The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 22/212

The Briscoe buckboard rattled along the elastic country-road, the roans

setting a sharp pace as they turned eastward on the pike toward home and

supper.

"They'll make the eight miles in three-quarters of an hour," said the

judge, proudly. He pointed ahead with his whip. "Just beyond that bend we

pass through Six-Cross-Roads."

Miss Sherwood leaned forward eagerly. "Can we see 'Mr. Wimby's' house from

here?"

"No, it's on the other side, nearer town; we pass it later. It's the only

respectable-looking house in this township." They reached the turn of the

road, and the judge touched up his colts to a sharper gait. "No need of

dallying," he observed quietly. "It always makes me a little sick just to

see the place. I'd hate to have a break-down here."

They came in sight of a squalid settlement, built raggedly about a

blacksmith's shop and a saloon. Half-a-dozen shanties clustered near the

forge, a few roofs scattered through the shiftlessly cultivated fields,

four or five barns propped by fence-rails, some sheds with gaping

apertures through which the light glanced from side to side, a squad of

thin, "razor-back" hogs--now and then worried by gaunt hounds--and some

abused-looking hens, groping about disconsolately in the mire, a broken-

topped buggy with a twisted wheel settling into the mud of the middle of

the road (there was always abundant mud, here, in the dryest summer), a

lowering face sneering from a broken window--Six-Cross-Roads was

forbidding and forlorn enough by day. The thought of what might issue from

it by night was unpleasant, and the legends of the Cross-Roads, together

with an unshapen threat, easily fancied in the atmosphere of the place,

made Miss Sherwood shiver as though a cold draught had crossed her.

"It is so sinister!" she exclaimed. "And so unspeakably mean! This is

where they live, the people who hate him, is it? The 'White-Caps'?"

"They are just a lot of rowdies," replied Briscoe. "You have your rough

corners in big cities, and I expect there are mighty few parts of any

country that don't have their tough neighborhoods, only Six-Cross-Roads

happens to be worse than most. They choose to call themselves 'White-

Caps,' but I guess it's just a name they like to give themselves. Usually

White-Caps are a vigilance committee going after rascalities the law

doesn't reach, or won't reach, but these fellows are not that kind. They

got together to wipe out their grudges--and sometimes they didn't need any

grudge and let loose their deviltries just for pure orneriness; setting

haystacks afire and such like; or, where a farmer had offended them, they

would put on their silly toggery and take him out at midnight and whip him

and plunder his house and chase the horses and cattle into his corn,

maybe. They say the women went with them on their raids."