Once he wuz found with a rifle fixed up in front of the cave rakin’ the road in front, and they had to skulk up a back way to ketch him.
The last time he went he took a girl with him, one of the prettiest little girls in the neighborhood; he took his father’s old white horse into the woods and a red woollen shawl of his mother’s and had persuaded the girl to be a Captive Princess. And when found she wuz settin’ on the horse, which wuz draped in scarlet, as become the charger of a Princess, and Cicero wuz walkin’ by her side, ornamented with feathers and wampum. Well, the girl’s father, bein’ ragin’ mad, horsewhipped Cicero hard, and then Cicero organized a band of banditta, called the Bloody League, that ravaged the man, stole his fruit, took his horses out of the lot and rode ’em, and finally drove his flocks off into the woods and barricaded ’em there.
That cost Hamen over forty-two dollars to settle, and Cicero didn’t git into another scrape till most a month afterwards, when he got mad at one of the neighbor’s boys and shot him, as a “dastardly foe” should be attacked by a bold buckaneer or bandit. The ball went through the boy’s leg, and, though it made him lame for life, his folks, bein’ poor, settled for five hundred dollars, and Cicero come home from jail and wuz fresh for new dime novels flavored by cigarettes. The next time he got into trouble he hid himself behind the bushes and shot at the man who had horsewhipped him, and for whom he cherished a deep, invincible hatred and thirst for revenge. He felt the honor of the Bloody League wuz at stake, the example of the braves wuz goadin’ him on. He hid behind a tall clump of elderberry bushes and shot his dastardly foe as he wuz wendin’ his way peacefully home from church on a Sunday night. The ball woonded the man, but not fatally, and the next month saw Cicero in prison. He wrote home for some novels and cigarettes, which Tamer Ann sent to solace him in his confinement, and for a time the neighborhood wuz at peace and breathed freely.
Hamen wuz jest crushed by the blow, and went round lookin’ like an old man before his time. Tamer had to git a new box of novels to comfort her, and she developed eight new diseases durin’ the next two months. It wuz hard for ’em, I pitied ’em from nearly the bottom of my heart. Clear down in the bottom of my heart lay the conviction that Tamer had brought on all this sorrow and sin, had opened the door and let her bandits and banditta come in, luggin’ all this misery in with ’em, and so I told Josiah. Cicero’s reputation wuz such they couldn’t git his sentence shortened; he went for ten years.
As for the neighborin’ boy and girl, who used to pour over the novels with Cicero, durin’ the next two years the boy shot another one and killed him and wuz sent to prison for life, and the girl run away with a circus man who had already several wives in different parts of the country. She didn’t take all her clothin’ with her, for she left in haste, but she took “The Disguised Hero of the Sawdust; or, The Clown Prince.” It wuz Tamer’s book.
The girl wuz brought back by her father, but she wuz ruined for life in the estimation of her neighbors, Tamer wouldn’t allow Anna to speak to her if she met her on the street; Tamer wuz dretful bitter now on her, and said such low creeters ort to be made examplers of. She would have been glad to had her stunned.
I myself pitied her, and in the cause of duty told Tamer when she wuz goin’ on about her, I sez, “Tamer, your books have been one great cause of that poor child’s ruination. When her young mind wuz a calm, innocent, restful place you jest led into it to ravage round and destroy and tromple and kick up the ground all the wild villians and wicked wimmen and guirellas that possibly could be drove into it, they went in and did their work, they destroyed all the sweet blossoms of innocence, laid waste all the tender beauty and purity they found there, and put up a wretched ideal of romantic wickedness which she strove to realize, and has, and you can set down here and watch the result, and the one that did the work is the first to condemn her.” Tamer wuz mad, but I didn’t care. I knew I wuz in the right on’t, and I said jest the same to her about the boy, and agin Tamer Ann wuz mad, and agin I didn’t care, for the same reason.
CHAPTER XXII.
