HIS FORTUNE—GOOD AND BAD
Mr. Sikes, taking no chance on having Baxter’s order vetoed by Serepta,
rushed from the room. A moment later he returned, followed by two
shivering women who stopped just inside the door and apologetically
smirked upon the waiting group. One of them, evidently the leader, was a
woman of middle-age—swarthy, keen-eyed, sardonic of expression. A thick
red shawl covered her hair, drawn close under the chin by a brown,
claw-like hand. She wore a man’s overcoat; the tips of a pair of heavy
boots peeped out from beneath the bottom of her dirty yellow petticoat.
Her companion, much younger and quite handsome in a bold, sullen way,
also wore a scarlet shawl about her head; she was dressed very much
after the pattern of her senior.
“Here we are,” announced Mr. Sikes, with a wave of his hand.
“Shut the door,” ordered Mrs. Grimes.
The host, with a nervous sort of geniality, beckoned to the strangers.
“Better come down to the fire, Queen,” he said.
They did not move. The elder woman fixed a curious look upon Mr. Baxter.
“I am the queen of the gypsies, Mister, but how came you to know it?”
she asked in a hoarse, not unmusical voice.
“Always best to be on the safe side,” said Baxter, with his jolliest
laugh. “There are so blamed many gypsy queens running around loose these
days that—”
The gypsy silenced him with an imperious gesture. “There is but one true
queen of the gypsies. I am the true queen of all the Romanies. And you,
Mister, are the father of a noble, handsome son—a prince.”
“Well, by gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Link in astonishment. “That does beat
all!”
“Don’t tell me there’s nothing in fortune-telling,” said Mr. Baxter,
cackling again. “Come up by the fire, Queen. Warm yourself. And you too,
Miss.”
The two women, after a glance at each other, slowly advanced to the
stove and held out their hands to the warmth. The younger of the two
fastened her gaze upon Mrs. Sage. A covetous light gleamed in her black
eyes as she took in the fur coat and the wondrous hat.
“Bring in a couple of chairs from the kitchen, Joe,” ordered the host.
“Set down, everybody. Put on a little more coal, will you, Horace? How
did you know about me, Queen?” He seemed to expand a little with his own
rather vicarious importance.
The gypsy waited impressively until the chairs were produced.
“The stars brought me the news,” she said, and sat down, signaling her
companion that it was now permissible for her to do the same. “They make
no mistakes. I am the chosen mouthpiece of the stars. I speak only of
the things they tell me.”
“Umph!” from Mr. Gooch.
The two women looked at him so piercingly that he turned away, conscious
of a most uncomfortable feeling.
“The stars, Mister, witnessed the birth of your son a hundred thousand
years ago—his birth and also his death,” said the “queen,” satisfied
with the squelching of the scoffer. “They also looked down upon your own
deathbed, Mister, a hundred thousand years ago.”
There was an awed silence while the company sought mentally for a
solution to this tremendous and incomprehensible enigma.
“Look here, Ollie,” said Mr. Link, blatantly jocular; “if you’ve been
dead as long as all that you ought to be buried. You stop in at my
office in the morning.”
This remark properly was ignored by the gypsy queen. She paid no
attention to the strained laugh that followed the undertaker’s sally.
She sat hunched forward in the chair, her chin in her hands.
“The stars travel through space at the rate of a million miles a
minute,” she said oracularly. “How long, Mister, would it take mortal
man to travel a million miles?”
The question, addressed abruptly to Mr. Baxter, found him at a loss for
an answer. All he could do was to shake his head helplessly.
“I see it is beyond you,” she went on. “So fast travel the stars that in
one day, such as ours, they have put behind them a hundred thousand of
the tiny things we call years.”
No one present was prepared to dispute the statement.
“Even as I speak to you now, Mister, my words are as ancient history to
the stars. So! I lift my hand. The stars are a thousand years older than
they were before I lifted it. Do you understand, Mister? Is it not clear
to you?”
“Not very,” confessed Mr. Baxter, humbly.
“See. I snap my fingers. Not in scorn for your ignorance, but to
illustrate. While I was snapping my fingers, some of the stars shot
through a million miles of space, taking thousands of our years to do
it.”
“Mathematically—” began Mr. Sage, but got no further. The gypsy
proceeded, impressively:
“They have witnessed all that is to transpire on this earth of ours
during the next thousand years or two.”
“By gosh—it sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Link. “I never thought of it
in that way before.”
