name of his assailant even had he known it, or to describe him
either, seeing that loss of blood, pain, shock and drugs had put him
beyond the power of coherent speech. Nevertheless, the chief felt it
a duty incumbent on him to lose no time in visiting what the _Daily
Evening News_, with a touch of originality, called “the scene of the
crime.” This he did.
Everything was quiet on the flatlands below the Old Fort when he got
there, an hour after the stabbing. Midway between the bluff that marked
the rim of the hollow and the fringe of willows along the river, stood
the long plank barracks of the imported hands. Smoke rose from the
stovepipes that broke the expanse of its snow-covered roof; about one
door was a maze of tracks and crosstracks; at a certain place, which
was, say, seventy-five feet from the door, the snow was wallowed and
flurried as though a heavy oxhide had been dragged across its surface;
and right there a dark spot showed reddish brown against the white
background.
However, no figures moved and no faces showed at the small windows
as the chief and his men, having floundered down the hill, cautiously
approached the silent building; and when he knocked on the door with
the end of his hickory walking stick, and knocked and knocked again,
meantime demanding admittance in the name of the law, no one answered
his knock or his hail. Losing patience, he put his shoulder to the
fastened door and, with a heave, broke it away from its hinges and its
hasp, so that it fell inward.
Through the opening he took a look, then felt in his overcoat pocket for
his gun, making ready to check a rush with revolver shots if needs
be; but there was no rush. Within the place two hundred frightened,
desperate men silently confronted him. Some who had pistols were wearing
them now in plain sight. Others had knives and had produced them. All
had picks and shovels--dangerous enough weapons at close quarters in the
hands of men skilled in the use of them.
Had the big-hatted chief been wise in the ways of these men, he might
peacefully have attained his object by opening his topcoat and showing
his blue uniform, his brass buttons and his gold star; but naturally he
did not think of that, and as he stood there before them, demanding of
them, in a language they did not know, to surrender the guilty one,
he was ulstered, like any civilian, from his throat to the tops of his
rubber boots.
In him the foreigners, bewildered by the sudden turn in events, saw
only a menacing enemy coming, with no outward show of authority about
him, to threaten them. They went right on at their task of barricading
the windows with strips of planking tom from their bunks. They had food
and they had fuel, and they had arms. They would stand a siege, and if
they were attacked they would fight back. In all they did, in all
their movements, in their steadfast stare, he read their intent plainly
enough.
Gabriel Henley was no coward, else he would not have been serving his
second term as our chief of police; but likewise and furthermore he was
no fool. He remembered just then that the town line ended at the bluff
behind him. Technically, at least, the assault on Beaver Yancy had been
committed outside his jurisdiction; constructively this job was not a
job for the city, but for the county officials. He backed away, and as
he retired sundry strong brown hands replaced the broken door and began
making it fast with props and improvised bars. The chief left his two
men behind to keep watch--an entirely unnecessary precaution, since
none of the beleaguered two hundred, as it turned out, had the slightest
intention of quitting his present shelter; and he hurried back uptown,
pondering the situation as he went.
On his way to the sheriff's office he stopped by Palassi's fruit store.
As the only man in town who could deal with Sicilians in their own
tongue, Tony might help out tremendously; but Tony wasn't in. Mrs.
Palassi, née Callahan, regretted to inform him that Tony had departed
for Memphis on the early train to see about certain delayed Christmas
shipments of oranges and bananas. To the youth of our town oranges
and bananas were almost as necessary as firecrackers in the proper
celebration of the Christmas. And when he got to the courthouse the
chief found the sheriff was not in town either.
He had started at daylight for Hopkinsburg to deliver an insane woman at
the state asylum there; one of his deputies had gone with him. There
was a second deputy, to be sure; but he was an elderly man and a chronic
rheumatic, who mainly handled the clerical affairs of the office--he
never had tried to arrest anyone in his whole life, and he expressed
doubt that the present opportunity was auspicious for an opening
experiment in that direction.
