Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Why was the bell ringing now? Men and women, startled into wide wakefulness, groped to windows — no red mist hung over town or country. What was it? The bell rang on. Its loud alarm beat increasingly into men’s hearts and quickened their throbbing to the rapid measure of its own. Vague forms loomed in the gloaming. A horse, wildly ridden, splashed through the town. There were shouts; voices called hoarsely. Lamps began to gleam in the windows. Half-clad people emerged from their houses, men slapping their braces on their shoulders as they ran out of doors. Questions were shouted into the dimness.

  Then the news went over the town.

  It was cried from yard to yard, from group to group, from gate to gate, and reached the furthermost confines. Runners shouted it as they sped by; boys panted it, breathless; women with loosened hair stumbled into darkling chambers and faltered it out to new-wakened sleepers; pale girls clutching wraps at their throats whispered it across fences; the sick, tossing on their hard beds, heard it. The bell clamored it far and near; it spread over the country-side; it flew over the wires to distant cities. The White-Caps had got Mr. Harkless!

  Lige Willetts had lost track of him out near Briscoes’, it was said, and had come in at midnight seeking him. He had found Parker, the “Herald” foreman, and Ross Schofield, the typesetter, and Bud Tipworthy, the devil, at work in the printing-room, but no sign of Harkless, there or in the cottage. Together these had sought for him and had roused others, who had inquired at every house where he might have gone for shelter, and they had heard nothing. They had watched for his coming during the slackening of the storm and he had not come, and there was nowhere he could have gone. He was missing; only one thing could have happened.

  They had roused up Warren Smith, the prosecutor, the missing editor’s most intimate friend in Carlow, and Homer, the sheriff, and Jared Wiley, the deputy. William Todd had rung the alarm. The first thing to do was to find him. After that there would be trouble — if not before. It looked as if there would be trouble before. The men tramping up to the muddy Square in their shirt-sleeves were bulgy about the right hips; and when Homer Tibbs joined Lum Landis at the hotel corner, and Landis saw that Homer was carrying a shot-gun, Landis went back for his. A hastily sworn posse galloped out Main Street. Women and children ran into neighbors’ yards and began to cry. Day was coming; and, as the light grew, men swore and savagely kicked at the palings of fences that they passed.

  In the foreglow of dawn they gathered in the Square and listened to Warren Smith, who made a speech from the court-house fence and warned them to go slow. They answered him with angry shouts and hootings, but he made his big voice heard, and bade them do nothing rash; no facts were known, he said; it was far from certain that harm had been done, and no one knew that the Six-Cross-Roads people had done it — even if something had happened to Mr. Harkless. He declared that he spoke in Harkless’s name. Nothing could distress him so much as for them to defy the law, to take it out of the proper hands. Justice would be done.

  “Yes it will!” shouted a man below him, brandishing the butt of a raw-hide whip above his head. “And while you jaw on about it here, he may be tied up like a dog in the woods, shot full of holes by the men you never lifted a finger to hender, because you want their votes when you run for circuit judge. What are we doin’ here? What’s the good of listening to you?”

  There was a yell at this, and those who heard the speaker would probably have started for the Cross-Roads without further parley, had not a rumor sprung up, which passed so rapidly from man to man that within five minutes it was being turbulently discussed in every portion of the crowd. The news came that the two shell-gamblers had wrenched a bar out of a window under cover of the storm, had broken jail, and were at large. Their threats of the day before were remembered now, with convincing vividness. They had sworn repeatedly to Bardlock and to the sheriff, and in the hearing of others, that they would “do” for the man who took their money from them and had them arrested. The prosecuting attorney, quickly perceiving the value of this complication in holding back the mob that was already forming, called Homer from the crowd and made him get up on the fence and confess that his prisoners had escaped — at what time he did not know, probably toward the beginning of the storm, when it was noisiest.

