The Gentleman From Indiana

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Down the road a buggy came creaking toward him, gray with dust, the top
canted permanently to one side, old and frayed, like the fat, shaggy, gray
mare that drew it; her unchecked, despondent head lowering before her,
while her incongruous tail waved incessantly, like the banner of a
storming party. The editor did not hear the flop of the mare's feet nor
the sound of the wheels, so deep was his reverie, till the vehicle was
nearly opposite him. The red-faced and perspiring driver drew rein, and
the journalist looked up and waved a long white hand to him in greeting.

"Howdy' do, Mr. Harkless?" called the man in the buggy. "Soakin' in the
weather?" He spoke in shouts, though neither was hard of hearing.

"Yes; just soaking," answered Harkless; "it's such a gypsy day. How is Mr.
Bowlder?"

"I'm givin' good satisfaction, thankye, and all at home. She's in town;
goin' in after her now."

"Give Mrs. Bowlder my regards," said the journalist, comprehending the
symbolism. "How is Hartley?"

The farmer's honest face shaded over, a second. "He's be'n steady ever
sence the night you brought him out home; six weeks straight. I'm kind of
bothered about to-morrow--It's show-day and he wants to come in town with
us, and seems if I hadn't any call to say no. I reckon he'll have to take
his chances--and us, too." He raised the reins and clucked to the gray
mare; "Well, she'll be mad I ain't there long ago. Ride in with me?"

"No, I thank you. I'll walk in for the sake of my appetite."

"Wouldn't encourage it _too_ much--livin' at the Palace Hotel,'" observed
Bowlder. "Sorry ye won't ride." He gathered the loose ends of the reins in
his hands, leaned far over the dashboard and struck the mare a hearty
thwack; the tattered banner of tail jerked indignantly, but she consented
to move down the road. Bowlder thrust his big head through the sun-curtain
behind him and continued the conversation: "See the White-Caps ain't got
ye yet."

"No, not yet." Harkless laughed.

"Reckon the boys 'druther ye stayed in town after dark," the other called
back; then, as the mare stumbled into a trot, "Well, come out and see us--
if ye kin spare time from the jedge's." The latter clause seemed to be an
afterthought intended with humor, for Bowlder accompanied it with the loud
laughter of sylvan timidity, risking a joke. Harkless nodded without the
least apprehension of his meaning, and waved farewell as Bowlder finally
turned his attention to the mare. When the flop, flop of her hoofs had
died out, the journalist realized that the day was silent no longer; it
was verging into evening.

He dropped from the fence and turned his face toward town and supper. He
felt the light and life about him; heard the clatter of the blackbirds
above him; heard the homing bees hum by, and saw the vista of white road
and level landscape, framed on two sides by the branches of the grove, a
vista of infinitely stretching fields of green, lined here and there with
woodlands and flat to the horizon line, the village lying in their lap. No
roll of meadow, no rise of pasture land, relieved their serenity nor
shouldered up from them to be called a hill. A second great flock of
blackbirds was settling down over the Plattville maples. As they hung in
the fair dome of the sky below the few white clouds, it occurred to
Harkless that some supping god had inadvertently peppered his custard, and
now inverted and emptied his gigantic blue dish upon the earth, the
innumerable little black dots seeming to poise for a moment, then floating
slowly down from the heights.

A farm-bell rang in the distance, a tinkling coming small and mellow from
far away, and at the lonesomeness of that sound he heaved a long, mournful
sigh. The next instant he broke into laughter, for another bell rang over
the fields, the court-house bell in the Square. The first four strokes
were given with mechanical regularity, the pride of the custodian who
operated the bell being to produce the effect of a clock-work bell such as
he had once heard in the court-house at Rouen; but the fifth and sixth
strokes were halting achievements, as, after four o'clock, he often lost
count on the strain of the effort for precise imitation. There was a pause
after the sixth, then a dubious and reluctant stroke--seven--a longer
pause, followed by a final ring with desperate decision--eight! Harkless
looked at his watch; it was twenty minutes of six.

As he crossed the court-house yard to the Palace Hotel, he stopped to
exchange a word with the bell-ringer, who, seated on the steps, was
mopping his brow with an air of hard-earned satisfaction.

"Good-evening, Schofields'," he said. "You came in strong on the last
stroke, to-night."

"What we need here," responded the bell-ringer, "is more public-spirited
men. I ain't kickin' on you, Mr. Harkless, no sir; but we want more men
like they got in Rouen; we want men that'll git Main Street paved with
block or asphalt; men that'll put in factories, men that'll act and not
set round like that ole fool Martin and laugh and polly-woggle and make
fun of public sperrit, day in and out. I reckon I do my best for the
city."

