“We got to save them picture-houses,” panted Anderson, and then in hasty apology,—”and the churches, too.”
“You got to save my studio first,” bawled Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer, trying to keep pace with him in the congested line.
“Halt!” commanded the chief, not because tactics called for such an action but because he was beginning to feel that he couldn’t keep up with the engine.
The cavalcade eased down to a walk and finally came to a halt. Every eye was riveted on the burning structure which now stood out alone in all its grandeur beyond the quarries and gravel-pits. Every one waited in breathless suspense for the collapse of the towering walls.
A shrill, boyish voice broke out above the subdued, awe-struck chatter of the crowd.
“Where’s Mr. Crow? Mr. Crow! Where are you?”
“Sh!” hissed Alf Reesling, glowering upon the excited boy, who had just come up at full speed from the direction of the town. “Don’t you make so much noise! The walls are going to cave in, an’—”
“Where’s Mr. Crow?” panted the boy, a lad of twelve. His eyes appeared starting from his head. A second boy joined him, and he was trembling so violently that he could not speak at all. All he could do was to point at the lank figure of the old town marshal, some distance back in the crowd.
Three seconds later the two youngsters had the ear of Anderson Crow, and between them they poured it full of news of the most extraordinary character. The crowd, forgetting the imminent crash of the warehouse wall, pressed eagerly forward.
“Wait a second—wait a second!” roared Anderson. “One at a time now. Don’t both of you talk at oncet. You, Bud—you tell it. You keep still, Roswell Hatch. Take your time, Bud!”
“Lemme tell it, Mr. Crow,” begged Roswell. “I knowed it first. It ain’t fair for Bud to—”
“But I got here first,” protested Bud, and there might have been something more sanguinary than mere words if Marshal Crow had not interfered.
“None o’ that, now! What’s the matter, Bud?”
“Somethin’ turrible has happened, Mr. Crow—somethin’ awfully turrible,” wheezed the boy.
“If you derned little scalawags have run all the way from town to tell me that Smock’s warehouse is on fire, you’d—”
“Oh, gee, that ain’t nothin’!” gulped Bud. “Wait till you hear what I know.”
“I can’t wait all night. I got to save Mr. Pratt’s studio, an’—”
“Well, you know them two tramps you put in the lock-up yesterday afternoon?” cried Bud.
“Desperit characters, both of ’em. I figgered they was up to some devilment an—”
“Well, they ain’t in any more; they’re out. Ros an’ me seen the whole business. We wuz—”
“Geminy crickets! What’s this? A jail-break? Out of the way, everybody! Two desperit villains are loose in town, an—”
“Hold on, Mr. Crow,” cried the other lad, seizing his opportunity. “There’s more’n two. Three or four more fellers from the outside come up an’ busted in the door an’ let ’em out. Then they all run down the street to where the new bank is. Me an’ Bud seen some of ’em climb into one of the winders of the bank, an’ nen we struck out to find you, Mr. Crow. We thought maybe you’d like to know what—”
The rest of Roswell’s narrative was lost in the hullabaloo of command and action. The fickle populace turned its back on the burning warehouse and swept down the lane in quest of new excitement. The tottering wall came down with a crash, but its fall was unwitnessed except by those infirm old ladies and gentlemen who had lagged so far behind in the first rush for safety that they were still in ignorance of the latest calamity. It was a pity, wrote Miss Sue Becker in her diary, that the gods crowded so much into a single night when there were “three hundred and sixty-four more perfectly good nights available.”
The story of the two boys proved not only to be true, but also woefully lacking in exaggeration. The jail-delivery and the looting of the First National Bank of Tinkletown turned out to be but two in a long and fairly complete list of disasters.
Investigation revealed an astonishing thoroughness and impartiality on the part of the bandits. The safe in Brubaker’s drugstore was missing, with something like nineteen dollars in cash; Lamson’s store had been entered, and the cash-register rifled; Fryback’s hardware-store, Higgins’ feed-store and Rush Applegate’s tailor-shop were visited, and, as Harry Squires said in the Banner, “contents noted.” Two brand-new “shoes” and a couple of inner tubes were missing from Gillespie’s Universal Garage, and Ed Higgins’ dog was slain in cold blood by the “remorseless ravagers.”