  “You see,” cried the attorney, “there is nothing as yet of which we can accuse the Cross-Roads. If our friend has been hurt, it is much more likely that these crooks did it. They escaped in time to do it, and we all know they were laying for him. You want to be mighty careful, fellow-citizens. Homer is already in telegraphic communication with every town around here, and we’ll have those men before night. All you’ve got to do is to control yourselves a little and go home quietly.” He could see that his words (except those in reference to returning home — no one was going home) made an impression. There rose a babble of shouting and argument and swearing that grew continually louder, and the faces the lawyer looked down on were creased with perplexity, and shadowed with an anger that settled darker and darker.

  Mr. Ephraim Watts, in spite of all confusion, clad as carefully as upon the preceding day, deliberately climbed the fence and stood by the lawyer and made a single steady gesture with his hand. He was listened to at once, as his respect for the law was less notorious than his irreverence for it, and he had been known in Carlow as a customarily reckless man. They wanted illegal and desperate advice, and quieted down to hear it. He spoke in his professionally calm voice.

  “Gentlemen, it seems to me that Mr. Smith and Mr. Ribshaw” (nodding to the man with the rawhide whip) “are both right. What good are we doing here? What we want to know is what’s happened to Mr. Harkless. It looks just now like the shell-men might have done it. Let’s find out what they done. Scatter and hunt for him. ‘Soon as anything is known for certain, Hibbard’s mill whistle will blow three times. Keep on looking till it does. Then” he finished, with a barely perceptible scornful smile at the attorney, “then we can decide on what had ought to be done.”

  Six-Cross-Roads lay dark and steaming in the sun that morning. The forge was silent, the saloon locked up, the roadway deserted, even by the pigs. The broken old buggy stood rotting in the mud without a single lean, little old man or woman — such were the children of the Cross-Roads — to play about it. The fields were empty, and the rag-stuffed windows blank, under the baleful glance of the horsemen who galloped by at intervals, muttering curses, not always confining themselves to muttering them. Once, when the deputy sheriff rode through alone, a tattered black hound, more wolf than dog, half-emerged, growling, from beneath one of the tumble-down barns, and was jerked back into the darkness by his tail, with a snarl fiercer than his own, while a gun-barrel shone for a second as it swung for a stroke on the brute’s head. The hound did not yelp or whine when the blow fell. He shut his eyes twice, and slunk sullenly back to his place.

  The shanties might have received a volley or two from some of the mounted bands, exasperated by futile searching, had not the escape of Homer’s prisoners made the guilt of the Cross-Roads appear doubtful in the minds of many. As the morning waned, the advocates of the theory that the gamblers had made away with Harkless grew in number. There came a telegram from the Rouen chief of police that he had a clew to their whereabouts; he thought they had succeeded in reaching Rouen, and it began to be generally believed that they had escaped by the one-o’clock freight, which had stopped to take on some empty cars at a side-track a mile northwest of the town, across the fields from the Briscoe house. Toward noon a party went out to examine the railroad embankment.

  Men began to come back into the village for breakfast by twos and threes, though many kept on searching the woods, not feeling the need of food, or caring if they did. Every grove and clump of underbrush, every thicket, was ransacked; the waters of the creek, shallow for the most part, but swollen overnight, were dragged at every pool. Nothing was found; there was not a sign.

  The bar of the hotel was thronged all morning as the returning citizens rapidly
made their way thither, and those who had breakfasted and were going out again paused for internal, as well as external, reinforcement. The landlord, himself returned from a long hunt, set up his whiskey with a lavish hand.

  “He was the best man we had, boys,” said Landis, as he poured the little glasses full. “We’d ort of sent him to the legislative halls of Washington long ago. He’d of done us honor there; but we never thought of doin’ anything fer him; jest set ‘round and let him build up the town and give him empty thankyes. Drink hearty, gentlemen,” he finished, gloomily, “I don’t grudge no liquor to-day — except to Lige Willetts.”

  “He was a good man,” said young William Todd, whose nose was red, not from the whiskey. “I’ve about give up.”

  Schofields’ Henry drew his sleeve across his eyes. “He was the only man in this whole city that didn’t jab and nag at me when I done my best,” he exclaimed, with an increasing break in his utterance. “Many a good word I’ve had from him when nobody in town done nothin’ but laugh an’ rile an’ badger me about my — my bell.” And Schofields’ Henry began to cry openly.

