Less than two hours later Landlord Vose revised that advice. He rushed up to my room where I was sorting some papers, having resolved to travel light when I did go.
“Get under—get under, young Sidney,” he gasped.
“Under what?”
“I reckon I mean get out. It’s your uncle Deck! Bailey and some other of them yawp-mouths in this place have been twitting and tormenting him and dropping hints, and he’s worse than a sore-eared bulldog after a scruffing. He’s coming with a double-barreled shot-gun. He is! He’s drunk, son, and there’s no dealing with him. He lays it all to you!”
“I won’t run.”
“But he isn’t responsible, son. To say nothing of what will happen to you, it means that he’ll go to State prison. You’re sane and sober and you ought to be willing to save him from himself.”
Right then Mr. Vose said something which appealed to me. I had stepped outside my family—I had conspired against my uncle—I had blocked his dearest ambition, iniquitous though it was. By hanging around and allowing him to take pot-shots at me I would be aggravating his troubles and bringing more serious afflictions upon him. A dead nephew, shot-riddled, would be a damning exhibit A in his trial for murder!
I picked up my few belongings and escaped from the back door of the tavern, hid in a cross-road till Dodovah Vose’s stableman came with a hitch, and I caught a train at a station down the line; hustling out of my native town on the run, by dint of practice, was getting to be one of the best performances in my list of tricks.
I counted my money when I was on my way to the city. I had not been keeping any strict account between the judge and myself; from the common stock I had been paying expenses and spending as loose as peas in order to hasten our journey back East. I found around two hundred and fifty dollars in my pockets, and I reflected, with a sort of grim zest in the humor of the thing, that I could fairly claim most of this money as my own—the tainted cash from my poker profits.
I went straight to Jodrey Vose when I arrived in the metropolis and he looked neither surprised nor overjoyed.