Poor White: Chapter 11

Chapter 11

If many things had happened to Clara Butterworth in the three years since
that day when John May so rudely tripped her first hesitating girlish
attempt to run out to life, things had also happened to the people she
had left behind in Bidwell. In so short a space of time her father, his
business associate Steve Hunter, Ben Peeler the town carpenter, Joe
Wainsworth the harness maker, almost every man and woman in town had become
something different in his nature from the man or woman bearing the same
name she had known in her girlhood.

Ben Peeler was forty years old when Clara went to Columbus to school. He
was a tall, slender, stoop-shouldered man who worked hard and was much
respected by his fellow townsmen. Almost any afternoon he might have been
seen going through Main Street, wearing his carpenter's apron and with a
carpenter's pencil stuck under his cap and balanced on his ear. He went
into Oliver Hall's hardware store and came out with a large package of
nails under his arm. A farmer who was thinking of building a new barn
stopped him in front of the post-office and for a half hour the two men
talked of the project. Ben put on his glasses, took the pencil out of his
cap and made some notation on the back of the package of nails. "I'll do a
little figuring; then I'll talk things over with you," he said. During the
spring, summer and fall Ben had always employed another carpenter and an
apprentice, but when Clara came back to town he was employing four gangs
of six men each and had two foremen to watch the work and keep it moving,
while his son, who in other times would also have been a carpenter, had
become a salesman, wore fancy vests and lived in Chicago. Ben was making
money and for two years had not driven a nail or held a saw in his hand. He
had an office in a frame building beside the New York Central tracks, south
of Main Street, and employed a book-keeper and a stenographer. In addition
to carpentry he had embarked in another business. Backed by Gordon Hart,
he had become a lumber dealer and bought and sold lumber under the firm
name of Peeler and Hart. Almost every day cars of lumber were unloaded
and stacked under sheds in the yard back of his office. He was no longer
satisfied with his income as a workman but, under the influence of Gordon
Hart, demanded also a swinging profit on the building materials. Ben now
drove about town in a vehicle called a buckboard and spent the entire day
hurrying from job to job. He had no time now to stop for a half hour's
gossip with a prospective builder of a barn, and did not come to loaf in
Birdie Spinks' drug-store at the end of the day. In the evening he went to
the lumber office and Gordon Hart came over from the bank. The two men
figured on jobs to be built, rows of workingmen's houses, sheds alongside
one of the new factories, large frame houses for the superintendents and
other substantial men of the town's new enterprises. In the old days Ben
had been glad to go occasionally into the country on a barn-building job.
He had liked the country food, the gossip with the farmer and his men at
the noon hour and the drive back and forth to town, mornings and evenings.
While he was in the country he managed to make a deal for his winter
potatoes, hay for his horse, and perhaps a barrel of cider to drink on
winter evenings. Now he had no time to think of such things. When a farmer
came to see him he shook his head. "Get some one else to figure on your
job," he advised. "You'll save money by getting a barn-building carpenter.
I can't bother. I have too many houses to build." Ben and Gordon sometimes
worked in the lumber office until midnight. On warm still nights the sweet
smell of new-cut boards filled the air of the yard and crept in through the
open windows, but the two men, intent on their figures, did not notice. In
the early evening one or two teams came back to the yard to finish hauling
lumber to a job where the men were to work on the next day. The voices
of the men, talking and singing as they loaded their wagons, broke the
silence. Later the wagons loaded high with boards went creaking away.
When the two men grew tired and sleepy, they locked the office and walked
through the yard to the driveway that led to a residence street. Ben was
nervous and irritable. One evening they found three men, sleeping on a pile
of boards in the yard, and drove them out. It gave both men something to

