Mary did not move from her chair. With closed
eyes she waited. Her heart pounded. A weakness
complete and overmastering had possession of her and
from feet to head ran little waves of feeling as though
tiny creatures with soft hair-like feet were playing
upon her body.
It was Duke Yetter who carried the dead man up the
stairs and laid him on a bed in one of the rooms back
of the office. One of the men who had been sitting
with him before the door of the barn followed lifting
his hands and dropping them nervously. Between
his fingers he held a forgotten cigarette the light
from which danced up and down in the darkness.
He was an old man and he sat on the steps of the railroad
station in a small Kentucky town.
A well dressed man, some traveler from the city, approached
and stood before him.
The old man became self-conscious.
His smile was like the smile of a very young child.
His face was all sunken and wrinkled and he had a
huge nose.
“Have you any coughs, colds, consumption or
bleeding sickness?” he asked. In his voice
there was a pleading quality.
The stranger shook his head. The old man arose.
“The sickness that bleeds is a terrible nuisance,”
he said. His tongue protruded from between his
teeth and he rattled it about. He put his hand
on the stranger’s arm and laughed.
“Bully, pretty,” he exclaimed. “I
cure them all—coughs, colds, consumption
and the sickness that bleeds. I take warts from
the hand—I cannot explain how I do it—it
is a mystery—I charge nothing—my
name is Tom—do you like me?”
The stranger was cordial. He nodded his head.
The old man became reminiscent. “My father
was a hard man,” he declared. “He
was like me, a blacksmith by trade, but he wore a
plug hat. When the corn was high he said to the
poor, ‘go into the fields and pick’ but
when the war came he made a rich man pay five dollars
for a bushel of corn.”
“I married against his will. He came to
me and he said, ’Tom I do not like that girl.’”
“‘But I love her,’ I said.
“‘I don’t,’ he said.
“My father and I sat on a log. He was a
pretty man and wore a plug hat. ‘I will
get the license,’ I said.
“‘I will give you no money,’ he
said.
“My marriage cost me twenty-one dollars—I
worked in the corn—it rained and the horses
were blind—the clerk said, ’Are you
over twenty-one?’ I said ‘yes’
and she said ‘yes.’ We had chalked
it on our shoes. My father said, ‘I give
you your freedom.’ We had no money.
My marriage cost twenty-one dollars. She is dead.”
The old man looked at the sky. It was evening
and the sun had set. The sky was all mottled
with grey clouds. “I paint beautiful pictures
and give them away,” he declared. “My
brother is in the penitentiary. He killed a man
who called him an ugly name.”