Under the circumstances, with the padrone away, with Tony Palassi away,
with the sheriff away, and with the refuge of the culprit under close
watch, Chief of Police Henley decided just to sit down and wait--wait
for developments; wait for guidance; perhaps wait for popular sentiment
to crystallize and, in process of its crystallization, give him a hint
as to the steps proper to be taken next. So he sat him down at his
roll-top desk in the old City Hall, with his feet on the stove, and he
waited.
Had our efficient chief divined the trend of opinion as it was to be
expressed during the day by divers persons in divers parts of the town,
it is possible he might have done something, though just what that
something might have been, I for one confess I do not know--and I do not
think the chief knew either. There was a passion of anger abroad. This
anger was to rise and spread when word circulated--as it very shortly
did--that those other Dagos were harbouring and protecting the
particular Dago who had done the cutting.
Such being the case, did not that make them outlaws too--accessories
after the fact, comalefactors? The question was asked a good many times
in a good many places and generally the answer was the same. And how
about letting these murderous, dirk-toting pauper labourers come pouring
down from the slums of the great cities to take the bread right out of
the mouths of poor, hard-working darkies? With the sudden hostility to
the white stranger rose an equally sudden sympathy for the lot of the
black neighbour whose place he had usurped. Besides, who ever saw one of
the blamed Dagos spending a cent at a grocery, or a notions store, or a
saloon--or anywhere? Money earned in the community ought to be spent in
the community. What did the railroad mean by it anyway?
Toward the middle of the afternoon somebody told somebody else--who, in
turn, told everybody he met--that poor old Beaver was sinking fast; the
surgeons agreed that he could not live the night out. Despite the rutted
snow underfoot and the chill temperature, now rapidly dropping again
to the freezing point and below it, knots of men began to gather on the
streets discussing one topic--and one only.
Standing at the Richland House corner and addressing an entirely
congenial gathering of fifteen or so who had just emerged from the
Richland House bar, wiping their mouths and their moustaches, a
self-appointed spokesman ventured the suggestion that it had been a long
time between lynchings. Maybe if people just turned in and mobbed a
few of these bloodthirsty Dagos it would give the rest of them a little
respect for law and order? What if they didn't get the one that did the
cutting? They could get a few of his friends, couldn't they--and chase
all the others out of the country, and out of the state? Well, then,
what more could a fair-minded citizen ask? And if the police force
could not or would not do its duty in the premises, was it not up to the
people themselves to act?--or words to that general effect. In the act
of going back inside for another round of drinks the audience agreed
with the orator unanimously, and invited him to join them; which he did.
Serenely unaware of these things, Judge Priest spent his day at Soule's
Drug Store, beat Squire Roundtree at checkers, went trudging home at
dusk for supper and, when supper was eaten, came trudging back downtown
again, still hap-pily ignorant of the feeling that was in the icy
air. Eight o'clock found him in the seat of honour on the platform at
Kamleiter's Hall, presiding over the regular semi-monthly meeting of
Gideon K. Irons Camp.
Considering weather conditions, the judge, as commandant, felt a throb
of pride at the size of the attendance. Twenty-two elderly gentlemen
answered to their names when the adjutant, old Professor Reese, of the
graded school, called the roll. Two or three more straggled in, bundled
up out of all their proper proportions, in time to take part in the
subsequent discussion of new business. Under that elastic heading the
Camp agreed to co-operate with the Daughters in a campaign to raise
funds for a monument to the memory of General Meriwether Grider, dead
these many years; voted fifty dollars out of the Camp treasury for the
relief of a dead comrade's widow; and listened to a reminiscence of the
retreat from Atlanta by Sergeant Jimmy Bagby.
One overhearing might have gathered from the tenor of the sergeant's
remarks that, if King's Hell Hounds had been given but the proper
support in that campaign, the story of Sherman's March to the Sea would
have a vastly different ending from the one set forth in the schoolbooks
and the histories. In conclusion, and by way of a diversion from the
main topic, Sergeant Bagby was launching on a circumstantial recital of
a certain never-to-be-forgotten passage of words between General Buckner
and General Breckenridge on a certain momentous and historic occasion,
when an interruption occurred, causing him to break off in the middle of
his opening sentence.
Old Press Harper, from three miles out in the county, was sitting
well back toward the rear of the little hall. It is possible that his
attention wandered from the subject in hand. He chanced to glance over
his shoulder and, through the frosted panes of a back window, he caught
a suffused reflection. Instantly he was on his feet.
