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EDITED BY
EFRAÍN AGOSTO & JACQUELINE M. HIDALGO

Latinxs, the Bible,

and Migration

THE BIBLE AND

CULTURAL
STUDIES
The Bible and Cultural Studies

Series Editors
Hal Taussig
Union Theological Seminary
New York, NY, USA

Maia Kotrosits
Religion Department
Denison University
Granville, OH, USA
The Bible and Cultural Studies series highlights the work of established
and emerging scholars working at the intersection of the fields of biblical
studies and cultural studies. It emphasizes the importance of the Bible in
the building of cultural narratives—and thus the need to intervene in
those narratives through interpretation—as well as the importance of
situating biblical texts within originating cultural contexts. It approaches
scripture not as a self-evident category, but as the product of a larger set of
cultural processes, and offers scholarship that does not simply “use” or
“borrow” from the field of cultural studies, but actively participates in its
conversations.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14449
Efraín Agosto • Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
Editors

Latinxs, the Bible,

and Migration
Editors
Efraín Agosto Jacqueline M. Hidalgo
New York Theological Seminary Williams College
New York, NY, USA Williamstown, MA, USA

The Bible and Cultural Studies

ISBN 978-3-319-96694-6    ISBN 978-3-319-96695-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018954651

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
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microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
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publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: gaiamoments / Getty Images

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Contents

1 Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx Migrations/

the Bible as Text(s) of Migration   1
Efraín Agosto and Jacqueline M. Hidalgo

2 The Bible as Homing Device Among Cubans at

Claremont’s Calvary Chapel  21
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo

3 Gendering (Im)migration in the Pentateuch’s Legal Codes:

A Reading from a Latina Perspective  43
Ahida Calderón Pilarski

4 Channeling the Biblical Exile as an Art Task for Central

American Refugee Children on the Texas–Mexico Border  67
Gregory Lee Cuéllar

5 “Out of Egypt I Called My Son”: Migration as a Male

Activity in the New Testament Gospels  89
Gilberto A. Ruiz

6 The Flight to Egypt: Toward a Protestant Mariology in

Migration 109
Nancy Elizabeth Bedford

v
vi Contents

7 Whence Migration? Babel, Pentecost, and Biblical

Imagination 133
Eric D. Barreto

8 Islands, Borders, and Migration: Reading Paul in Light

of the Crisis in Puerto Rico 149
Efraín Agosto

9 Border Crossing into the Promised Land: The

Eschatological Migration of God’s People in Revelation
2:1–3:22 171
Roberto Mata

10 Reading (Our)Selves in Migration: A Response 191

Margaret Aymer

Author Index 203

Subject Index 207
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 Notes on Contributors

Efraín Agosto is Professor of New Testament Studies at New York

Theological Seminary in New York City. Previously, he was Professor of New
Testament (1995–2011) and Academic Dean (2007–2011) at Hartford
Seminary. He is the author of Servant Leadership: Jesus and Paul, 2005 and
a Spanish-language commentary on 1–2 Corinthians, Corintios, 2008.
Margaret Aymer is Associate Professor of New Testament at Austin
Presbyterian Seminary. Previously, she taught at the Interdenominational
Theological Center in Atlanta. She is the author of James: Diaspora
Rhetorics of a Friend of God, 2014 and First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick
Douglass Reads James, 2008. She is also a co-editor of Fortress Commentary
on the Bible: The New Testament, 2014 and Islanders, Islands and the Bible:
Ruminations, 2015. In 2013, she was the Robert Jones Lecturer at Austin
Seminary, offering a discourse on the “New Testament as Migrant
Writings.”
Eric D. Barreto is an ordained Baptist minister and the Weyerhaeuser
Associate Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary.
The author of Ethnic Negotiations: The Function of Race and Ethnicity in
Acts 16, 2010, the co-author of New Proclamation Year C 2013: Easter
through Christ the King, 2013, and editor of Reading Theologically,
2014 and Thinking Theologically, 2015, he is also a regular contributor
to ONScripture.org, the Huffington Post, WorkingPreacher.org, and
EntertheBible.org.

vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, Dr. theol., was born in Comodoro Rivadavia,

Argentina. She has been Georgia Harkness Professor of Theology at
Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston) since 2003.
Previously, she taught theology at Instituto Universitario ISEDET and
Seminario Internacional Teológico Bautista (both in Buenos Aires). She
has written or edited 8 books and written over 70 book chapters and jour-
nal articles, which have appeared in five languages. Her latest book is
Galatians, A Theological Commentary, 2016. Her current project is on
Christology from Latin American and Latino/a perspectives.
Gregory Lee Cuéllar is Associate Professor of Old Testament at Austin
Presbyterian Seminary. Previously, he was Curator of Rare Books and
Manuscripts and the Colonial Mexican Imprint Collection at Cushing
Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University. Cuéllar is
author of Voices of Marginality: Exile and Return in Second Isaiah 40–55
and the Mexican Immigrant Experience, 2008, as well as numerous journal
articles and book chapters. He has two forthcoming books titled The
British Museum and the Bible: The Indexes of Subjectivity in Modern Biblical
Criticism and Borderlands Hermeneutics: Transgressive and Traumatic
Readings of Scripture. He is also working on an art-based social action
project called Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project.
Jacqueline M. Hidalgo is Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies and
Religion at Williams College. The author of Revelation in Aztlán:
Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016,
this series), her research examines the power of scriptural imaginaries, nar-
ratives, and material cultures in shaping relations of race and gender in the
American West. She also studies religion, scriptures, and culture
among Latin@s in the United States more generally.
Roberto Mata is Assistant Professor of Contextual Biblical Studies at
Santa Clara University. His research explores the intersections of colonial
power, ethnicity/race, and civic rhetoric in the Book of Revelation. In his
analysis of biblical texts, Mata not only employs critical race, postco-
lonial, and borderlands theories, but also uses the current struggles
and geopolitical situations of marginalized communities in the United
States as loci of theoretical reflection. His forthcoming article, “Self-­
Deporting From Babylon? A Latino/a Borderlands Reading of Revelation
18:4,” reads the text from the location of undocumented Mexican
communities in the United States, and their current struggle against
­
“attrition through enforcement” strategies.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix

Ahida Calderón Pilarski is Associate Professor in the Theology

Department at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Her research focuses on the intersection of gender and culture/ethnicity/
race in the interpretation of the Bible. Areas that inform her analysis
include Biblical Hermeneutics, Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Latina
Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnicity, and Race. She is the co-editor of
Bread Alone: Reading the Bible Through the Eyes of the Hungry, 2014 and
Pentateuco. Introducción al Antiguo Testamento/La Biblia Hebrea en
Perspectiva Latinoamericana, 2014.
Gilberto A. Ruiz teaches at Saint Anselm College (Manchester, NH) as
Assistant Professor of Theology. His research interests include studying the
New Testament gospels in light of first- and second-century Judaism and
life in the Roman Empire, and interpreting biblical texts through analytical
approaches that foreground the experiences and identities of modern read-
ers, especially from minoritized perspectives and Latino@ perspectives in
particular. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic
Biblical Association, and the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians of
the United States, and on the topic of migration and biblical interpretation
published an article in the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology that exam-
ines the Christology of John’s Gospel in light of questions that arise from
the immigration debate in the United States (“A Migrant Being At Work:
Movement and Migration in Johannine Christology,” 2011).
 List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Genesis, “El Centro de Detención,” marker and crayon, 2015,
9 × 12, Arte de Lágrimas. Gallery. Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas:
Refugee Artwork Project 77
Fig. 4.2 Photograph of “El Centro de Detención” being made.
Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 78
Fig. 4.3 Genesis, “Prefiero estar en mi casa,” marker and crayon, 2015,
9 × 12, Arte de Lágrimas. Gallery. Courtesy of Arte de
Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 82
Fig. 4.4 Photograph of “Prefiero estar en mi casa” being made.
Courtesy of Arte de Lágrimas: Refugee Artwork Project 82

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Reading the Bible and Latinx

Migrations/the Bible as Text(s) of Migration

Efraín Agosto and Jacqueline M. Hidalgo

This book represents several years of reflection and writing on this inexo-
rable fact: Migration remains a topic of political controversy and subaltern
urgency in the United States of 2018. We currently reside under a presi-
dent who launched his campaign by attacking Mexican migrants, and
extending that attack to encompass migrants from all Latin America and
the Middle East.1 On the day we submitted this introduction, US President
Donald J. Trump stated that the United States was deporting immigrants
who “aren’t people. These are animals.”2 We share these comments to
underscore the dehumanizing perceptions that migrants encounter and
live with daily. Although it can be easy to vilify only Trump or only the
United States, antagonism to migrants has been a global problem even as
migration—impelled by war, politics, economics, and human-caused cli-
mate change—has increased dramatically. The chapters in this volume do

E. Agosto (*)
New York Theological Seminary, New York, NY, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
J. M. Hidalgo
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 1

E. Agosto, J. M. Hidalgo (eds.), Latinxs, the Bible, and Migration,
The Bible and Cultural Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96695-3_1
2 E. AGOSTO AND J. M. HIDALGO

not strictly grapple with our contemporary migration crises; rather we

consider the Christian Bible as a space of migrant urgency.3 Fundamentally,
we read with migrant humanity, alongside migrant perspectives, and for
the humanization of migrants in broader discourse.
The focus of this collection then is not on those whose acts of domina-
tion continue to push migrants to risk their lives in the Arizona desert or
the Mediterranean Sea. Rather, this collection plays with and around the
Bible with a focus on those persons—historical and contemporary—who
have undertaken migration as well as their descendants living in a land that
is no longer quite the land of their ancestors. We have drawn together
some Latinx biblical critics who reconsider the Bible and the people who
read it through the lens of migration, exile, and diaspora with a focus on
migrants and the children of migrants.

Who Is Latinx? Why Migration?

In order to frame this collection of chapters, a brief clarification of terms
is required.
“Migration” is the broad term for what Jean-Pierre Ruiz has called
“people on the move.”4 It has been much in the news lately, along with
the term “immigration,” because of a variety of complex issues. For
example, war and strife in Syria has compelled migrations across the
­
region, migrations which have been chronicled in the news, including
with stirring visual images of thousands of refugees risking their lives
across the Mediterranean Sea and other crossings, fleeing war, and vio-
lence. As one report put it, “The Syrian war has displaced millions who are
desperately seeking an existence free from barrel bombs and chemical
weapons. Others travel thousands of miles over land and water to escape
poverty and authoritarian governments.”5 These forced migrations from
Syria are not the only tragedies, of course; the flight and plight of Rohingya
Muslims from Myanmar after military violence against them comes to
mind, along with all too many other examples of people forced to move
because of a range of injustices.6
In the United States, “immigration” across the Southwestern border
has occupied the attention of the current presidential administration in
the most harmful of ways. Most recently, an order from US Attorney
General Jeff Sessions has called for arrests of families attempting to cross
into the United States including the separation of children from their
parents. Even though border crossings have decreased in recent years, the
 INTRODUCTION: READING THE BIBLE AND LATINX MIGRATIONS… 3

anti-­immigration rhetoric of the current US president and his supporters

unduly demonizes the efforts of families from Central America in particu-
lar to escape difficult circumstances. In fact, before the actions of the
Trump administration, US policy has been to support migrant refugees
from both Syria and Central America, as a broader strategy to bring a mea-
sure of stability to these regions and in particular those affected refugees
who have “hit the road” to save their lives and those of their families.7
Indeed, even before the current Trump administration and its “build
the wall” mentality, similar proposals and other “draconian measures”
were being proposed in Congress, state houses, and local governments
across the country.8 For example, one of the failures of the pre-Trump era
Congress was to pass legislation to protect young immigrants that came
here as children, brought by their parents, who lacked proper documenta-
tion. These so-called Dreamers, the narrative about them insists, were
“American” in every sense of the term, but could be deported without
such protections. President Barack Obama enacted executive orders to
protect them, which, of course, have since been rescinded by his successor.
Still, Congress, despite various promises and attempts, has been unable to
enact legislation to permanently protect the Dreamers, and, except for
court orders, they stand in limbo.9 In short, migration and immigration
are issues of vital import and impact, especially in our contemporary politi-
cal moment in the United States. Given the complexities of political
weight that different terms carry, we have chosen to employ the terms
“migrant” and “migration” because we understand migration as a univer-
sal human activity irrespective of the definitions wielded by particular
modern nation-states or ancient regimes. The term “migrant” allows us to
think globally and in historically comparative ways, putting Puerto Rican
histories in conversation with Mexican ones, African Americans alongside
Cubans, and all of them alongside ancient communities.
This volume focuses on the import and impact of the migration of dif-
ferent Latinx populations.10 The very term “Latinx” itself is contested in
meaning and usage, coming out of a fraught history in terms of US ­politics
and naming practices, and we have let each author broadly choose their
own approach to this term.11 Whatever its fraught history, the term is gen-
erally taken to encapsulate people who trace their descent to territories
conquered by Iberia—Spain and Portugal—in the Americas during early
modernity. This term includes ethnic Mexicans who lived in Texas before
it was part of the United States as well as Brazilians. The oft-used govern-
ment term “Hispanic” includes people from Spain and the Philippines,
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4 E. AGOSTO AND J. M. HIDALGO

who are not included in the understanding of “Latinx” in this volume.

Others might argue for an even more expansive sense of Latinx (see, for
example, the critical questions Margaret Aymer raises in the conclusion to
this volume), that perhaps all descendants of the Caribbean—both the
islands of the Antilles and the continental regions that border the
Caribbean Sea—also share some of the histories in relationship to Europe
and the United States that should require the incorporation under this
shared term. Recognizing a kinship among varying migration histories
from the Caribbean, we therefore asked Margaret Aymer to respond to
the volume, but our authors have mostly retained a more focused atten-
tion on particular Latinx histories and experiences that fit with dominant
definitions of “Latin American” descent. It is the methodological conten-
tion of those who work in Latina/o/x biblical studies that attention to
particularities is more important than trying to make universal summaries
that incorporate everyone. We hope that other Latinxs, however broadly
the term is construed (indeed we hope all migrants or children of migrants),
can find a way to converse with the diverse readings here.
Partially, the scope of this volume is limited simply on account of who
has training in biblical studies. There are few Latinx scholars in the United
States, so voices even from sizable Latinx communities, such as Salvadorans,
Brazilians, and Dominicans, are absent because the structures of biblical
studies as a field have not fostered much of their membership in our guild.
Latinx communities in the United States are often members of the work-
ing class, and broader structural challenges with education impact all
working class communities. Latinxs of greater European descent and
­especially Latinxs of Cuban heritage tend to belong to better educated
and better paid middle classes, and thus class is a significant and under-
studied variable in Latinx migration narratives. Moreover, women consti-
tute a remarkably low proportion of biblical scholars, and this truth holds
among Latino/as in biblical studies. Numbers on LGBT+ biblical scholars
are not available for discussion, but they also constitute a low proportion
of Latinx biblical scholars.
The absence of many critical Latinx perspectives in this volume speaks
to another challenge around the term “Latinx.” What does it mean to
delimit around a larger, almost hemispheric, ethnic label? What about the
racial and ethnic differences internal to Latin America? Here we are not
concerned only with the quite distinct histories of, for instance, Puerto
Rico and Mexico both in this hemisphere and with the United States, we
are also concerned about the distinct experiences of, for instance, Zapotec
 INTRODUCTION: READING THE BIBLE AND LATINX MIGRATIONS… 5

and Afro-Mexicans. On the one hand, we must bear in mind the diverse
histories of migration that different Latinx communities have in the
United States, some dating back to the nineteenth century, with others
living in lands that were conquered as a consequence of US Manifest
Destiny and expansionary imperialism in the nineteenth century.12 On the
other hand, we must also bear in mind the histories of internal ethnic and
racial differences within distinctive Latinx cultures. Practically absent from
the broader biblical studies guild are Afro-Latinx and Asian-Latinx schol-
ars as well as Native Latinx scholars who identify primarily with an indig-
enous community rather than with belonging to a category of mestizaje.13
Also broadly absent is an attention to the increasing numbers of mixed
Latinxs—those who have one Latinx parent and one non-Latinx parent as
well as those whose parents are Latinxs of different ethnic backgrounds.
These complexities can make it difficult to know of whom we speak when
we speak of Latinxs. It also means that no one book or essay can do justice
to the full diversity of Latinx experiences with migration, or even to the
full diversity of one community’s (i.e., Cuban, etc.) experiences.
Bearing in mind the challenges of defining who falls under the umbrella
term “Latinx,” demographics vary and are ever-changing, but recent sta-
tistics indicate close to 50 million Latinxs present in the United States,
constituting almost 18% of the overall US population. Luis N. Rivera-­
Pagán, writing in 2014, reports that in 1975, the Latinx population stood
at 11 million, just over 5% of the US population.14 Thus, there has been a
major increase in the presence of Latinx populations in the last 40 years,
such that it is now the largest minoritized community in the United States.
By the year 2050, Latinxs could be 26–32% of the country’s population.
These numbers include so-called undocumented Latinxs, although the
numbers for those groups are difficult to ascertain, but it is estimated that
undocumented immigrants in the United States—who are not only
Latinx—may be anywhere between 11 and 12 million individuals.
As Rivera-Pagán points out, such statistics lend themselves to the ongo-
ing “xenophobia” that has long been evident in US history. While more
recent dimensions of such fear include even more restrictive policies and
police actions on the border, this country has historically exhibited the fear
that “open borders” could lead to “disease and criminality,” which has
consistently racialized immigration.15 Such attitudes, writes Rivera-Pagán,
result in the harsh rhetorics of “xenophobia and scapegoating of the
‘stranger in our midst.’”16 Thus, Rivera-Pagán calls for “xenophilia”
instead, in the form of “a biblical theology of migration.”17
6 E. AGOSTO AND J. M. HIDALGO

Yet others caution against a “one-size fits all” theology of migration.18

The migratory experience is just too varied and each story different. Thus,
“no single theology of migration can make sense of the whole range of
what people on the move experience.”19 Indeed by the end of his own call
for a theology of migration that reflects the consistent biblical picture of
love for the stranger (“xenophilia”), Rivera-Pagán himself concludes that
because “migration is an international problem, a salient dimension of
modern globalization,” communities of faith should respond with more
global perspectives that transcend one faith, one theology, or especially
one nation and its own borders. In addressing global issues and opportu-
nities of migration—people on the move—“the main concern is not and
should not be exclusively our national society, but the entire fractured
global order.”20
This volume does not purport to address the “entire fractured global
order,” but does recognize that Latinx migrants who come to the United
States, with or without authorized “papers,” do so for a complex set of
reasons that are in fact a function of global realities. These include US
imperialism and neo-colonial policies in their countries of origin that com-
pel their migration. So, for every person that migrates to the US border,
and through it, there are myriads of persons, including their family mem-
bers, who stay home. For example, the recent decisions of the Trump
administration to rescind the Temporary Protected Status for Hondurans,
Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, and Haitians, which includes tens of thousands
of individuals, impact the efforts of longer-term US economic and diplo-
matic policy to stabilize the region. As one diplomat involved in the efforts
during the Obama administration put it, “We finally had a bipartisan con-
sensus in Congress that we needed to invest in Central America and to get
at the push factors, the root causes, of immigration. We’re going to set
back our efforts.” In the case of many of the Hondurans affected by a
rescinded T.P.S., they “won’t have places to live when they return, …
there is virtually no chance that they’ll find gainful employment.” Indeed,
“sending them back will also hurt Honduras’s already struggling econ-
omy; twenty percent of the G.D.P. there comes from remittances sent by
immigrants working in this country.”21 Thus, one set of policies, or the
lack thereof, nixes the impact of another. And so it goes in the global real-
ity represented by the phenomenon of migration, in all its dimensions—
immigration, emigration, exile, and diaspora. Imperialism and colonization,
as well as the internal struggles that often develop in relationship to these
realities and histories, are root causes of migration.
 INTRODUCTION: READING THE BIBLE AND LATINX MIGRATIONS… 7

Latinx Biblical Scholars and Their Roots

and Realities

What this volume does engage most directly is the role of the Latinx bibli-
cal scholar in addressing the myriad of issues represented by the complex
dynamics of migration. Yet, there are relatively few biblical scholars of Latin
American descent in the United States and Canada, as we pointed out
above. Most of us are called upon to teach the discipline, sometimes in
traditional ways that counter our instincts (and in some cases training, espe-
cially the more recently trained scholar in biblical studies), especially if we
have to teach in theological schools in which certain expectations of biblical
training are required for aspiring religious leaders. Increasingly, however,
the dynamics of teaching biblical studies in the broader context of the
humanities and liberal arts, as well the more critical approaches to biblical
studies in theological education, afford biblical scholars who care about
these themes—of migration, imperialism, coloniality and the global, politi-
cal and economic study of religion in general and the Bible in particular—a
space in which to work. We will address the latter more specifically below.
Yet the question remains, who is addressing the issues of migration from
the perspective of the Bible, and who among them are Latinx biblical schol-
ars? In the most recent (2018) “Member Profile” of the Society of Biblical
Literature (SBL), the professional organization of Bible scholars, 206 mem-
bers self-identified as being of “Latin American descent.” Of those, only 108
are current in their membership.22 Also, it is not necessarily clear who this
number represents: those US born members who identify as Latin American
in ancestry, or Latin Americans born in South America, Central America, or
the Caribbean, but who now live and work in the United States, or interna-
tional members of SBL who reside in Latin America. Certainly, if we included
the latter group, the numbers would be much higher. However understood,
Latinx biblical scholars, given a total SBL membership of 8465, represent
3.44% of all members and 2.89% of current members. Since only 22% of all
SBL members are female, we can assume the numbers of Latinas are simi-
larly small, although the statistics of those of “Latin American descent” are
not broken down by gender.
Obviously, these are considerably small numbers, radically dispropor-
tionate to their portion of the US population and lower even than Latinx
academic proportions in most other fields in the humanities. It would be
interesting to ascertain how many see their biblical scholarship as needing
to be in dialogue with the critical issues of the current day, both nationally
8 E. AGOSTO AND J. M. HIDALGO

and globally, rather than a more historicist approach that much of biblical
scholarship was known for until the last several decades.23 Certainly, the
scholars represented in this volume could all be considered Latinxs (perhaps
not in the case of our respondent, who was born in Barbados, and raised in
the United States, but whose ancestry does hail from a Caribbean with
shared experiences under European and US imperialism), all living and
working in the United States. Two of our authors were born in Latin
America (Peru, Argentina) and came to the United States as adults. The rest
were either born in the United States or were born in Latin America but
grew up in the United States, with roots in Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, and
Puerto Rico. Their scholarship focuses on biblical texts in dialogue with the
concerns and needs of the world today, including the Latinx community.
Thus, we turn in this introduction to the broader concerns of scholarship in
religion and biblical studies in light of our theme of migration.

Religion as a Migrant Tradition

Most contemporary scholars and students of religion assume that religion
cannot be neatly disentangled from the embodied and material experiences
of daily life; as theologian Orlando Espín has argued about Christianity in
particular, religion is “a way of living, of being human” and not just some
set of pristine textual teachings or doctrines that exist in a realm com-
pletely isolated beyond this world.24 In this regard, religion cannot be sim-
ply segregated from other human social spheres and activities: labor, class,
gender, race (in our case, as Latinxs vis-à-vis dominant US culture but also
within and in relationship to Latin American racial h ­ ierarchies which are
related to but distinct from US black-white racial binaries and colorist
hierarchies). Yet religion’s capacity to speak to and/or from something
beyond this world has often been crucial to how people engage with the
world, especially in the contexts of migration in the United States.
Scholars of religion in general and of Latinx religions in particular have
considered how religions are often deeply intertwined with, shaping of,
and shaped by human migrations. Not all religions migrate in the same
ways with their practitioners, and some religious traditions are more
mobile than others. Nevertheless, religions often provide frameworks that
migrants turn to in making sense of, justifying, surviving, and thriving
amid migration. In this way, we can think of religions as among those
human social structures that are used to interpret migration, that change
with the humans who migrate, and that, because of religious traditions’
 INTRODUCTION: READING THE BIBLE AND LATINX MIGRATIONS… 9

own internal power dynamics, also incorporate structures that can pro-
duce the borders people cross when migrating.
The study of religion in the United States has particularly underscored
the importance of place.25 Because the United States is a settler colonial
state, the various peoples who have migrated here or who were forcibly
brought to these shores have had to grapple with either making home or
surviving in this new land. Meanwhile Native populations were forced to
transform their religious relationships with the landscape, and settler colo-
nists forced many Native populations to migrate to regions of this conti-
nent far from their ancestral homelands.26 Even as dominant Euro-diasporic
settler colonists sacralized their homemaking processes in this hemisphere,
minoritized communities in particular have turned to religion as they
struggled to make home. Religious traditions have often supplied crucial
practices, material cultures, and mythic traditions for this space making. As
scholar of religion Thomas A. Tweed, for instance, has shown in his study
of Cuban migrant engagements with la Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre,
religious symbols and material cultures drawn from the homeland of Cuba
become critical to the politics of placemaking in another nation only
90 miles away.27
Scholars of Latinx religions have shown how religious ideas and frame-
works can help Latinxs to make place especially when they can struggle to
feel at home in this world. Edwin David Aponte observes how Latinxs
engage with diverse traditions, including many traditions beyond the
Christian fold as well as traditions that blend with Christianity, in ways that
can often create safe and sacred spaces outside of institutional churches,
mosques, and synagogues. He shares the story of a Latina who found her
own private space in a basement where “she would cry out to God, pray,
spit out her frustrations and anger, asking for help, wisdom, and strength
to persevere” in the midst of daily struggles.28 As Desirée A. Martín’s work
on non-traditional saints in the borderlands has shown, migrants often
seek spaces and stories that fall beyond institutional confines because they
need a form of sanctity that reflects (as a mirror of and a mirror upon) the
ambiguities of their daily lives.29 Further, Aponte depicts how Latinxs
make sacred spaces through the stories they tell about those places, around
those places, and in those places, something that is crucial for understand-
ing the role of the Bible in migration as we discuss below.30
Although religion can fulfill a range of interpretive roles for migrant
individuals and communities, religion can provide a utopian framework
for homemaking. Several scholars have observed how often migrants turn
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 “But, damn it,” Kite insisted, “you ought to be willing to help me out. I
helped you out.”
“It would hurt me, Kite, to know I sanctioned nonenforcement.”
“Nobody would know.”
“They’d find out. Things like that do get out, you know, Kite.”
The little man tugged at his side whiskers feverishly. “Amos,” he
pleaded, “isn’t there anything you can do for me? This is bad business. I
can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. Isn’t there anything you can do?”
Amos considered, then he sighed, and said good-naturedly: “Kite, you’re
an awful pest, stirring me up when I’m comfortable.”
“You’ve got to do something.”
“We-ell, I’ll tell you. I’ll take you to see Wint. You can put it up to him.
That’s the best.”
“You’ll back me up?”
Amos shook his head. “You and him can have it out. I’ll not yell for
either of you.”
Kite protested: “A lot of good that will do.”
Amos shrugged his big shoulders. “Well....” Kite got up hurriedly.
“All right,” he agreed, before Amos could withdraw his offer. “All right,
come on.”
Amos looked ruefully at his feet, and wiggled his toes in his comfortable
slippers. “I declare, Kite, I hate to put on shoes.”
“Damn it, man, it’s your own offer,” Kite protested; and Amos admitted
it, and groaned:
“All right, I’ll come.”

Wint was in a cheerful humor, that morning. He had been depressed by

his father’s attitude, disappointed that the elder Chase chose to oppose him.
But at the same time, the opposition exhilarated him. After his father left the
house, he went to see Joan for an hour; and without over-applauding the
step he had taken, she spoke of the trouble and the opposition he would
face, and the prospect pleased Wint. He took a cheerful delight in opposing
people. He was never so good-natured as when he was fighting.
 So Amos and Kite found Wint amiably glad to see them both. Amos sat
on the broad window ledge, his back to the light, his face somewhat
shadowed. Wint made Kite sit down near his desk; he himself tilted his
chair back against one of the leaves of the desk, and put his feet on an open
drawer, and asked what their errand was.
“Kite wanted to see you,” said Amos. “Asked me to come along.”
“No need of that, Kite.” Wint said good-naturedly. “I don’t keep an
office boy. Anybody can see me any time.”
Kite shifted uneasily in his seat, not quite sure what he meant to say.
Amos prompted him from the window. “Kite don’t think you ought to shut
down on him,” he said.
Wint looked surprised. “Shut down on him? What’s the idea, Kite?”
Kite said, in a flustered way: “It’s not so personal as that. You know, I’m
by conviction a believer in the sale of liquor. I believe the people of
Hardiston agree with me. I’m sorry to hear you’ve taken steps to stop the
sale.”
“Why, no,” said Wint cheerfully, “the town voted against it. I had
nothing to do with that. I’m just enforcing the law.”
Kite smiled weakly. “There are laws, and laws,” he said. “Some laws are
not meant to be enforced. The people of Hardiston objected to the open
saloon; they did not object to the unobtrusive and inoffensive sale.”
“Oh!” said Wint.
“You didn’t object to it yourself,” Kite reminded him. “Isn’t that so?”
He expected Wint to be confused; but Wint only laughed. “I should say I
didn’t,” he admitted. “I liked it as well as any one. Same time, this isn’t a
question of liking; it’s a question of the law.” He leaned forward with a
certain jeering earnestness in his voice. “Why, Mr. Kite, if I didn’t enforce
the law, Hardiston people could remove me for misfeasance in office, or
something like that.”
Kite said: “Bosh!” impatiently. And Wint asked him suddenly:
“What’s your interest in this?”
“That of a citizen.”
“Oh, I know you don’t sell it yourself,” said Wint, meaning just the
contrary. “But, Mr. Kite, if you have any friends in the business, tell them to
get out of it. It’s dead, in Hardiston. Dead and gone.”
 Kite said weakly: “Amos and I came here to try and make you change
your mind about that.”
Wint looked at Amos. “That so?” he asked. “You think I ought to back
down?”
“ ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’ ” said Amos cheerfully. “That’s me.”
“Not taking sides?”
“No.”
Kite explained: “Amos and I worked together to elect you, you know.”
Wint eyed him blandly. “Well, I’m much obliged. But I don’t see what
that has to do—”
“You owe us some gratitude.”
“I’m grateful.”
“There’s a moral obligation.”
Wint grinned. “Kite, I’m afraid you’re an Indian giver. I’m afraid you
elected me, thinking you could use me. But I didn’t ask to be elected, so I
don’t see—”
Hopelessness was settling down on V. R. Kite; hopelessness, and the
desperate energy of a cornered rat. There was no shame in him, and no
scruple. Also, there was very little wisdom in the buzzard-like man. He was
to prove this before their eyes.
“Wint,” he said, “Amos and I are practical men. You’re practical, too,
aren’t you? There’s no place for dreams in this world, Wint. It’s a hard
world. You understand that.”
“You find it a hard world? Why, Kite, I think the world is a pretty good
sort of a place. That’s the way it strikes me.”
“I—”
“Maybe it’s your own fault you find it hard.”
Kite brushed the suggestion away. He was obsessed with a new idea, a
last hope. He said: “Wint, if you drop this, Amos and I can do a lot for
you.”
“You and Amos?” Wint looked at Amos again. “How about it,
Congressman?”
“ ‘Go it, wife; go it, b’ar,’ ” Amos repeated imperturbably.
 “What I mean,” said Kite, “is that we can send you to the legislature, or
anything.”
“Why, I’m not looking for anything,” said Wint mildly.
Kite snapped: “Every man has his price.” And when he met Wint’s level
eyes, and knew he was committed, he went on hurriedly: “I know that. If
politics isn’t yours, something else is. Speak out, man. What do you—”
Wint asked curiously, and without anger: “What’s the idea, Kite?”
“I could give you a start in business. Help you.... I’m a business man,
you understand. Anything....”
Wint laughed. “You’re too vague.”
Kite looked at Amos. He looked at him so steadily that Amos got down
from the window seat, and whistled softly under his breath, and walked out
of the office into the council chamber above the fire-engine house. He shut
the door behind him. Kite leaned toward Wint. “Five hundred?” he asked
huskily.
Wint chuckled. “I say,” he exclaimed, “I had no idea there was any
money in this job.”
“A thousand....”
“I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like to be bribed.”
“A thousand, Wint? For God’s sake....”
Wint shook his head, still perfectly good-humored. “There’s no question
about it, Kite,” he said. “You surely are an old buzzard. Get out of my nest,
you evil bird!”
Kite protested: “Wint, listen to—”
“Damn you!” said Wint, still without heat, “do you want me to throw
you out the window?”
Kite got up. Wint had not even taken his feet down from their perch.
Kite said: “You’ll change your—”
Wint’s feet banged the floor; and Kite stopped, and he went swiftly to
the door. In the doorway, he turned and looked back, his dry old face
working. He seemed to want to speak. But without a word, he turned and
went away.
Amos strolled back in. Wint looked up at him and chuckled. But Amos
looked serious.
 “Went away all rumpled up, didn’t he?” Wint commented. “But he didn’t
have a word to say.”
Amos nodded. “Not a word to say,” he agreed. “But, Wint,” he added,
“knowing Kite like I do, I wish he had.”
“Wish he had had a word?”
“I never was much afraid of a barking dog,” said the Congressman.

