CHAPTER X

THE STREET CARNIVAL

Joan’s warning as to Jack Routt, her word as to Hetty, and Wint’s rejection of both warning and advice did not lead to a break between them. They met next day, and Wint had the grace to say to her:

“I’m sorry I talked as I did yesterday, last night. I was tired, and--all that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Joan told him. “It’s natural for you to stick by your friends.”

“I needn’t have talked so to you, though.”

She laughed, and said he had been all right. “I guess you’ve been imagining you were worse than you really were,” she told him. “It’s quite all right, really.”

“But I’m sorry you--dislike Jack,” he said. “He’s an awfully decent sort.”

“Is he?” she asked. “Then I’m glad you and he are friends.”

“That’s the stuff,” Wint told her. “That’s the way to talk.”

Thereafter, for a week or so, life in Hardiston went quietly. V. R. Kite still bided his time; there was no liquor being sold; Ote Runns went home sober, day after day, with a look of desperate longing in his eyes. That sodden man who had embraced Wint in the Weaver House so long, whom Wint had jailed more than once for his drinking, suffered as much as Ote, or more. He came to Wint and unbraided him for what he had done. “It ain’t the way to treat a fellow,” he told Wint, pleading huskily. “You know how it is. I just gotta have a drink, Mister Mayor. I just gotta. I told Mrs. Moody she’s gotta give me a drink, and she told me you wouldn’t let her. You ain’t got a thing against me, now, have you?” The miserable man’s fingers were twitching, his lips twisted and writhed. “If I don’t get a drink, I’m a-going to kill some-buddy, I am.”

Wint did not know what to do. He could see at a glance that the man was suffering a very real torment. He had himself never become so soaked with alcohol that his system cried out for it when he abstained; but he knew what torture this might be. He had an idea that candy would alleviate the man’s distress; but the idea seemed to him ridiculous, and he put it aside. Yet there was an obligation upon him to do something.

He did, in the end, a characteristic thing, an impulsive thing; and yet it was sensible, too. There was no saving this man. Highest mercy to him was to let him drink himself to death. Wint told him to come to the house that night; and he gave the poor fellow a quart bottle from his father’s store. The derelict wandered away, calling Wint blessed. They found him under a tree in the yard next door, in the morning, blissfully sleeping.

The story got around, as it was sure to do. The man told it himself; he boasted that Wint was a good fellow. V. R. Kite heard of it, and waved his clenched fists and swore at Wint by every saint in the calendar. Also, he sent for Jack Routt. “We’ve got him,” he cried. “He can’t put over a thing like this on me, Routt. I’ll not stand for it. I’ll run him out of town. Or get out myself. Damn it, Routt, he’s a hypocrite! He’s a whited sepulcher. I’ll--”

Routt laughed good-naturedly, and held up a quieting hand. “Hold on,” he said. “We’ll have better than this on Wint before long. Good enough so that I--I’ll tell you a secret, Kite.”

Kite looked suspicious, and asked what the secret was; but Routt decided not to tell. Not just yet. “Wait till the time comes,” he told Kite. “A little later on.”

So Kite waited.

Toward the end of June, the street carnival came to town for a week’s stay. These carnivals are indigenous to such towns as Hardiston. They resemble nothing so much as an aggregation of the added attractions which usually go with a circus, broken loose from the circus and wandering about the country alone. A merry-go-round reared its tent and set up it clanking organ at Main and Pearl streets. Down the hill below the tent, the snake-eating wild man had his lair; and below him, again, there was an “Ocean Wave.” Along Pearl Street in the other direction the Museum of Freaks and the Galaxy of Beauty were located. Main Street itself was given over to venders of popcorn, candy, hot dogs, ice-cream sandwiches, lemonade, ginger pop, and every other indigestible on the calendar. There also, you might, for the matter of a nickel, have three tries at ringing a cane worth six cents, or a knife worth three. Or you might take a chance in the great lottery, where every entrant drew some prize, even if it were only a packet of hairpins. The arts and crafts were represented by a man who would twist a bit of gilded wire into likeness of your signature for half a dollar.

