Reivers, The - William Faulkner [5]
It continued to go fast. Doctor Peabody's office was just across the street, above Christian's drugstore; with Mr Hampton carrying John Powell's pistol and leading, Luster and another Negro man carried the girl, still screaming and bleeding like a stuck pig, up the stairs, Father following with Boon, then me and the deputy with Ludus, and as many more as could crowd onto the stairs until Mr Hampton stopped and turned and bellowed at them. Judge Ste-vens's office was just down the gallery from Doctor Pea-body's; he was standing at the top of the steps as we came up. So we—I mean Father and me and Boon and Ludus and the deputy—went in there to wait for Mr Hampton to come back from Doctor Peabody's office. It wasn't long.
"All right," Mr Hampton said. "It barely creased her. Buy her a new dress" (there wasn't anything under it) "and a bag of candy and give her father ten dollars, and that'll settle Boon with her. I ain't quite decided yet what'll settle him with me." He breathed hard at Boon a moment: a big man with hard little gray eyes, as big as Boon in fact, though not as tall. "All right," he told Boon.
"He insulted me," Boon said. "He told Son Thomas I was a narrow-asted son of a bitch."
Now Mr Hampton looked at Ludus. "All right," he said.
"I never said he was norrer-asted," Ludus said. "I said he was norror-headed."
"What?" Boon said. "That's worse," Judge Stevens said. "Of course it's worse," Boon said, cried. "Cant you see? And I aint even got any choice. Me, a white man, have got to stand here and let a damn mule-wrestling nigger either criticise my private tail, or state before five public witnesses that I aint got any sense. Cant you see? Because you cant take nothing back, not nothing. You cant even correct it because there aint nothing to correct neither one of them to." He was almost crying now, his big ugly florid walnut-tough, walnut-hard face wrung and twisted like a child's. "Even if I managed to get another pistol somewhere to shoot Son Thomas with, I'd likely miss him too." Father got up, quickly and briskly. He was the only one sitting down; even Judge Stevens was standing spraddled on the hearth before the cold fireplace with his hands under his coattails exactly like it was winter and there was a fire burning. "I must get back to work," Father said. "What does the old saw say about idle hands?" He said, not to anybody: "I want both of them, Boon and this boy, put under bond to keep the peace: say, a hundred dollars each; I will make the bond. Only, I want two mutual double-action bonds. I want two bonds, both of which will be abrogated, fall due, at the same moment that either one of them does anything that—that I—"
"That dont suit you," Judge Stevens said, "Much obliged," Father said. "—the same second that either one of them breaks the peace. I dont know if that is legal or not."
"I dont either," Judge Stevens said. "We can try. If such a bond is not legal, it ought to be."
"Much obliged," Father said. We—Father and I and Boon—went toward the door.
"I could come back