“Hey, boys!” called out Mr. Harper. “Somethin's on fire--looky yander!”
He ran to the window. With his sleeve he rubbed a patch clear on the
sweated pane and peered out. Others followed _him_. Sashes were hoist,
and through each of the three window openings in the back wall protruded
a cluster of heads--heads that were pinky-bald, grey-grizzled or
cottony-white, as the case might be.
“You bet there's a fire, and a good hot one! See them blazes shootin'
up.”
“Must be down by the Old Fort. D'ye reckin it could be the old plough
factory bumin' up?”
“Couldn't be that far away, could it, Bony? Looks closer'n that to me.”
“Fires always seem closer than what they really are--that's been my
experience.”
“Listen, boys, for the engines--they ought to be startin' now in a
minute.”
They listened; but, though the fire bell in the City Hall tower, two
blocks away, was sounding in measured beats, no clatter of hoofs, no
clamour of fast-turning wheels, rose in the street below or in any
neighbouring street. Only the red flare widened across the northern
horizon, deepening and brightening, and shot through in its centre with
lacings of flame.
“That's funny! I don't hear 'em. Well, anyway, I'm a-goin'.”
“Me, too, Press.”
The windows were abandoned. There was a rush for the corner where
overcoats had been swung on hooks and overshoes had been kicked back
against the baseboard. Various elderly gentlemen began adjusting
earmuffs and mufflers, and spearing with their arms at elusive sleeve
openings. The meeting stood adjourned without having been adjourned.
“Coming, Billy?” inquired Mr. Nap. B. Crump in the act of hastily
winding two yards of red knitted worsted about his throat.
“No; I reckin not,” said Judge Priest. “It's a mighty bitter night fur
folks to be driv' out of their homes in this weather. I'm sorry fur
'em, whoever they are--but I reckin I couldn't do no good ef I went. You
young fellers jest go ahead without me--I'm sort of gittin' along too
fur in years to be runnin' to other people's fires. I've got one of my
own to go to--out there in my old settin' room on Clay Street.”
He rose slowly from his chair and stepped round from behind the table,
then halted, cant-ing his head to one side.
“Listen, boys! Ain't that somebody runnin' up the steps?”
It surely was. There was a thud of booted feet on the creaking boards.
Somebody was coming three stairs at a jump. The door flew open and
Circuit Clerk Elisha Milam staggered in, gasping for breath. They
assailed him with questions.
“Hey, Lisha, where's the fire?”
“It's that construction camp down below town burning up,” he answered
between pants. “How did it get started?”
“It didn't get started--somebody started it. Gentlemen, there's trouble
beginning down yonder. Where's Judge Priest?... Oh, yes, there he is!”
He made for Judge Priest where the judge still stood on the little
platform, and all the rest trailed behind him, scrouging up to form a
close circle about those two, with hands stirruped behind faulty ears
and necks craned forward to hear what Mr. Milam had to say. His story
wasn't long, the blurting way he told it, but it carried an abundant
thrill. Acting apparently in concert with others, divers unknown
persons, creeping up behind the barracks of the construction crew, had
fired the building and fled safely away without being detected by its
dwellers or by the half-frozen watchers of the police force on the
hillock above. At least that was the presumption in Mr. Milam's mind,
based on what he had just heard.
The fire, spreading fast, had driven the Sicilians forth, and they were
now massed under the bluff with their weapons. The police force--eight
men, all told, constituted the night shift--hesitated to act, inasmuch
as the site of the burning camp lay fifty yards over the town line,
outside of town limits. The fire department was helpless. Notice had
been served at both the engine houses, in the first moment of the alarm,
that if the firemen unreeled so much as a single foot of hose it would
be cut with knives--a vain threat, since all the water plugs were frozen
up hard and fast anyhow. The sheriff and his only able-bodied deputy
were in Hopkinsburg, eighty miles away; and an armed mob of hundreds was
reported as being on the way from its rendezvous in the abandoned plough
factory to attack the foreigners.