“Will you permit me to inquire, my good woman, what college—what great
seat of learning—you attended?” inquired Mr. Sage ironically.
“College?” she inquired, a trifle blankly.
“You speak the language of a cultivated woman. You use good English. You
have colossal figures on the tip of your tongue. You—”
“I speak many languages,” she broke in. “The language of the stars is
older than any of them. There were stars in the East when the Savior was
born. They were there when this world was made and peopled with ignorant
men and women. They saw from afar the birth of your Savior a million
years before he was—”
“My dear Brother Baxter,” cried the parson, “this is perfect nonsense.
Have you the impudence, Madam, to imply that we mortals are so far
behind the times as all this?”
“I know of nothing, Reverend Sir, that proves the fact more clearly than
the institution you represent,” said the gypsy, with a rare smile.
“Goodness, what beautiful teeth!” murmured Mrs. Sage admiringly.
“The best I can say for you, Madam,” said Mr. Sage, returning the smile,
“is that right or wrong, honest or dishonest, you are nobody’s fool.”
“I can see beyond the end of my nose,” rejoined the woman cryptically.
The parson laughed. “And so, according to your gospel, I am now treading
the streets of the Celestial City, and have been doing so for a million
years without knowing it?”
With the utmost seriousness the gypsy replied: “If you will cross my
palm with a piece of silver, good Pastor, I may be able to state
positively whether you are there—or in the other place.”
The parson’s wife clapped her hands. “Give her a quarter, Herbert,” she
cried, mischievously. “It certainly is worth that much to find out
whether we’re wasting our youth trying to—”
“Ahem! My dear Josephine! In the first place, I do not have to be told
that I am going to heaven when I die. I live in faith. I have no doubt
as to the future.”
At this point Mr. Baxter’s interest in the project got the better of his
politeness.
“We’re wasting time. Let’s get down to business. Do you mean to say,
Queen, that you can look at my hand and tell what’s ahead of my boy
upstairs?”
“First, you must cross my palm with silver. It is a bitter night,
Mister. I have come far through the storm to serve you. You are poor,
but so am I. I have earned more than one piece of silver, but I will be
content with what you may give.”
“I believe I’ll take a chance on it,” said Baxter, with a defiant glance
at Mrs. Grimes and the supercilious Gooches.
Mrs. Grimes was deeply though secretly impressed by the words and manner
of the gypsy. She nodded her head and Baxter brightened. Mr. Gooch,
however, exclaimed:
“Don’t be a fool, Baxter. Money don’t grow on bushes.”
Young Mrs. Sage jumped up from her chair. “I’ve got an idea,” she cried
briskly. “Suppose we all chip in a silver piece toward the fortune of
Oliver October. It’s his birthday, so let’s start him off right. You
pass the hat, Mr. Sikes. Chip in for me, Herbert. I left my purse on the
piano.”
“I didn’t know you had a piano,” said Mrs. Grimes, pricking up her ears.
“Figure of speech,” said Mrs. Sage, airily. “If I had a piano I would
have left my purse upon it if I had a purse.”
There was a jingling of small coins in several pockets. The swarthy
faces of the two gypsies brightened. Horace Gooch glanced at his big
watch—a silver one—and said sharply:
“Didn’t I tell you to get your things on, Ida? We’ve got a long, cold
drive ahead of us.” Then, somewhat defiantly: “Besides, I haven’t got
anything smaller than a silver dollar. No baby’s fortune is worth a
dollar.”
“I guess the queen can change a dollar for you, Mr. Gooch,” said Mrs.
Grimes. “Joe, if you have a spare quarter, put it in for me. I’ll hand
it back to-morrow.”
Sikes picked up the parson’s stove-pipe hat and, fishing some coins out
of his pocket, dropped two of them into the hollow depths of the “tile.”
“That’s for me and Serepty. Come on, Silas. Shell out.”
Link flipped a coin into the hat. “There’s a quarter. Now you can change
that dollar for—er—for Ollie’s brother-in-law.”
“After all, it is a harmless experiment,” announced Mr. Sage, but
dubiously, “and it may prove diverting. In any case, my dear, we will
not miss the—er—the—the thirty-five cents.” As he dropped the coins
into the hat, he leaned over and whispered in her ear: “There goes the
jar of cold cream you were wanting, my dear.”
Oliver October’s parent was embarrassed. “It ain’t right for you folks
to be squandering all this money on account of little Oliver October.
You can’t afford it. ’Specially Horace.”
