“That’s not the question, Mr. McCallum,” the investigator said. “All required of them was to register. Their numbers might not even be drawn this time; under the law of averages, they probably would not be. But they refused — failed, anyway — to register.”
“I see,” the other said. He was not looking at the investigator. The investigator couldn’t tell certainly if he was even looking at the marshal, although he spoke to him, “You want to see Buddy? The doctor’s with him now.”
“Wait,” the investigator said. “I’m sorry about your brother’s accident, but I—” The marshal glanced back at him for a moment, his shaggy gray brows beetling, with something at once courteous yet a little impatient about the glance, so that during the instant the investigator sensed from the old marshal the same quality which had been in the other’s brief look.
The investigator was a man of better than average intelligence; he was already becoming aware of something a little different here from what he had expected. But he had been in relief work in the state several years, dealing almost exclusively with country people, so he still believed he knew them. So he looked at the old marshal, thinking, Yes.
The same sort of people, despite the office, the authority and responsibility which should have changed him. Thinking again, These people. These people. “I intend to take the night train back to Jackson,” he said. “My reservation is already made. Serve the warrant and we will—”
“Come along,” the old marshal said. “We are going to have plenty of time.”
So he followed — there was nothing else to do — fuming and seething, attempting in the short length of the hall to regain control of himself in order to control the situation, because he realized now that if the situation were controlled, it would devolve upon him to control it; that if their departure with their prisoners were expedited, it must be himself and not the old marshal who would expedite it. He had been right.
The doddering old officer was not only at bottom one of these people, he had apparently been corrupted anew to his old, inherent, shiftless sloth and unreliability merely by entering the house. So he followed in turn, down the hall and into a bedroom; whereupon he looked about him not only with amazement but with something very like terror.
The room was a big room, with a bare unpainted floor, and besides the bed, it contained only a chair or two and one other piece of old-fashioned furniture.
Yet to the investigator it seemed so filled with tremendous men cast in the same mold as the man who had met them that the very walls themselves must bulge. Yet they were not big, not tall, and it was not vitality, exuberance, because they made no sound, merely looking quietly at him where he stood in the door, with faces bearing an almost identical stamp of kinship — a thin, almost frail old man of about seventy, slightly taller than the others; a second one, white-haired, too, but otherwise identical with the man who had met them at the door; a third one about the same age as the man who had met them, but with something delicate in his face and something tragic and dark and wild in the same dark eyes; the two absolutely identical blue-eyed youths; and lastly the blue-eyed man on the bed over which the doctor, who might have been any city doctor, in his neat city suit, leaned — all of them turning to look quietly at him and the marshal as they entered.
And he saw, past the doctor, the slit trousers of the man on the bed and the exposed, bloody, mangled leg, and he turned sick, stopping just inside the door under that quiet, steady regard while the marshal went up to the man who lay on the bed, smoking a cob pipe, a big, old-fashioned, wicker-covered demijohn, such as the investigator’s grandfather had kept his whisky in, on the table beside him.
“Well, Buddy,” the marshal said, “this is bad.”
“Ah, it was my own damn fault,” the man on the bed said. “Stuart kept warning me about that frame I was using.”
“That’s correct,” the second old one said.
Still the others said nothing. They just looked steadily and quietly at the investigator until the marshal turned slightly and said, “This is Mr. Pearson. From Jackson. He’s got a warrant for the boys.”
Then the man on the bed said, “What for?”
“That draft business, Buddy,” the marshal said.
“We’re not at war now,” the man on the bed said.
“No,” the marshal said. “It’s that new law. They didn’t register.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“It’s a warrant, Buddy. Swore out.”
“That means jail.”
“It’s a warrant,” the old marshal said. Then the investigator saw that the man on the bed was watching him, puffing steadily at the pipe.
“Pour me some whisky, Jackson,” he said.
“No,” the doctor said. “He’s had too much already.”
“Pour me some whisky, Jackson,” the man on the bed said. He puffed steadily at the pipe, looking at the investigator. “You come from the Government?” he said.
“Yes,” the investigator said. “They should have registered. That’s all required of them yet. They did not—” His voice ceased, while the seven pairs of eyes contemplated him, and the man on the bed puffed steadily.
“We would have still been here,” the man on the bed said. “We wasn’t going to run.” He turned his head. The two youths were standing side by side at the foot of the bed. “Anse, Lucius,” he said.
To the investigator it sounded as if they answered as one, “Yes, father.”
“This gentleman has come all the way from Jackson to say the Government is ready for you. I reckon the quickest place to enlist will be Memphis. Go upstairs and pack.”
The investigator started, moved forward. “Wait!” he cried.
But Jackson, the eldest, had forestalled him. He said, “Wait,” also, and now they were not looking at the investigator. They were looking at the doctor.
“What about his leg?” Jackson said.
“Look at it,” the doctor said. “He almost amputated it himself. It won’t wait. And he can’t be moved now. I’ll need my nurse to help me, and some ether, provided he hasn’t had too much whisky to stand the anesthetic too. One of you can drive to town in my car. I’ll telephone—”
“Ether?” the man on the bed said. “What for? You just said yourself it’s pretty near off now. I could whet up one of Jackson’s butcher knives and finish it myself, with another drink or two. Go on. Finish it.”
“You couldn’t stand any more shock,” the doctor said. “This is whisky talking now.”
“Shucks,” the other said. “One day in France we was running through a wheat field and I saw the machine gun, coming across the wheat, and I tried to jump it like you would jump a fence rail somebody was swinging at your middle, only I never made it. And I was on the ground then, and along toward dark that begun to hurt, only about that time something went whang on the back of my helmet, like when you hit a anvil, so I never knowed nothing else until I woke up.
There was a heap of us racked up along a bank outside a field dressing station, only it took a long time for the doctor to get around to all of us, and by that time it was hurting bad. This here ain’t hurt none to speak of since I got a-holt of this johnny-jug. You go on and finish it. If it’s help you need, Stuart and Rafe will help you. . . . Pour me a drink, Jackson.”
This time the doctor raised the demijohn and examined the level of the liquor. “There’s a good quart gone,” he said. “If you’ve drunk a quart of whisky since four o’clock, I doubt if you could stand the anesthetic. Do you think you could stand it if I finished it now?”
“Yes, finish it. I’ve ruined it; I want to get shut of it.”
The doctor looked about at the others, at the still, identical faces watching him. “If I had him in town, in the hospital, with a nurse to watch him, I’d probably wait until he got over this first shock and got the whisky out of his system. But he can’t be moved now, and I can’t stop the bleeding like this, and even if I had ether or a local anesthetic—”
“Shucks,” the man on the bed said. “God never made no better local nor general comfort or anesthetic neither than what’s in this johnny-jug. And this ain’t Jackson’s leg nor Stuart’s nor Rafe’s nor Lee’s. It’s mine. I done started it; I reckon I can finish cutting it off any way I want to.”
But the doctor was still looking at Jackson. “Well, Mr. McCallum?” he said. “You’re the oldest.”
But it was Stuart who answered. “Yes,” he said. “Finish it. What do you want? Hot water, I reckon.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “Some clean sheets. Have you got a big table you can move in here?”
“The kitchen table,” the man who had met them at the door said. “Me and the boys—”
“Wait,” the man on the bed said. “The boys won’t have time to help you.” He looked at them again. “Anse, Lucius,” he said.
Again it seemed to the investigator that they answered as one, “Yes, father.”
“This gentleman yonder is beginning to look impatient. You better start: Come to think of it, you won’t need to pack. You will have uniforms in a day or two. Take