Mr. Milam, essentially a man of peace, had learned these things at first
hand, or at second, and had hastened hotfoot to Kamleiter's Hall for
the one man to whom, in times of emergency, he always looked--his
circuit-court judge. He didn't know what Judge Priest could do or would
do in the face of a situation so grave; but at least he had done his
duty--he had borne the word. In a dozen hasty gulping sentences he
told his tale and finished it; and then, by way of final punctuation, a
chorus of exclamatory sounds--whistled, grunted and wheezed--rose from
his auditors.
As for Judge Priest, he, for a space of seconds after Mr. Milam had
concluded, said nothing at all. The rapping of his knuckled fist on the
tabletop alongside him broke in sharply on the clamour. They faced him
then and he faced them; and it is possible that, even in the excitement
of the time, some among them marked how his plump jaws had socketed
themselves into a hard, square-mortise shape, and how his tuft of white
chin beard bristled out at them, and how his old blue eyes blazed into
their eyes. And then Judge Priest made a speech to them--a short, quick
speech, but the best speech, so his audience afterward agreed, that ever
they heard him make.
“Boys,” he cried, lifting his high, shrill voice yet higher and yet
shriller, “I'm about to put a motion to you and I want a vote on it
purty dam' quick! They've been sayin' in this town that us old soldiers
was gittin' too old to take an active hand in the affairs of this
community any longer; and at the last election, ez you all know, they
tried fur to prove it by retirin' most of the veterans that offered
themselves ez candidates fur re-election back to private life.
“I ain't sayin' they wasn't partly right neither; fur here we've been
sittin' this night, like a passel of old moo-cows, chewin' the cud of
things that happened forty-odd year' ago, and never suspicionin' nothin'
of what was goin' on, whilst all round us men, carried away by passion
and race prejudice, have been plottin' to break the laws and shed blood
and bring an everlastin' disgrace on the reppitation fur peace and good
order of this fair little city of ourn. But maybe it ain't too late yit
fur us to do our duty ez citizens and ez veterans. Oncet on a time--a
mighty long while ago--we turned out to pertect our people ag'inst an
armed invader. Let's show 'em we ain't too old or too feeble to turn out
oncet more to pertect them ag'inst themselves.”
He reared back, and visibly, before their eyes, his short fat figure
seemed to lengthen by cubits.
“I move that Gideon K. Irons Camp of United Confederate Veterans, here
assembled, march in a body right now to save--ef we can--these poor
Eyetalians who are strangers in a strange and a hosstil land from bein'
mistreated, and to save--ef we can--our misguided fellow townsmen from
sufferin' the consequences of their own folly and their own foolishness.
Do I hear a second to that motion?”
Did he hear a second to his motion? He heard twenty-five seconds to it,
all heaved at him together, with all the blaring strength of twenty-five
pairs of elderly lungs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby forgot parliamentary usage.
“Will we go?” whooped Sergeant Bagby, waving his pudgy arms aloft so
that his mittened hands described whizzing red circles in the air. “You
betcher sweet life we'll go! We'll go through hell and high water--with'
you as our commandin' officer, Billy Priest.”
“You betcher! That's the ticket!” A whoop of approval went up.
“Well, then, ef that's the way you feel about it--come on!” their leader
bade them; and they rushed for the door, sweeping the circuit clerk
aside. “No; wait jest a minute!” He singled out the jostled Mr. Milam.
“Lishy, you've got the youngest, spriest legs of anybody here. Run on
ahead--won't you?--and find Father Minor. He'll be at the priest house
back of his church. Tell him to jine up with us as quick as ever the
Lord'll let him. We'll head down Harrison Street.”
Mr. Milam vanished. With a wave of his arm, the judge comprehended those
who remained.
“Nearly everybody here served one time or another under old Nathan
Bedford Forrest. The rest would 'a' liked to. I reckin this here is
goin' to be the last raid and the last charge that Forrest's Cavalry,
mounted or dismounted, ever will make! Let's do it regular--open up that
there wardrobe-chist yonder, some of you, and git what's inside!”
Hurried old hands fumbled at the catches of a weather-beaten oaken
cabinet on the platform and plucked forth the treasured possessions of
the Camp--the dented bugle; the drum; the slender, shiny, little fife;
the silken flag, on its short polished staff.
