The marshal of Tinkletown, Anderson Crow, on three separate occasions organized a posse to go out to Power-house Gully to arrest Lucius on the complaint of neighbours who said they couldn’t stand hearing his wife’s howls any longer. On each of these occasions, the marshal got as far as the Fry front gate, backed by eight or ten of the huskiest men in town. There they were intercepted by Mrs. Fry, who told them that Lucius was upstairs peaceably reloading his double-barreled shotgun, or oiling up his trusty old horse-pistol, as the case may have been, and she didn’t believe he would like to be disturbed.
“Is he ca’am an’ quiet, Stella?” Marshal Crow would ask.
“As quiet as a lamb,” Mrs. Fry would reply.
“Then I guess we’d better leave him alone,” the Marshal would say, adding: “But if he ever goes on the rampage again, just you send for me, Stella, an’ I’ll come as quick as I can.”
And the wife of Vicious Lucius would say: “Don’t forget to bring the undertaker with you when you come, Anderson. You won’t need a doctor.”
At times Lucius would feel his courage slipping. At such times he would go out to the barn and jostle old Peggy around in the stall, hoping against hope, but without the desired result. She simply wouldn’t step on his foot.
One bitter cold night just before Christmas, a group of Tinkletown’s foremost citizens sat around the big sheet-iron stove in Lamson’s store. Outside, the wind was blowing a gale; it howled and shrieked around the corners of the building, banged forgotten window-shutters, slammed suspended signboards with relentless fury, and afforded unlimited food for reflection, reminiscence and prophecy. It was long past Mr. Lamson’s customary hour for closing the store, but with rare tact the loungers permitted him to do most of the talking. It was nice and warm in the vicinity of the stove, and there were tubs of dried apples and prunes and a sack of hazel nuts within easy reach.
“I’ll never forget the Christmas I spent out in Nebraska,” Mr. Lamson was saying. He was probably the most travelled man in town. Every time he told a story, he went a little farther West. (Harry Squires disconcerted him on one occasion by asking in his most ironic manner if he didn’t think it would be a good idea to settle in California when he got there, and Mr. Lamson, after thinking it over, stopped his subscription to The Banner.) “Yes sir; that was a terrible winter. I don’t know as I ever told you about it, but we had to drive twenty-six miles in sleighs to get a tree on Christmas Eve. I mean a Christmas tree. The thermometer registered twenty-six below zero and—”
He was interrupted by the opening of the door. An icy draft swept down the length of the store.
“Shut that door!” roared out Marshal Crow.
But the door remained open. Whereupon every one craned his neck to see who was responsible. There was no one in sight.
“That’s funny,” said Newt Spratt. “I shut it tight when I came in awhile ago.”
“Well, go and shut it again,” ordered Mr. Crow. “Do you want us to freeze our ears right here in sight o’ Jim Lamson’s stove?”
Newt got up and kicked the door shut, saw that it was latched, and returned to his place near the stove. Marshal Crow, during his absence, had bettered his position. He had exchanged a seat on a box of soap for the cane-bottom chair Newt had been occupying.
“As I was sayin’,” resumed Mr. Lamson, “the thermometer registered—”
Again the door flew open, banging against a barrel of sugar. With one accord the assembled group arose and peered at the open door.
“Well, now, that is funny,” said Newt. “I latched her sure that time.”
“Acts like ghosts,” said Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer.
“If I was a drinking man,” said Alf Reesling, the town drunkard, “I’d think I had ’em.”
Marshal Crow stalked to the door, pulling his coat-collar up about his throat as he encountered the furious blast of the wind.
At the top of the steps leading up to the porch stood a small figure wrapped in a shawl. The light from within shone full upon the figure. It was that of a young girl, and she was looking intently up the street.
“Well, of all the—Say, don’t you know it’s after nine o’clock?” exclaimed the old Marshal. “What’s a young girl like you doin’ out this time o’ night?”
“Is—is that you, Mr. Crow?” quaked the girl without turning her head.
“It is. What’s that got to do with it?”
“I—You don’t see him anywheres up the street, do you?”
“Come inside if you want to talk to me. I ain’t goin’ to stand here in this door an’ freeze to death. Come in here, I say.”
