“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.