“Fall in--by twos!” commanded Judge Priest. “_Forward--march!_”
Half a minute later the gasjets that lighted Kamleiter's Hall lighted
only emptiness--an empty chest in a corner; empty chairs, some
overturned on their sides, some upright on their legs; an empty hall
doorway opening on an empty patch of darkness; and one of Judge Priest's
flannel-lined galoshes, gaping emptily where it had been forgotten.
From the street below rose a measured thud of feet on the hard-packed
snow. Forrest's Cavalry was on the march!
With bent backs straightening to the call of a high, strong impulse;
with gimpy, gnarled legs rising and falling in brisk unison; with heads
held high and chests puffed out; with their leader in front of them and
their flag going before them--Forrest's Cavalry went forward. Once and
once only the double line stopped as it traversed the town, lying snug
and for the most part still under its blanketing, of snow.
As the little column of old men swung round the first corner below
Kamleiter's Hall, the lights coming through the windows of Tony
Palassi's fruit shop made bright yellow patches on the white path they
trod.
“Halt!” ordered Judge Priest suddenly; and he quit his place in the lead
and made for the doorway.
“If you're looking for Tony to go along and translate you're wasting
time, Judge,” sang' out Mr. Crump. “He's out-of town.”
“Is he?” said Judge Priest. “Well, that's too bad!”
As though to make sure, he peered in through the glassed upper half of
the fruitshop door. Within might be seen Mrs. Delia Callahan Palassi,
wife of the proprietor, putting the place to rights before locking it
up for the night; and at her skirts tagged Master Antonio Wolfe
Tone Palassi, aged seven, only son and sole heir of the same, a
round-bellied, red-cheeked little Italian-Irish-American. The judge put
his hand on the latch and jiggled it.
“I tell you Tony's not there,” repeated Mr. Crump impatiently.
If the judge heard him he paid no heed. He went through that door,
leaving his command outside, as one might go who knew exactly what he
was about. Little Tony Wolfe Tone recognised an old friend and came,
gurgling a welcome, to greet him. Most of the children in town knew
Judge Priest intimately, but little Tony Wolfe Tone was a particular
favourite of his; and by the same token he was a particular favourite of
Tony's.
Whatever Judge Priest said to Mrs. Palassi didn't take long for the
saying of it; yet it must have been an argument powerfully persuading
and powerfully potent. It is possible--mind you, I don't make the
positive assertion, but it is possible--he reminded her that the blood
of a race of fighting kings ran in her veins; for in less than no time
at all, when Judge Priest reissued from the fruit shop, there rode
pack-fashion on his back a little figure so well bundled up against the
cold that only a pair of big brown Italian eyes and a small, tiptilted
Irish nose showed themselves, to prove that Judge Priest's burden was
not a woolly Teddy-bear, but a veritable small boy. No; I'm wrong there.
One other thing proved it--a woman standing in the doorway, wringing her
apron in her hands, her face ablaze with mother love and mother pride
and mother fear, watching the hurrying procession as it moved down the
wintry street straight into the red glare on ahead.
The flimsy framework of resiny pine burned fast, considering that much
snow had lain on the roof and much snow had melted and run down the
sides all day, to freeze again with the coming of nighttime. One end of
the barracks had fallen into a muddle of black-charred ruination. The
fire ate its way along steadily, purring and crackling and spitting
as its red teeth bit into the wetted boards. Above, the whole sky
was aglare with its wavering red reflections. The outlines of the
bowl-shaped flat stood forth distinctly revealed in the glow of that
great wooden brazier, and the snow that covered the earth was channelled
across with red streaks, like spilt blood.
Here, against the nearermost bank, the foreigners were clumped in a
tight, compact black huddle, all scared, but not so badly scared that
they would not fight. Yonder, across the snow, through the gap where
a side street debouched at a gentle slope into the hollow, the mob
advanced--men and half-grown boys--to the number of perhaps four
hundred, coming to get the man who had stabbed Beaver Yancy and string
him up on the spot--and maybe to get a few of his friends and string
them up as an added warning to all Dagos. They came on and came on until
a space of not more than seventy-five yards separated the mob and the
mob's prospective victims. From the advancing mass a growling of many
voices rose. Rampant, unloosed mischief was in the sound.