“What’s that?” snapped Mr. Gooch, reddening. “What do you think I am? A
pauper?” With that he tossed a silver dollar into the hat. “That’s the
kind of a sport I am.”
“Oh, Horace!” cried his wife, starting. “That was a dollar.”
“I know it was. Why?”
“Oh—nothing. Only—only you acted as if it was a dime.”
“How much you got, Joe?” inquired Silas.
“Two-ten. Put your money back in your pocket, Ollie. She ought to tell
all our fortunes for two-ten.”
But Baxter, ignoring him, dropped a dollar into the hat, an act of
vanity which drew from Mrs. Grimes a little squeak of dismay.
“Goodness, Oliver Baxter! The child’s got to have clothes.”
“How do you know it has to have clothes?” demanded Baxter. “Wait till
the queen gets through telling what’s going to happen to him before you
go to prophesying on your own account.”
“I wish I’d put you to bed when I started to awhile ago,” was her
retort.
Mrs. Gooch, who had been a silent and disapproving witness to all this
prodigality, piped up: “I was fool enough to have my fortune told at the
county fair once. By a trained canary bird. For ten cents only.”
“You never told me about it, Ida,” said Mr. Gooch sourly.
Sikes turned the money over to Baxter. “Cross her palm with it, Ollie,”
said he.
“What guarantee is there that we get our money’s worth?” demanded Mr.
Gooch, crinkling his eyes a little as he listened to the jingle of the
coins which Baxter shifted noisily from one hand to the other while
Sikes was arranging the chairs in a semi-circle about the central
figures.
The “queen” looked hard at the speaker. “We all come into the world by
chance, Mister,” she said. “We exist by chance and we are destroyed by
chance. The child’s future depends on chance. I can give no guarantee.
Who shall say whether I speak truly or falsely until time has given its
testimony?”
“A remarkably clever woman,” murmured Mr. Sage, as he seated himself.
“I’d hate to hear any bad news about little Oliver October,” said Baxter
anxiously.
“You must accept the bad with the good, Mister. Our fortunes run over a
road of many turnings, through many snares and pitfalls. Fate directs
us. Each of us has a guiding star. We travel by the light it sheds. Your
baby was born under his own star. His fate is known to that star.”
“Hold out your hand. I’ll say in advance that I don’t believe in
fortune-telling, so if you tell me anything bad it won’t make any
difference. Before you begin, I guess I’ll run upstairs and see if he is
still all right.”
“You stay away from that baby, Oliver Baxter,” exclaimed Mrs. Grimes.
“Like as not these gypsies carry all sorts of awful diseases around with
’em. Sit down, I say. I won’t have any strangers busting in and
frightening that child.”
“Great Scott, Serepty! You don’t call _me_ a stranger, do you?”
“He don’t know you from Adam,” was the stern reply.
“Or Eve, for that matter,” added Mrs. Sage, with a snicker.
“I do wish, Josephine, you would remember—”
“Sh! She’s ready to begin,” interrupted Baxter.
The company drew their chairs closer as the coins were dropped one by
one into the gypsy’s palm. She deliberately drew up her thick skirt and
slipped them into a pocket of her petticoat. Then she seized one of
Baxter’s hands in her own and fixed him with her brilliant, searching
eyes. Silence pervaded the room. Every eye was on the dark, impassive
face of the fortune-teller. Presently, after a few strange passes with
her free hand, she lowered her eyes and began to study the creases in
the Baxter palm.
A particularly violent blast of wind roared and whistled about the
corners of the house, rattling the windows in their frames and peppering
the panes with a fusillade of sleet. The younger gypsy drew her shawl
closer about her chin and slunk a little deeper into the chair.
“A tough night on horses,” said Mr. Link, and then cleared his throat
hastily.
“Maybe you’d sooner be alone, Ollie,” said Mr. Sikes, considerately.
“I wouldn’t be left alone with her for anything, Joe.”
The gypsy began, in a deep, monotonous, rather awesome tone.
“I see a wonderful child. He is strong and sturdy. In the hand of his
father the stars have laid their prophecy. It is very clear. This babe
will grow up to be a fine—Ah, wait! Yes, a very remarkable man.”
Another long silence, broken sacrilegiously by Mr. Sikes.
“I could have told you that, Ollie, for nothing,” he said.
“Sh!”
“I can see this son of yours, Mister, as a leader of men. Great honor is
in store for him, and great wealth.”
“They invariably say that,” said Mr. Sage, smiling.