think about. Gordon Hart went home and before he slept made up his mind
that he would not let another day go by without getting the lumber in the
yard more heavily insured. Ben had not handled affairs long enough to come
quickly to so sensible a decision. All night he rolled and tumbled about in
his bed. "Some tramp with his pipe will set the place afire," he thought.
"I'll lose all the money I've made." For a long time he did not think of
the simple expedient of hiring a watchman to drive sleepy and penniless
wanderers away, and charging enough more for his lumber to cover the
additional expense. He got out of bed and dressed, thinking he would get
his shotgun out of the barn and go back to the yard and spend the night.
Then he undressed and got into bed again. "I can't work all day and spend
my nights down there," he thought resentfully. When at last he slept, he
dreamed of sitting in the lumber yard in the darkness with the gun in
his hand. A man came toward him and he discharged the gun and killed the
man. With the inconsistency common to the physical aspect of dreams, the
darkness passed away and it was daylight. The man he had thought dead was
not quite dead. Although the whole side of his head was torn away, he still
breathed. His mouth opened and closed convulsively. A dreadful illness took
possession of the carpenter. He had an elder brother who had died when
he was a boy, but the face of the man on the ground was the face of his
brother. Ben sat up in bed and shouted. "Help, for God's sake, help! It's
my own brother. Don't you see, it is Harry Peeler?" he cried. His wife
awoke and shook him. "What's the matter, Ben," she asked anxiously. "What's
the matter?" "It was a dream," he said, and let his head drop wearily on
the pillow. His wife went to sleep again, but he stayed awake the rest of
the night. When on the next morning Gordon Hart suggested the insurance
idea, he was delighted. "That settles it of course," he said to himself.
"It's simple enough, you see. That settles everything."

In his shop on Main Street Joe Wainsworth had plenty to do after the boom
came to Bidwell. Many teams were employed in the hauling of building
materials; loads of paving brick were being carted from cars to where they
were to be laid on Main Street; and teams hauled earth from where the new
Main Street sewer was being dug and from the freshly dug cellars of houses.
Never had there been so many teams employed and so much repairing of
harness to do. Joe's apprentice had left him, had been carried off by the
rush of young men to the places where the boom had arrived earlier. For a
year Joe had worked alone and had then employed a journeyman harness maker
who had drifted into town drunk and who got drunk every Saturday evening.
The new man was an odd character. He had a faculty for making money, but
seemed to care little about making it for himself. Within a week after he
came to town he knew every one in Bidwell. His name was Jim Gibson and he
had no sooner come to work for Joe than a contest arose between them. The
contest concerned the question of who was to run the shop. For a time
Joe asserted himself. He growled at the men who brought harness in to be
repaired, and refused to make promises as to when the work would be done.
Several jobs were taken away and sent to nearby towns. Then Jim Gibson
asserted himself. When one of the teamsters who had come to town with the
boom came with a heavy work harness on his shoulder, he went to meet him.
The harness was thrown with a rattling crash on the floor and Jim examined
it. "Oh, the devil, that's an easy job," he declared. "We'll fix that up in
a jiffy. You can have it to-morrow afternoon if you want it."

For a time Jim made it a practice to come to where Joe stood at work at his
bench and consult with him regarding prices to be charged for work. Then he
returned to the customer and charged more than Joe had suggested. After a
few weeks he slopped consulting Joe at all. "You're no good," he exclaimed,
laughing. "What you're doing in business I don't know." The old harness
maker stared at him for a minute and then went to his bench and to work.
"Business," he muttered, "what do I know about business? I'm a harness
maker, I am."

After Jim came to work for him, Joe made in one year almost twice the
amount he had lost in the failure of the plant-setting machine factory. The
money was not invested in stock of any factory but lay in the bank. Still
he was not happy. All day Jim Gibson, whom Joe had never dared tell the
tales of his triumph as a workman and to whom he did not brag as he had
formerly done to his apprentices, talked of his ability to get the best of
customers. He had, he declared, managed, in the last place he had worked
before he came to Bidwell, to sell a good many sets of harness as handmade
that were in reality made in a factory. "It isn't like the old times," he
said, "things are changing. We used to sell harness only to farmers or to
teamsters right in our towns who owned their own horses. We always knew the
men we did business with and always would know them. Now it's different.
The men now, you see, who are here in this town to work--well, next month
or next year they'll be somewhere else. All they care about you and me is
how much work they can get for a dollar. Of course they talk big about
honesty and all that stuff, but that's only their guff. They think maybe
we'll fall for it and they'll get more for the money they pay out. That's
what they're up to."