Somebody who was drunk yelled out shrill profanity and then laughed a
maudlin laugh. The group against the bank kept silent. Theirs was the
silence of a grim and desperate resolution. Their only shelter had been
fired over their heads; they were beleaguered and ringed about with
enemies; they had nowhere to run for safety, even had they been minded
to run. So they would fight. They made ready with their weapons of
defence--such weapons as they had.
A man who appeared to hold some manner of leadership over the rest
advanced a step from the front row of them. In his hand he held an
old-fashioned cap-and-ball pistol at full cock. He raised his right arm
and sighted along the levelled barrel at a spot midway between him and
the oncoming crowd. Plainly he meant to fire when the first of his foes
crossed an imaginary line. He squinted up his-eye, taking a careful aim;
and he let his trigger finger slip gently inside the trigger guard--but
he never fired.
On top of the hill, almost above his head, a bugle blared out. A fife
and a drum cut in, playing something jiggy and brisk; and over the crest
and down into the flat, two by two, marched a little column of old men,
following after a small silken flag which flicked and whispered in the
wind, and led by a short, round-bodied commander, who held by the hand a
little briskly trotting figure of a child. Tony Wolfe Tone had grown too
heavy for the judge to carry him all the way.
Out across the narrow space between the closing-in mob and the closed-in
foreigners the marchers passed, their feet sinking ankle-deep into the
crusted snow. Their leader gave a command; the music broke off and they
spread out in single file, taking station, five feet apart from one
another, so that between the two hostile groups a living hedge was
interposed. And so they stood, with their hands down at their sides,
some facing to the west, where the Italians were herded together, some
facing toward the east, where the would-be lynchers, stricken with a
great amazement, had come to a dead stand.
Judge Priest, still holding little Tony Wolfe Tone's small mittened
hand fast in his, spoke up, addressing the mob. His familiar figure was
outlined against the burning barracks beyond him and behind him. His
familiar whiny voice he lifted to so high a pitch that every man and boy
there heard him.
“Feller citizens,” he stated, “this is part of Forrest's Cavalry you see
here. We done soldierin' oncet and we've turned soldiers ag'in; but we
ain't armed--none of us. We've only got our bare hands. Ef you come on
we can't stop you with guns; but we ain't agoin' to budge, and ef you
start shootin' you'll shorely git some of us. So ez a personal favour
to me and these other gentlemen, I'd like to ast you jest to stand still
where you are and not to shoot till after you see what we're fixrin' to
try to do. That's agreeable to you-all, ain't it? You've got the whole
night ahead of you--there's no hurry, is there, boys?”
He did not wait for any answer from anyone. By name he knew a good half
of them; by sight he knew the other half. And they all knew him; and
they knew Tony Palassi's boy; and they knew Father Minor, who stood
at his right hand; and they knew the lame blacksmith and the little
bench-legged Jewish merchant, and the rich banker and the poor
carpenter, and the leading wholesaler, and all the other old men who
stretched away from the judge in an uneven line, like fence posts for a
fence that had not been built. They would not shoot yet; and, as though
fully convinced in his own mind they would bide where they were until he
was done, and relying completely on them to keep their unspoken promise,
Judge Priest half-turned his back on the members of the mob and bent
over little Tony.
“Little feller,” he said, “you ain't skeered, are you?”
Tony looked up at his friend and shook his head stoutly. Tony was not
scared. It was as good as play to Tony--all this was.
“That's my sandy little pardner,” said Judge Priest; and he put his
hands under Tony's arms and heaved the child back up on his shoulders,
and swung himself about so that he and Tony faced the huddle of silent
figures in the shadow of the bank.
“You see all them men yonder, don't you, boy?” he prompted. “Well, now
you speak up ez loud ez you can, and you tell 'em whut I've been tellin'
you to say all the way down the street ever since we left your mammy.