"Oh, nobody minds Tom Martin," answered Harkless. "It's only half the time
he means anything by what he says."

"That's jest what I hate about him," returned the bell-ringer in a tone of
high complaint; "you can't never tell which half it is. Look at him now!"
Over in front of the hotel Martin was standing, talking to the row of
coatless loungers who sat with their chairs tilted back against the props
of the wooden awning that projected over the sidewalk. Their faces were
turned toward the court-house, and even those lost in meditative whittling
had looked up to laugh. Martin, his hands in the pockets of his alpaca
coat, his rusty silk hat tilted forward till the wide brim rested almost
on the bridge of his nose, was addressing them in his one-keyed voice, the
melancholy whine of which, though not the words, penetrated to the court-
house steps.

The bell-ringer, whose name was Henry Schofield, but who was known as
Schofield's Henry (popularly abbreviated to Schofields') was moved to
indignation. "Look at him," he cried. "Look at him! Everlastingly goin' on
about my bell! Let him talk, jest let him talk." The supper gong boomed
inside the hotel and Harkless bade the bell-ringer good-night. As he moved
away the latter called after him: "He don't disturb nobody. Let him talk.
Who pays any 'tention to him I'd like to know?" There was a burst of
laughter from the whittlers. Schofields' sat in patient silence for a full
minute, as one who knew that no official is too lofty to escape the
anathemas of envy. Then he sprang to his feet and shook his fist at
Martin, who was disappearing within the door of the hotel. "Go to
Halifax!" he shouted.

The dining-room of the Palace Hotel was a large, airy apartment, rustling
with artistically perforated and slashed pink paper that hung everywhere,
at this season of the year, to lend festal effect as well as to palliate
the scourge of flies. There were six or seven large tables, all vacant
except that at which Columbus Landis, the landlord, sat with his guests,
while his wife and children ate in the kitchen by their own preference.
Transient trade was light in Plattville; nobody ever came there, except
occasional commercial travellers who got out of town the instant it was
possible, and who said awful things if, by the exigencies of the railway
time-table, they were left over night.

Behind the host's chair stood a red-haired girl in a blue cotton gown; and
in her hand she languidly waved a long instrument made of clustered strips
of green and white and yellow tissue paper fastened to a wooden wand;
with this she amiably amused the flies except at such times as the
conversation proved too interesting, when she was apt to rest it on the
shoulder of one of the guests. This happened each time the editor of the
"Herald" joined in the talk. As the men seated themselves they all nodded
to her and said, "G'd evening, Cynthy." Harkless always called her
Charmion; no one knew why. When he came in she moved around the table to a
chair directly opposite him, and held that station throughout the meal,
with her eyes fixed on his face. Mr. Martin noted this manoeuvre--it
occurred regularly twice a day--with a stealthy smile at the girl, and her
light skin flushed while her lip curled shrewishly at the old gentleman.
"Oh, all right, Cynthy," he whispered to her, and chuckled aloud at her
angry toss of the head.

"Schofields' seemed to be kind of put out with me this evening," he
remarked, addressing himself to the company. "He's the most ungratefullest
cuss I ever come up with. I was only oratin' on how proud the city ought
to be of him. He fairly keeps Plattville's sportin' spirit on the gog;
'die out, wasn't for him. There's be'n more money laid on him whether
he'll strike over and above the hour, or under and below, or whether he'll
strike fifteen minutes before time, or twenty after, than--well, sir, we'd
all forgit the language if it wasn't for Schofields' bell to keep us
talkin'; that's _my_ claim. Dull days, think of the talk he furnishes all
over town. Think what he's done to promote conversation. Now, for
instance, Anna Belle Bardlock's got a beau, they say"--here old Tom tilted
back in his chair and turned an innocent eye upon a youth across the
table, young William Todd, who was blushing over his griddle-cakes--"and I
hear he's a good deal scared of Anna Belle and not just what you might
call brash with her. They say every Sunday night he'll go up to Bardlocks'
and call on Anna Belle from half-past six till nine, and when he's got
into his chair he sets and looks at the floor and the crayon portraits
till about seven; then he opens his tremblin' lips and says, 'Reckon
Schofields' must be on his way to the court-house by this time.' And about
an hour later, when Schofields' hits four or five, he'll speak up again,
'Say, I reckon he means eight.' 'Long towards nine o'clock, they say he
skews around in his chair and says, 'Wonder if he'll strike before time or
after,' and Anna Belle answers out loud, 'I hope after,' for politeness;
but in her soul she says, 'I pray before'; and then Schofields' hits her
up for eighteen or twenty, and Anna Belle's company reaches for his hat.
Three Sundays ago he turned around before he went out and said, 'Do you
like apple-butter?' but never waited to find out. It's the same programme
every Sunday evening, and Jim Bardlock says Anna Belle's so worn out you
wouldn't hardly know her for the blithe creature she was last year--the
excitement's be'n too much for her!"

