“Has a citizens’ committee come to you and asked you to come talk to me about this?”
“Well, no, but …”
“John!” someone shouted from the street. “Excellent story! You said what is on everyone’s mind! Keep up the good work, the whole town is behind you!”
“Thank’s, Ernie!” John replied, shouting his answer over the mayor’s shoulder. He turned back to Felker. “Well?” he said.
Felker started to say something, and though his jaws worked, nothing came out. Finally, and in obvious anger and frustration, he turned to leave, finding his voice just before he stepped down from the porch.
“This is going to mean trouble, John,” he said. “You mark my words, this is going to mean trouble.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Yes, Mr. Tolliver?” Denbigh asked, looking up from the book he was reading.
“Mr.—Butrum—is here to see you, sir,” Tolliver said, as always setting Butrum’s name apart to show his disdain for the man.
“Show him in, please.”
“Yes, m’lord,” Tolliver said with a respectful dip of his head.
Denbigh put a bookmark between the pages he was reading, then closed the book and set it aside. Before Tolliver returned with Butrum, Denbigh poured whiskey into a glass, and he handed it to the little man when he came in.
“Thanks,” Butrum said. He took a drink.
“What is it, Mr. Butrum?” Denbigh asked. “Why have you left your post in town?”
“I came out here ’cause that newspaper editor has done wrote another one of them articles. He put it out in somethin’ that’s called an extra. All the folks in town is talkin’ about it.”
“Well, what does he say?”
“It’s all full of highfalutin talk, so it’s kind of hard for me to understand all that much, to tell you the truth. But I figure a smart man like you can most likely read it and figure it out all right. So, that’s why I brung one of them papers with me for you to see.”
Denbigh cringed, and ground his teeth at the fractured grammar, but he said nothing, realizing that a silk purse could not be made from a sow’s ear.
“So, Mr. Bryce put out an extra, did he? And it is all about me?”
“Yes, sir. And it ain’t just about the shootin’. It goes on about the toll and the like. Like I said, it’s got a lots of folks in town talkin’.”
“Let me read it,” Denbigh said, reaching for the paper.
Butrum had the paper folded up and stuck inside his shirt. Reaching in between the buttons, he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed it to Denbigh.
Denbigh turned his nose up slightly as he took the paper from him. Then he read aloud, the first line.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” He stopped reading then, and laughed out loud. “Oh, good one, Mr. Bryce, very good. Don’t you think so, Mr. Butrum?”
“I don’t know,” Butrum said. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You’ve never heard that line before?”
“No, sir, I ain’t.”
“Well, Mr. Butrum, it is a line that is borrowed from one of your own treasonous rebels.”
“Who would that be?”
“Thomas Paine.”
Butrum shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t reckon I ever met nobody by that name,” he said. “Leastwise, not that I can recall.”
Denbigh chuckled softly, then continued. “I believe you said that all the people in town are talking about this article?”
“Yes, sir, ever’where you go, you hear folks talkin’ about it,” Butrum said.
“What are they saying?”
“Well, sir, they’re sayin’ they don’t think it’s right for you to be a’ collectin’ a toll like you’re doin’. And they are wonderin’ why no one is doin’ nothin’ about it.”
“I see.”
“But then some of ’em is worried about it and say they don’t think the newspaper fella should be writin’ articles like that.” Butrum chuckled. “They don’t want to make you mad.”
“Sensible people, I would say,” Denbigh said.
“If you ask me, Mister, uh, that is, Lord Denbigh. The fella that is causin’ all the trouble is this here newspaperman.”
