The Gentleman From Indiana

B >> Booth Tarkington >> The Gentleman From Indiana

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The most eastward of the debilitated edifices of Six-Cross-Roads was the
saloon, which bore the painted legends: on the west wall, "Last Chance";
on the east wall, "First Chance." Next to this, and separated by two or
three acres of weedy vacancy from the corners where the population centred
thickest, stood-if one may so predicate of a building which leaned in
seven directions-the house of Mr. Robert Skillett, the proprietor of the
saloon. Both buildings were shut up as tight as their state of repair
permitted. As they were furthest to the east, they formed the nearest
shelter, and to them the Cross-Roaders bent their flight, though they
stopped not here, but disappeared behind Skillett's shanty, putting it
between them and their pursuers, whose guns were beginning to speak. The
fugitives had a good start, and, being the picked runners of the Cross-
Roads, they crossed the open, weedy acres in safety and made for their
homes. Every house had become a fort, and the defenders would have to be
fought and torn out one by one. As the guns sounded, a woman in a shanty
near the forge began to scream, and kept on screaming.

On came the farmers and the men of Plattville. They took the saloon at a
run; battered down the crazy doors with a fence-rail, and swarmed inside
like busy insects, making the place hum like a hive, but with the hotter
industries of destruction. It was empty of life as a tomb, but they beat
and tore and battered and broke and hammered and shattered like madmen;
they reduced the tawdry interior to a mere chaos, and came pouring forth
laden with trophies of ruin. And then there was a charry smell in the air,
and a slender feather of smoke floated up from a second-story window.

At the same time Watts led an assault on the adjoining house--an assault
which came to a sudden pause, for, from cracks in the front wall, a
squirrel-rifle and a shot-gun snapped and banged, and the crowd fell back
in disorder. Homer Tibbs had a hat blown away, full of buck-shot holes,
while Mr. Watts solicitously examined a small aperture in the skirts of
his brown coat. The house commanded the road, and the rush of the mob into
the village was checked, but only for the instant.

A rickety woodshed, which formed a portion of the Skillett mansion,
closely joined the "Last Chance" side of the family place of business.
Scarcely had the guns of the defenders sounded, when, with a loud shout,
Lige Willetts leaped from an upper window on that side of the burning
saloon and landed on the woodshed, and, immediately climbing the roof of
the house itself, applied a fiery brand to the time-worn clapboards. Ross
Schofield dropped on the shed, close behind him, his arm lovingly
enfolding a gallon jug of whiskey, which he emptied (not without evident
regret) upon the clapboards as Lige fired them. Flames burst forth almost
instantly, and the smoke, uniting with that now rolling out of every
window of the saloon, went up to heaven in a cumbrous, gray column.

As the flames began to spread, there was a rapid fusillade from the rear
of the house, and a hundred men and more, who had kept on through the
fields to the north, assailed it from behind. Their shots passed clear
through the flimsy partitions, and there was a horrid screeching, like a
beast's howls, from within. The front door was thrown open, and a lean,
fierce-eyed girl, with a case-knife in her hand, ran out in the face of
the mob. At sound of the shots in the rear they had begun to advance on
the house a second time, and Hartley Bowlder was the nearest man to the
girl. With awful words, and shrieking inconceivably, she made straight at
Hartley, and attacked him with the knife. She struck at him again and
again, and, in her anguish of hate and fear, was so extraordinary a
spectacle that she gained for her companions the four or five seconds they
needed to escape from the house. As she hurled herself alone at the
oncoming torrent, they sped from the door unnoticed, sprang over the
fence, and reached the open lots to the west before they were seen by
Willetts from the roof.

"Don't let 'em fool you!" he shouted. "Look to I your left! There they go!
Don't let 'em get away."

The Cross-Readers were running across the field. They were Bob Skillett
and his younger brother, and Mr. Skillett was badly damaged: he seemed to
be holding his jaw on his face with both hands. The girl turned, and sped
after them. She was over the fence almost as soon as they were, and the
three ran in single file, the girl last. She was either magnificently
sacrificial and fearless, or she cunningly calculated that the regulators
would take no chances of killing a woman-child, for she kept between their
guns and her two companions, trying to cover and shield the latter with
her frail body.

"Shoot, Lige," called Watts. "If we fire from here we'll hit the girl.
Shoot!"