  “He was a great hand with the chuldern,” said one man. “Always have something to say to ’em to make ’em laugh when he went by. ‘Talk more to them ‘n he would to grown folks. Yes, sir.”

  “They knowed him all right,” added another. “I reckon all of us did, little and big.”

  “It’s goin’ to seem mighty empty around here,” said Ross Schofield. “What’s goin’ to become o’ the ‘Herald’ and the party in this district? Where’s the man to run either of ’em now. Like as not,” he concluded desperately, “the election’ll go against us in the fall.”

  Dibb Zane choked over his four fingers. “We might’s well bust up this dab-dusted ole town ef he’s gone.”

  “I don’t know what’s come over that Cynthy Tipworthy,” said the landlord. “She’s waited table on him last two year, and her brother Bud works at the ‘Herald’ office. She didn’t say a word — only looked and looked and looked — like a crazy woman; then her and Bud went off together to hunt in the woods. They just tuck hold of each other’s hands like — —”

  “That ain’t nothin’,” Homer Tibbs broke in. “You’d ort to’ve saw old Miz Hathaway, that widder woman next door to us, when she heard it. He had helped her to git her pension; and she tuck on worse ‘n’ anything I ever hear — lot worse ‘n’ when Hathaway died.”

  “I reckon there ain’t many crazier than them two Bowlders, father and son,” said the postmaster, wiping the drops from his beard as he set his glass on the bar. “They rid into town like a couple of wild Indians, the old man beatin’ that gray mare o’ theirn till she was one big welt, and he ain’t natcherly no cruel man, either. I reckon Lige Willetts better keep out of Hartley’s way.”

  “I keep out of no man’s way,” cried a voice behind him. Turning, they saw Lige standing on the threshold of the door that led to the street. In his hand he held the bridle of the horse he had ridden across the sidewalk, and that now stood panting, with lowered head, half through the doorway, beside his master. Lige was hatless, splashed with mud from head to foot; his jaw was set, his teeth ground together; his eyes burned under red lids, and his hair lay tossed and damp on his brow. “I keep out of no man’s way,” he repeated, hoarsely.

  “I heard you, Mr. Tibbs, but I’ve got too much to do, while you loaf and gas and drink over Lum Landis’s bar — I’ve got other business than keeping out of Hartley Bowlder’s way. I’m looking for John Harkless. He was the best man we had in this ornery hole, and he was too good for us, and so we’ve maybe let him get killed, and maybe I’m to blame. But I’m going to find him, and if he’s hurt — damn me! I’m going to have a hand on the rope that lifts the men that did it, if I have to go to Rouen to put it there! After that I’ll answer for my fault, not before!”

  He threw himself on his horse and was gone. Soon the room was emptied, as the patrons of the bar returned to the search, and only Mr. Wilkerson and the landlord remained, the bar being the professional office, so to speak, of both.

  Wilkerson had a chair in a corner, where he sat chanting a funeral march in a sepulchral murmur, allowing a parenthetical hic to punctuate the dirge in place of the drum. Whenever a batch of newcomers entered, he rose to drink with them; and, at such times, after pouring off his liquor with a rich melancholy, shedding tears after every swallow, he would make an exploring tour of the room on his way back to his corner, stopping to look under each chair inquiringly and ejaculate: “Why, where kin he be!” Then, shaking his head, he would observe sadly: “Fine young man, he was, too; fine young man. Pore fellow! I reckon we hain’t a-goin’ to git him.”

  At eleven o’clock. Judge Briscoe dropped wearily from his horse at his own gate, and said to a wan girl who came running down the walk to meet him: “There is nothing, yet. I sent the telegram to your mother — to Mrs. Sherwood.”

  Helen turned away without answering. Her face was very white and looked pinched about the mouth. She went back to where old Fisbee sat on the porch, his white head held between his two hands; he was rocking himself to and fro. She touched him gently, but he did not look up. She spoke to him.