* * * *
Nobody went to sleep that night. Everybody joined in the search for the robbers. Citizens hurried home after the first alarm and did their part by looking under every bed in their houses, after which the more venturesome visited garrets, cellars and woodsheds.
Anderson Crow, after organizing a large posse and commandeering several automobiles, suddenly remembered that he had left his silver watch and a wallet containing eleven dollars under his pillow. He drove home as rapidly as possible in John Blosser’s 1903 Pope-Toledo and was considerably aggravated to find his wife sound asleep. He awoke her with some rudeness.
“Wake up, Eva! Consarn it, don’t you know the town’s full of highwaymen? It’d be just like you to sleep here like a log and let ’em come in an’ nip my watch an’ purse right out o’ your own bed. I wouldn’t ‘a’ been a bit surprised to find ’em gone—an’ you chloryformed and gagged. I—”
“Burglars, did you say?” cried his wife, sitting up in bed and staring at him in alarm.
“Dozens of ’em,” he declared, pocketing his watch and wallet. “Get up and help me search the house. Where’s my revolver?”
“Oh, Lordy, Anderson! Your—your revolver? You’re not going to shoot it off, are you?”
“I certainly am—if the derned thing’s loaded. Where’s it at?”
She sank back with a sigh of relief. “Thank heavens, I just remembered that Milt Cupples borrowed it last winter to—”
“Borrowed my revolver?” roared Anderson. “Why—”
“To loan to a friend of his’n who was going down to New York on business.”
“An’ he never brought it back?”
“He never did.”
Anderson’s opinion of Milt Cupples was smothered in a violent chorus of automobile horns. Mrs. Crow promptly covered her head with the bed-clothes and let out a muffled shriek.
“It’s only the posse,” he shouted, pulling the covers from her face. “Don’t be scairt, Evy. Where’s your courage? Remember who you are. Rememb—”
“I’m only a poor, weak woman—”
“I know that,” he agreed, “but that ain’t all. You are marshal o’ Tinkletown, an’ if you’re goin’ to cover up your head every time a horn toots, you’ll—”
“Oh, go on away and leave me alone, Anderson,” she cried. “I don’t want to be marshal. I never did. I resign now—do you hear me? I resign this instant. I was a fool to let the women elect me—and the women were worse fools for voting for me. That’s what comes of letting women vote. We had a good, well-trained marshal—because that’s what you are, Anderson. And—”
The door flew open. Alf Reesling burst into the room, followed by both of Anderson Crow’s daughters.
“Come on, Anderson!” shouted Alf, gasping with excitement. “Good even’, Mrs. Crow. Howdy do? Hurry up, Ander—”
“We tried to keep him out, Ma,” broke in Caroline Crow, glaring at Alf. “We told him you were in bed, but he—”
“Well, gosh a’mighty,” cried Alf in exasperation, “we can’t wait all night. We got track o’ them fellers, but if we got to set around out here till mornin’ just because your ma’s in bed, I—I—well, that’s all I got to say.” He turned to Anderson for support, and catching the look in his eye, bawled: “No, I ain’t been drinkin’, Anderson Crow! I’m as sober as a—”<
br />
“Get out of my bedroom this minute, Alf Reesling,” cried Mrs. Crow. “I’ll tell your wife how you’re behavin’ if you—”
“Go ahead an’ tell her,” snorted Alf, goaded beyond endurance. “She ain’t had a good laugh since the time Anderson had his pocket picked up at Boggs City, fair-week. Go ahead an’—”
“Come on, Alf—lively now,” broke in Mr. Crow hastily. “We got to be on the jump. Gosh, listen to them dogs! Never heard so much barkin’ in all my life.”
Out of the house rushed the two men. Anderson immediately began issuing orders.
“Ed Higgins, you take a squad o’ men and go back to the fire. We got our hands full tonight. Now, all you fellers as has got pistols an’ shotguns go home an’ get ’em at oncet. Come back here as quick as you can an’—what say, Harry?”
