Keep it yoursef, High Sheriff Washington Nash, Esquire, she bade him; thats whut you git paid good money for doin. And git out of my way! Im a-goin in there to that pore little lonesome thing settin there all by herself, and there aint nobody goin to hinder me neither!
The sheriff shrunk aside; perhaps it would be better to say he evaporated aside. And public opinion, reorganized and made over but still incarnate in Aunt Tilly Haslett, swept past the rail and settled like a billowing black cloud into a chair that the local attorney for the defense vacated just in time to save himself the inconvenience of having it snatched bodily from under him.
There, honey, said Aunt Tilly crooningly as she gathered the forlorn little figure of the prisoners wife in her arms like a child and mothered her up to her ample bombazined bosom, there now, honey, you jest cry on me.
Then Aunt Tilly looked up and her specs were all blurry and wet. But she waved her palmleaf fan as though it had been the baton of a marshal.
Now, Jedge, she said, addressing the bench, and you other gentlemen you kin go ahead now.
The states attorney had meant evidently to make some sort of an objection, for he was upon his feet through all this scene. But he looked back before he spoke and what he saw kept him from speaking. I believe I stated earlier that he was a candidate for rejection. So he settled back down in his chair and stretched out his legs and buried his chin in the top of his limp white waistcoat in an attitude that he had once seen in a picture entitled, Napoleon Bonaparte at St. Helena.
You may resume, Judge Priest, said the trial judge in a voice that was not entirely free from huskiness, although its owner had been clearing it steadily for some moments.
Thank you kindly, suh, but I was about through anyhow, answered the witness with a bow, and for all his homeliness there was dignity and stateliness in it. I merely wanted to say for the sake of completin the record, so to speak, that on the occasion referred to them Yankees did not cross that bridge. With the air of tendering and receiving congratulations Mr. Lukins turned to his nearest neighbor and shook hands with him warmly.
The witness got up somewhat stiffly, once more becoming a commonplace old man in a wrinkled black alpaca coat, and made his way back to his vacant place, now in the shadow of Aunt Tilly Hasletts form. As he passed along the front of the jury-box the foremans crippled right hand came up in a sort of a clumsy salute, and the juror at the other end of the rear row No. 12, the oldest juror leaned forward as if to speak to him, but remembered in time where his present duty lay. The old judge kept on until he came to Durhams side, and he whispered to him: Son, theyve quit lookin at him and theyre all a-lookin at her. Son, rest your case. Durham came out of a maze.
Your Honor, he said as he rose, the defense rests.
The jury were out only six minutes. Mr. Lukins insisted that it was only five minutes and a half, and added that hed be dad-rotted if it was a second longer than that.
As the lately accused Tandy came out of the courthouse with his imported lawyer Aunt Tilly bringing up the rear with his trembling, weeping, happy little wife friendly hands were outstretched to clasp his and a whiskered old gentleman with a thumbnail like a Brazil nut grabbed at his arm.
Whichaway did Billy Priest go? he demanded little old Fightin Billy whar did he go to? Soon as he started in talkin I placed him. Whar is he?
Walking side by side, Tandy and Durham came down the steps into the soft June night, and Tandy took a long, deep breath into his lungs.
Mr. Durham, he said, I owe a great deal to you.
Hows that? said Durham.
Just ahead of them, centered in a shaft of light from the window of the barroom of the Drummers Home Hotel, stood Judge Priest. The old judge had been drinking. The pink of his face was a trifle more pronounced, the high whine in his voice a trifle weedier, as he counted one by one certain pieces of silver into the wide-open palm of a saddle-colored negro.
Hows that? said Durham. I say I owe everything in the world to you, repeated Tandy.
No, said Durham, what you owe me is the fee you agreed to pay me for defending you. Theres the man youre looking for.
And he pointed to the old judge.
II. THE COUNTY TROT
SATURDAY was the last day of the county fair and the day of the County Trot. It was also Veterans Day, when the old soldiers were the guests of honor of the management, and likewise Ladies Day, which meant that all white females of whatever age were admitted free. So naturally, in view of all these things, the biggest day of fair week was Saturday.
The fair grounds lay in a hickory flat a mile out of town, and the tall scaly barks grew so close to the fence that they poked their limbs over its top and shed down nuts upon the track. The fence had been whitewashed once, back in the days of its youth when Hector was a pup; but Hec was an old dog now and the rains of years had washed the fence to a misty gray, so that in the dusk the long, warped panels stood up in rows, palely luminous like the highshouldered ghosts of a fence. And the rust had run down from the eaten-out nail-holes until each plank had two staring marks in its face like rheumy, bleared eyes. The ancient grandstand was of wood too, and had lain outdoors in all weathers until its rheumatic rafters groaned and creaked when the wind blew.
Back of the grandstand stood Floral Hall and Agricultural Hall. Except for their names and their flagstaffs you might have taken them for two rather hastily built and long-neglected bams. Up the track to the north were the rows of stables that were empty, odorous little cubicles for fifty-one weeks of the year, but now for this one week alive with darky stable hands and horses; and all the good savors of woodfires, clean hay, and turned-up turf were commingled there.
The fair had ideal weather for its windup. No frost had fallen yet, but in the air there were signs and portents of its coming. The long yellow leaves of the hickories had begun to curl up as if to hold the dying warmth of the sap to the last; and once in a while an ash flamed red like a signal fire to give warning for Indian summer, when all the woods would blaze in warpaints before huddling down for the winter under their tufted, ragged tawnies and browns like buffalo robes on the shoulders of chilled warriors. The first flights of the wild geese were going over, their Vs pointed to the Gulf; and that huckstering little bird of the dead treetops, which the negroes call the sweet-potato bird maybe its a pewee, with an acquired Southern accent was calling his mythical wares at the front door of every woodpeckers hole. The woods were perfumy with ripening wild grapes and pawpaws, and from the orchards came rich winy smells where the windfalls lay in heaps and cider mills gushed under the trees; and on the roof of the smokehouse the pared, sliced fruit was drying out yellow and leathery in the sun and looking a little way off like countless ears all turned to listen for the same thing.
Saturday, by sunup, the fair grounds were astir. Undershirted concessionaries and privilege people emerged from their canvas sleeping quarters to sniff at a the tantalizing smell that floated across to them from certain narrow trenches dug in the ground. That smell, just by itself, was one square meal and an incentive to another; for these trenches were full of live red hickory coals; and above them, on greenwood stakes that were stretched across, a shoat and a whole sheep, and a rosary of young squirrels impaled in a string, had been all night barbecuing. Uncle Isom Woolfolk was in charge here mightily and solely in charge Uncle Isom Woolfolk, no less, official purveyor to the whole county at fish fries or camp breakfasts, secretary of the Republican County Committee, high in his church and his lodges and the best barbecue cook in seven states. He bellowed frequent and contradictory orders to two negro women of his household who were arranging clean white clothes on board trestles; and constantly he went from shoat to sheep and from sheep to squirrels, basting them with a rag wrapped about a stick and dipped into a potent sauce of his own private making. Red pepper and sweet vinegar were two of its main constituents, though, and in turn he painted each carcass as daintily as an artist retouching the miniature of his lady fair, so that under his hand the crackling meatskins sizzled and smoked, and a yellowish glaze like a veneer spread over their surfaces. His white chin-beard waggled with importance and the artistic temperament.