“Git on home now,” he said.
“Show’s over.
You boys done had your fun.
Git on home to bed, now.”
The drummers sat a little while longer along the curb before the hotel, Horace among them; the south-bound train ran at one oclock.
“They’re going to let him get away with it, are they?” a drummer said.
“With that corn cob?
What kind of folks have you got here?
What does it take to make you folks mad?”
“He wouldn’t a never got to trial, in my town,” a second said.
“To jail, even,” a third said.
“Who was she?”
“College girl.
Good looker.
Didn’t you see her?”
“I saw her.
She was some baby.
Jeez.
I wouldn’t have used no cob.”
Then the square was quiet.
The clock struck eleven; the drummers went in and the negro porter came and turned the chairs back into the wall.
“You waiting for the train?” he said to Horace.
“Yes.
Have you got a report on it yet?”
“It’s on time.
But that’s two hours yet.
You could lay down in the Sample Room, if you want.”
“Can I?” Horace said.
“I’ll show you,” the negro said.
The Sample Room was where the drummers showed their wares.
It contained a sofa.
Horace turned off the light and lay down on the sofa.
He could see the trees about the courthouse, and one wing of the building rising above the quiet and empty square.
But people were not asleep.
He could feel the wakefulness, the people awake about the town.
“I could not have gone to sleep, anyway,” he said to himself.
He heard the clock strike twelve.
Then—it might have been thirty minutes or maybe longer than that—he heard someone pass under the window, running.
The runner’s feet sounded louder than a horse, echoing across the empty square, the peaceful hours given to sleeping.
It was not a sound Horace heard now; it was something in the air which the sound of the running feet died into.
When he went down the corridor toward the stairs he did not know he was running until he heard beyond a door a voice say,
“Fire!
It’s a.……” Then he had passed it.
“I scared him,” Horace said.
“He’s just from Saint Louis, maybe, and he’s not used to this.”
He ran out of the hotel, onto the street.
Ahead of him the proprietor had just run, ludicrous; a broad man with his trousers clutched before him and his braces dangling beneath his nightshirt, a tousled fringe of hair standing wildly about his bald head; three other men passed the hotel running.
They appeared to come from nowhere, to emerge in midstride out of nothingness, fully dressed in the middle of the street, running.
“It is a fire,” Horace said.
He could see the glare; against it the jail loomed in stark and savage silhouette.