Evening Star Newspaper, June 2, 1929, Page 104

This Story—““Curtains,” by Fiswoode Tarleton—Is the Second of a Series Now Appearing in The Magazine of The Sun- day Star. Each Story Is Compl ete. Each Story Has Been Selected as One of the Best Published During the Past Year. Each Story Is Worthy of One of the O. Henry Memorial Azvards. LECTION day in Leeston and folks trickling into town from the hills to vote and shop. Wagons, mules and gaunt mountain men and wom- en dot the five roads. Wagons creak down Main street and dry-land sleds crunch the mud. Mules and oxen plod silently. Mules and lean horses carrying whole families dump them in front of the business stores. Both sides, the street is lined with beasts tied to hitchracks. Hogs wallow in their holes and cows roam with their noses turning over rub- bish heaps. Some bellow for their calves. Under the porticos of the business stores men, women and children make groups. Some stare silently at newcomers who hitch their mules to the racks. Some whisper among themselves. Legs swing over portico floors and eyes stare from under bonnets and wide- brimmed hats. Some hillmen and hillwomen sit under the big elms in the courthouse yard. Men lie flat and women lean their backs against tree trunks. Men whittle or whisper. Hillmen gather on the boardwalk in front of the restaurant and move from mule to mule, from horse to horse. Ox to ox. Hill traders, with more cunning than a gypsy, feel over the live stock, look into beasts’ mouths. Unhurried men, with expressionless faces, make terms in low voices, trade or buy without animation. Traders mount horses and mules, race them, whip them to a gallop up and down Main street, Mud flies and hoofs pound. & FT'RADE in the business stores is brisk. In the ! general store old man Steele hustles from counter to counter. Hillmen sit on counters, eat canned peaches and crackers, or drink pink soda water from bottles. Steve Dodie, the town marshal, leans against the casement of the general store. The star on his shirt glitters, and the butt of his .45 gun taps the wall as he shifts his body. Down in the picnic grove, under the can- opy of spreading elms, hill folks are heating fotched-in victuals over wood fires. Beyond the picnic grove, where Meddlesome Creek bends into town, hillmen are shooting rats. Hog rifles roar and Mausers crack. Men and boys sit on the banks of Meddlesome, hit rats square, and watch them pass with the waters, kicking. Men linger in the dark hallway of the tourthouse after voting. Throw suspicious eyes around. New voters enter slowly and scrutinize those who loaf in the hallway as they pass into the county clerk’'s office to cast their ballots. In the voting place the judges and clerks sit at long pine tables, fix their eyes on those who enter. Alert eyes fly to the door. Hard eyes scrutinize. Sometimes hands creep nearer the butts of pistol-guns on the table. A deputy sheriff sits in the corner holding a carbine. He rises leisurely, steps over to a voter and searches him. Finds a gun, marches his prisoner to a cell at the end of the long hall- way. Tension everywhere. Because everybody's toncerned in some way. Everybody's related in some way to somebody up for election. Men and women shut their mouths tight and watch +—watch for moves, watch for firearms, tucked @way in jean pants, calico shirts or wagons, Women sit on the stairway that leads to the courtroom upstairs. Some chew snuff. Some “smoke pipes; spit into boxes of sand. i New arrivals look in the big double doorway and enter timidly. Some carry saddlebags stuffed with groceries. Some look in the tax ‘collector’s office a long time before they enter. When they stand before the table of the tax ‘collector they push their tax bills across to him. The business is done without talk. Most- 1y pantomime, IN the sheriff’'s office, next to the tax collec- tor’s, Floyd Jett, the county officer, High Sheriff Jett, sits in a hickory-back chair and ‘cocks his feet on his table-desk. He looks out his office door at those who pass. Hillmen Jook in at him. Some speak. Some nod. Some scowl. Tad Daniels, the six-foot-and-a-half moun- %ain woodsman from Pennyroyal settlement, iswings through the doorway into the sheriff's ‘office and sits down. He spits into a box of isand and moves his chair up close to Jett’s. "The