“I dassent. Maybe he follered me.”
“Maybe who follered you?”
“Him.”
By this time several other customers had joined the Marshal.
“Why, it’s Lucius Fry’s girl Elfaretta,” said Elmer K. Pratt. “What’s the matter, Elfie?”
“You’re sure he ain’t follerin’ me? Look hard,” said the girl.
They all looked hard.
“I don’t see anybody, Elfie,” said Anderson Crow.
“It’s a little early for Santa Claus,” said Harry Squires, turning back to the stove, his eye on the only rocking-chair in the place. “Come inside and tell us all about it.”
The girl entered the store, and some one closed the door. She was shivering, and not altogether from the cold. Her glance darted hither and thither, as if in quest of a more enduring protection than that exemplified by the man-power surrounding her.
“Roll that barrel of sugar over against the door,” she ordered quickly. “I wouldn’t have him catch me here for anything.”
“You needn’t be skeered,” said the Marshal. “Ain’t we here? Let’s see: there’s one, two—eight of us. I guess—”
“He’d clean this bunch up as easy as rolling off a log,” said Elfaretta, edging toward the fire, but all the while casting uneasy apprehensive glances over her shoulder.
Newt Spratt and Situate M. Jones jointly took it upon themselves to roll the barrel of sugar up against the door.
“Are you referring to your estimable dad?” inquired Mr. Squires from the rocking-chair.
“Yes, I am,” said Elfaretta somewhat defiantly.
“Is he a little more vicious than usual tonight?” asked the reporter.
“He never was worse,” said the girl. “He’s just simply awful. I had to come out to see if I couldn’t get Mr. Crow to come up to the house an’—an’ settle him. He seen me just as I was going out the door, and took after me. Out by the front gate he slipped on the ice and set down like a ton of bricks. Oh, I never heard such cussing. You got to come up to the house right away, Mr. Crow. He’s just terrible. He—”
“Hold on a minute,” interrupted the Marshal. “Go slow, now, an’ answer my questions. Is he—”
“He’s throwing things around something awful. Ma’s in the pantry with the door locked, and Juliet’s hiding up in the—”
“I know all that,” broke in Mr. Crow sharply. “You needn’t tell me about that. What I want to know is, is he or is he not in his own house, under his own roof?”
“He is, unless he’s still setting out there in the front yard—or follerin’ after me,” she concluded with a terrified look at the barricaded door. “Do you think that barrel’s heavy enough to stop him?”
“Well, if he’s inside his own house, I can’t touch him without a warrant. You’ll have to go an’ swear out a search-warrant for him, Elfarettie. It’s against the law for me to arrest—”
“But ain’t it against the law for him to be trying to murder Ma and Juliet and me?”
“There ain’t no use arguing about it. I can’t go an’ get him without a warrant.”
“You won’t have to go in,” said she confidently. “All you got to do is to let him know you’re outside—anywheres—looking for him, and he’ll come out; and he’ll come without a warrant—you can bet your life on that, Mr. Crow. He says he’
s getting awful sick of having nothing to lick but women. He—”
“Did he say that?” demanded Marshal Crow, frowning and pulling at his whiskers.
“He put in some extra words, but I can’t say ’em,” said Elfaretta.
“I’ve a notion to—to—” began the Marshal in a somewhat bellicose manner, and then sadly shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be legal. I’m an officer of the law. But let me tell you one thing, Elfaretta Fry, if I wasn’t an officer of the law, I’d take your dad by the back of the neck and shake him till his shoes flew off.”
“We’re getting away from the main issue,” broke in Mr. Squires, the gadfly. “The point is, Anderson, are you going to let Vicious Lucius beat his family to death, or are you going up to the Gully and arrest him?”
The Marshal looked at Harry reproachfully. “You know I ain’t empowered by law to enter a man’s house without a warrant, Harry Squires.”
“But the girl says you won’t have to. She says her father will be only too glad to step outside.”
“How do I know she’s telling the truth about all this rumpus? She ain’t under oath, is she? Well, there’s got to be an affidavit, properly sworn to, before I do anything. It’s the law, an’ you know it. She may be lyin’ like all get-out.”
