“Women,” he says, “dum women. If it wasn’t for you women swarming over the world like different kinds of—of—of—noxious insects, it would be a regular paradise.”
“Sure it would,” I says logical, “because there wouldn’t be a man in it to mess it up.”
Silas had just opened his mouth to reply, when all of a sudden, like a letter in your box, somebody come and stood in the doorway—a man, and called out something, short and sharp and ending in “Come on—all of you,” and disappeared out again, and we heard him running down the street. Then we saw two-three more go running by the door, and we heard some shouting. And Silas, that must have guessed at what they said, he started off behind them, dragging on his sear-sucker coat and holding his soft felt hat in his mouth, it not seeming to occur to him that he could set it on his head till he was ready to use it.
“What’s the matter?” I says to Mis’ Holcomb. “They must be getting excited because nothing ever happens here. They ain’t nothing else to get excited over that I can think of.”
Then we see more men come running, and their boots clumped down on the loose board walk with that special clump and thud that boots gets to ’em when they’re running with bad news, or hurrying for help.
“What is it?” I says, getting to the door. And I see men begin to come out of the stores and get in knots and groups that you can tell mean trouble of some kind, just as plain as you can tell that some portraits of total strangers is the portraits of somebody that’s dead. They look dead. And them groups looked trouble. And then I see Timothy Toplady come tearing down the road in his spring wagon, with his horse’s check reins all dragging and him lashing out at ’em as he stood up in the box. Then I run right out in the road and yelled at him.
“Timothy,” I says, “what’s the matter? What’s happened?”
He drew up his horses, and threw out his hand, beckoning angular.
“Come on!” he says, “get in here—get in quick....”
Then he looked back over his shoulder and see Mis’ Merriman that had come out to her gate with Mis’ Sykes, and they was both out on the street, looking, and he beckoned, wild, to them; and they come running.