Willetts and Ross Schofield were still standing on the roof, at the edge,
out of the smoke, and both fired at the same time. The fugitives did not
turn; they kept on running, and they had nearly reached the other side of
the field, when suddenly, without any premonitory gesture, the elder
Skillett dropped flat on his face. The Cross-Roaders stood by each other
that day, for four or five men ran out of the nearest shanty into the
open, lifted the prostrate figure from the ground, and began to carry it
back with them. But Mr. Skillett was alive; his curses were heard above
all other sounds. Lige and Schofield fired again, and one of the rescuers
staggered. Nevertheless, as the two men slid down from the roof, the
burdened Cross-Readers were seen to break into a run; and at that, with
another yell, fiercer, wilder, more joyous than the first, the Plattville
men followed.

The yell rang loudly in the ears of old Wilkerson, who had remained back
in the road, and at the same instant he heard another shout behind him.
Mr. Wilkerson had not shared in the attack, but, greatly preoccupied with
his own histrionic affairs, was proceeding up the pike alone--except for
the unhappy yellow mongrel, still dragged along by the slip-noose--and
alternating, as was his natural wont, from one fence to the other;
crouching behind every bush to fire an imaginary rifle at his dog, and
then springing out, with triumphant bellowings, to fall prone upon the
terrified animal. It was after one of these victories that a shout of
warning was raised behind him, and Mr. Wilkerson, by grace of the god
Bacchus, rolling out of the way in time to save his life, saw a horse dash
by him--a big, black horse whose polished flanks were dripping with
lather. Warren Smith was the rider. He was waving a slip of yellow paper
high in the air.

He rode up the slope, and drew rein beyond the burning buildings, just
ahead of those foremost in the pursuit. He threw his horse across the road
to oppose their progress, rose in his stirrups, and waved the paper over
his head. "Stop!" he roared, "Give me one minute. Stop!" He had a grand
voice; and he was known in many parts of the State for the great bass roar
with which he startled his juries. To be heard at a distance most men lift
the pitch of their voices; Smith lowered his an octave or two, and the
result was like an earthquake playing an organ in a catacomb.

"Stop!" he thundered. "Stop!"

In answer, one of the flying Cross-Roaders turned and sent a bullet
whistling close to him. The lawyer paused long enough to bow deeply in
satirical response; then, flourishing the paper, he roared again: "Stop! A
mistake! I have news! Stop, I say! Homer has got them!"

To make himself heard over that tempestuous advance was a feat; for him,
moreover, whose counsels had so lately been derided, to interest the
pursuers at such a moment enough to make them listen--to find the word--
was a greater; and by the word, and by gestures at once vehemently
imperious and imploring, to stop them was still greater; but he did it. He
had come at just the moment before the moment that would have been too
late. They all heard him. They all knew, too, he was not trying to save
the Cross-Roads as a matter of duty, because he had given that up before
the mob left Plattville. Indeed, it was a question if, at the last, he had
not tacitly approved; and no one feared indictments for the day's work. It
would do no harm to listen to what he had to say. The work could wait; it
would "keep" for five minutes. They began to gather around him, excited,
flushed, perspiring, and smelling of smoke. Hartley Bowlder, won by Lige's
desperation and intrepidity, was helping the latter tie up his head; no
one else was hurt.

"What is it?" they clamored impatiently. "Speak quick!" There was another
harmless shot from a fugitive, and then the Cross-Roaders, divining that
the diversion was in their favor, secured themselves in their decrepit
fastnesses and held their fire. Meanwhile, the flames crackled cheerfully
in Plattville ears. No matter what the prosecutor had to say, at least the
Skillett saloon and homestead were gone, and Bob Skillett and one other
would be sick enough to be good for a while.

"Listen," cried Warren Smith, and, rising in his stirrups again, read the
missive in his hand, a Western Union telegraph form. "Warren Smith,
Plattville," was the direction. "Found both shell-men. Police familiar
with both, and both wanted here. One arrested at noon in a second-hand
clothes store, wearing Harkless's hat, also trying dispose torn full-dress
coat known to have been worn by Harkless last night. Stains on lining
believed blood. Second man found later at freight-yards in empty lumber
car left Plattville 1 P.M., badly hurt, shot, and bruised. Supposed
Harkless made hard fight. Hurt man taken to hospital unconscious. Will
die. Hope able question him first and discover whereabouts body. Other man
refuses talk so far. Check any movement Cross-Roads. This clears Skillett,
etc. Come over on 9.15."

The telegram was signed by Homer and by Barrett, the superintendent of
police at Rouen.