The girl flared up. “I’m going to tell Pa you called me a liar. He’ll bust your jaw if—”
“I didn’t call you a liar,” snapped Anderson. “I only said maybe you’re lyin’. I leave it to anybody here if I said you was a liar; an’ besides, your pa ain’t man enough to bust my jaw anyhow. You go home an’ tell him I said—”
“Let’s get the facts about this present embroglio, Anderson, before we make arrangements for another,” put in Mr. Squires.
“I’ve no objection to that,” said Anderson, a note of relief in his voice. “She can’t swear out a warrant till tomorrow morning anyhow, so there’s no particular hurry.”
“But he’s killin’ Ma tonight!” burst in the girl.
“Keep cool now, my girl; don’t get excited,” cautioned the Marshal. “What was he plannin’ to kill her with? A gun?”
“No, sir. He had a hammer in one hand and a flatiron in the other, the last I saw of him.”
“Well, go on—tell us all about it.”
“It was awful sudden. We were all setting around the kitchen stove, and Pa was cracking hickory-nuts, just as nice and peaceful as anything. He was joking with Ma and telling her he couldn’t help it if the women up our way were going plumb crazy over him—specially that Mrs. Banks, whose husband works at the tanyard. Every time Pa goes out in the back yard, she comes and leans on her fence and talks to him, making eyes and grinning like a cat. She’s worse than Mrs. Elam Crippen and Mrs. Ducker—and Ma’s been noticing it too. She’s worried about Pa.
“Up to three months ago there wasn’t a woman in town that’d look at him, and now they can’t seem to look at anybody else. Mrs. Banks came out in her back yard yesterday and gave Pa a good pair of overshoes and a fur cap that belonged to her husband. Pa didn’t want to take ’em, but she said she didn’t care if Mr. Banks did get mad; he wasn’t much of a man anyhow and she wouldn’t take any back talk off’n him. Juliet heard Mrs. Crippen say to Pa the other day that if he’d give her one of his photographs, she’d be the happiest mortal alive. And Mrs. Ducker calls to see Ma nearly every washday now, just when she’s busiest, and so Pa has to sit and entertain her.
“Yesterday a couple of women that Ma don’t even know stopped out in front of the house and giggled at everything Pa said, and one of ’em said: ‘Oh, you naughty man!’ When Pa came into the house, Ma asked him what he was saying to those strange women that made ’em call him a naughty man, and Pa looked awful worried and wouldn’t tell her. He said it wasn’t his fault if women acted like fools. He’s all swelled-up, Pa is. Wears his best clothes every day and has taken to smoking cigarettes instead of a pipe when he’s outside the house. Ma was counting up the other day just to see how much the cigarettes cost her, and—But that wasn’t what I started to tell you. I—”
“I seen him walkin’ down Cutler Street day before yesterday with a woman,” said Alf Reesling. “Fat sort of a woman with a pink hat on.”
“That’s Mrs. Banks. She—”
“Never mind about Mrs. Banks,” interrupted the Marshal. “Confine yourself to the evidence in this case, an’ nothing else.”
“Well, as I was saying, Pa was peaceful and quiet, cracking nuts on the flatiron. He got hold of a tough hickor’-nut, and it wouldn’t crack very easy. So he had to hit it as hard as he could. Somehow he missed it, and smack went the hammer right on his thumb. My goodness! You’d ought to have heard him yell. He hopped up and began dancing around the kitchen, sucking his thumb and trying to swear with his mouth full. Ma says,—this is all she said,—Ma says: ‘Did you hit your finger, Lucius?’ Pa let fly the hammer. It didn’t miss her head a foot. Then he fired the flatiron at her feet. Ma screamed and started to run to’ards the back stairs. Pa knocked over the kitchen table trying to head her off. She stumbled and fell down on her hands and knees. Then while he was looking for something to beat her brains out with, she got up and run into the pantry and locked the door.