You tell 'em I'm the big judge of the big court. Tell 'em there's one
man among 'em who must come on and go with me. He'll know and they'll
know which man I mean. Tell 'em that man ain't goin' to be hurt ef he
comes now. Tell 'em that they ain't none of 'em goin' to be hurt ef they
all do what I say. Tell 'em Father Minor is here to show 'em to a safe,
warm place where they kin spend the night. Kin you remember all that,
sonny-boy? Then tell 'em in Eyetalian--quick and loud.”
And Tony Wolfe Tone told them. Unmindful of the hundreds of eyes that
were upon him, even forgetting for a minute to watch the fire--Tony opened
wide his small mouth and in the tongue of his father's people, richened
perhaps by the sweet brogue of his mother's land, and spiced here and
there with a word or two of savoury good American slang, he gave the
message a piping utterance.
They hearkened and they understood. This baby, this _bambino_, speaking
to them in a polyglot tongue they, nevertheless, could make out--surely
he did not lie to them! And the priest of their own faith, standing in
the snow close by the child, would not betray them. They knew better
than that. Perhaps to them the flag, the drum, the fife, the bugle,
the faint semblance of military formation maintained by these volunteer
rescuers who had appeared so opportunely, promising succour and security
and a habitation for the night--perhaps all this symbolised to them
organised authority and organised protection, just as Judge Priest, in
a flash of inspiration back in Kamleiter's Hall, had guessed that it
might.
Their leader, the man who held the pistol, advanced a pace or two and
called out something; and when Tony Wolfe, from his perch on the old
judge's shoulders, had answered back, the man, as though satisfied,
turned and might be seen busily confabbing with certain of his mates who
clustered about him, gesticulating.
“Whut did he say, boy?” asked Judge Priest, craning his neck to look up.
“He say, Mister Judge, they wants to talk it over,” replied Tony,
craning his neck to look down.
“And whut did you say to him then?”
“I say to him: 'Go to it, kiddo!'”
In the sheltering crotch of little Tony's two plump bestraddling legs,
which encircled his neck, the old judge chuckled to himself. A wave
of laughter ran through the ranks of the halted mob--Tony's voice had
carried so far as that, and Tony's mode of speech apparently had met
with favour. Mob psychology, according to some students, is hard to
fathom; according to others, easy.
From the midst of the knot of Sicilians a man stepped forth--not the
tall man with the gun, but a little stumpy man who moved with a limp.
Alone, he walked through the crispened snow until he came up to where
the veterans stood, waiting and watching. The mob, all intently quiet
once more, waited and watched too.
With a touch of the dramatic instinct that belongs to his race, he flung
down a dirk knife at Judge Priest's feet and held out both his hands in
token of surrender. To the men who came there to take his life he gave
no heed--not so much as a sidewise glance over his shoulder did he give
them. He looked into the judge's face and into the face of little Tony,
and into the earnest face of the old priest alongside these two.
“Boys”--the judge lifted Tony down and, with a gesture, was invoking
the attention of his townsmen--“boys, here's the man who did the knifin'
this mornin', givin' himself up to my pertection--and yours. He's goin'
along with me now to the county jail, to be locked up ez a prisoner.
I've passed my word and the word of this whole town that he shan't be
teched nor molested whilst he's on his way there, nor after he gits
there. I know there ain't a single one of you but stands ready to help
me keep that promise. I'm right, ain't I, boys?”
“Oh, hell, judge--you win!” sang out a member of the mob, afterward
identified as one of Beaver Yancy's close friends, in a humorously
creditable imitation of the judge's own earnest whine. And at that
everybody laughed again and somebody started a cheer.
“I thought so,” replied the judge. “And now, boys, I've got an idea.
I reckin, after trampin' all the way down here in the snow, none of us
want to tramp back home ag'in without doin' somethin'--we don't feel
like ez ef we want to waste the whole evenin', do we? See that shack
burnin' down? Well, it's railroad property; and we don't want
the railroad to suffer. Let's put her out--let's put her out with
snowballs!” Illustrating his suggestion, he stooped, scooped up a double
handful of snow, squeezed it into a pellet and awkwardly tossed it in
the general direction of the blazing barracks. It flew wide of the mark
and fell short of it; but his intention was good, that being conceded.
Whooping joyously, four hundred men and half-grown boys, or thereabouts
such a number, pouched their weapons and dug into the drifted whiteness.