“Sh!” hissed Baxter fiercely.
“He is in uniform. Of the military, I believe, although the vision is
not yet entirely clear. I do not recognize the uniform.”
“Have you ever seen a general?” inquired Mr. Baxter, wistfully.
Mr. Link interposed. “I know what it is. Many’s the time that infant’s
father has marched in a funeral procession wearing a Knights of Pythias
uniform. Does the hat appear to have a long white plume on it, Queen?”
“There will be wars, Mister, bloody wars,” went on the gypsy, paying not
the slightest attention to the obliging undertaker. “I see men in
uniform following your son—many men, Mister, and all of them armed.”
“Sounds like the police to me,” observed Mrs. Sage.
“Do they catch him?” cried Mrs. Grimes breathlessly.
“He puts away the trappings of war,” continued the imperturbable
seeress. “I see him as a successful man, at the head of great
undertakings. He is still young. He has been out of college but a few
years.”
“That will please his mother,” said Baxter, sniffling. “She has always
wanted that boy to go to college.”
“Sh!” put in Mr. Sikes testily.
“Alas! He will have a great sorrow before he is ten. I can see death
standing beside him. He will lose some one who is very dear to him.”
“Aha!” ejaculated Mr. Gooch, as if here was something to relish.
Mr. Baxter laughed shrilly but mirthlessly. “Look close, Queen,” he
said. “I bet it’s me he’s going to lose.”
“Nay. Some one nearer to him than his father.”
“Stop!” said he soberly, trying to withdraw his hand. “I don’t want to
hear any more. If you mean his—his mother, why, you’ll have to stop.”
Some coaxing and a little ridicule on the part of the spectators decided
Baxter. He laughed and, edging forward on his chair, ordered the gypsy
to continue.
“Let me go back a little,” she droned. “The vision is clearer. He will
come out of college at the top of his class, with great honors. Then,
soon after, will come the wars. He will fight in foreign lands.”
“That bears out what I’ve claimed for years,” said Mr. Link. “We’ve got
to lick England again.”
“Your son will have many narrow escapes, Mister, but he will come home
to his mother, safe and sound.”
“I thought you said she was going to die before he was ten,” said Mr.
Gooch.
Covert glances passed between the two gypsies, the younger now being
wide awake. The fortune-teller bent low over the Baxter palm and studied
it more carefully.
“I—I seem to see a strange woman,” she muttered. “Perhaps it is his
step-mother. It is possible that you will marry again, Mister.”
“You’re off your base there, Queen,” said Mr. Baxter firmly. “It _ain’t_
possible.”
“This is all humbug, Brother Baxter.”
“A great deal more is being revealed to me by the light of the star,
Mister,” urged the gypsy, now eager to give good measure. “Shall I go
on?”
“After what you said about me being likely to get married again, all I
got to say is that I don’t believe a derned word of anything you’ve told
me. That boy’s never going to have a step-mother unless he has a
step-father first.”
“You feel the same way about step-mothers that I do about
brother-in-laws,” put in Mr. Sikes.
“Go on, Queen,” commanded Mr. Baxter.
“I see a great white house and a building with a huge dome upon it. Your
son will sit in the halls of state, in the councils of his land. Ah, the
vision grows dim again. It may mean that he will decline the greatest
honor the people of this land could confer upon him.”
“Oh, dear,” gulped Mrs. Grimes. “You don’t mean to say he will refuse to
be President?”
“It’s more likely he’ll be running on the Republican ticket,” said Mr.
Gooch, grinning at Mr. Link.
“Sh! How old is little Oliver by this time, Queen?” inquired Baxter. “I
mean how far have you got him by now?”
“He is nearing thirty. Rich, respected and admired. He will have many
affairs of the heart. I see two dark women and—one, two—yes, three
fair women.”
Mrs. Sage sighed. “At last it begins to look like real trouble.”
“That would seem to show that he’s going to be a purty good-looking sort
of a feller, wouldn’t it?” said Baxter, proudly.
“He will grow up to be the image of his father, Mister.”
“Now she’s telling you the unpleasant things you were dreading, Oliver,”
said Gooch.
The gypsy leaned back in her chair, spreading her hands in a gesture of
finality.
“I see no more,” she said. “The light of the star has faded out. So! Are
you not pleased?”
“Is that all? Well, all I got to say is that you got a good deal of
money for telling me something that I’ve been dreaming about for I don’t
know how long.”
