I suppose it did sound mighty top-lofty and unlike anything else that ever came from me. But I was thinking with all my might of Celene Kingsley and what an awful thing it would be to have those young hyenas invade that house in the night-time. You can say what you want to about hoodlumism in the city—it’s bad! But you’ve got to go back into the country for unadulterated hellishness, when a mob really gets started. Furthermore, nobody is especially afraid of a village constable. I could foresee dirty doings that night in Levant. I had seen one mob in Levant when I was a youngster; they tarred and feathered a fanatical evangelist, and he died of fright.
I tried to think up something in the way of argument and I stammered about local pride and so forth, but my talk didn’t ring true, and I felt it and they knew it. Personally, I didn’t care a hoot about that clumsy fool of a detective, and I was not remarkably fond of sneering Judge Kingsley. If I could have stepped up to those boys and explained my love and my hopes and my fears for Celene Kingsley I might have made some impression on them. But that was not to be thought of.
While I talked I saw them crawling toward me, spreading out, two by two. It was plain enough—they intended to start their foray by making me a captive so that I could not interfere.
Therefore, I made hasty resolution and turned and ran with all my speed toward Judge Kingsley’s house. I wasn’t at all sure just what I intended to do, but my impulse was to forewarn the household so that Celene might not be frightened. The Skokums came on my heels on the dead jump. But I had a good lead of them when I came around the corner of the house.
Then a man tripped me, pounced on me, and sat on me; I was a submissive captive, for the breath was knocked out of me when I fell. The instant the Skokums appeared my captor began to shoot off two automatic revolvers. I was lying on my back and saw by the flashes that he was shooting into the air. The boys had been chasing me rather than intending to rush the house at that time, and they broke and fled in all directions, scampering in a way which suggested that they were not prepared for artillery defense and that the hostilities were over for that night.
After a time there was silence, and the man who was sitting on me rose and yanked me to my feet.
He was a stocky man with a big, black mustache, and he looked savage.
There was a sound of drawing bolts and Judge Kingsley appeared at his office door.
“You have the right one, have you, officer?”
“Sure thing! He was leading the rush—ahead of ’em all. This is the chap you told me to follow in the afternoon.”
The judge came down the steps and stared into my face.
“It’s the right one—the ringleader,” he said.
I knew that she was listening above. She must be listening! And other folks were flocking outside in the street; that fusillade had been a signal as effective as a general fire alarm.
“Look here,” I cried, full of panic, seeing the position I was in, suddenly become the scapegoat of the whole affair. “I have done nothing wrong. I rushed up here to warn you—”
“You rushed up, all right,” declared the detective. “Do you think you hicks could hold a mass-meeting down in that orchard and fool me as to what you were planning to do? I was ready for you. What’s orders, Judge?”
“Take him to the lock-up!”
God of the innocent! I’ll never forget how that sounded. It was as if somebody had hit me on the heart with a hammer. There is some sort of dignity about a real prison! But that little, red, wooden coop in our village where an occasional drunk was cast in or some lousy hobo harbored—it had always seemed to me and to others such a shameful place—to leave such a badge of utter discredit on the person who had been lodged there!
“I’ll never go in there! I’ll die first,” I wailed.
I was telling the bitter truth as I felt it.
I was eager to die in my tracks rather than to have such a foul blot on my name.
The next instant I had sudden revulsion of feeling in regard to that lock-up. In bitter fear, in almost frenzy of apprehension, in default of better retreat, I was quite ready to flee to that loathsome coop.
For I heard my uncle raving in the street!
I never remembered his words; my feelings were too much stirred just then. But the hideous screech of rage in his tones I’ll never forget. I knew he had found out my betrayal of him.
“He is going to kill me,” I told the detective. “It’s about the horse!”
“Yes, I reckon he will peel you if he gets his hands on you,” stated the man, who seemed to know what I was referring to. My uncle was threshing his way through the crowd toward me, making slow progress in the jam. The detective took advantage of that delay and rushed me off, with Constable Nute swinging his key and leading the way. Before I was fairly in my right senses I was in the lock-up alone and my two defenders were on guard outside the door.
My uncle frothed about the place for an hour, circling the little building again and again, plucking at bars and clapboards as a monkey might pick at a gigantic nut which resisted his attempts to get at the juicy meat for which he was hungry.
Never had I thought that I would be thankful to be in jail till then!
Furthermore, my hopes were sustaining me. I was young and trustful, and I was sure that innocence would be victorious. I could not understand how anybody would believe that I was guilty when morning came and I could explain it all. And I resolved to make some of the Skokums speak up in my behalf on threat of exposing the whole gang.
At last my uncle went away, staggering and hiccoughing curses—for he had brought his bottle with him and had been consulting it quite often.
I fell to wondering whether my innocence would stand me in good stead, providing it vindicated me and secured my release from the lock-up? The lock-up was surely proving a sanctuary—and my uncle’s threats had been horrible ones.
Then the crowd which had been hanging around the place with a sort of hope, I suppose, that my uncle would be able to get at me, went away, for the hour was late. Mr. Detective went, too. So did Constable Nute, who was the village night-watch and had his rounds to make. They considered the cage a secure one, I suppose, for there were big bolts on the door and iron bars on the windows.
I sat on a stool and mourned my lot as a prisoner, when I was not dreading my release to be a victim of my incensed uncle. A good many times I had watched Bart Flanders bring a trapped rat up from his cellar and set it free in the village square for the entertainment of his terrier. I was in a position to sympathize with trapped rats.
In the silence of the night something clicked on the glass of a window and a voice outside hailed me cautiously. My first thought was that the Skokums had come to rescue me, and I was not especially pleased, for I felt that they would be impelled more by the spirit of vandalism than by any love for me. I did not answer.
Then the window-frame grunted and squeaked and I saw that somebody was prying with a chisel. I rose from the stool and saw the face of Dodovah Vose.
“I take it that it’s another job they have put up on you, young Sidney.”
“Yes, it is, Mr. Vose,” I cried, and I began to whimper. I couldn’t help it. He spoke as if he understood, as if he were a friend. “I was trying to stop their devilishness, and they—”
“You needn’t bother about going into details—not with me, young Sidney. I have been watching you lately. You have been a good boy. I know you haven’t been rampaging round town nights. No matter about telling me anything. There’s no time to listen. Nute may be drifting back here any minute.”
He was working with his chisel while he was talking.
He pried a couple of bars out of the rotten wood. He pushed