Then the cavalry formed in two lines, and between them marched Laura Van Dorn and Grant Adams, manacled together. Up through the weed-grown commons between South 569Harvey and the big town they marched under the broiling sun. The crowd trudged after them–trailing behind for the most part, but often running along by the horsemen and calling words of sympathy to Grant or reviling the soldiers.
Down Market Street they all came–soldiers, prisoners and straggling crowd. The town, prepared by telephone for the sight, stood on the streets and hurrahed for Joe Calvin. He had brought in his game, and if one trophy was a trifle out of caste for a prisoner, a bit above her station, so much the worse for her. The blood of the seven dead soldiers was crying for vengeance in Harvey–the middle-class nerve had been touched to the quick–and Market Street hooted at the prisoners, and hailed Joe Calvin on his white charger as a hero of the day.
For the mind of a crowd is a simple mind. It draws no fine distinctions. It has no memory. It enjoys primitive emotions, and takes the most rudimentary pleasures. The mind of the crowd on Market Street in Harvey that bright, hot June day, when Joe Calvin on his white steed at the head of his armed soldiers led Grant Adams and Laura Van Dorn up the street to the court house, saw as plainly as any crowd could see anything that Grant Adams was the slayer of seven mangled men, whose torn bodies the crowd had seen at the undertaker’s. It saw death and violation of property rights as the fruit of Grant Adams’s revolution, and if this woman, who was of Market Street socially, cared to lower herself to the level of assassins and thugs, she was getting only her deserts.
So Grant and Laura passed through the ranks of men and women whom they knew and saw eyes turned away that might have recognized them, saw faces averted to whom they might have looked for sympathy–and saw what power on a white horse can make of a mediocre man!
But Grant was not interested in power on a white horse, nor was he interested in the woman who marched with him. His face kept turning to the crowd from South Harvey that straggled beside him outside of the line of horsemen about him. Now and then Grant caught the eyes of a leader or of a friend and to such a one he would speak some earnest word 570of cheer or give some belated order or message. Only once did Laura divert him from the stragglers along the way. It was when Ahab Wright ducked his head and drew down his office window in the second story of the Wright & Perry building. “At least,” said Laura, “it’s a lesson worth learning in human nature. I’ll know how much a smile is worth after this or the mere nod of a head. Not that I need it to sustain me, Grant,” she went on seriously, “so far as I’m concerned, but I can feel how it would be to–well, to some one who needed it.”
Under the murmur of the crowd, Laura continued: “I know exactly with what emotion pretty little Mrs. Joe Calvin will hear of this episode.”
“What?” queried Grant absently. His attention left her again, for the men from South Harvey at whom he was directing volts of courage from his blazing eyes.
“Well–she’ll be scared to death for fear mother and I will cut her socially for it! She’s dying to get into the inner circle, and she’ll abuse little Joe for this–which,” smiled Laura, “will be my revenge, and will be badly needed by little Joe.” But she was talking to deaf ears.
A street car halted them before Brotherton’s store for a minute. Grant looked anxiously in the door way, and saw only Miss Calvin, who turned away her head, after smiling at her brother.
“I wonder where George can be?” asked Grant.