CHAPTER VII

ANOTHER WORD AS TO HETTY

I F Wint had expected immediate conflict, he was to be disappointed. For

after Kite left his office that day, nothing happened; neither that day, nor
the next, nor the next. Amos told Wint that Kite would strike, in his own
time, and strike below the belt. Wint laughed and said he was ready to fight,
foul or fair. But—neither foul blow nor fair was struck. Radabaugh reported
that his orders had been obeyed. Lutcher had left town, temporarily, it was
said. His rooms off the alley were locked, and he had gone so far as to give
Radabaugh a key, so that the marshal might make sure, now and then, that
Lutcher’s store of drinkables was not disturbed. One shipment did come in
for Mrs. Moody. It was labeled “Canned Goods”; but Jim Radabaugh made
it his business to inspect all sorts of goods consigned to Mrs. Moody, and he
found this particular box contained goods in bottles instead of cans. He
emptied the bottles into the creek, across the railroad tracks from the
station, and told Mrs. Moody about it. She threw a stick of firewood at him,
then wept with rage because he dodged it successfully.
For the rest, Hardiston was quiet. The lunch-cart man whom Radabaugh
had suspected took his cart and left town. Kite met Wint on the street and
greeted him as pleasantly as usual. Jack Routt cultivated him, and joked
him about his ideas of morality. One night, at Routt’s home, he offered Wint
a drink. Wint looked thoughtfully through the smoke of his pipe as though
he had not heard. When Routt repeated the offer, Wint declined politely.
The business of being Mayor occupied very little of Wint’s time. Early in
June, Foster, the city solicitor, brought a stranger to see Wint about a street
carnival which wanted to come to Hardiston the last week in June. Wint
agreed to grant the permits necessary.
 “You understand,” he told the man, “that this is a dry town.”
The stranger winked, and said he understood. Wint shook his head
gravely. “I’m afraid you don’t understand,” he said. “This is a dry town.
There’s no booze sold here. Last summer, I remember, there was some
selling in connection with your carnival, here. If you try that this time, I’ll
have to close you up.”
The man looked surprised and disgusted. “What is this, a Sunday
school?” he demanded.
“No,” said Wint. “Just a dry town.”
“How about the games?”
Wint smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t make them too raw. I’ve no
objection to ‘The cane you ring, that cane you get.’ ”
“Hell!” said the man. “We won’t make chicken feed.”
“You don’t have to come.”
But the stranger said they would come, all right. After he had gone, Wint
told Foster the carnival would bear watching. Foster agreed, but said the
merchants wanted it. “Brings the farmers to town every day, instead of just
Saturday, you know.”
“I know,” said Wint. “Well, let them come.”
After a week of quiet, Wint decided that Kite and his allies had put the
lid on. “But they’re just waiting,” Amos warned him. “Waiting till they get
a toe hold on you, somehow. Watch your step, Wint.”
Wint said he was watching. “I wish they’d start something,” he said.
“Hot weather’s dull, with no excitement.”
“There’ll be enough excitement,” Amos assured him.
Routt walked home with Wint one afternoon, talking over a proposition
that he had brought up a day or two before. Since Wint was going to be a
lawyer, he said, they ought to go in together. Wint was already so well
advanced in his reading that Routt thought in another year or eighteen
months he could take the examinations. “There’s a big practice waiting for
the right people down here,” he told Wint enthusiastically. “Dick Hoover
and I are going to get together when his father dies. The old man is pretty
feeble. You come in with us. We’ll do things, Wint.”
Wint was pleased and somewhat flattered by the suggestion, and thought
well of Routt for it. But he only said, good-naturedly, that it was still a long
way off, and that there would be times enough to talk about the matter when
he was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, Routt dwelt on it insistently, so
insistently that instead of turning aside toward his own home at the usual
place, he came on toward Wint’s father’s house, still talking. It did not
occur to Wint that there was any purpose in Routt’s thus accompanying
him. He had heard that Routt and Kite had been seen together, and asked
Jack about it. Routt explained that he had to keep in touch with all sorts. A
mixture of business and politics, he said, and Wint was satisfied.
When they came in sight of the house, it was still an hour before supper
time; and Hetty Morfee was sweeping down the front steps and the walk to
the gate. They saw her while they were still half a block away, and Routt
said casually:
“Hetty still working for your mother, I see.”
Wint nodded. “Yes; I guess she’s pretty good.”
Routt agreed. “If she’d only keep straight. But....”
“I don’t think she’s that kind,” said Wint.
“I hope not,” Routt assented. “Hope she doesn’t—get into trouble. If she
ever did, in this town....”
Wint said nothing; and Routt added: “She’d need a friend, all right.” And
again: “She’d need some one to take her part. But he’d be in Dutch,
whoever he was.”
He looked at Wint sidewise. They were near the gate now, and Wint said:
“Come in and have supper.”
Routt shook his head. “Not to-night.”
Hetty looked up, at their approach, and Wint called: “Hello, Hetty.”
She said: “Hello, Wint.” Routt repeated Wint’s greeting, and the girl
looked at him with curiously steady eyes, and said:
“Hello, Jack.”
Wint thought, vaguely, that there was some repressed feeling in her tone;
but he forgot the matter in bidding Routt good-by, and went inside, leaving
Hetty at her task, while Routt went back by the way they had come. Hetty
watched him go. He did not look toward her, did not turn his head. She
watched him out of sight.
 Jack Routt took Agnes Caretall to the moving pictures that night. Wint
saw them there. He was with Joan. Afterward, Routt and Agnes walked
home together.
Routt did most of the talking, on that homeward walk. Now and then
Agnes seemed to protest, weakly, at something he was urging her to do.
One near enough might have heard him speak of Wint. But there was no
one near.
When they reached her home, there was a light in the sitting-room
window. That meant Amos was there; and Routt said he would not go in.
“But you’ll remember, won’t you, Agnes,” he asked, “if you want to do
something for me?”
She said softly: “I do want to do anything for you.”
He laughed at her gently. “How about him?”
“I hate him,” she said, with a sudden intensity that was not pretty to see.
“I hate him. Hate him, I say.”
“What’s he ever done to you?” Routt teased; and she said:
“Nothing,” as though that one word were an accusation.
Routt put his arm around her; and she clung to him with a swift, terrified
sort of passion, as though afraid to let him go. It seemed to embarrass him;
he freed himself a little roughly.
He left her standing there when he hurried away.

CHAPTER VIII

AGNES TAKES A HAND

I F Jack Routt had meant to force Hetty into Wint’s thoughts, he had
succeeded. Wint was not conscious of this when he left Jack at his gate;
he was thinking of other things. But during supper, an hour later, when
Hetty came into the dining room, Wint remembered what Jack had said; and
he looked at the girl with a keen scrutiny. He studied her, without seeming
to do so.
He was surprised to discover in how many ways Hetty had changed,
since she came to work for his mother. The changes were slight, they had
been gradual. But they were appallingly obvious, under Wint’s cool
appraisal now. He tallied them in his thoughts. Her laughter had been gayly
and merrily defiant; it was sullen, now, and mirthless. Her eyes had
twinkled with a pleasant impudence; they were overcast, these days, with a
troubling shadow. There was a shadow, too, upon the clear, milky skin of
her cheeks; it was a blemish that could neither be analyzed nor defined. Yet
it was there.
Hetty had slackened, too. Her hair was no longer so smoothly brushed,
so crisply drawn back above her ears. It was, at times, untidy. Her waists
were no longer so immaculate; her aprons needed pressing, needed soap
and water, too, at times. She had been fresh and clean and good to look
upon; she was, in these days, indefinably soiled.
After supper that night, Wint went out into the kitchen where Hetty was
washing dishes. He went on the pretext of getting a drink of water. There
had been a time, a few months ago, when Hetty would have turned to greet
him laughingly, and she would have drawn a glass of water and given it to
him. But she did neither of those things now. Instead, she moved aside
without looking at him, while he held the glass under the faucet; and when
he stepped back to drink, she went on with her work, shoulders bent, eyes
down.
Wint finished the glass of water, and put the glass back in its place. Then
he hesitated, started to go, came back. At last he asked pleasantly: “Well,
Hetty, how are things going?”
She looked at him sideways, with a swift, furtive glance. And she
laughed in the mirthless way that was becoming habitual. “Oh, great,” she
said, and her tone was ironical.
“What’s the matter?” Wint asked. “Anything wrong?”
“Of course not. Don’t be a kid. Can’t I have a grouch if I want to?”
“Sure,” he agreed amiably. “I have ’em, myself. Anything I can do to
bring you out of your grouch?”
“No.”
“If there is,” he said, so seriously she knew he meant his offer. “If there
is, let me know. Maybe I can help.”
“I’m not asking help,” she told him sullenly.
“Is there anything definite? Anything wrong?”
 She said, with a hot flash of her dark eyes in his direction: “I told you
no, didn’t I? What do you have to butt in for?”
Wint considered that, and he filled his pipe and lighted it; and at last he
turned to the door. From the doorway he called to her: “If anything turns up,
Hetty, count on me.”
She nodded, without speaking; and he left her. He was more troubled
than he would have cared to admit; and he was convinced, in spite of what
Hetty had said, that there was something wrong.
The third or fourth day after, Hardiston meanwhile moving along the
even tenor of its way, Wint decided, after supper at home, that he wanted to
see Amos. He telephoned the Congressman’s home, and Agnes answered.
He asked if Amos was at home.
“He went uptown for the mail,” Agnes told him. “But he said he’d be
right back. He’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Tell him I’m coming down, will you?” Wint suggested, and Agnes
promised to do so. Wint took his hat and started for Amos’s home. He
thought of going through town on the chance of picking Amos up at the
Post Office; but the mail had been in for an hour, and he decided Amos
would have reached his home before he got there, so he went on. Wint and
Amos lived on the same street, but at different ends of the town. The better
part of a mile lay between the two houses. The stores and business houses
were the third point of a triangle of which the Chase home and Amos’s
formed the other angles.
The night was warm and moonlit; a night in June. The street along which
Wint’s route lay was shaded on either side by spreading trees, and lined
with the attractive, comfortable homes of Hardiston folks who knew what
homes should be. Wint met a few people: A young fellow with a flower in
his buttonhole, in a great deal of a hurry; a boy and a girl with linked arms;
a man, a woman here and there. At one corner, in the circle of radiance from
a sputtering electric light, a dozen boys were playing “Throw the Stick.”
Wint heard their cries while he was still a block or two away; he saw their
shadowy figures scurrying in the dust, or crouching behind bushes and
houses in the adjoining yards. As he passed the light, a woman came to the
door of one of the houses and called shrilly:
“Oh-h-h, Willie-e-e-e-e!”
 One of the boys answered, in reluctant and protesting tones; and the
woman called:
“Bedti-i-ime.” Wint heard the boy’s querulous complaint; heard his
fellows jeer at him under their breath, so that his mother might not hear. The
youngsters trained laggingly homeward; and the woman at the door, as Wint
passed, said implacably to her son:
“You go around to the pump and wash your feet before you come in the
house, Willie.”
The boy went, still complaining. And Wint grinned as he passed by. His
own days of playing, barefoot, under the corner lights were still so short a
time behind him that he could sympathize with Willie. Is there any sharper
humiliation than to be forced to come home to bed while the other boys are
still abroad? Is there any keener discomfort than to take your two dusty feet,
with the bruises and the cuts and the scratches all crudely cauterized with
grime, and stick them under a stream of cold water, and scrub them till they
are raw, and wipe the damp dirt off on a towel?... Wint was half minded to
turn back and join that game of “Throw the Stick.” The bewildering
moonlight, the warm air of the night had somewhat turned his head. It
required an effort of will to keep on his way.
Agnes opened the door for him when he came to Caretall’s home.
“Dad’ll be here in a minute or two,” she said. “Come right in.”
Wint hesitated. “Oh, isn’t he home yet?”
“No, but he will be.” She laughed at him, in a pretty, inviting way she
had. “I won’t bite, you know.”
“I guess not,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But it’s a shame to go in the
house, a night like this.”
She said: “Wait till I get a scarf. Sit down. The hammock, or the chairs.
I’ll be right out.”
So Wint sat down, where the moonlight struck through the vines about
the porch and mottled the floor with silver. Agnes came out with something
indescribably flimsy about her fair head; and Wint laughed and said: “I
never could make out why girls think a thing like that keeps them warm.”
