A tremendous thump on the floor above and a woman’s shrieks woke him. His first thought was that Doc Bingham was robbing and murdering the woman. But immediately he heard another voice cursing and shouting in broken English. He had half gotten up from the chair, when Doc Bingham dashed past him. He had on only his flannel unionsuit. In one hand were his shoes, in the other his clothes. His trousers floated after him at the end of his suspenders like the tail of a kite.
“Hey, what are we going to do?” Fainy called after him, but got no answer. Instead he found himself face to face with a tall dark man with a scraggly black beard who was coolly fitting shells into a doublebarrelled shotgun.
“Buckshot. I shoot the sonabitch.”
“Hey, you can’t do that,” began Fainy. He got the butt of the shotgun in the chest and went crashing down into the chair again. The man strode out the door with a long elastic stride, and there followed two shots that went rattling among the farm buildings. Then the woman’s shrieks started up again, punctuating a longdrawnout hysterical tittering and sobbing.
Fainy sat in the chair by the stove as if glued to it.
He noticed a fiftycent piece on the kitchen floor that must have dropped out of Doc Bingham’s pants as he ran. He grabbed it and had just gotten it in his pocket when the tall man with the shotgun came back.
“No more shells,” he said thickly. Then he sat down on the kitchen table among the uncleared supper dishes and began to cry like a child, the tears trickling through the knobbed fingers of his big dark hands. Fainy stole out of the door and went to the barn. “Doc Bingham,” he called gently. The harness lay in a heap between the shafts of the wagon, but there was no trace of Doc Bingham or of the piebald horse. The frightened clucking of the hens disturbed in the hencoop mixed with the woman’s shrieks that still came from upstairs in the farmhouse. “What the hell shall I do?” Fainy was asking himself when he caught sight of a tall figure outlined in the bright kitchen door and pointing the shotgun at him. Just as the shotgun blazed away he ducked into the barn and out through the back door. Buckshot whined over his head. “Gosh, he found shells.” Fainy was off as fast as his legs could carry him across the oatfield. At last, without any breath in his body, he scrambled over a railfence full of briars that tore his face and hands and lay flat in a dry ditch to rest. There was nobody following him.
Newsreel III
“IT TAKES NERVE TO LIVE IN THIS WORLD” LAST WORDS OF GEORGE SMITH HANGED WITH HIS BROTHER BY MOB IN KANSAS MARQUIS OF QUEENSBERRY DEAD FLAMES WRECK SPICE PLANT COURT SETS ZOLA FREE
a few years ago the anarchists of New Jersey, wearing the McKinley button and the red badge of anarchy on their coats and supplied with beer by the republicans, plotted the death of one of the crowned heads of Europe and it is likely that the plan to assassinate the president was hatched at the same time or soon afterward
It’s moonlight fair tonight upon the Wabash
From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay
Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming
On the banks of the Wabash far away
OUT FOR BULLY GOOD TIME
Six Thousand Workmen at Smolensk Parade With Placards Saying Death To Czar Assassin.
riots and streetblockades mark opening of teamster’s strike
WORLD’S GREATEST SEA BATTLE NEAR
Madrid police clash with 5000 workmen carrying black flag
spectators become dizzy while dancer eats orange breaking record that made man insane
The Camera Eye (5)
and we played the battle of Port Arthur in the bathtub and the water leaked down through the drawingroom ceiling and it was altogether too bad but in Kew Gardens old Mr. Garnet who was still hale and hearty although so very old came to tea and we saw him first through the window with his red face and John Bull whiskers and aunty said it was a sailor’s rolling gait and he was carrying a box under his arm and Vickie and Pompom barked and here was Mr. Garnet come to tea and he took a gramophone out of a black box and put a cylinder on the gramophone and they pushed back the tea-things off the corner of the table Be careful not to drop it now they scratch rather heasy Why a hordinary sewin’ needle would do maam but I ave special needles
and we got to talking about Hadmiral Togo and the Banyan and how the Roosians drank so much vodka and killed all those poor fisherlads in the North Sea and he wound it up very carefully so as not to break the spring and the needle went rasp rasp Yes I was a bluejacket miself miboy from the time I was a little shayver not much bigger’n you rose to be bosun’s mite on the first British hironclad the Warrior and I can dance a ornpipe yet maam and he had a mariner’s compass in red and blue on the back of his hand and his nails looked black and thick as he fumbled with the needle and the needle went rasp rasp and far away a band played and out of a grindy noise in the little black horn came God Save the King and the little dogs howled
Newsreel IV
I met my love in the Alamo
When the moon was on the rise
Her beauty quite bedimmed its light
So radiant were her eyes
during the forenoon union pickets turned back a wagon loaded with 50 campchairs on its way to the fire engine house at Michigan Avenue and Washington Street. The chairs it is reported, were ordered for the convenience of policemen detailed on strike duty
FLEETS MAY MEET IN BATTLE TODAY
WEST OF LUZON
three big wolves were killed before the dinner.
A grand parade is proposed here in which President Roosevelt shall ride so that he can be seen by citizens. At the head will be a caged bear recently captured after killing a dozen dogs and injuring several men. The bear will be given an hour’s start for the hills then the packs will be set on the trail and President Roosevelt and the guides will follow in pursuit
three Columbia students start auto trip to Chicago on wager
GENERAL STRIKE NOW THREATENS
It’s moonlight fair tonight upon the Wa-abash
OIL KING’S HAPPYEST DAY
one cherub every five minutes market for all classes of real estate continues to be healthy with good demand for factory sites residence and business properties court bills break labor
BLOODY SUNDAY IN MOSCOW
lady angels are smashed troops guard oilfields America tends to become empire like in the days of the Caesars $5 poem gets rich husband eat less says Edison rich poker player falls dead when he draws royal flush charges graft in Cicero
STRIKE MAY MEAN REVOLT IN RUSSIA
lake romance of two yachts murder ends labor feud Michigan runs all over Albion red flags in St. Petersburg
CZAR YIELDS TO PEOPLE
holds dead baby forty hours families evicted by bursting watermain.
CZAR GRANTS CONSTITUTION
From the fields there comes the breath of newmown hay
Through the sycamores the candlelight is gleaming
The Camera Eye (6)
Go it go it said Mr. Linwood the headmaster when one was running up the field kicking the round ball footer they called it in Hampstead and afterwards it was time to walk home and one felt good because Mr. Linwood had said Go it