The crowd rushed up the street toward Sherburn’s house, shouting, and everything had to get out of the way or be run over. Children ran ahead of it, screaming, and women at the windows were crying, scared nearly to death.
The crowd gathered in front of Sherburn’s fence and made so much noise that you couldn’t hear yourself think. Somebody shouted, “Tear down the fence!” The fence went down, and the front of the crowd rolled in like a wave.
Just then Sherburn stepped out onto the roof of his little front porch with a gun in his hand. He stood there perfectly calm and didn’t say a word. The noise stopped, and the wave moved back.
He looked slowly across the crowd, and wherever he looked, people tried to look back at him, but they couldn’t. Then he laughed, and it wasn’t a nice laugh, and he spoke slowly and coldly:
“The idea of *you* hanging anybody! Do you think you are brave enough to hang a *man*? A man is safe among ten thousand of your kind, as long as it’s daytime and you aren’t behind him. I know you. I was born and raised in the South, and I’ve lived in the North, so I know the average man everywhere. The average man is a coward. You didn’t want to come here. But when half a man, like Buck Harkness there, shouts ‘Hang him!’, you’re afraid to say no, because people might find out what you are: cowards. There is nothing as pitiful as a mob. Now go home and crawl into a hole. And take your half a man with you!”
As he said this, he lifted his gun, ready to fire.
The crowd fell back, then broke apart and ran off in every direction, and Buck Harkness ran after them, looking pretty small. I could have stayed if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to.
I went to the circus and crawled in under the back of the tent when the guard wasn’t looking. I had my twenty-dollar gold piece, but you never know when you’ll need money, far from home among strangers. I don’t mind spending money on a circus when there’s no other way in, but there’s no use wasting it.
It was a wonderful circus. They all came riding in, two by two, a gentleman and a lady, and the ladies looked like real queens, in dresses covered with diamonds. Then they stood up on their horses and went around and around the ring, faster and faster, dancing on one foot. And the clown was the funniest man I ever saw.
Then a drunk man tried to get into the ring. He said he could ride as well as anybody. People shouted at him and laughed at him, and at last the ringmaster said he could ride if he thought he could stay on. As soon as the man was on the horse, it began to jump and kick and broke loose and ran around the ring, and the drunk man held on to its neck, with his legs flying. The whole crowd laughed until they cried, but it wasn’t funny to me. I was shaking, I was so afraid for him.
But soon he sat up, and the next minute he jumped up and stood on the running horse, as easily as if he had never been drunk in his life. Then he began to pull off his clothes and throw them away. He took off seventeen suits, and there he was, slim and handsome, in the brightest, prettiest clothes you ever saw. He rode around once more, jumped off, bowed and danced away, and everybody shouted with surprise and pleasure.
It was one of the circus’s own men! He had fooled even the ringmaster. I felt silly to be fooled like that, but I wouldn’t want to be that ringmaster, not for a thousand dollars.
That night we had our show, but only about twelve people came. They laughed all the time, which made the duke angry, and they all left before the end, except one boy who was asleep. So the duke said these Arkansas people couldn’t understand Shakespeare. What they wanted was cheap comedy, or maybe something worse.
The next morning he painted some big notices and put them up all over town. They said:
AT THE COURT HOUSE!
FOR 3 NIGHTS ONLY!
The world-famous actors
DAVID GARRICK THE YOUNGER
AND EDMUND KEAN THE ELDER
in their exciting play
THE ROYAL NONESUCH!!!
Admission 50 cents.
And at the bottom, in the biggest letters of all:
LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED.
“There,” he said. “If that line doesn’t bring them in, I don’t know Arkansas!”