"It's all a mistake, boys," the lawyer said, as he handed the paper to
Watts and Parker for inspection. "The ladies at the judge's were mistaken,
that's all, and this proves it. It's easy enough to understand: they were
frightened by the storm, and, watching a fence a quarter-mile away by
flashes of lightning, any one would have been confused, and imagined all
the horrors on earth. I don't deny but what I believed it for a while, and
I don't deny but the Cross-Roads is pretty tough, but you've done a good
deal here already, to-day, and we're saved in time from a mistake that
would have turned out mighty bad. This settles it. Homer got a wire from
Rouen to come over there, soon as they got track of the first man; that
was when we saw him on the Rouen accommodation."

A slightly cracked voice, yet a huskily tuneful one, was lifted
quaveringly on the air from the roadside, where an old man and a yellow
dog sat in the dust together, the latter reprieved at the last moment, his
surprised head rakishly garnished with a hasty wreath of dog-fennel
daisies.

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
While we go marching on!"

Three-quarters of an hour later, the inhabitants of the Cross-Roads,
saved, they knew not how; guilty; knowing nothing of the fantastic
pendulum of opinion, which, swung by the events of the day, had marked the
fatal moment of guilt, now on others, now on them, who deserved it--these
natives and refugees, conscious of atrocity, dumfounded by a miracle,
thinking the world gone mad, hovered together in a dark, ragged mass at
the crossing corners, while the skeleton of the rotting buggy in the
slough rose behind them against the face of the west. They peered with
stupified eyes through the smoky twilight.

From afar, faintly through the gloaming, came mournfully to their ears the
many-voiced refrain--fainter, fainter:

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground,
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground.
John Brown's body lies--mould--
. . . . . we go march . . . . on."

CHAPTER XII

JERRY THE TELLER
At midnight a small brougham stopped at the gates of the city hospital in
Rouen. A short distance ahead, the lamps of a cab, drawn up at the
curbing, made two dull orange sparks under the electric light swinging
over the street. A cigarette described a brief parabola as it was tossed
from the brougham, and a short young man jumped out and entered the gates,
then paused and spoke to the driver of the cab.

"Did you bring Mr. Barrett here?"

"Yes, sir," answered the driver; "him and two other gentlemen."

Lighting another cigarette, from which he drew but two inspirations before
he threw it away, the young man proceeded quickly up the walk. As he
ascended the short flight of steps which led to the main doors, he panted
a little, in a way which suggested that (although his white waistcoat
outlined an ellipse still respectable) a crescendo of portliness was
playing diminuendo with his youth. And, though his walk was brisk, it was
not lively. The expression of his very red face indicated that his
briskness was spurred by anxiety, and a fattish groan he emitted on the
top step added the impression that his comfortable body protested against
the mental spur. In the hall he removed his narrow-brimmed straw hat and
presented a rotund and amiable head, from the top of which his auburn hair
seemed to retire with a sense of defeat; it fell back, however, not in
confusion, but in perfect order, and the sparse pink mist left upon his
crown gave, by a supreme effort, an effect of arrangement, so that an
imaginative observer would have declared that there was a part down the
middle. The gentleman's plump face bore a grave and troubled expression,
and gravity and trouble were patent in all the lines of his figure and in
every gesture; in the way he turned his head; in the uneasy shifting of
his hat from one hand to the other and in his fanning himself with it in a
nervous fashion; and in his small, blue eyes, which did not twinkle behind
his rimless glasses and looked unused to not twinkling. His gravity
clothed him like an ill-fitting coat; or, possibly, he might have reminded
the imaginative observer, just now conjured up, of a music-box set to
turning its cylinder backwards.

He spoke to an attendant, and was directed to an office, which he entered
without delay. There were five men in the room, three of them engaged in
conversation near the door; another, a young surgeon, was writing at a
desk; the fifth drowsily nodding on a sofa. The newcomer bowed as he
entered.

"Mr. Barrett?" he said inquiringly.

One of the men near the door turned about. "Yes, sir," he answered, with a
stem disfavor of the applicant; a disfavor possibly a perquisite of his
office. "What's wanted?"

"I think I have met you," returned the other. "My name is Meredith."