He turned to the reporter.
“I said the first thing to do is to shoot about thirty or forty of these infernal dogs.”
“We can’t afford to waste ca’tridges, Harry Squires,” said Anderson severely. “We got to tackle a desperate gang ‘fore we’re through.”
“Where is your daughter Caroline, Mr. Crow?” inquired the reporter irrelevantly.
“She’s in the house tryin’ to quiet her ma. A drunk man bust into her room a little while ago an’—”
“Well, tell her to get on the job at once. She’s chief telephone operator down at the exchange, and she ought to be there now sending out warnings to every town within twenty miles of—”
“Carrie! Car-ree!” shouted Anderson, racing up the path. “How many times have I got to tell you to ‘tend to that telephonin’? Go down to the office this minute an’ call up Boggs City an’—”
“I’m not the night operator,” snapped Caroline, appearing in the window. “What’s the matter with Jane Swiggers and Lucy Cummings? They’re supposed to be on duty all night.”
“Don’t sass back! Do as I tell you. Telephone every town in the county to be on the lookout fer an automobile with two tires and a couple of inner tubes—”
“Two new tires, Caroline,” amended Harry Squires.
“And carrying a tin safe with George W. Brubaker’s name on it in red letters. Say that a complete description of the robbers will follow. Is your ma still in bed?”
“Yes, she is.”
“Well, you tell her I’ll be home soon as I capture them desperadoes.” He was moving toward the front gate. Caroline’s paraphrase pursued him and left a sting:
“What is home without a father!”
Followed now a lengthy and at times acrimonious argument as to the further operations of the marshal’s posse.
“We’re losing valuable time,” protested Harry Squires at the end of a half-hour’s fertile discussion. Fertile is here employed instead of futile, for never was there a more extensive crop of ideas raised by human agency.
“We can’t do anything till we find out which way the derned rascals went, can we?” said Mr. Crow bitingly. “We got to find somebody that seen ’em start off in that automobile. We—”
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Harry. “We’ve got to split up into parties and follow every road out of Tinkletown.”
“How in thunder do you expect me to lead five or six different posses?” demanded Anderson.
“Yes, an’ what in thunder would we do if we caught up with ’em unexpected-like if we didn’t have Anderson with us?” said Alf Reesling, loyal to the core. “In the first place, we wouldn’t have any legal right to capture ’em, and in the second place we couldn’t do it anyhow.”
By this time there were a dozen shotguns on the scene, to say nothing of a most impressive collection of antiquated revolvers, “Flobert” rifles, Civil War muskets and baseball bats.
“I move we move,” was the laconic but excellent speech of Mr. Henry Plumb. He already had his forefinger on the trigger of his “single-barrel.”
“Second the motion,” cried out Ed Higgins loudly.
“I thought I told you to go an’ ‘tend to that fire, Ed Higgins,” said Anderson, in some surprise.
An extremely noisy dog-fight put an end to the discussion for the time being, and it was too late to renew it after Situate Jones’ mongrel Pete had finished with Otto Schultz’s dachshund Bismarck. So vociferous was the chorus put up by the other dogs that no one noticed the approach of an automobile, coming down the Boggs City pike. The car passed at full speed. Three dogs failed to get out of the way in time, and as a result, the list of casualties was increased to four, including Ed Higgins’ previously mentioned black and tan.
The speeding car, a big one loaded with men, was a hundred yards away and going like the wind before the startled group regained its senses.
“There they go!” yelled Harry Squires.
“Exceedin’ the speed limit, dog-gone ’em!” roared Anderson. “They ought to be locked up fer ten days an’ fined—”
“Come on, men!” shouted Harry. “After ’em! That’s the gang! They’ve been headed off at Boggs City—or something like that.”
“Did anybody ketch the number of that car?” shouted Anderson. “I c’n trace ’em by their license number if—”
The rest of the speech was lost in the rush to enter the waiting automobiles, and the shouting that ensued. Then followed a period of frantic cranking, after which came the hasty backing and turning of cars, the tooting of horns and the panic of gears.