The first tents of the carnival began to rise one Saturday morning; and all that day and the next, the boys of the town and the grown-ups, too, watched the show take shape. It was almost as good as a circus. At noon on Monday, the carnival opened for business, with the ballyhoo men in full voice before every tent. The moderate afternoon crowd grew into a throng in the evening, when the kerosene torches flared and smoked on every pole, and the normal things of daylight took on a dusky glamour in the jerky illumination of the flares.

Every one went uptown to the carnival that first evening. Wint was there, and Jack Routt, Agnes, Joan, V. R. Kite--every one. In mid-evening, the quieter folk drifted home, but Wint stayed to watch what passed. A little after eleven, he bumped into a drunken man.

In spite of his warning to the advance agent of this carnival, Wint had been expecting to see drunken men. It was the nature of the carnival breed. He wandered back and forth till he came upon Jim Radabaugh, and called the marshal aside.

“Jim,” he said, “they’re selling booze.”

Radabaugh shifted that lump in his cheek, and spat. “So?” he asked mildly.

“I want it stopped,” said Wint. “If you pin it on the carnival bunch, I’ll shut them up.”

“I’ll see,” Radabaugh promised.

“Come along, first, and let’s talk to the boss,” Wint suggested; and they sought out that man. He was running the merry-go-round; a hard little fellow with a cold blue eye. Wint introduced himself; and the man shook hands effusively.

“My name’s Rand,” he said. “Mike Rand. Glad t’ meet you, Mister Mayor.”

Wint said: “That’s all right,” and he asked: “Did your advance man give you my orders?”

“What orders?”

“I told him I didn’t want any booze peddling.”

“Sure, he told me.”

Wint jerked his head backward toward Main Street. “I ran into a drunk up there,” he said.

Rand grinned. “Can’t help that. We’re not selling any.”

“I’m holding you responsible,” said Wint. “If there’s any sold, I’ll cancel your permits.”

The little man stared at him bleakly. “You’ve got a nerve. You can’t pin anything on us.”

“I can’t help that,” Wint told him. “In fact, I don’t care. If there’s booze sold, you get out. If I pin in on any man, he goes to jail. Is that clear?”

“What is this town, anyway--a damned Sunday school?”

“If you like,” said Wint sweetly; and he and Radabaugh turned away. Rand’s engine man left his throttle to approach his chief and ask:

“What’s up? Who was that?”

“Mayor of this burg and the marshal. Say we’ve got to shut down on the booze.”

“Like hell!”

Rand grinned. “Sure. He can’t run a whoozer on me.”

When he left Radabaugh, Wint ran into Jack Routt, and they strolled about together through the crowd. Once they saw Hetty, and Wint thought she was unnaturally cheerful and gay. He wondered if it were possible she had been drinking again; and he stared after her so long that Routt asked:

“Takes your eye, does she?’

“I was wondering,” said Wint.

Routt touched his arm. “You take it from me, Wint, you want to keep clear of her. I’d get her out of the house, if I were you. They’re beginning to talk.”

Wint asked angrily: “Who’s beginning to talk? What about?”

“Everybody. About Hetty--and you, naturally.”

“I wish they--I wish people in this town would mind their own business.”

Routt grinned and said: “You act as though there was something in it.”

“Don’t be a darned fool.”

“Well, I’m telling you what people say. If I were you--you’re a public official, you know, in the public eye--I’d be careful. Tell your mother to get rid of her. Safest thing to do.”

“I’m not looking for safe things to do.” Wint liked the defiant sound of that.

Routt nodded. “I’d be worried, if it was me. That’s all.”

“I’m not worried,” said Wint. “Hetty’s all right. And if she weren’t--I don’t propose to be scared.”

“We-ell, it’s your funeral,” Routt told him.

Wint laughed. “I guess it’s not as bad as that. It’s almost twelve. I’m going home.”