Mr. Barrett probably did not locate the meeting, but the name proved an
open sesame to his geniality, for he melted at once, and saying: "Of
course, of course, Mr. Meredith; did you want a talk with me?" clasped the
young man's hand confidentially in his, and, with an appearance of
assuring him that whatever the atrocity which had occurred in the Meredith
household it should be discreetly handled and hushed up, indicated a
disposition to conduct him toward a more appropriate apartment for the
rehearsal of scandal. The young man accepted the hand-clasp with some
resignation, but rejected the suggestion of privacy.

"A telegram from Plattville reached me half an hour ago," he said. "I
should have had it sooner, but I have been in the country all day."

The two men who had been talking with the superintendent turned quickly,
and stared at the speaker. He went on: "Mr. Harkless was an old--and--" He
broke off, with a sudden, sharp choking, and for a moment was unable to
control an emotion that seemed, for some reason, as surprising and
unbefitting, in a person of his rubicund presence, as was his gravity. An
astonished tear glittered in the corner of his eye. The grief of the gayer
sorts of stout people appears, sometimes, to dumfound even themselves. The
young man took off his glasses and wiped them slowly. "--An old and very
dear friend of mine." He replaced the glasses insecurely upon his nose. "I
telephoned to your headquarters, and they said you had come here."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir," the superintendent of police responded, cheerfully.
"These two gentlemen are from Plattville; Mr. Smith just got in. They
mighty near had big trouble down there to-day, but I guess we'll settle
things for 'em up here. Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr.
Smith, and my friend, Mr. Homer. Gentlemen, my friend, Mr. Meredith, one
of our well-known citizens."

"You hear it from the police, gentlemen," added Mr. Meredith, perking up a
little. "I know Dr. Gay." He nodded to the surgeon.

"I suppose you have heard some of the circumstances--those that we've
given out," said Barrett.

"I read the account in the evening paper. I had heard of Harkless, of
Carlow, before; but it never occurred to me that it was my friend--I had
heard he was abroad--until I got this telegram from a relative of mine who
happened to be down there."

"Well," said the superintendent, "your friend made a mighty good fight
before he gave up. The Teller, that's the man we've got out here, he's so
hacked up and shot and battered his mother wouldn't know him, if she
wanted to; at least, that's what Gay, here, says. We haven't seen him,
because the doctors have been at him ever since he was found, and they
expect to do some more tonight, when we've had our interview with him, if
he lives long enough. One of my sergeants found him in, the freight-yards
about four-o'clock and sent him here in the ambulance; knew it was Teller,
because he was stowed away in one of the empty cars that came from
Plattville last night, and Slattery--that's his running mate, the one we
caught with the coat and hat--gave in that they beat their way on that
freight. I guess Slattery let this one do most of the fighting; he ain't
scratched; but Mr. Harkless certainly made it hot for the Teller."

"My relative believes that Mr. Harkless is still alive," said Meredith.

Mr. Barrett permitted himself an indulgent smile. He had the air of having
long ago discovered everything which anybody might wish to know, and of
knowing a great deal which he held in reserve because it was necessary to
suppress many facts for a purpose far beyond his auditor's comprehension,
though a very simple matter to himself.

"Well, hardly, I expect," he replied, easily. "No; he's hardly alive."

"Oh, don't say that," said Meredith.

"I'm afraid Mr. Barrett has to say it," broke in Warren Smith. "We're up
here to see this fellow before he dies, to try and get him to tell what
disposal they made of the----"

"Ah!" Meredith shivered. "I believe I'd rather he said the other than to
hear you say that."

Mr. Horner felt the need of defending a fellow-townsman, and came to the
rescue, flushing painfully. "It's mighty bad, I know," said the sheriff of
Carlow, the shadows of his honest, rough face falling in a solemn pattern;
"I reckon we hate to say it as much as you hate to hear it; and Warren
really didn't get the word out. It's stuck in our throats all day; and I
don't recollect as I heard a single man say it before I left our city this
morning. Our folks thought a great deal of him, Mr. Meredith; I don't
believe there's any thinks more. But it's come to that now; you can't
hardly see no chance left. We be'n sweating this other man, Slattery, but
we can't break him down. Jest tells us to go to"--the sheriff paused,
evidently deterred by the thought that swear-words were unbefitting a
hospital--"to the other place, and shets his jaw up tight. The one up here
is called the Teller, as Mr. Barrett says; his name's Jerry the Teller.
Well, we told Slattery that Jerry had died and left a confession; tried to
make him think there wasn't no hope fer him, and he might as well up and
tell his share; might git off easier; warned him to look out for a mob if
he didn't, maybe, and so on, but it never bothered him at all. He's nervy,
all right. Told us to go--that is, he said it again--and swore the Teller
was on his way to Chicago, swore he seen him git on the train. Wouldn't
say another word tell he got a lawyer. So, 'soon as it was any use, we
come up here--they reckon he'll come to before he dies. We'll be glad to
have you go in with us," Horner said kindly. "I reckon it's all the same
to Mr. Barrett."