sheriff bites the end off a stogie and lights 4t. Glances out the window down Main street, ‘out the doorway conce, then back at the hill- ‘mali. Iman. “Huh. ‘Too quiet!” “Reckon yuh air a-goin’ tuh beat-win, iiet e—lection, Floyd,” says the Daniels Floyd. Cain't see 'at oI’ moonshinin’ Mark Valentine a-gettin’ hit, a-getting power I mean, Hit shore air funny business ef we-uns git a high sheriff ’at’s a moonshiner. County’ll be a shore hot abidin’ place I'm a-sayin’. Mark he air tha gunningdest man I ever seed. Kilt a heap o' men. Be no peace fer decent folks ef Mark beat-wins. Reckon he cain't, though. Nope, Mark he hain’t a-goin’ tuh git hit.” “Can’t tell. Can’t tell!” says the sheriff. “Strange things happen sometimes.” Floyd Jett rises, looks out the window. He takes Tab Daniels by the elbow. They go out together. Pass down the hallway. Pause on steps lead- ing to the courthouse yard. Both men look up and down Main street. “Mark Valentine air a-doin® some right smart struttin’” says Tab Daniels. *“Mus’ reckon he air high sheriff a-ready. Seed him while ago with Steve Dodie tha marshal. They shore war’ confabbin’. Mark a-paradin’ roun’, talkin’ big talk, Huh!” Sheriff Jett moves down the steps alone, crosses the courthouse yard. When he reaches the edge of the boardwalk he pauses to look up and down Main street. The talk of two women leaning against an elm reaches his ears. Two of the Shakespeare women from Milk Sick Cove. Old Ruth Shakespeare herself, who in her youth used to ride wild horses without a bridle or saddle, who used to snatch off the bridle to whip her horse with. “Hell-jumping” Ruth, who used to leap an eight-rail fence with a bucket of water in each hand, is talking. “Seven year ’at O'Gowd boy war at hit, larnin® tuh shoot. Jined Jess James tuh larn rifle-gun. An’ seven year tuh clock-minute O'Gowd boy come back and killed his uncle who whip-beated him all time.” The county officer pulls away from the talk. Pulls away from the droning of old Ruth Shakespeare, who's telling the other woman about a sock fight in Meddlesome when her grandson and one of the Meadowes boys set- tled a dispute with rocks. He leans against an elm by the road, ab- sently watches two hillboys slide off a gray mule and talk heatedly while one of them ties the mule to a hitching rack. “Hit war a sight, I'm a-tellin’ yuh. Blood spattered mail-order book in my hand. Blood war a-flyin’ ever’-whar. Two Sidson men jes’ slashed Tate Torkey tuh bits. Right in Penny- rile store. Blood all over letter I war a-fotchin’ to my pap.” ; ‘Hain't ketched Sidson men yit,” said the other boy. “Two years gone an’ hain't ketched Sidsons. Reckon we-uns won’ see Sidsons any- more.” “Maybe gone tuh Arizony.” “Nebrasky maybe.” The sheriff turns around sharp, faces the hillboys. Their talk is chopped off. They move away quickly, looking back over their shoulders at the county officer, puzzlement on their faces. “Killings. Nothing but killings!” says Jett to himself. “Can’t talk about anything else. Men, women and children steeped in blood and gore.” His eyes sweep the town and come to rest finally on the picnic grove. He sees a mountain boy playing at feud® Sees him hold a hickory stick like a gun. The boy’s pointing at some man under the portico of the general store. Killing in his mind. Killing some old enemy of his people, A HILLMAN steps out from under the gen- eral store portico and crosses the street. The boy's hickory stick is trained on him until he disappears into the drug store. The boy is of the Valentine family, and the hillman is a Danijels. Old feud still smoldering. Ten- year-old boy trying to fan blood hate to flame. Jett sees suddenly that five men of the Valentine family squat on the ground near the boy with the hickory stick. The Valentines, the trouble clan, the most vindictive and pow- erful family in the county, are holding an as- sembly. War powwow it looks like to Jett. Trouble anyway. “Election and trouble,” thinks the sheriff. “Isn’'t worth it. Being sheriff isn’t worth the trouble. Didn’t want to run for office. Why am I doing it?” Echoes of voices come to him, echoes of words said by the better people of the hills and towns. Jeff agreed to run when folks pointed out that, left to some moonshiner or some easily influ- enced man, the county would be the bloody