Poor William Todd bent his fiery face over the table and suffered the
general snicker in helpless silence. Then there was quiet for a space,
broken only by the click of knives against the heavy china and the
indolent rustle of Cynthia's fly-brush.

"Town so still," observed the landlord, finally, with a complacent glance
at the dessert course of prunes to which his guests were helping
themselves from a central reservoir, "Town so still, hardly seems like
show-day's come round again. Yet there's be'n some shore signs lately:
when my shavers come honeyin' up with, 'Say, pa, ain't they no urrands I
can go for ye, pa? I like to run 'em for you, pa,'--'relse, 'Oh, pa, ain't
they no water I can haul, or nothin', pa?'--'relse, as little Rosina T.
says, this morning, 'Pa, I always pray fer _you_ pa,' and pa this and pa
that-you can rely either Christmas or show-day's mighty close."

William Todd, taking occasion to prove himself recovered from confusion,
remarked casually that there was another token of the near approach of the
circus, as ole Wilkerson was drunk again.

"There's a man!" exclaimed Mr. Martin with enthusiasm. "There's the
feller for _my_ money! He does his duty as a citizen more discriminatin'ly
on public occasions than any man I ever see. There's Wilkerson's
celebration when there's a funeral; look at the difference between it and
on Fourth of July. Why, sir, it's as melancholy as a hearse-plume, and
sympathy ain't the word for it when he looks at the remains, no sir;
preacher nor undertaker, either, ain't _half_ as blue and respectful. Then
take his circus spree. He come into the store this afternoon, head up,
marchin' like a grenadier and shootin' his hand out before his face and
drawin' it back again, and hollering out, 'Ta, ta, ta-ra-ta, ta, ta-ta-
ra'--why, the dumbest man ever lived could see in a minute show's 'comin'
to-morrow and Wilkerson's playin' the trombone. Then he'd snort and goggle
like an elephant. Got the biggest sense of appropriateness of any man in
the county, Wilkerson has. Folks don't half appreciate him."

As each boarder finished his meal he raided the glass of wooden toothpicks
and went away with no standing on the order of his going; but Martin
waited for Harkless, who, not having attended to business so concisely as
the others, was the last to leave the table, and they stood for a moment
under the awning outside, lighting their cigars.

"Call on the judge, to-night?" asked Martin.

"No," said Harkless. "Why?"

"Didn't you see the lady with Minnie and the judge at the lecture?"

"I caught a glimpse of her. That's what Bowlder meant, then."

"I don't know what Bowlder meant, but I guess you better go out there,
young man. She might not stay here long."

CHAPTER IV

THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER

The Briscoe buckboard rattled along the elastic country-road, the roans
setting a sharp pace as they turned eastward on the pike toward home and
supper.

"They'll make the eight miles in three-quarters of an hour," said the
judge, proudly. He pointed ahead with his whip. "Just beyond that bend we
pass through Six-Cross-Roads."

Miss Sherwood leaned forward eagerly. "Can we see 'Mr. Wimby's' house from
here?"

"No, it's on the other side, nearer town; we pass it later. It's the only
respectable-looking house in this township." They reached the turn of the
road, and the judge touched up his colts to a sharper gait. "No need of
dallying," he observed quietly. "It always makes me a little sick just to
see the place. I'd hate to have a break-down here."

They came in sight of a squalid settlement, built raggedly about a
blacksmith's shop and a saloon. Half-a-dozen shanties clustered near the
forge, a few roofs scattered through the shiftlessly cultivated fields,
four or five barns propped by fence-rails, some sheds with gaping
apertures through which the light glanced from side to side, a squad of
thin, "razor-back" hogs--now and then worried by gaunt hounds--and some
abused-looking hens, groping about disconsolately in the mire, a broken-
topped buggy with a twisted wheel settling into the mud of the middle of
the road (there was always abundant mud, here, in the dryest summer), a
lowering face sneering from a broken window--Six-Cross-Roads was
forbidding and forlorn enough by day. The thought of what might issue from
it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the Cross-Roads, together
with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the atmosphere of the place,
made Miss Sherwood shiver as though a cold draught had crossed her.