  “There isn’t anything — yet. He sent the telegram to mamma. I shall stay with you, now, no matter what you say.” She sat beside him and put her head down on his shoulder, and though for a moment he appeared not to notice it, when Minnie came out on the porch, hearing her father at the door, the old scholar had put his arm about the girl and was stroking her fair hair softly.

  Briscoe glanced at them, and raised a warning finger to his daughter, and they went tiptoeing into the house, where the judge dropped heavily upon a sofa with an asthmatic sigh; he was worn and tired. Minnie stood before him with a look of pale inquiry, and he shook his head.

  “No use to tell them; but I can’t see any hope,” he answered her, biting nervously at the end of a cigar. “I expect you better bring me some coffee in here; I couldn’t take another step to save me. I’m too old to tear around the country horseback before breakfast, like I have to-day.”

  “Did you send her telegram?” Minnie asked, as he drank the coffee she brought him. She had interpreted “coffee” liberally, and, with the assistance of Mildy Upton (whose subdued nose was frankly red and who shed tears on the raspberries), had prepared an appetizing table at his elbow.

  “Yes,” responded the judge, “and I’m glad she sent it. I talked the other way yesterday, what little I said — it isn’t any of our business — but I don’t think any too much of those people, somehow. She thinks she belongs with Fisbee, and I guess she’s right. That young fellow must have got along with her pretty well, and I’m afraid when she gives up she’ll be pretty bad over it; but I guess we all will. It’s terribly sudden, somehow, though it’s only what everybody half expected would come; only we thought it would come from over yonder.” He nodded toward the west. “But she’s got to stay here with us. Boarding at Sol Tibbs’s with that old man won’t do; and she’s no girl to live in two rooms. You fix it up with her — you make her stay.”

  “She must,” answered his daughter as she knelt beside him and patted his coat and handed him several things to eat at the same time. “Mr. Fisbee will help me persuade her, now that she’s bound to stay in spite of him and the Sherwoods, too. I think she is perfectly grand to do it. I’ve always thought she was grand — ever since she took me under her wing at school when I was terribly ‘country’ and frightened; but she was so sweet and kind she made me forget. She was the pet of the school, too, always doing things for the other girls, for everybody; looking out for people simply heads and heads bigger than herself, and so recklessly generous and so funny about it; and always thoughtful and — and — pleasant — —”

  Minnie was speaking sadly, mechanically; but suddenly she broke off with a quick sob, sprang up and went to the window; then, turning, cried out:

  “I don’t believe it! He knew how to take care of himself too well. H
e’d have got away from them.”

  Her father shook his head. “Then why hasn’t he turned up? He’d have gone home after the storm if something bad wasn’t the matter.”

  “But nothing — nothing that bad could have happened. They haven’t found — any — anything.”

  “But why hasn’t he come back, child?”

  “Well, he’s lying hurt somewhere, that’s all.”

  “Then why haven’t they found him?”

  “I don’t care!” she cried, and choked with the words and tossed her dishevelled hair from her temples; “it isn’t true. Helen won’t believe it — why should I? It’s only a few hours since he was right here in our yard, talking to us all. I won’t believe it till they’ve searched every stick and stone of Six-Cross-Roads and found him.”

  “It wasn’t the Cross-Roads,” said the old gentleman, pushing the table away and relaxing his limbs on the sofa. “They probably didn’t have anything to do with it. We thought they had at first, but everybody’s about come to believe it was those two devils that he had arrested yesterday.”

  “Not the Cross-Roads!” echoed Minnie, and she began to tremble violently. “Haven’t they been out there yet?”

  “What use? They are out of it, and they can thank God they are!”

  “They are not!” she cried excitedly. “They did it. It was the White-Caps. We saw them, Helen and I.”

  The judge got upon his feet with an oath. He had not sworn for years until that morning. “What’s this?” he said sharply.

  “I ought to have told you before, but we were so frightened, and — and you went off in such a rush after Mr. Wiley was here. I never dreamed everybody wouldn’t know it was the Cross-Roads; that they would think of any one else. And I looked for the scarecrow as soon as it was light and it was ‘way off from where we saw them, and wasn’t blown down at all, and Helen saw them in the field besides — saw all of them — —”