To this Reuben made no reply, and the two walked on for a few moments in silence.
They were approaching a big, ungainly, shabby-looking structure, which presented a receding roof, a row of windows with small, old-fashioned panes of glass, and a broad, rickety veranda sprawling the whole width of its front, to the highway on their left. This had once been a rural wayside tavern, but now, by the encircling growth of the village, it had taken on a hybrid character, and managed to combine in a very complete way the coarse demerits of a town saloon with the evil license of a suburban dive. Its location rendered it independent of most of the restrictions which the village authorities were able to enforce in Thessaly itself, and this freedom from restraint attracted the dissipated imagination of town and country alike. It was Dave Rantell’s place, and being known far and wide as the most objectionable resort in Dearborn County, was in reality much worse than its reputation.
The open sheds at the side of the tavern were filled with horses and sleighs, and others were ranged along at the several posts by the roadside in front—these latter including some smart city cutters, and even a landau on runners. From the farther side of the house came, at brief intervals, the sharp report of rifle-shots, rising loud above the indistinct murmuring of a crowd’s conversation.
“It must be a turkey-shoot,” said Reuben. “This man Rantell has them every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas,” he added, as they came in view of the scene beyond the tavern. “There! Have you seen anything in Europe like that?” Let it be stated without delay that there was no trace of patriotic pride in his tone.
The wide gate of the tavern yard was open, and the path through it had been trampled smooth by many feet. In the yard just beyond were clustered some forty or fifty men, standing about in the snow, and with their backs to the road. Away in the distance, and to the right, were visible two or three slouching figures of men. Traversing laterally and leftward the broad, unbroken field of snow, the eye caught a small, dark object on the great white sheet; if the vision was clear and far-sighted, a closer study would reveal this to be a bird standing alone in the waste of whiteness, tied by the leg to a stake near by, and waiting to be shot at. The attention of every man in the throng was riveted on this remote and solitary fowl. There was a deep hush for a fraction of a second after each shot. Then the turkey either hopped to one side, which meant that the bullet had gone whistling past, or sank to the ground after a brief wild fluttering of wings. In the former case, another loaded rifle was handed out, and suspense began again; in the latter event, there ensued a short intermission devoted to beverages and badinage, the while a boy started across the fields toward the throng with the dead turkey, and the distant slouching figures busied themselves in tying up a new feathered target.
“No, it isn’t what you would call elevating, is it?” said Horace, as the two stood looking over the fence upon the crowd. “Still, it has its interest as a national product. I’ve seen dog-fights and cock-mains in England attended by whole thousands of men, that were ever so much worse than this. If you think of it, this isn’t particularly brutal, as such sports go.”
“But what puzzles me is that men should like such sports at all,” said Reuben.
“At any rate,” replied Horace, “we’re better off in that respect than the English are. The massacre of rats in a pit is a thing that you can get an assemblage of nobility, and even royalty, for, over there. Now, that isn’t even relatively true here. Take this turkey-shoot of Rantell’s, for example. You won’t find any gentlemen here; that is, anybody who sets up to be a gentleman in either the English or the American sense of the word.”
As if in ironical answer, a sharp, strident voice rose above the vague babble of the throng inside the yard, and its accents reached the two young men with painful distinctness:
“I’ll bet five dollars that General Boyce kills his six birds in ten shots—bad cartridges barred!”