Clouds had been gathering overhead for some time, and now they overcast the skies. The sunlight, with all its brightness of a few minutes ago, had faded; it became so dark that the people could scarcely see across the diamond. Heavy peals of thunder added now to the darkness, while flashes of lightning struck electrically all about. The crowd stood awestruck. The woman in the box had lowered her arm, and was looking wild-eyed at the woman who had fallen prostrate at her feet. And then, through the still air came again the cry of the beast.
"Ah tole yu' 'f yu' played ball ag'in ah'd kill yu'. Ah've killed yu' doity sista, in the' stands you, 'n' the' is John Smith who run away frum Palmetto, Geo'gi', 'n' whose real name's Tom Rollins!" And with that, the woman gave a long lingering cry that frightened all those about. They turned in one great mass, the revolver sounded another shot, and with scarcely a groan, the woman staggered for a moment, and fell to the ground dead. For just a second it seemed, the crowd, tearing wildly about, halted and turned their eyes upon the two dead women. And as they did so, the murderer turned wildly in the direction of where Smith had stood, but he was gone. In a blind fury, the drunken brute whirled around dazed, yelling: "Wha' is he! Damn him! Wha' is he!"
"I'm heah, you beast!" roared Smith, in a terrible voice. The other had just time to see him, but too late to do further murder. John Smith was on him in an instant, and all the strength of his powerful frame seemed to come to him in that moment. He snatched the smoking weapon from the hand of the brute, and, raising it to the length of his large arm, while the other, at last sensitive to the moment, saw it as it lingered one brief instant, with eyes, the sight of which Sidney Wyeth did not soon forget, it fell, crushing the skull. A mad herd now, the crowd rushed upon the fallen creature and did the rest.
Just then the heavens opened up with a mighty crash of thunder, and there came a flash of lightning that made trees tremble, while the rain came down in torrents.
Sidney returned to the city by the first car. The incident rose before him again and again, as the car crept along in the downpour. He had seen the first murder of his life, which, however, was an almost daily occurrence in Effingham. When he reached his room and related the incident, it caused less excitement than when he once witnessed a gambling raid and related it. No one took murder seriously in Effingham.
"They kill a nigga every day on an average in this town," grinned Moore. When he read the papers the following morning, he had about given up finding it at all, when his eyes came across a small paragraph in the corner, reporting that a drunken Negro had killed his wife and sister-in-law, which added to the list of casualties, making eleven for the day in Effingham. All were homicides. No deaths from other sources were reported.
As Sidney Wyeth now saw it, the people might have prosperity, and they might have happiness; likewise, they might suffer reverses and be in hard straights for a time; but of one thing there seemed a certainty, that as long as whiskey was available, crime would be prevalent in Effingham.
Sidney Wyeth had never voted for prohibition. As he saw it now in Attalia, where it was not sold legally, and in Effingham, where it had this permit, there seemed but one conclusion. Only when they stopped making it, would these ignorant, semi-barbarous creatures quit drinking it.
And thus we find conditions in one of our great American cities, where there is forty per cent of illiteracy among two-fifths of the populace.