Tramping on Life Part 129

"So it's come to that, has it?"

"Johnnie, it isn't the townsfolk that started it ... of that I am certain ... left alone, they would still have been content to mind their business, and accept you and Hildreth on a friendly basis...."

She brought up the story of the strange men haranguing from street corners again....

"It's the New York newspapers, or one or two of the most sensational of them, that are back of this new phase."

"You mean, Mrs. Rond, that they would dare go so far as to instigate an attack on me and Hildreth ... with possibly fatal results?"

"Of course they would ... they need more news ... they want something more to happen ... to have all this uproar end tamely in happy, permanent love--that's what they couldn't endure....

"Well," she resumed after a pause, "what are you going to do? You're not afraid, are you?"

"To tell the truth I am, very much afraid."

"You and Hildreth and Darrie would best take the three o'clock train back to New York then."

"I haven't the least intention of doing that."

"What are you going to do?"

"--just let them come."

"You won't--fight?"

"As long as I'm alive."

"You just said you were afraid."

"Where a principle is considered, one can be afraid and still stick by one's guns."

"You're a real man, John Gregory, as well as a real poet, and I'm going to help you ... if it was the townspeople alone I would hesitate advising you ... but it's dirty, hired outsiders who are back of this feeling. Here!" and she stepped over to the mantel and brought a six-shooter to me and laid it in my hand, "can you shoot?"

"A little, but not very well."

"It's loaded already ... here is a pocketful of extra bullets."

She filled my coat pocket till it sagged heavily. I slipped the gun in my hip pocket.

"You're really going to stand them off if they come?"

"As long as no one tries to break into my house I will lie quiet ... the minute someone tries to break in, I'll shoot, I'll shoot to kill, and I'll kill as many as I can before they take me. I'll admit I'm frightened, but I have principles of freedom and radical right, and I'll die for them if necessary."

Mrs. Rond put her hand on my shoulder like a man.

"You have the makings of a fine fanatic in you ... in the early Christian era you would have been a church martyr."

I held immediate consultation with Darrie and Hildreth and they were both scared blue ... but they were game, too.

Darrie, however, unfolded a principle of strategy which I put into immediate effect ... she advised me to try a bluff first.

When I walked downtown within the hour, to obtain the New York papers, there was no doubt, by the even more sullen att.i.tude of the inhabitants that I pa.s.sed on the street, that something serious was a-foot....

I sauntered up to the news stand, took my _Times_ ... hesitated, and then tried the bluff Darrie had suggested:

"Jim," I began, to the newsdealer, who had been enough my friend for us to speak to each other by our first names, "Jim, I hear the boys are planning a little party up my way to-night!"

"Not as I've heard of, Johnnie," Jim answered, with sly evasion, and I caught him sending a furtive wink to a man I'd never seen in town before.

"Now, Jim, there's no use trying to fool me. I'm _on_!"

The newspaper stand was, I knew, the centre for the town's dissemination of gossip. I knew what I said would sweep everywhere the moment I turned my back.

"As I said," I continued, "I'm on!" And I looked about and spoke in a loud voice, while inwardly quaking, "Yes, I know all about it, and I want to drop just this one hint ... tell the boys they can come. Tell them they'll be welcome ... So far I've had no trouble here ...

everybody has been right decent with me," affecting a Western, colloquial drawl, "and I've tried to treat everybody, for my part, like a gentleman,--ain't that true?"

"That's true, Mr. Gregory" (it was suddenly "Mr. Gregory" now, not "Johnnie"). "As I was saying just the other day, there's lots worse in the world than Mr. Gregory that ain't found out."

"I want to leave this message with you, Jim. I'm from the West. I'm a good shot. I've got a six-shooter ready for business up at the cottage.

I've got a lot of extra bullets, too. As I've said, I ain't the kind that looks for trouble, but when anybody goes out of their way--Well, as I said before, as soon as the boys begin getting rough--I'll begin to shoot ... I'll shoot to kill, and I'll kill everybody I can get, till someone gets me."

"Yes, Mr. Gregory!"

"Mind you, Jim, I've always considered you as my friend. I mean what I say. I'm a householder. I'm in the right ... if the law wants me that's another matter ... but no group of private citizens--"

"Good-bye, Mr. Gregory."

I walked rapidly back to the cottage. I was thinking as rapidly as I walked. For the s.p.a.ce of a full minute I thought of packing off ignominiously with my little household.

But before I stepped in at the door something murky had cleared away inside me.

"Oh, Hildreth! Darrie!"

The women came dragging forward. But with them, too, it was a pa.s.sing mood.

My indignation at the personal outrage of the impending mob incited me as them ... till I think not one of the three of us would have stepped aside from the path of a herd of stampeding elephants.

"The yokels," and Darrie's nostrils flared, her blue blood showing, "to dare even think of such an action, against their betters!"

We lit a roaring log fire. We sat reading aloud from Sh.e.l.ley. As the hours drew by ... eight ... nine ... ten ... eleven ... there is no doubt that our nerves grew to a very fine edge....

And at twelve o'clock--