Mrs. Gooch sniffed. “She’s just like all the rest of these thieving
gypsies. They’re all frauds and liars. Telling fortunes and stealing
children is all they know how to do. If I had my way, they’d all be
locked up.”
The two gypsies leaned forward, their hands close to the stove, their
heads almost touching. There was nothing in their actions or manner to
indicate that they heard the foregoing remarks. Nevertheless, they
scowled unseen and there was evil in their black eyes.
“Anybody could have told you all that she did, Oliver,” complained Mrs.
Grimes, “but that wouldn’t make it true, would it? Three dollars and ten
cents for all that rubbish!”
“And they’ll be robbing your hen roost before morning, Baxter,” said Mr.
Gooch.
“Well,” mused Baxter, “the only really unpleasant thing that’s going to
happen to Oliver October, far as I can make out, is that he’s going to
look exactly like me. That _is_ purty rough, ain’t it, Mrs. Sage?”
“At any rate,” said she, “he will have the satisfaction of being
unmistakably recognized as a wise son.”
The gypsies were preparing to depart. Their shifty eyes wandered over
the heads of the company, taking in the meager contents of the room.
There was a pleased leer on the lips of the younger of the two. Mr.
Baxter arose.
“Taking it by and large, Queen,” he said, “I guess you took us all in
purty neatly. I ain’t blaming you. It’s your business to pick out the
easiest kind of fools and then soak it to ’em.”
The “queen” drew herself erect and gave him a look that would have done
credit to the most regal personage in the world.
“Would you offer insult to the queen of the gypsies?” she demanded
coldly.
“It ain’t insulting you, is it, to call ourselves fools?”
For answer, outraged royalty reached into her pocket and drew out the
silver.
“I could throw your accursed silver into your face,” she almost shouted.
As she drew back her arm as if to carry out the threat, her wrist was
seized by her companion, who whispered fiercely in her ear. “No, no!”
the “queen” answered, “I will not do as you say, Magda. I will not be
cruel. Let the fool be happy while he may. I have been kind to him. He
jeers at me because I have stopped when I might have gone on and told
him the dreadful things—”
“Tell him!” cried the other. “Tell him everything.”
“Open the door, Joe!” commanded Baxter. “Get out, both of you.”
The “queen” turned on him furiously. “Stay! I am about to tell you all
that I saw in the hand of that baby’s father.” Her eyes were hard and
cruel, her voice raised in anger. “You scoff at me. For that you shall
have the truth. All that I have told you will come true. But I did not
tell you of the end that I saw for him. Hark ye! This son of yours will
go to the gallows. He will swing from the end of a rope.” She was now
speaking in a high shrill voice; her hearers sat open-mouthed, as if
under a spell that could not be shaken off. “It is all as plain as the
noonday sun. He will never reach the age of thirty. All good fortune
will desert him in the last year of his life. The very first vision I
had when I took your hand was the sight of a young man swinging in the
air with a rope around his neck. A solemn group of men look on. They
watch him swing to and fro. He jerks and writhes and then at last is
still. That is all. That is the end. I have spoken the truth. You forced
me to do so. I go. Come, Magda!”
They were nearing the door before the silence caused by this staggering
revelation was shattered by Mr. Sikes, who was the first to recover from
the momentary paralysis that had gripped the entire company. The burly
feed store proprietor, superstitious but far from sentimental, sprang
forward and intercepted the two women.
“Hold on, there! I don’t believe a damn’ word of it—and neither does
Mr. Baxter, no matter if he does look white about the gills. You’re
sore, and you’re saying all this for spite.”
The queen lifted her chin haughtily. “You will see,” she proclaimed.
“Wait till the end of his twenty-ninth year before you say it is spite.”
“Say,” broke in Mr. Link shrewdly, “he’s got to commit murder before
they can hang him, ain’t he?”
“I have not said that he would be a murderer,” was the reply, but not
until after she had taken the time to deliberately button her coat and
readjust her headgear.
“Did you not say you saw him swinging to and fro at the end of a rope?”
demanded Silas, accusingly.
“Yes—I—I—that is what I said,” she stammered, and sent a malevolent,
challenging look at the smiling churchman.
“The woman is a fraud,” said the latter, shrugging his shoulders. “Cheer
up, Brother Baxter. No such fate awaits your son.”
“Well, what I was about to say,” went on Mr. Link, “is this. All we got
to do is to bring that boy up not to commit murder. We simply got to
educate him so’s he won’t ever think of doing anything like that. Learn
him to hold his temper down. Soon as he’s old enough to understand,
we’ll begin talking to him about the—er—wages of sin, and so forth.