"He will die, will he, Gay?" Meredith asked, turning to the surgeon.

"Oh, not necessarily," the young man replied, yawning slightly behind his
hand, and too long accustomed to straightforward questions to be shocked
at an evident wish for a direct reply. "His chances are better, because
they'll hang him if he gets well. They took the ball and a good deal of
shot out of his side, and there's a lot more for afterwhile, if he lasts.
He's been off the table an hour, and he's still going."

"That's in his favor, isn't it?" said Meredith. "And extraordinary, too?"
If young Dr. Gay perceived a slur in these interrogations he betrayed no
exterior appreciation of it.

"Shot!" exclaimed Homer. "Shot! I knowed there'd be'n a pistol used,
though where they got it beats me--we stripped 'em--and it wasn't Mr.
Harkless's; he never carried one. But a shot-gun!"

An attendant entered and spoke to the surgeon, and Gay rose wearily,
touched the drowsy young man on the shoulder, and led the way to the door.
"You can come now," he said to the others; "though I doubt its being any
good to you. He's delirious."

They went down a long hall and up a narrow corridor, then stepped softly
into a small, quiet ward.

There was a pungent smell of chemicals in the room; the light was low, and
the dimness was imbued with a thick, confused murmur, incoherent
whisperings that came from a cot in the corner. It was the only cot in use
in the ward, and Meredith was conscious of a terror that made him dread,
to look at it, to go near it. Beside it a nurse sat silent, and upon it
feebly tossed the racked body of him whom Barrett had called Jerry the
Teller.

The head was a shapeless bundle, so swathed it was with bandages and
cloths, and what part of the face was visible was discolored and pigmented
with drugs. Stretched under the white sheet the man looked immensely tall
--as Horner saw with vague misgiving--and he lay in an odd, inhuman
fashion, as though he had been all broken to pieces. His attempts to move
were constantly soothed by the nurse, and he as constantly renewed such
attempts; and one hand, though torn and bandaged, was not to be restrained
from a wandering, restless movement which Meredith felt to be pathetic. He
had entered the room with a flare of hate for the thug whom he had come to
see die, and who had struck down the old friend whose nearness he had
never known until it was too late. But at first sight of the broken figure
he felt all animosity fall away from him; only awe remained, and a
growing, traitorous pity as he watched the long, white fingers of the
Teller "pick at the coverlet." The man was muttering rapid fragments of
words, and syllables.

"Somehow I feel a sense of wrong," Meredith whispered to Gay. "I feel as
if I had done the fellow to death myself, as if it were all out of gear. I
know, now, how Henry felt over the great Guisard. My God, how tall he
looks! That doesn't seem to me like a thug's hand."

The surgeon nodded. "Of course, if there's a mistake to be made, you can
count on Barrett and his sergeants to make it. I doubt if this is their
man. When they found him what clothes he wore were torn and stained; but
they had been good once, especially the linen."

Barrett bent over the recumbent figure. "See here. Jerry," he said, "I
want to talk to you a little. Rouse up, will you? I want to talk to you as
a friend."

The incoherent muttering continued.

"See here, Jerry!" repeated Barrett, more sharply. "Jerry! rouse up, will
you? We don't want any fooling; understand that, Jerry!" He dropped his
hand on the man's shoulder and shook him slightly. The Teller uttered a
short, gasping cry.

"Let me," said Gay, and swiftly interposed. Bending over the cot, he said
in a pleasant, soft voice: "It's all right, old man; it's all right.
Slattery wants to know what you did with that man down at Plattville, when
you got through with him. He can't remember, and he thinks there was money
left on him. Slattery's head was hurt--he can't remember. He'll go shares
with you, when he gets it. Slattery's going to stand by you, if he can get
the money."

The Teller only tried to move his free hand to the shoulder Barrett had
shaken.

"Slattery wants to know," repeated the surgeon, gently moving the hand
back upon the sheet. "He'll divvy up, when he gets it. He'll stand by you,
old man."

"Would you please not mind," whispered the Teller faintly, "would you
please not mind if you took care not to brush against my shoulder again?"

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