“Hold on a minute--we'll do it to soldier music!” shouted the judge, and
he gave a signal. The drum beat then; and old Mr. Harrison Treese buried
the fife in his white whiskers and ripped loose on the air the first
bars of Yankee Doodle. The judge molded another snowball for himself.
“All set? Then, ready!--aim!--fire!”
Approximately two hundred snowballs battered and splashed the flaming
red target. A great sizzling sound rose.
Just after this first volley the only gun-powder shot of the evening was
fired. It came out afterward that as a man named Ike Bowers stooped over
to gather up some snow his pistol, which he had forgotten to uncock,
slipped out of his pocket and fell on a broken bit of planking. There
was a darting needle of fire and a smart crack. The Sicilians wavered
for a minute, swaying back and forth, then steadied themselves as Father
Minor stepped in among them with his arms uplifted; but Sergeant Jimmy
Bagby put his hand to his head in a puzzled sort of way, spun round, and
laid himself down full length in the snow.
It was nearly midnight. The half-burned hull of the barracks in the
deserted bottom below the Old Fort still smoked a little, but it no
longer blazed. Its late occupants--all save one--slept in the P. A. & O.
V. roundhouse, half a mile away, under police and clerical protection;
this one was in a cell in the county jail, safe and sound, and it is
probable that he slept also. That linguistic prodigy, Master Tony Wolfe
Tone Palassi, being excessively awearied, snored in soft, little-boy
snores at his mother's side; and over him she cried tears of pride and
visited soft kisses on his flushed, upturned face. To the family of the
Palassis much honour had accrued--not forgetting the Callahans. At
eleven o'clock the local correspondent of the _Courier-Journal_ and
other city papers had called up to know where he might get copies of her
son's latest photograph for widespread publication abroad.
The rest of the town, generally speaking, was at this late hour of
midnight, also abed; but in the windows of Doctor Lake's office, on the
second floor of the Planters' Bank building, lights burned, and on the
leather couch in Doctor Lake's inner room a pudgy figure, which breathed
heavily, was stretched at full length, its hands passively flat on its
breast, its head done up in many windings of cotton batting and surgical
bandages. Above this figure stood old Doctor Lake, holding in the open
palm of his left hand a small, black, flattened object. The door leading
to the outer office opened a foot and the woe-begone face and dripping
eyes of Judge Priest appeared through the slit.
“Get out!” snapped Doctor Lake without turning his head.
“Lew, it's me!” said Judge Priest in the whisper that any civilised
being other than a physician or a trained nurse instinctively assumes in
the presence of a certain dread visitation. “I jest natchelly couldn't
wait no longer--not another minute! I wouldn't 'a' traded one hair off
of Jimmy Bagby's old grey head fur all the Beaver Yancys that ever was
whelped. Lew, is there a chance?”
“Billy Priest,” said Doctor Lake severely, “the main trouble with you is
that you're so liable to go off half-cocked. Beaver Yancy's not going to
die--you couldn't kill him with an ax. I don't know how that story got
round to-night. And Jim Bagby's all right too, except he's going to have
one whale of a headache tomorrow. The bullet glanced round his skull and
stopped under the scalp. Here 'tis--I just got it out.... Oh, Lord! Now
look what you've done, bursting in here and blubbering all around the
place!”
The swathed form on the couch sat up and cocked an eye out from beneath
a low-drawn fold of cheesecloth.
“Is that you, Judge?” demanded Sergeant Bagby in his usual voice and in
almost his usual manner.
“Yes, Jimmy; it's me.”
Judge Priest projected himself across the room toward his friend. He
didn't run; he didn't jump; he didn't waddle--he projected himself.
“Yes, Jimmy, it's me.”
“Are any of the other boys out there in the other room?”
“Yes, Jimmy; they're all out there, waitin'.”
“Well, quit snifflin' and call 'em right in!” said Sergeant Bagby
crisply. “I've been tryin' fur years to git somebody to set still long
enough fur me to tell 'em that there story about Gin'ral John C.
Breckenridge and Gin'ral Simon Bolivar Buckner; and it seems like
somethin' always comes up to interrupt me. This looks like my chance to
finish it, fur oncet. Call them boys all in!”