“It’s in that vacant lot,” the proprietor said, clutching his trousers.
“I cant go because there aint anybody on the desk.……”
Horace ran.
Ahead of him he saw other figures running, turning into the alley beside the jail; then he heard the sound, of the fire; the furious sound of gasoline.
He turned into the alley.
He could see the blaze, in the center of a vacant lot where on market days wagons were tethered.
Against the flames black figures showed, antic; he could hear panting shouts; through a fleeting gap he saw a man turn and run, a mass of flames, still carrying a five-gallon coal oil can which exploded with a rocket-like glare while he carried it, running.
He ran into the throng, into the circle which had formed about a blazing mass in the middle of the lot.
From one side of the circle came the screams of the man about whom the coal oil can had exploded, but from the central mass of fire there came no sound at all.
It was now indistinguishable, the flames whirling in long and thunderous plumes from a white-hot mass out of which there defined themselves faintly the ends of a few posts and planks.
Horace ran among them; they were holding him, but he did not know it; they were talking, but he could not hear the voices.
“It’s his lawyer.”
“Here’s the man that defended him.
That tried to get him clear.”
“Put him in, too.
There’s enough left to burn a lawyer.”
“Do to the lawyer what we did to him.
What he did to her.
Only we never used a cob.
We made him wish we had used a cob.”
Horace couldn’t hear them.
He couldn’t hear the man who had got burned screaming.
He couldn’t hear the fire, though it still swirled upward unabated, as though it were living upon itself, and soundless: a voice of fury like in a dream, roaring silently out of a peaceful void.
30
The trains at Kinston were met by an old man who drove a seven passenger car. He was thin, with gray eyes and a gray moustache with waxed ends.
In the old days, before the town boomed suddenly into a lumber town, he was a planter, a landholder, son of one of the first settlers.
He lost his property through greed and gullibility, and he began to drive a hack back and forth between town and the trains, with his waxed moustache, in a top hat and a worn Prince Albert coat, telling the drummers how he used to lead Kinston society; now he drove it.
After the horse era passed, he bought a car, still meeting the trains.
He still wore his waxed moustache, though the top hat was replaced by a cap, the frock coat by a suit of gray striped with red made by Jews in the New York tenement district.
“Here you are,” he said, when Horace descended from the train.
“Put your bag into the car,” he said.
He got in himself.
Horace got into the front seat beside him.
“You are one train late,” he said.
“Late?” Horace said.
“She got in this morning.
I took her home. Your wife.”
“Oh,” Horace said.
“She’s home?”
The other started the car and backed and turned.
It was a good, powerful car, moving easily.
“When did you expect her?.……” They went on.
“I see where they burned that fellow over at Jefferson.
I guess you saw it.”
“Yes,” Horace said.
“Yes.
I heard about it.”
“Served him right,” the driver said.
“We got to protect our girls.
Might need them ourselves.”