“Juliet was squealing her head off. Pa picked up the hammer and started to’ard her. Juliet made a break for the stairs, and Pa let go with the hammer. He missed her, but he knocked a big hole in the ceiling. Then he grabbed the tea-kettle off the stove and threw it at the cat. He got some of the boiling water on his legs, I guess, because he grabbed ’em in his hands and yelled like an Indian. He swore he’d kill everybody in the house. So I beat it. He was hunting for the flatiron and the hammer, and I was outside before he noticed me. I grabbed this old red tablecloth as I went out and put it around me. When I saw a light in your store, Mr. Lamson, I knowed Mr. Crow would be here, so up I came. Now, what are you going to do about it, Mr. Crow?”
The Marshal pondered. “You say your Ma’s safely locked in the pantry?”
“She was—unless he busted the door down.”
“And Julie is up in the attic?”
“Yes, and she’s probably dead by this time. There ain’t any lock on the attic door.”
“Well, seems to me they’re perfectly safe till morning. Julie could jump out of the attic window if the worst come to the worst. The thing that’s worryin’ me is you. Where are you going to sleep tonight, Elfie?”
“Right here in Mr. Lamson’s rocking-chair,” said the girl promptly.
“I’ll take her up to my house,” said Alf Reesling. “She can crawl in with my daughter Queenie.”
“That’s out of the question,” said Harry Squires, arising and looking around for his overcoat. “We will need you, Alf. The Marshal is going to organize a posse and go up to Power-house Gully and capture Vicious Lucius dead or alive, before he’s half an hour older.”
“What’s that?” demanded the Marshal, startled.
“You heard what I said. Get into your overcoats and goloshes, gentlemen. The Marshal instructs me to say that we will be leaving here in five minutes.”
“Well, I’ll be dog-goned!” oozed from Marshal Crow’s lips. He was staring quite hopelessly at Harry Squires.
“Isn’t that a fact, Mr. Crow?” inquired Harry, fixing him with a most disconcerting look.
Anderson indulged in a short fit of coughing. “Yes,” he said, after recovering himself, “it is a fact, but I’d like to know how you got onto it.”
“I am a mental telegrapher, Mr. Crow,” said the reporter, carefully placing a hat upon Mr. Reesling’s head. “There’s your hat, Alf. Now be sure and pick out a good coat.”
* * * *
The Marshal’s posse eventually resolved itself into a party of two—Anderson Crow and Harry Squires. Elmer K. Pratt remembered that his youngest child had the croup, and he couldn’t leave her; Situate M. Jones complained of a sudden and violent attack of lumbago; Newt Spratt loudly demanded the flaxseed his wife had asked him to bring home
so that she could make a poultice for a terrible toothache she was enjoying that evening; Alf Reesling refused to desert poor little Elfie; and two other gentlemen succeeded in sneaking out the back way while the Marshal’s view was obstructed by the aforesaid slackers. Storekeeper Lamson had a perfectly sound excuse. He was a pacifist. However, he was willing to lend his revolver to the Marshal and a pair of brass “knucks” to Harry Squires.
Approaching Power-house Gully, the two adventurers observed shadowy forms moving about in the darkness at the foot of the slope. They paused.
“Mostly women, I should say,” remarked the Marshal.
“Probably hoping that Lucius is a widower by this time,” said the reporter.
“So’s they c’n send flowers an’ victuals to him all the time he’s in jail,” said Anderson. “S’pose you go down an’ talk to ’em, Harry, while I sneak around the back way and reconnoitre.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Harry. “I’ll just rush in through the front door, and he’ll make a break to escape by the rear, so you’ll be right there to head him off.”
“Come to think of it,” said Anderson hastily, “maybe we’d better see if he’s out in the front yard first. Come on.”
Eight or ten people were congregated in front of the Fry house, conversing in a hushed, excited manner. The Marshal and his companion bore down upon them. As the former had remarked, they were “mostly” women. There was but one man in the group. He turned out to be no other than Vicious Lucius himself.
“What’s this I hear about you, Lucius Fry?” demanded Anderson Crow.
“Don’t you dare arrest Mr. Fry, Anderson Crow,” cried one of the ladies. “He ain’t done anything but give her what she deserves, and——”
“Can I speak to you private, Mr. Crow?” interrupted Vicious Lucius in a hurried manner. He was wearing an overcoat that came down to his heels, and a derby hat that rested rather firmly upon his ears.
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 271