ground always. His, the most isolated of mountain counties, has to be preserved. Leeston, the most isolated of county seats, with no railroads, no telegraph office, no roads but ereek beds leading to it, has to be saved. The sheriff shifts his legs. Relights his stogie. His movement draws eyes. Eyes glance ] |/ at him, then settle on newcomers or a dog fight in the mud. A sudden realization comes to Jett, A sudden releasing of memories. Mem- ories of other election days. They stand out sharp. Even since he was a boy election days have brought about a killing—one Kkilling at least, usually more. Shootings on election day have been as regular as speeches on the Fourth of July. As men and women come to Leeston on the Fourth and assemble in the picnic grove to hear the Commonwealth’'s attorney, the judge, or old Lawyer Carr deliver orations about George Washington, so they come on election day to see who's going to be killed. A killing is part of getting men into office. “Blood’s in their minds,” thinks Jett. “Men are thinking death, thinking war, Hate, the father of war, father of all trouble in the hills, is resting now, is seated in the souls of some- body, seated and waiting. ‘What a man thinketh,”” The county officer tries to clean his mind of the thought. Forces into his mind the thought that maybe today will be an excep- tion. Maybe today will pass without trouble. If it does tradition may break down, crumble a little year by year. His thinking so may not bring about heaven and peace in Leeston, but he mustn't throw his thoughts on the other side of the scale, ‘“Maybe we won't have trouble,” he thinks. “Maybe things will be all right.” He looks up Main street, sees stragglers still walking into town. Sees a lone mule bearing a man, woman and two children. Mule’s loaded from neck to rump. He sees the mule suddenly pulled to a halt. Sees the hillmen afoot sud- denly stop and look back. And he hears hoof- beats. The flash of a sorrel horse as he turns in at Five Corners makes the folks under the porticos and in the grove stiffen. Some sit up, some lying on the grass in the courthouse yard rub their eyes and turn their faces around to look. The beard of the coming man on the sorrel that canters easily now past the courthouse and the rim of his hat pulled way down over his eyes quicken the sheriff’s interest. Men trying to hide under felt hats and beards, if they are strangers, always arouse Jett's sus- picions. ‘“A beard that’s not silky, a tough beard that's allowed to grow for the first time,” is the substance of Jett's first thought. " EEPING his face straight ahead, looking neither to right nor left, the rider passes the business stores and stops his horse at the picnic grove, The sheriff can tell by the ex- pressions on the faces of the men and women under the porticos that they don't know the horseman—at least, they haven't recognized him yet. 2 Down by the picnic grove the horseman stops his sorrel, dismounts, ties him to an elm ?‘HE SUNDAY STAR, VW7A§VH>1NG _ tree. Then enters the grove and sits down with the Valentine family. None of the Valen- tines move, make any sign, say a word. None even look at him. The leisurely and indiffer- ent attitude of the Valentines doesn't fool Jett, tlwugh. And since suspicion is aroused in his mind he's ransacking his memory. He feels that he should know the newcomer. To the sheriff the newcomer is a bad omen. A shadow. A sign of trouble. And rising within the county officer is the strange thought that the newcomer is the crystallization of the blood and gore talk that's been going on in the courthouse yard, the grove and under the porticos. Men, women and children have been talking about Kkillings: they've been expecting killings. And as if it were made to order, as if the wishing brought it, as if the obsession of the election-day crowd crystallized, Jett sees the bearded stranger, the addition to the Valen- tine circle, as the sign of trouble. Hymn 10 BY C. T. I We are the builders of beauty, ] Consecrate .« w « Sworn to the flame, Marble and music and canvas, Only on these is our name. We are the crying of bugles, The hunger and seeking for bread, The windrow, the flail and the reaper, The quict dream of the dead. We are the wild-eyes . The jeered at . .., the The cruel . . the tender Idiots . . fools . . an