"It is so sinister!" she exclaimed. "And so unspeakably mean! This is
where they live, the people who hate him, is it? The 'White-Caps'?"

"They are just a lot of rowdies," replied Briscoe. "You have your rough
corners in big cities, and I expect there are mighty few parts of any
country that don't have their tough neighborhoods, only Six-Cross-Roads
happens to be worse than most. They choose to call themselves 'White-
Caps,' but I guess it's just a name they like to give themselves. Usually
White-Caps are a vigilance committee going after rascalities the law
doesn't reach, or won't reach, but these fellows are not that kind. They
got together to wipe out their grudges--and sometimes they didn't need any
grudge and let loose their deviltries just for pure orneriness; setting
haystacks afire and such like; or, where a farmer had offended them, they
would put on their silly toggery and take him out at midnight and whip him
and plunder his house and chase the horses and cattle into his corn,
maybe. They say the women went with them on their raids."

"And he was the first to try to stop them?"

"Well, you see our folks are pretty long-suffering," Briscoe replied,
apologetically. "We'd sort of got used to the meanness of the Cross-Roads.
It took a stranger to stir things up--and he did. He sent eight of 'em to
the penitentiary, some for twenty years."

As they passed the saloon a man stepped into the doorway and looked at
them. He was coatless and clad in garments worn to the color of dust; his
bare head was curiously malformed, higher on one side than on the other,
and though the buckboard passed rapidly, and at a distance, this singular
lopsidedness was plainly visible to the occupants, lending an ugly
significance to his meagre, yellow face. He was tall, lean, hard,
powerfully built. He eyed the strangers with affected languor, and then,
when they had gone by, broke into sudden, loud laughter.

"That was Bob Skillett, the worst of the lot," said the judge. "Harkless
sent his son and one brother to prison, and it nearly broke his heart that
he couldn't swear to Bob."

When they were beyond the village and in the open road again. Miss
Sherwood took a deep breath. "I think I breathe more freely," she said.
"That was a hideous laugh he sent after us. I had heard of places like
this before--and I don't think I care to see many of them. As I understand
it, Six-Cross-Roads is entirely vicious, isn't it; and bears the same
relation to the country that the slums do to a city?'"

"That's about it. They make their own whiskey. I presume; and they have
their own fights amongst themselves, but they settle 'em themselves, too,
and keep their own counsel and hush it up. Lige Willetts, Minnie's friend
--I guess she's told you about Lige?--well, Lige Willetts will go anywhere
when he's following a covey, though mostly the boys leave this part of the
country alone when they're hunting; but Lige got into a thicket back of
the forge one morning, and he came on a crowd of buzzards quarrelling over
a heap on the ground, and he got out in a hurry. He said he was sure it
was a dog; but he ran almost all the way to Plattville."

"Father!" exclaimed his daughter, leaning from the back seat. "Don't tell
such stories to Helen; she'll think we're horrible, and you'll frighten
her, too."

"Well, it isn't exactly a lady's story," said the judge. He glanced at his
guest's face and chuckled. "I guess we won't frighten her much," he went
on. "Young lady, I don't believe you'd be afraid of many things, would
you? You don't look like it. Besides, the Cross-Roads isn't Plattville,
and the White-Caps have been too scared to do anything much, except try to
get even with the 'Herald,' for the last two years; ever since it went for
them. They're laying for Harkless partly for revenge and partly because
they daren't do anything until he's out of the way."

The girl gave a low cry with a sharp intake of breath. "Ah! One grows
tired of this everlasting American patience! Why don't the Plattville
people do something before they----"

"It's just as I say," Briscoe answered; "our folks are sort of used to
them. I expect we do about all we can; the boys look after him nights, and
the main trouble is that we can't make him understand he ought to be more
afraid of them. If he'd lived here all his life he would be. You know
there's an old-time feud between the Cross-Roads and our folks; goes way
back into pioneer history and mighty few know anything of it. Old William
Platt and the forefathers of the Bardlocks and Tibbses and Briscoes and
Schofields moved up here from North Carolina a good deal just to get away
from some bad neighbors, mostly Skilletts and Johnsons--one of the
Skilletts had killed old William Platt's two sons. But the Skilletts and
Johnsons followed all the way to Indiana to join in making the new
settlement, and they shot Platt at his cabin door one night, right where
the court-house stands to-day. Then the other settlers drove them out for
good, and they went seven miles west and set up a still. A band of
Indians, on the way to join the Shawnee Prophet at Tippecanoe, came down
on the Cross-Roads, and the Cross-Roaders bought them off with bad whiskey
and sent them over to Plattville. Nearly all the Plattville men were away,
fighting under Harrison, and when they came back there were only a few
half-crazy women and children left. They'd hid in the woods.

