Part 17 (2/2)

”He did the talking, Flash. They called him 'Judge'--they most always do in those towns. He most certainly monopolized the conversation, and while he gave his monologue, I sat and got the best of them down on paper. They thought I was taking notes. I'll show you his picture some day. He's the meanest man I ever met yet--and I've met a few!

Puffy-faced and red, and too close between the eyes. Fat, too! Somehow I'm ashamed of being plump myself, since meeting him.

”He did all the talking, and from the very first time he opened his mouth I knew he was lying. You can always tell a professional liar; he lies too smoothly, somehow. Well, to judge from his story Conway was the only unspotted cherub child that had ever been born and bred in that section. Oh, yes, _he'd_ seen the promise in Conway; _he_ knew that Conway was to be the pride and joy of the community, right from the first. _He'd_ always said so! Why, _he_ was the very man who had given him his first pointers in the game, when he was cleaning up all the rest of the boys in town, just by way of recreation. If I'd never had a suspicion before I'd have known just from those slick sentences of his that Conway had never been anything in that village but a small-sized edition of the full-blown crook he is today.

”But I didn't have any reason to contradict him, did I? He was doing all that I could ask, and more. For there wasn't a man in that whole crowd who dared to sneeze until he got his cue from the Judge. But that fat man got his jolt finally, just the same, and got it good, too.

”He had just finished telling how Conway had cleaned up the village kids, irrespective of size, whenever he felt the need of exercise, and was looking around at the circle behind him to give them a chance to back him up, when it happened. I told you a minute ago that I wished you could have seen that boy, as I saw him that night, standing there in that tavern doorway. You see, he'd come in so quietly that n.o.body had heard him--come in just in time to hear the Judge's last words.

And when the Judge turned around he looked full into that boy's eyes.

”Oh, he got his, good and plenty! I didn't watch him very closely because it was hard for me to take my eyes off the white face of that boy at the door. But I did see that he went pretty nearly purple for a minute, and I heard him gurgle, too, he was that surprised, before he caught his breath. Then he stuck out one hand and tried to bluff it out.

”'There's one of 'em, right now,' he sang out; but he should have known that a man who's sure of his ground doesn't have to shout to make his point. 'There's Young Denny Bolton,' he said, 'who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jeddy Conway was pretty handy as a boy!' And he laughed, Flash--commenced to chuckle! Oh, there was no misunderstanding what he meant to insinuate.

'Ask him--but maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it yet--eh, Denny?'

”He thought he could bluff it--bluff me, with that boy standing there in the doorway calling him a liar as if I didn't know it all, yet at that minute I couldn't help but ask that boy a question. I think it was mostly because I wanted to hear what the voice of a man with a face like his would sound like, for he hadn't opened his lips to answer that fat hypocrite's insinuation.

”So I asked him if he had known Conway well--asked him if he had had a few set-to's with him himself. I'm not going to forget how he looked when he turned toward me, either. I'm not going to forget the look on his face as he swung around. And I'm remembering his voice pretty fairly well, too, right now!

”'Maybe,' he answered me, and he almost drawled the words. 'Maybe I did,' he said.

”Why, Flash, he couldn't have said more if he had talked for a week.

He'd said all there was to say, now, hadn't he? But it let the Judge out, just the same, for he just gave the circle behind him the the high sign and set the crowd to laughing for a minute or two, until the tension was relieved. I didn't laugh myself. There didn't seem to be much of a joke about it after seeing that boy's eyes. It was Bolton--Young Denny, they called him--and I got his story, their side of it at least, after he shut the door behind him.

”It's another thing I'd be more likely to understand than you would, Flash, because you've never lived in a village like that, and I have.

Back a hundred years or so the first settlement had been named for his family--Boltonwood, they'd called it--but I guess the strain must have petered out. From all I could gather the Boltons had been drinking themselves to death with unfailing regularity and dispatch for several generations back, and I heard a choice detailed description, too, of the way the boy's own father had made his final exit--heard it from that moon-faced leading citizen who did all the talking--that made me want to kick him in the face. I don't know yet why I didn't. I was sitting on the tavern desk with my feet on a level with his face. I should have bashed him a good one. It's one of the lost opportunities which I'll always regret, unless maybe I take a Sat.u.r.day off some day and run up and beat him up proper!

”He gave me a nice little account of how the boy's dad had gone over, screaming mad, with the town's elite standing around saying, 'I told you so,' and that big scared kid kneeling beside his bed, trying to pray--trying to make it easier for him.

”Did you ever see a flock of buzzards circling, Flash, waiting for some wounded thing beneath them to die? No? Well, I have, and it isn't a pretty sight either. That was what they made me think of that night.

And I learned, too, how they'd been waiting ever since for that boy to go the way his father had traveled before him; they even told me that the same old jug still stood in the kitchen corner, and would have pointed out his tumble-down old place on the hill, where they had let him go on living alone, only it was too dark for any one to see.

”Odd, now wasn't it? But it didn't come to me at that moment. I never gave it a thought that there was a man who had licked Conway once and might do it again. But I didn't forget him; I wanted to, that night, but I couldn't. And I guess I was still thinking about him when some one touched my arm the next morning, while I was waiting for the train, and I turned around and found him standing there beside me.

”Flash, have you noticed how grave he is--kind of sober-quiet? Have you? That comes from living too much alone. And he's only a kid, after all--that's all, just a kid. He startled me for a moment, but the minute I looked at him that morning I knew he had something on his mind, and after I'd tried to make it a little easier for him I gave him a chance to talk.

”He had a big raw welt across one cheek--a wicked thing to look at!

You've noticed it, I see. Well, he stood there fingering it a little, trying to think of a way to begin gracefully. Then he got out the paper with the account of Jed The Red's last go in it and jumped right into the middle of all that was bothering him. He hunted out the statement of Conway's share of the purse and asked me if it was true.

I told him it was--that I'd written it myself. And then he asked me, point blank, how _he_ could get a chance at Conway. He--he said Conway had never been able to whip him, Flash--said he didn't believe he ever could!

”Now, I'm sentimental--I know that. But I manage to keep my feet on the ground now and then just the same. And so I want to say right here that it wasn't his words that counted with me. Why, I'd have laughed in his face only for the way he said them! As it was, I said too much. But I thought of you then--I couldn't help it, could I? It hit me smash between the eyes! His face had been reminding me of something--something I couldn't place until that minute. Flash, do you know what he made me think of? Do you? Well, he looked like a halftone print of the Pilgrim Fathers--the kind that they hang on the walls in the district schools. And it got me--got me!--maybe you know why. I don't. But I wrote it on this card, under your address, and gave it to him.

”I would have laughed at him only he was so mighty grave and quiet.

One doesn't make a practice of laughing at men who are as big as he is--not when they carry themselves like that. I kept my funny feelings to myself, if I had any, while I spent a minute or two sizing him up.

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