Jim tried hard to make his version of how the shop should be run clear
to his employer. Every day he talked for hours regarding the matter. He
tried to get Joe to put in a stock of factory-made harness and when he was
unsuccessful was angry. "O the devil," he cried. "Can't you understand what
you're up against? The factories are bound to win. For why? Look here,
there can't any one but some old moss-back who has worked around horses all
his life tell the difference between hand- and machine-sewed harness. The
machine-made can be sold cheaper. It looks all right and the factories are
able to put on a lot of do-dads. That catches the young fellows. It's good
business. Quick sales and profits, that's the story." Jim laughed and then
said something that made the shivers run up and down Joe's back. "If I had
the money and was steady I'd start a shop in this town and show you up," he
said. "I'd pretty near run you out. The trouble with me is I wouldn't stick
to business if I had the money. I tried it once and made money; then when
I got a little ahead I shut up the shop and went on a big drunk. I was no
good for a month. When I work for some one else I'm all right. I get drunk
on Saturdays and that satisfies me. I like to work and scheme for money,
but it ain't any good to me when I get it and never will be. What I want
you to do here is to shut your eyes and give me a chance. That's all I ask.
Just shut your eyes and give me a chance."

All day Joe sat astride his harness maker's horse, and when he was not
at work, stared out through a dirty window into an alleyway and tried to
understand Jim's idea of what a harness maker's attitude should be toward
his customers, now that new times had come. He felt very old. Although Jim
was as old in years lived as himself, he seemed very young. He began to be
a little afraid of the man. He could not understand why the money, nearly
twenty-five hundred dollars he had put in the bank during the two years Jim
had been with him, seemed so unimportant and the twelve hundred dollars he
had earned slowly after twenty years of work seemed so important. As there
was much repair work always waiting to be done in the shop, he did not go
home to lunch, but every day carried a few sandwiches to the shop in his
pocket. At the noon hour, when Jim had gone to his boarding-house, he was
alone, and if no one came in, he was happy. It seemed to him the best time
of the day. Every few minutes he went to the front door to look out. The
quiet Main Street, on which his shop had faced since he was a young man
just come home from his trade adventures, and which had always been such a
sleepy place at the noon hour in the summer, was now like a battle-field
from which an army had retreated. A great gash had been cut in the street
where the new sewer was to be laid. Swarms of workingmen, most of them
strangers, had come into Main Street from the factories by the railroad
tracks. They stood in groups in lower Main Street by Wymer's tobacco store.
Some of them had gone into Ben Head's saloon for a glass of beer and came
out wiping their mustaches. The men who were digging the sewer, foreign
men, Italians he had heard, sat on the banks of dry earth in the middle of
the street. Their dinner pails were held between their legs and as they ate
they talked in a strange language. He remembered the day he had come to
Bidwell with his bride, the girl he had met on his trade journey and who
had waited for him until he had mastered his trade and had a shop of his
own. He had gone to New York State to get her and had arrived back in
Bidwell at noon on just such another summer day. There had not been many
people about, but every one had known him. On that day every one had been
his friend. Birdie Spinks rushed out of his drug store and had insisted
that he and his bride go home to dinner with him. Every one had wanted them
to come to his house for dinner. It had been a happy, joyous time.

The harness maker had always been sorry his wife had borne him no children.
He had said nothing and had always pretended he did not want them and now,
at last, he was glad they had not come. He went back to his bench and to
work, hoping Jim would be late in getting back from lunch. The shop was
very quiet after the activity of the street that had so bewildered him. It
was, he thought, like a retreat, almost like a church when you went to the
door and looked in on a week day. He had done that once and had liked the
empty silent church better than he did a church with a preacher and a lot
of people in it. He had told his wife about the matter. "It was like the
shop in the evening when I've got a job of work done and the boy has gone
home," he had said.

The harness maker looked out through the open door of his shop and saw Tom
Butterworth and Steve Hunter going along Main Street, engaged in earnest
conversation. Steve had a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth and Tom
had on a fancy vest. He thought again of the money he had lost in the
plant-setting machine venture and was furious. The noon hour was spoiled
and he was almost glad when Jim came back from his mid-day meal.

The position in which he found himself in the shop amused Jim Gibson. He
chuckled to himself as he waited on the customers who came in, and as he
worked at the bench. One day when he came back along Main Street from
the noon meal, he decided to try an experiment. "If I lose my job what
difference does it make?" he asked himself. He stopped at a saloon and had
a drink of whisky. When he got to the shop he began to scold his employer,
to threaten him as though he were his apprentice. Swaggering suddenly in,
he walked to where Joe was at work and slapped him roughly on the back.
"Come, cheer up, old daddy," he said. "Get the gloom out of you. I'm tired
of your muttering and growling at things."

The employee stepped back and watched his employer. Had Joe ordered him out
of the shop he would not have been surprised, and as he said later when he
told Ben Head's bartender of the incident, would not have cared very much.
The fact that he did not care, no doubt saved him. Joe was frightened. For
just a moment he was so angry he could not speak, and then he remembered
that if Jim left him he would have to wait on trade and would have to
dicker with the strange teamsters regarding the repairing of the work
harness. Bending over the bench he worked for an hour in silence. Then,
instead of demanding an explanation of the rude familiarity with which Jim
had treated him, he began to explain. "Now look here, Jim," he pleaded,
"don't you pay any attention to me. You do as you please here. Don't you
pay any attention to me."

Jim said nothing, but a smile of triumph lit up his face. Late in the
afternoon he left the shop. "If any one comes in, tell them to wait. I
won't be gone very long," he said insolently. Jim went into Ben Head's
saloon and told the bartender how his experiment had come out. The story
was later told from store to store up and down the Main Street of Bidwell.
"He was like a boy who has been caught with his hand in the jam pot," Jim
explained. "I can't think what's the matter with him. Had I been in his,
shoes I would have kicked Jim Gibson out of the shop. He told me not to
pay any attention to him and to run the shop as I pleased. Now what do you
think of that? Now what do you think of that for a man who owns his own
shop and has money in the bank? I tell you, I don't know how it is, but I
don't work for Joe any more. He works for me. Some day you come in the shop
casual-like and I'll boss him around for you. I'm telling you I don't know
how it is that it come about, but I'm the boss of the shop as sure as the
devil."

All of Bidwell was looking at itself and asking itself questions. Ed Hall,
who had been a carpenter's apprentice earning but a few dollars a week with
his master, Ben Peeler, was now foreman in the corn-cutter factory and
received a salary of twenty-five dollars every Saturday night. It was
more money than he had ever dreamed of earning in a week. On pay nights
he dressed himself in his Sunday clothes and had himself shaved at Joe
Trotter's barber shop. Then he went along Main Street, fingering the money
in his pocket and half fearing he would suddenly awaken and find it all a
dream. He went into Wymer's tobacco store to get a cigar, and old Claude
Wymer came to wait on him. On the second Saturday evening after he got his
new position, the tobacconist, a rather obsequious man, called him Mr.
Hall. It was the first time such a thing had happened and it upset him a
little. He laughed and made a joke of it. "Don't get high and mighty," he
said, and turned to wink at the men loafing in the shop. Later he thought
about the matter and was sorry he had not accepted the new title without
protest. "Well, I'm foreman, and a lot of the young fellows I've always
known and fooled around with will be working under me," he told himself. "I
can't be getting thick with them."

Ed walked along the street feeling very keenly the importance of his new
place in the community. Other young fellows in the factory were getting a
dollar and a half a day. At the end of the week he got twenty-five dollars,
almost three times as much. The money was an indication of superiority.
There could be no doubt about that. Ever since he had been a boy he had
heard older men speak respectfully of men who possessed money. "Get on
in the world," they said to young men, when they talked seriously. Among
themselves they did not pretend that they did not want money. "It's money
makes the mare go," they said.

Down Main Street to the New York Central tracks Ed went, and then turned
out of the street and disappeared into the station. The evening train had
passed and the place was deserted. He went into the dimly lighted
waiting-room. An oil lamp, turned low, and fastened by a bracket to the
wall made a little circle of light in a corner. The room was like a church
in the early morning of a wintry day, cold and still. He went hurriedly
to the light, and taking the roll of money from his pocket, counted it.
Then he went out of the room and along the station platform almost to Main
Street, but was not satisfied. On an impulse he returned to the waiting
room again and, late in the evening on his way home, he stopped there for a
final counting of the money before he went to bed.

Peter Fry was a blacksmith and had a son who was clerk in the Bidwell
Hotel. He was a tall young fellow with curly yellow hair and watery blue
eyes and smoked cigarettes, a habit that was an offense to the nostrils of
the men of his times. His name was Jacob, but he was called in derision
Fizzy Fry. The young man's mother was dead and he got his meals at the
hotel and at night slept on a cot in the hotel office. He had a passion for
gayly colored neckties and waistcoats and was forever trying unsuccessfully
to attract the attention of the town girls. When he and his father met on
the street, they did not speak to each other. Sometimes the father stopped
and stared at his son. "How did I happen to be the father of a thing like
that?" he muttered aloud.

The blacksmith was a square-shouldered, heavily built man with a bushy
black beard and a tremendous voice. When he was a young man he sang in the
Methodist choir, but after his wife died he stopped going to church and
began putting his voice to other uses. He smoked a short clay pipe that had
become black with age and that at night could not be seen against his black
curly beard. Smoke rolled out of his mouth in clouds and appeared to come
up out of his belly. He was like a volcanic mountain and was called, by the
men who loafed in Birdie Spinks' drug store, Smoky Pete.

Smoky Pete was in more ways than one like a mountain given to eruptions. He
did not get drunk, but after his wife died he got into the habit of having
two or three drinks of whisky every evening. The whisky inflamed his mind
and he strode up and down Main Street, ready to quarrel with any one his
eye lighted upon. He got into the habit of roaring at his fellow citizens
and making ribald jokes at their expense. Every one was a little afraid
of him and he became in an odd way the guardian of the town morals. Sandy
Ferris, a house painter, became a drunkard and did not support his family.
Smoky Pete abused him in the public streets and in the sight of all men.
"You cheap thing, warming your belly with whisky while jour children
freeze, why don't you try being a man?" he shouted at the house painter,
who staggered into a side street and went to sleep off his intoxication in
a stall in Clyde Neighbors' livery barn. The blacksmith kept at the painter
until the whole town took up his cry and the saloons became ashamed to
accept his custom. He was forced to reform.

The blacksmith did not, however, discriminate in the choice of victims. His
was not the spirit of the reformer. A merchant of Bidwell, who had always
been highly respected and who was an elder in his church, went one evening
to the county seat and there got into the company of a notorious woman
known throughout the county as Nell Hunter. The two went into a little room
at the back of a saloon and were seen by two Bidwell young men who had
gone to the county seat for an evening of adventure. When the merchant,
named Pen Beck, realized he had been seen, he was afraid the tale of his
indiscretion would be carried to his home town, and left the woman to join
the young men. He was not a drinking man, but began at once to buy drinks
for his companions. The three got very drunk and drove home together late
at night in a rig the young men had hired for the occasion from Clyde
Neighbors. On the way the merchant kept trying to explain his presence in
the company of the woman. "Don't say anything about it," he urged. "It
would be misunderstood. I have a friend whose son has been taken in by the
woman. I was trying to get her to let him alone."

The two young men were delighted that they had caught the merchant off his
guard. "It's all right," they assured him. "Be a good fellow and we won't
tell your wife or the minister of your church." When they had all the
drinks they could carry, they got the merchant into the buggy and began to
whip the horse. They had driven half way to Bidwell and all of them had
fallen into a drunken sleep, when the horse became frightened at something
in the road and ran away. The buggy was overturned and they were all thrown
into the road. One of the young men had an arm broken and Pen Beck's coat
was almost torn in two. He paid the young man's doctor's bill and settled
with Clyde Neighbors for the damage to the buggy.

For a long time the story of the merchant's adventure did not leak out, and
when it did, but a few intimate friends of the young men knew it. Then it
reached the ears of Smoky Pete. On the day he heard it he could hardly bear
to wait until evening came. He hurried to Ben Head's saloon, had two drinks
of whisky and then went to stand with the loafers before Birdie Spinks'
drug store. At half past seven Pen Beck turned into Main Street from Cherry
Street, where he lived. When he was more than three blocks away from the
crowd of men before the drug store, Smoky Pete's roaring voice began to
question him. "Well, Penny, my lad, so you went for a night among the
ladies?" he shouted. "You've been fooling around with my girl, Nell Hunter,
over at the county seat. I'd like to know what you mean. You'll have to
make an explanation to me."

The merchant stopped and stood on the sidewalk, unable to decide whether to
face his tormentor or flee. It was just at the quiet time of the evening
when the housewives of the town had finished their evening's work and stood
resting by the kitchen doors. It seemed to Pen Beck that Smoky Pete's voice
could be heard for a mile. He decided to face it out and if necessary to
fight the blacksmith. As he came hurriedly toward the group before the
drug store, Smoky Pete's voice took up the story of the merchant's wild
night. He stepped out from the men in front of the store and seemed to be
addressing himself to the whole street. Clerks, merchants, and customers
rushed out of the stores. "Well," he cried, "so you made a night of it with
my girl Nell Hunter. When you sat with her in the back room of the saloon
you didn't know I was there. I was hidden under a table. If you'd done
anything more than bite her on the neck I'd have come out and called you to
time."

Smoky Pete broke into a roaring laugh and waved his arms to the people
gathered in the street and wondering what it was all about. It was for him
one of the really delicious spots of his life. He tried to explain to the
people what he was talking about. "He was with Nell Hunter in the back room
of a saloon over at the county seat," he shouted. "Edgar Duncan and Dave
Oldham saw him there. He came home with them and the horse ran away. He
didn't commit adultery. I don't want you to think that happened. All that
happened was he bit my best girl, Nell Hunter, on the neck. That's what
makes me so mad. I don't like to have her bitten by him. She is my girl and
belongs to me."

The blacksmith, forerunner of the modern city newspaper reporter in his
love of taking the center of the stage in order to drag into public sight
the misfortunes of his fellows, did not finish his tirade. The merchant,
white with anger, rushed up and struck him a blow on the chest with his
small and rather fat fist. The blacksmith knocked him into the gutter and
later, when he was arrested, went proudly off to the office of the town
mayor and paid his fine.

It was said by the enemies of Smoky Pete that he had not taken a bath for
years. He lived alone in a small frame house at the edge of town. Behind
his house was a large field. The house itself was unspeakably dirty. When
the factories came to town, Tom Butterworth and Steve Hunter bought the
field intending to cut it into building lots. They wanted to buy the
blacksmith's house and finally did secure it by paying a high price. He
agreed to move out within a year but after the money was paid repented and
wished he had not sold. A rumor began to run about town connecting the name
of Tom Butterworth with that of Fanny Twist, the town milliner. It was
said the rich farmer had been seen coming out of her shop late at night.
The blacksmith also heard another story whispered in the streets. Louise
Trucker, the farmer's daughter who had at one time been seen creeping
through a side street in the company of young Steve Hunter, had gone to
Cleveland and it was said she had become the proprietor of a prosperous
house of ill fame. Steve's money, it was declared, had been used to set her
up in business. The two stories offered unlimited opportunity for expansion
in the blacksmith's mind, but while he was preparing himself to do what
he called bringing the two men down in the sight and hearing of the whole
town, a thing happened that upset his plans. His son Fizzy Fry left his
place as clerk in the hotel and went to work in the corn-cutting machine
factory. One day his father saw him coming from the factory at noon with a
dozen other workmen. The young man had on overalls and smoked a pipe. When
he saw his father he stopped, and when the other men had gone on, explained
his sudden transformation. "I'm in the shop now, but I won't be there
long," he said proudly. "You know Tom Butterworth stays at the hotel? Well,
he's given me a chance. I got to stay in the shop for a while to learn
about things. After that I'm to have a chance as shipping clerk. Then I'll
be a traveler on the road." He looked at his father and his voice broke.
"You haven't thought very much of me, but I'm not so bad," he said. "I
don't want to be a sissy, but I'm not very strong. I worked at the hotel
because there wasn't anything else I thought I could do."

Peter Fry went home to his house but could not eat the food he had cooked
for himself on the tiny stove in the kitchen. He went outdoors and stood
for a long time, looking out across the cow-pasture Tom Butterworth and
Steve Hunter had bought and that they proposed should become a part of the
rapidly growing city. He had himself taken no part in the new impulses that
had come upon the town, except that he had taken advantage of the failure
of the town's first industrial effort to roar insults at those of his
townsmen who had lost their money. One evening he and Ed Hall had got
into a fight about the matter on Main Street, and the blacksmith had been
compelled to pay another fine. Now he wondered what was the matter with
him. He had evidently made a mistake about his son. Had he made a mistake
about Tom Butterworth and Steve Hunter?

The perplexed man went back to his shop and all the afternoon worked in
silence. His heart had been set on the creation of a dramatic scene on Main
Street, when he openly attacked the two most prominent men of the town,
and he even pictured himself as likely to be put in the town jail where
he would have an opportunity to roar things through the iron bars at the
citizens gathered in the street. In anticipation of such an event, he had
prepared himself to attack the reputation of other people. He had never
attacked women but, if he were locked up, he intended to do so. John May
had once told him that Tom Butterworth's daughter, who had been away to
college for a year, had been sent away because she was in the family way.
John May had claimed he was responsible for her condition. Several of Tom's
farm hands he said had been on intimate terms with the girl. The blacksmith
had told himself that if he got into trouble for publicly attacking the
father he would be justified in telling what he knew about the daughter.

The blacksmith did not come into Main Street that evening. As he went home
from work he saw Tom Butterworth standing with Steve Hunter before the
post-office. For several weeks Tom had been spending most of his time away
from town, had only appeared in town for a few hours at a time, and had not
been seen on the streets in the evening. The blacksmith had been waiting
to catch both men on the street at one time. Now that this opportunity had
come, he began to be afraid he would not dare take it. "What right have I
to spoil my boy's chances?" he asked himself, as he went rather heavily
along the street toward his own house.

It rained on that evening and for the first time in years Smoky Pete did
not go into Main Street. He told himself that the rain kept him at home,
but the thought did not satisfy him. All evening he moved restlessly about
the house and at half past eight went to bed. He did not, however, sleep,
but lay with his trousers on and with his pipe in his mouth, trying to
think. Every few minutes he took the pipe from his mouth, blew out a cloud
of smoke and swore viciously. At ten o'clock the farmer, who had owned the
cow-pasture back of his house and who still kept his cows there, saw his
neighbor tramping about in the rain in the field and saying things he had
planned to say on Main Street in the hearing of the entire town.

The farmer also had gone to bed early, but at ten o'clock he decided that,
as the rain continued to fall and as it was growing somewhat cold, he had
better get up and let his cows into the barn. He did not dress, but threw a
blanket about his shoulders and went out without a light. He let down the
bars separating the field from the barnyard and then saw and heard Smoky
Pete in the field. The blacksmith walked back and forth in the darkness,
and as the farmer stood by the fence, began to talk in a loud voice. "Well,
Tom Butterworth, you're fooling around with Fanny Twist," he cried into the
silence and emptiness of the night. "You're sneaking into her shop late at
night, eh? Steve Hunter has set Louise Trucker up in business in a house in
Cleveland. Are you and Fanny Twist going to open a house here? Is that the
next industrial enterprise we're to have here in this town?"

The amazed farmer stood in the rain in the darkness, listening to the words
of his neighbor. The cows came through the gate and went into the barn. His
bare legs were cold and he drew them alternately up under the blanket. For
ten minutes Peter Fry tramped up and down in the field. Once he came quite
near the farmer, who drew himself down beside the fence and listened,
filled with amazement and fright. He could dimly see the tall, old man
striding along and waving his arms about. When he had said many bitter,
hateful things regarding the two most prominent men of Bidwell, he began
to abuse Tom Butterworth's daughter, calling her a bitch and the daughter
of a dog. The farmer waited until Smoky Pete had gone back to his house
and, when he saw a light in the kitchen, and fancied he could also see his
neighbor cooking food at a stove, he went again into his own house. He had
himself never quarreled with Smoky Pete and was glad. He was glad also that
the field at the back of his house had been sold. He intended to sell the
rest of his farm and move west to Illinois. "The man's crazy," he told
himself. "Who but a crazy man would talk that way in the darkness? I
suppose I ought to report him and get him locked up, but I guess I'll
forget what I heard. A man who would talk like that about nice respectable
people would do anything. He might set fire to my house some night or
something like that. I guess I'll just forget what I heard."

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