And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?" me being always up to some-thing.
Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then hollers out: "Hank is dead!" and throws her apern over her head and sets right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers louder.
Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they is always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns.
She run right acrost the road to where the Alexan-derses lived. Mis' Alexander, she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis'
Rogers she hollers out before she reached the porch:
"Hank Walters is dead."
And then she went footing it up the street.
They was a black plume on her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and out of seven front yards in five minutes.
Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back and forth in the path, and she says:
"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour ago.""Danny seen it all," says Elmira.
Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and how it happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing about that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:
"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's how he cone it," I says.
"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.
"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to oncet.
But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest bawled some more.
"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis'
Alexander. I nodded my head agin and let it go at that.
"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. Inodded agin. I hadn't meant to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that, and get him scared the way you're acting.
Besides, I says to myself, "so long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's the difference whether he's in the black-smith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they had funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of a big disad-vantage from the way Elmira always says keep away from that cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em every day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told come filing into that room, one at a time, looking sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late getting there because she stopped to put on her bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with licker in him and done it himself, they was all excited, and they all crowds around and asts me how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands which sets moaning in a chair. And they all asts me questions as to what I seen him do, which if they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did.
But they egged me on to it.
Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it in the blacksmith shop?"I nodded.
"But how did he get in?" sings out another woman. "The door was locked on the outside with a padlock jest now when I come by. He couldn't of killed himself in there and locked the door on the outside."I didn't see how he could of done that myself, so I begun to bawl agin and said nothing at all.
"He must of crawled through that little side window," says another one. "It was open when Icome by, if the door WAS locked. Did you see him crawl through the little side window, Danny?"I nodded. They wasn't nothing else fur me to do.
"But YOU hain't tall enough to look through that there window," says another one to me. "How could you see into that shop, Danny?"I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; Ijest sniffled.
"They is a store box right in under that window,"says another one. "Danny must have clumb onto that store box and looked in after he seen Hank come down the road and crawl through the window.
Did you scramble onto the store box and look in, Danny?"I jest nodded agin.
"And what was it you seen him do? How did he kill himself?" they all asts to oncet.
_I_ didn't know. So I jest bellers and boo-hoos some more. Things was getting past anything Icould see the way out of.
"He might of hung himself to one of the iron rings in the jists above the forge," says another woman. "He clumb onto the forge to tie the rope to one of them rings, and he tied the other end around his neck, and then he stepped off'n the forge.
Was that how he done it, Danny?"
I nodded. And then I bellered louder than ever.
I knowed Hank was down in that there cistern, a corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time; but they kind o' got me to thinking mebby he was hang-ing out in the shop by the forge, too. And I guessed I'd better stick to the shop story, not wanting to say nothing about that cistern no sooner'n I could help it.
Pretty soon one woman says, kind o' shivery:
"I don't want to have the job of opening the door of that blacksmith shop the first one!"And they all kind o' shivered then, and looked at Elmira. They says to let some of the men open it. And Mis' Alexander, she says she'll run home and tell her husband right off.
And all the time Elmira is moaning in that chair.
One woman says Elmira orter have a cup o' tea, which she'll lay off her bunnet and go to the kitchen and make it fur her. But Elmira says no, she can't a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennerey a-hang-ing out there in the shop. But she was kind o' enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too.
And all the other women says:
