Teeftallow/Chapter 43

ABNER returned from the jail with a feeling that he had fallen from some great height. He felt stunned; his legs shook from the blow. His thoughts fell on his mind in sharp fragments as if they, too, had been shattered. His fortune was gone. His claim on the half of Lane County had been dissipated—overslept; and here he was back where he had started, a labourer, a teamster, one of the stew.

A sudden rage seized Abner at his own folly and neglect. He recalled how Railroad Jones had shrugged and smiled at him. In the financier's machinations he had been a straw, a bubble, a nothing at all.

By this time night had fallen and the teamster moved along the dark street muttering imprecations, cursing Railroad Jones for a thief, a swindler, a rascal—unassailable propositions.

A solitary figure was approaching Abner on the dark street, and as it drew near paused to peer at the teamster then ejaculated in a gratified voice, "That you, Abner? Say, I heard Jim Sandage was givin' Railroad Jones hell over at the jail while ago—anything to it?"

"Railroad Jones is a damn swindle!" flung out Abner.

The gossip stared, then clapped a hand over his mouth and presently said, "Oh, you mean he done you!"

Apparently news of Abner's downfall had already circulated over the electric web of village gossip.

"Why, hell!" cried the fellow, beginning to laugh irrepressibly, "didn't you know you wa'n't no match for Railroad Jones! Why, by God, Abner, I'm supprised at ye! You buckin' up agin Railroad Jones!"

​And here the fellow gave away completely to his humour and his rachetty laughter rolled down the night wind. "Howsomever," he added with a certain genuine comfort in his voice, "I un'erstan' you're to git the gal. Of course, that ain't holdin' the whip han' like you thought you done—but it's som'pin."

Abner hated this yawping fool who was laughing and philosophizing so easily over a lost fortune. He muttered that he didn't know, and walked on. The villager, with that uncomprehending indifference to mental suffering which marks his ilk, turned a few steps after Abner.

"But d'reckon Jim Sandage is agoin' to do anything?" he persevered. "You know Jim's one o' them hell cats when you git him started."

"I don't know what he'll do!" cried Abner in pain.

"Now, you know Railroad Jones ain't goin' to pay him out. He'll shore let Jim go to the pen."

Abner hurried away and the man called after him angrily, "Hell, you needn't be too stuck up to talk to me! You're no better'n I am; yore daddy died in jail." And with this parting shot for Abner's lack of delicacy and consideration the villager fell behind.

As the teamster entered the Sandage home it suddenly smote him that the life which this new bungalow represented was no longer for him; that is, unless he really did marry Adelaide, which, somehow, he did not feel he would. He found that he had based his thought of marrying Adelaide Jones upon the fact that he himself had money. Now a certain hill feeling interdicted a union between Adelaide rich, and him poor. "Ever'body would say I was marryin' her for her money," he brooded, without regard for the logic of events, "an' I'm a man that wears my own boots. . ."

When Teeftallow opened the door of his home he found Mrs. Sandage sitting white-faced at the desk telephone in the hall. She had the receiver to her ear and was staring at the mouthpiece ejaculating, "What . . . He did . . . Let him go to the pen . . . Oh, I felt all the time ​. . . No, I haven't had a easy minute sence I— What? Oh! Oh! Oh!—Well, thank you for callin' me, Miss Prudie."

Here she seemed to realize that Abner had entered the hallway, for she jumped up and ran and flung her arms about her foster-son.

"Oh, Abner! Abner! We've lost ever'thing! An' you, too! I knew we couldn't go on like this—that low-down snake-in-the-grass! I wush he was dead! To scheme aroun' an' sen' honest men to the pen!"

"Miss Haly," comforted Abner unsteadily, "I don't believe they'll do anything to Jim—he didn't mean no—"

"Oh, yes, they will, Prudie Rhodes was a-talkin' to Judge Stone's wife, an' Prudie said Jim had to use due diligence and caution—Jim's gone!" And here she fell to weeping outright.

"But, Miss Haly, you can nearly always beat the law, even if you done somethin'."

"Y-yes, b-but if y-you b-been honest it-it's diff'runt."

Abner stroked the woman's bony shoulders with a sick expression on his own face. "How's B'atrice Belle takin' it?"

"She's in bed—her head's killin' her."

"Well, you better go there, too, Miss Haly. Go to bed an' try to sleep."

The woman clung to the youth a moment longer, then pulled herself away and started up the stairway. "I—I wush Railroad Jones hadn't never been borned! I always thought he was a fine man. . . . D'reckon Adelaide is goin' to marry you, Abner?"

"I don't know, Miss Haly," said Abner.

"She—she's a good-hearted girl . . ." and Mrs. Sandage climbed unsteadily up the stairs with her hard hand leaning on the polished rail.

"I—I don't min' goin' back to the farm myse'f, but—but to think of B-B-B'atrice Belle . . ."

She held her teeth in place, exhaled a long hopeless breath ​aspirated to an "O-o-o-o," and entered one of the doors at the head of the stairs. When she was in, Abner turned out the hall light and went up to his own room.

He entered his room, switched on the light, stood for a moment, then sat down on the side of his bed with the hot-and-cold feeling of a person with an ague. The hot-air vent from the furnace had been turned on and presently he was too warm. The dried air pinched his throat and nostrils. Even at the risk of growing ill from the unhealthful night air, Abner opened a window, put his feverish face in the cold draught, and breathed deeply. He had no desire for sleep, but sat on the side of his bed staring into the darkness. Presently he turned off his light, and this changed the outer world to a dull gray and his own room to an unrelieved black except for the counterpane on which he sat; this glimmered faintly in the starlight falling through the window.

In his attempt to console Mrs. Sandage, Abner had to some extent consoled himself. At least, he thought over his downfall more dispassionately. Indeed, his whole surprising elevation and sudden fall repeated itself over and over in his mind. Once he tried to stop it by shutting his eyes and shaking his head, but the drama continued on and on.

In the midst of this annoying reiteration the gasoline engine which controlled the water and light in the house burst into a quick throbbing. It shocked Abner. It seemed as if the little electric heart of the house had received a sharp fright. It beat at an amazing rate. Abner listened to it intently and presently decided that something was wrong with the engine. He was making up his mind to go down and find out the trouble when the engine stopped as abruptly as it began. It left the silence in the stricken house blanker than ever. It reminded Abner of his own sharp rise to fortune and his abrupt loss; a shoot up, a drop down. . . .

Abner never knew how long he sat by the window, but after some indeterminate time he was aroused to complete wake​fulness by a succession of rifle shots. Then he found himself, still fully dressed, lying on his bed with his legs hanging off. He was chilled to the bone. The firing brought him up on his bed shivering and listening intently. Presently came more shots, one-two-three; Abner thrust his head out of the window and counted up to six. So it must have been a pistol. The firing was in the direction of the jail.

Abner listened intently for some other interpretative sound when a door opened in the bungalow and Beatrice's voice called, "Abner! Abner! Did you hear that shootin'?"

The teamster called back that he had heard it.

"Where did it come from, Abner? It's not Pappy, is it? Who is it shootin'?"

"No, 'tain't Jim, of course! He's in—he ain't got no gun." Abner continued staring in the direction of the jail when there came another spacing of six shots. A lgiht appeared in an adjoining house, and then came the sound of a window being raised. Abner saw a head thrust out and a voice called, "What air they shootin' about?" and another voice farther on replied, "I guess it's them bootleggers."

Then other more distant voices with only a phrase or two distinguishable, "From the jail" . . . "Bascom shootin'" . . . "Signallin' for he'p" . . .

The firing started again, hammering the darkness with the hard clipped impacts of smokeless powder.

Abner turned on his own light and hurried stiffly for his door. As he bolted into the passageway he saw Mrs. Sandage and Beatrice Belle starting for the stairs in kimonos.

"Abner!" cried the wife, putting her shaking fingers to her teeth, "didn't somebody say it was Jim? It's from the jail—run down there, Abner!"

"I know it ain't him, Miss Haly—what would Jim be doin' . . ." Abner was striding down the stairs three at a time. He turned out into the cold night, and slammed the door just as Mrs. Sandage from the interior switched on the porch light so he could get to the gate.

​Half-a-dozen persons were hurrying through the street with flashlights, and they gave Abner the owl-like impression of having been up all night. Most of them were going to jail, one or two were coming back. One of the returning men explained the firing in a husky one-o'clock voice:

"The prisoners have broke out: Tim Fraley, Jim Sandage, a nigger named Rufus Beans. Bascom come out on 'em as they was jumpin' from his second story, an' Fraley knocked him in the head with a stick."

Abner's heart began to pound; Jim jumping from a second-story window—Bascom knocked in the head with a stick. . . . He ran on and presently met another man who explained it was Bascom's boy signalling for help with his father's gun. That's why the shots came so slowly.

Abner went running down the rocky lane toward the jail with men and flashlights gathering in from every direction. Ahead of him he could see lights in the jail yard and in the jail itself.

When Abner reached the yard, he found the spectators grouped about an uncurtained window through which the crowd could see a Doctor Agnew dressing a scalp wound on Bascom's head. The sheriff sat impatiently in his chair while the surgeon dabbled antiseptic solution on the wound and sewed it up. The doctor appeared to be arguing with the restless jailer.

The men around Abner were saying, "Bascom don't want to wait! He wants to go with the posse. He's mad as a hare, he's got to wait tull mornin'—kain't ketch nobody in the dark."

Other men were flashing their lights up at the broken bars of the window. There were exclamations and oaths at the height from which the prisoners had leaped. "Hell of a jolt!" "Looks like it would uh stove up their laigs!" "Has anybody 'phoned to Florence fer the dawgs?"

Just then a hand touched Abner's shoulder and a voice said, "There are two men in the crowd who don't care if he does get away, eh, Mr. Teeftallow?"

​Abner looked around. It was Sim Pratt addressing him.

"Jim didn't hit the sheriff," said Abner.

"No—I'm sorry anybody hit him. He was doin' his duty."

The thought of the bloodhounds after his foster-father revisioned for Abner the tragedy of Peck Bradley, and it filled the youth with terror. The notion of Jim being chased through the hills and swamps in this bitter weather was horrible.

Pratt was at his side again saying angrily, "Sandage was as innocent as you or I—tricked into it—Jones can talk a man into believin' white's black. . . ."

At that moment a voice in the crowd called above the babble, "Look yonder at that light!"

Everyone looked and other voices took up the cry.

"Ain't that the courthouse?"

"God'lmighty, is the courthouse afar?"

Across the night came the clangour of a distant bell. Faraway voices shouted with urgency in their faintly heard tones. Above the tops of the intervening trees, Abner could now see the dull umber of an illuminated smoke column. It was the only clearly visible thing in the encircling darkness.

By this time the excitement which a fire always creates in a village seized the crowd. The whole posse rushed pell-mell out of the jail yard and went streaming up the stony square toward the courthouse square. As they neared the square the tips of the flames underneath the rolling smoke seemed to be licking straight out of the tops of the water oaks in the courtyard. The running men panted and cursed as they stumbled through the boulders in the lane. The whole thoroughfare winked with flashlights and lanterns. Voices were crying, "It's the courthouse! Our courthouse is gone!"

Another man puffed out, "By God, that's no bad trick. I don't guess any posse'll chase him when they put the fire out."

"Yes, an' the dawgs kain't trail him amongst so many tracks!"

Just at this juncture Abner burst out of the lane into the ​square. The fire was not at the courthouse at all, but in Railroad Jones's office. The building was burning evenly all around its sides, and the north wind drove the blaze and smoke at a long slant into the live oaks in the courthouse yard.

Under the pressure of the wind and the draught of the fire, the trees surged and strained as if smitten by a hurricane. Streams of sparks and brands whirled through the branches on to the courthouse roof, and Abner could see the illuminated forms of three or four men on the roof with buckets douching the fragments of fire.

No effort whatever was made to save the magnate's office because it was far beyond the strength of the village bucket brigade. However, the fire was just getting under way when the crowd streamed up.

An old man named Lipscomb was telling amid the snap and whip of the flames that he had first seen the fire. It was about forty minutes after he had heard the shooting at the jail. He had got out of bed and later saw a light in the courthouse yard. He ran out and saw the flames spreading around Mr. Jones's office—it burned as if it had been oiled. All village fires appeared oiled.

But "oiled" was the release word which set the whole crowd speculating.

"Oiled!" "Then, of course it was him!" "My Lord, burn a man out!"

"But what diff'runce will that make to a millionaire like Railroad Jones!" shouted a voice.

But from another part of the crowd came a pessimistic, "By God, he's ruint. He's teetotally ruint! Ever' damn one o' them claims is in there burnin' up!"

"Hell, that don't make no diff'runce—Railroad'll ricollect ever' one of 'em."

At that moment Abner saw the dazzling light of a big motor enter the crowded square. It came honking, honking to get through. When its rays fell on Abner, Adelaide's voice called the teamster's name excitedly.

​Abner could see nothing behind the headlights, but he ran to the car.

"Where's Daddy?" cried the girl. "Is he here?"

Something in her voice plucked at Abner's nerves.

"I—I don't know. I haven't seen him." He began peering over the crowd from where he stood on the running board. He shouted at a man near by: "Milo! Oh, Milo," he called. "Have you seen Railroad Jones?"

Out of the confusion Milo answered back, "No, I ain't see him; ain't he at home?"

"No!" shrilled Adelaide suddenly. "He hasn't been at home to-night; he's bound to be here!"

"He hasn't!" Milo turned and began pushing through the crowd. "I'll help you look for him!"

Abner leaped off the machine and started a search in another direction. The motor moved forward again, honking constantly for a passage. As Abner threaded the throng, he could hear Adelaide's voice calling in increasing terror, "Where's Daddy? Have any of you-all seen Daddy?" Then other voices took up the search, "Railroad! Railroad Jones!" "Is Railroad Jones here?" "Hey, Railroad!" Presently the throng resounded with the hunt.

With a growing and formless fear, Abner hurried through the crowd, peering in every direction. In the dancing light, the faces of the hill folk looked more grotesque than ever. By this time everybody was still searching for the magnate. Abner could still hear Adelaide honking her motor.

Suddenly the teamster set off at a trot to make the entire circuit of the burning office. As he trotted a sudden inarticulate shout arose from the north side of the building. A note of horror in it whirled Abner about and sent him flying in this new direction. He heard somebody scream in an extremity of repulsion, "Look! My God, look!" and another, "Jim Sandage must have . . . Keep Addy away! Good Lord, keep her away!" Then everything was lost in shrieks and screams. Abner saw men fling up their hands and turn away as if overpowered by the heat. Women ​fled backward into the crowd, or stood as if transfixed. Two or three of them fainted in the red light.

With chilled face and twitching nerves Abner pushed to the front of the crowd and stared. The northern window of the office had fallen in; a blast of air had swept the smoke out of the room and set out its interior in fiery brightness. In this shining scene, Abner saw the black, shapeless bulk of a man slumped over on a burning table.