That’ll fix it all right, Ollie. So don’t you believe a derned word she
said to you.”
But Mr. Baxter was not so much dismayed as he was dejected. He stared
bleakly before him. “The trouble is,” said he, shaking his head
mournfully, “there’s a lot of it I want to believe. And if I believe any
of it, I’ve got to believe all of it. So what’s the sense of little
Oliver being one of the grandest men in the United States if he’s got to
be hung before the United States finds it out? Here! Where are you
going, Serepty? Don’t leave me.”
“I am going out to get a kettle of boiling water and then I’m going to
make that woman wish she’d stayed out where it’s cold. The idea of that
poor little innocent baby being a bloodthirsty murderer! If you’re here
when I get back, I’ll scald you—”
The gypsy made haste to intercept the bristling Serepta.
“He will not be guilty of the crime for which he is to suffer,” was her
sententious conclusion. “Have I not said he would grow up to be a noble
and righteous man? He will never do evil. He will be unjustly accused of
slaying a fellow man. He will die on the gallows an innocent victim of
the law. That is all. I have spoken. I have told you his fate as the
stars have revealed it to me. You may believe me or not, as you like.
Hold! You need not bother, Mister. Magda will open the door.”
It was a speechless, unsmiling group that watched the vagabond women
pass from the room. No one spoke until the front door closed with a
bang. The crunching of snow on the porch followed, and then for a brief
space, the loud ticking of the clock on the shelf. The sophisticated
Mrs. Sage was bereft of all inclination to banter; she was wide-eyed and
solemn. Even her husband was impressed; as for Baxter and the others one
might have been justified in suspecting that they were already
witnessing the horrible execution of the infant Oliver.
A wild, prolonged shriek of the wind, yowling up from the black
stretches of Death Swamp, caused more than one person in the room to
shudder. The humane Mr. Link closed his eyes but opened them
immediately, and said, with less conviction however than on former
occasions:
“It’s a tough night for horses.”
Mr. Sikes bethought himself to poke up the fire. He did it with such
vigor that every one was grateful to him; the prodigious noise and
clatter he was making relieved the tension.
Baxter screwed his face up into a wry grin, but for once forebore
cackling. He drew a singularly boisterous and unanimous laugh by
remarking dryly:
“I wish we had a canary bird here, Ida, to cheer us up a bit.”
“Keep that blanket up close around your neck and shoulders, Oliver
Baxter,” ordered Serepta Grimes briskly. “You’ll be having croup if you
ain’t careful. Mrs. Gooch, you and your husband can sleep in the spare
room to-night. Mr. Baxter will take the back bedroom over the kitchen.
It’s warmer than any other room in the house. Good night, everybody.
I’ll go up the back way with the warm blanket for Oliver October.”
With her departure, Mr. Baxter seemed suddenly to realize that something
was expected of him as host.
“Sit down, everybody,” he invited, and that was the extent of his
hospitality. He lapsed into a brooding silence, pulling feebly at the
drooping ends of his mustache. His mood was contagious. The company, one
and all, appeared to be thinking profoundly. At last the Reverend Sage
spoke.
“There’s nothing in it—absolutely nothing.”
Mrs. Sage came out of a dark reverie to inquire blandly of Mrs. Gooch if
she was intending to spend the night.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Baxter’s sister. “I’ve had my things on
and off three times.”
Mr. Link pondered aloud. “If little Oliver grows up to be as wise as
Solomon, as she seems to think, I’ll bet my last cent he’ll be able to
get around any law that ever was made.”
Suddenly Baxter startled them all by slapping his leg resoundingly. His
face was beaming.
“By ginger, I’ve thought of a way to upset that doggoned prophecy. I’ll
wait till little Oliver is purty well grown up and then I’ll up and move
to a state where they don’t have capital punishment. Gosh! I wish I’d
thought of that before she got away. It would have taken a lot of wind
out of her sails, wouldn’t it?”
Mr. Gooch put a dampener on this. “I don’t see how that would help any
if a mob took him out of jail and lynched him. They say lynching is
getting worse all the time in this part of the country.”
Whereupon Mr. Sikes arose and said something under his breath, adding an
instant later:
“Don’t let me hear anything about Solomon being so dodgasted wise. Look
at all the brother-in-laws he must have taken unto himself—and with his
eyes open, too.”