Loaded to the “gunnels,” the half-dozen machines finally got under way, and off they went into the night, chortling with an excitement all their own.
A lone figure remained standing in front of Anderson Crow’s gate—a tall, lank figure without coat or hat, one suspender supporting a pair of blue trousers, the other hanging limp and useless. He wore a red undershirt and carried in his left hand the trumpet of a fire-fighting chieftain.
“Well, I’ll be dog-goned!” issued from his lips as the last of the cars rattled away. Then he started off bravely on foot in the wake of the noisy cavalcade. “Now, all of ’em are breakin’ the speed laws; an’ it’s goin’ to cost ’em somethin’, consarn ’em, when I yank ’em up ‘fore Justice Robb tomorrow, sure as my name’s Anderson Crow.”
Presently he heard a car approaching from behind. It was very dark in the outskirts of the town, and the lonely highway that reached down into the valley was a thing of the imagination rather than of the vision. Profiting by the catastrophes that attended the passing of the big touring-car Anderson hastily leaped to the side of the road. A couple of small headlights veered around a curve in the road and came down the slight grade, followed naturally and somewhat haltingly by an automobile whose timorous brakes were half set. There was a single occupant.
Anderson levelled his trumpet at the driver and shouted:
“Halt!”
“Oh-h!” came in a shrill, agitated voice from the car, but the machine gave no sign of halting.
“Hey! Halt, I say!”
“I—I don’t know how!” moaned the voice. “How do you stop it?”
“Good gracious sakes alive! Is—is it you, Eva?”
“Oh, Anderson! Thank goodness! I thought you was a highwayman. Oh, dear—oh, dear! Ain’t there any way to stop this thing?”
“Shut off the power, an’ it’ll stop when you start up the grade.”
Anderson was trotting along behind, tugging at one of the mud-guards.
“How do you shut it off?”
“The same way you turned it on.”
“Goodness, what a fool way to do things!”
The little car came to a stop on the rise of the grade, and Anderson side-stepped just in time to avoid being bumped into as it started back again, released.
“It’s Deacon Rank’s car,” explained Mrs. Crow in response to a series of bewildered, rapid-fire questions from her husband. “He offered to sell it to me for fifty dollars, and I’ve been learnin’ how to run it for two whole days—out in Peters’ Mill lane.”
“How does it happen I never kn
owed anything about this, Eva?” demanded he, regaining in some measure his tone of authority.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Well, by gosh, you have!”
“Deacon Rank’s been giving me lessons every afternoon. I know how to start it and steer it, goin’ slow-like—but of course I’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Well, you just turn that car around an’ skedaddle for home, Eva Crow,” was his command. “What business have you got runnin’ around the country like this in the dead o’ night, all alone—”
“Ain’t I the Marshal of Tinkletown?” she broke in crossly. “What right have all you men to be going off without me in this—”
“The only official thing you’ve done, madam, since you got to be marshal, was to resign while you was in bed not more’n an hour ago. I accepted your resignation, so now you go home as quick as that blamed old rattletrap will take you.”
“Besides, I saw the ornery fools go off an’ leave you behind, Anderson, and that made me mad. I run over to Deacon Rank’s and got the car. Now, you hop right in, and I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Get in, I say. I hereby officially withdraw my resignation. I’m still marshal of this town, and if you don’t do as I tell you, I’ll discharge you as deputy.”
So Anderson got up beside her and pulled desperately at his chin-whiskers, no doubt to assist the words that were struggling to escape from his compressed lips.
After considerable back-firing, the decrepit machine began to climb the grade. Presently Mr. Crow found his voice.
“Didn’t I tell you to turn around, Eva?”
“Don’t talk to me when I’m driving,” said she, gripping the wheel tightly with the fingers of death.
“You turn the car around immediately, woman. I’m your husband, an’ I order you to do as I tell ye!”
“I’ll turn it around when I get good and ready,” said she in a strained voice. “Can’t you see there ain’t room enough to turn around in this road?”
“Well, it don’t get any wider.”
“Besides, I don’t know how to turn it around,” she confessed.
“Why, you just back her, same as anybody else does, an’ then reverse her, an’—”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 262