"The men stopped just long enough to hear how it was, and started for the
Cross-Roads; but the Cross-Roads people caught them in an ambush and not
many of our folks got back.

"We really never did get even with them, though all the early settlers
lived and died still expecting to see the day when Plattville would go
over and pay off the score. It's the same now as it was then, good stock
with us, bad stock over here; and all the country riff-raff in creation
come and live with 'em when other places get too hot to hold them. Only
one or two of us old folks know what the original trouble was about; but
you ask a Plattville man, to-day, what he thinks of the Cross-Roads and
he'll be mighty apt to say, 'I guess we'll all have to go over there some
time and wipe those hoodlums out.' It's been coming to that a long time.
The work the 'Herald' did has come nearer bringing us even with Six-Cross-
Roads than anything else ever has. Queer, too--a man that's only lived in
Plattville a few years to be settling such an old score for us. They'll do
their best to get him, and if they do there'll be trouble of an illegal
nature. I think our people would go over there again, but I expect there
wouldn't be any ambush this time; and the pioneers, might rest easier in--"
He broke off suddenly and nodded to a little old man in a buckboard,
who was turning off from the road into a farm lane which led up to a trim
cottage with a honeysuckle vine by the door. "That's Mrs. Wimby's
husband," said the judge in an undertone.

Miss Sherwood observed that "Mrs. Wimby's husband" was remarkable for the
exceeding plaintiveness of his expression. He was a weazened, blank, pale-
eyed little man, with a thin, white mist of neck whisker; his coat was so
large for him that the sleeves were rolled up from his wrists with several
turns, and, as he climbed painfully to the ground to open the gate of the
lane, it needed no perspicuous eye to perceive that his trousers had been
made for a much larger man, for, as his uncertain foot left the step of
his vehicle, one baggy leg of the garment fell down over his foot,
completely concealing his boot and hanging some inches beneath. A faintly
vexed expression crossed his face as he endeavored to arrange the
disorder, but he looked up and returned Briscoe's bow, sadly, with an air
of explaining that he was accustomed to trouble, and that the trousers had
behaved no worse than he expected.

No more inoffensive or harmless figure than this feeble little old man
could be imagined; yet his was the distinction of having received a
terrible visit from his neighbors of the Cross-Roads. Mrs. Wimby was a
widow, who owned a comfortable farm, and she had refused every offer of
the neighboring ill-eligible bachelors to share it. However, a vagabonding
tinker won her heart, and after their marriage she continued to be known
as "Mrs. Wimby"; for so complete was the bridegroom's insignificance that
it extended to his name, which proved quite unrememberable, and he was
usually called "Widder-Woman Wimby's Husband," or, more simply, "Mr.
Wimby." The bride supplied the needs of his wardrobe with the garments of
her former husband, and, alleging this proceeding as the cause of their
anger, the Cross-Roads raiders, clad as "White-Caps," broke into the
farmhouse one night, looted it, tore the old man from his bed, and
compelling his wife, who was tenderly devoted to him, to watch, they
lashed him with sapling shoots till he was near to death. A little yellow
cur, that had followed his master on his wanderings, was found licking the
old man's wounds, and they deluged the dog with kerosene and then threw
the poor animal upon a bonfire they had made, and danced around it in
heartiest enjoyment.

The man recovered, but that was no palliation of the offense to the mind
of a hot-eyed young man from the East, who was besieging the county
authorities for redress and writing brimstone and saltpetre for his paper.
The powers of the county proving either lackadaisical or timorous, he
appealed to those of the State, and he went every night to sleep at a
farmhouse, the owner of which had received a warning from the "White-
Caps." And one night it befell that he was rewarded, for the raiders
attempted an entrance. He and the farmer and the former's sons beat off
the marauders and did a satisfactory amount of damage in return. Two of
the "White-Caps" they captured and bound, and others they recognized. Then
the State authorities hearkened to the voice of the "Herald" and its
owner; there were arrests, and in the course of time there was a trial.
Every prisoner proved an alibi, could have proved a dozen; but the editor
of the "Herald," after virtually conducting the prosecution, went upon the
stand and swore to man after man. Eight men went to the penitentiary on
his evidence, five of them for twenty years. The Plattville Brass Band
serenaded the editor of the "Herald" again.

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