“Oh, but it does,” she insisted. “You’ve no idea how much warmth there
is in it.”
 He shook his head, laughing at her. “That wouldn’t keep a butterfly
warm on the Sahara Desert.”
She protested: “Now you just see....” And she moved lightly around
behind him and wrapped the film of silken stuff about his head. “There,”
she said, and looked at him, and laughed gayly. “You’re the funniest-
looking thing.”
Wint unwound the scarf gingerly. “It feels like cobwebs,” he said. “I
don’t see how you can wear it. Sticky stuff.”
“Men are always afraid of things like cobwebs. Always afraid of little
things.”
Wint chuckled. “What’s this? New philosophy of life?”
“Can’t I say anything serious?”
“Why, sure. I don’t know but what you’re right, too.”
He had taken one of the chairs. She sat down in the hammock. “Come sit
here with me,” she invited. “That chair’s not comfortable.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
She stamped her foot. “I should think you’d do what I say when you
come to see me.”
“Matter of fact, you know, I came to see your father.”
“Well, you’re staying to see me. If you don’t sit in the hammock, I’m
going in the house and leave you.”
Wint held up his hands in mock consternation. “Heaven forbid.” He sat
down beside her, as uncomfortable as a man must always be in a hammock;
and she leaned away from him, half reclining, enjoying his discomfort. He
could see her laughing at him in the moonlight. She pointed one forefinger
at him, stroked it with the other as one strops a razor.
“ ’Fraid to sit in the hammock with a girl,” she taunted.
She was very pretty and provoking in the silver light; and Wint
understood that he could kiss her if he chose. He had kissed Agnes before
this. “Wink” and “Post Office” and kindred games were popular when he
and Agnes were in high school together. But—he had no notion of kissing
Agnes, moonlight or no moonlight. He had come to see Amos. Amos’s
daughter was another matter.
 “When is Amos coming home?” he asked. “Has he called up? Maybe I’d
better walk uptown.”
“He called and said he was starting,” she assured him. “You stay right
here. He’ll be here, unless he gets to talking some of your old politics. I
suppose that’s what you came to see him for.”
“Oh, I just happened down this way....”
She sat up straight. “Good gracious. You act as though it were a secret.
Tell me, this minute.”
“Why, as a matter of fact,” said Wint good-naturedly, “I want to talk to
him about a sewer the city’s going to put in through some land he owns. I
guess you’re not interested in sewers.”
She grimaced, and said she should say not. “I thought maybe it was
something about the bootleggers,” she said. “Everybody’s talking about
them. What are you going to do to them?”
Wint laughed. “That’s like the instructions for destroying potato bugs,”
he said. “First, catch your potato bug.”
“You mean you haven’t caught any?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you trying to?”
“Why, we’ve got our eyes open.”
“I love to hear about criminals and everything,” she said. “What will you
do to them when you get them? Send them to jail?”
“Well, I’ll do that, if I can’t do anything worse.”
She asked: “You’re really going to—you really mean to get after them?”
He nodded, and she laughed. He asked:
“What’s the joke?”
“Oh, it seems funny for you to be so moral about whisky and things.”
He grinned. “It is funny, isn’t it?”
“I should think they’d just laugh at you.”
“Well, maybe they do.”
“I suppose you’re just going to give them a lesson, and then—sort of let
things go, aren’t you?”
Wint shook his head. “No, I sha’n’t let things go. Not as long as I’m—in
charge.”
 “But lots of people will be awfully mad at you. Why, even your father
buys whisky and things, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, I suppose so. But he doesn’t sell them.”
“Well, some one’s got to sell them to him.”
“They’ll not sell in Hardiston,” said Wint. He was a little tired of this.
“Looks to me as though Amos has stopped to talk politics, after all. Did you
tell him I was coming?”
“Oh, yes,” she assured him. “He’ll be right home.” She got up abruptly.
“There’s some lemonade in the dining room,” she said. “Would you like
some?”
“Every time,” he said. “It’s warm enough to make it taste pretty fine, to-
night.”
She came out with a tall pitcher and two glasses, and filled his glass and
her own. They lifted the glasses together, and Wint touched his to his lips.
Then he took it down, and looked at it, and said:
“Hello!”
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“There’s a stick in this, isn’t there?”
“Yes. I always put a little in. Peach brandy. I love it.”
“Peach brandy, eh?”
“Yes. Don’t you like it?”
“Well, I’ve been letting it alone lately I guess I’ll not.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Wint,” she protested, and stamped her foot at him. “I
guess a little brandy won’t hurt you!”
“No, probably not,” Wint agreed. “But I’m on the wagon, you see.”
“You make me feel as though I’d done something wrong to offer it to
you.”
“Why, no. Only, I....”
They were so interested that neither of them had heard Amos, and
neither of them had seen him stop by the gate for a moment, listening to
what they said. But when the gate opened, Agnes saw him, and the sight
silenced her. Amos came heavily toward the house, and Agnes called to
him:
“Wint’s here, dad.”
 Amos said: “Oh! Hello, Wint!”
Wint said “Good evening.” Amos was up on the porch by this time, and
seemed to discover the lemonade.
“Hello, there,” he exclaimed. “That looks pretty good. I’m hot. Pour me
a glass, Agnes.”
She hesitated; and Wint said: “Take mine.”
“What’s the matter with it?” Amos asked good-naturedly. “Poisoned?”
He lifted the glass to his nose. “Oh, brandy, eh? Well, got anything against
that?”
“Oh, I’m on the wagon, myself, that’s all.”
Amos nodded. “Well, I never touch it. Not lately. Take it away, Agnes.”
His voice was gentle enough; but Wint thought the girl seemed very
white and frightened as she faced her father. She took pitcher and glasses
and went swiftly into the house. Amos turned to Wint, and sat down, and
asked cheerfully:
“Well, young fellow, what’s on your mind?”

When their business was done, and Wint had gone, Amos sat quietly
upon the porch for a while. Then, without moving from his chair, he turned
his head and called toward the open door:
“Agnes!”
She answered, from inside. He said: “Come here.” And she appeared in
the doorway. He bade her come out and sit down. She chose the hammock,
lay back indolently.
Amos filled his pipe with slow care and lighted it. His head was on one
side, his eyes squinted thoughtfully. If there had been more light, Agnes
could have seen that he was sorely troubled. But she could not see. So she
thought him merely angry; and grew angry herself at the thought.
He asked at last: “You offered Wint booze?”
“Just some lemonade,” she said stiffly.
“Booze in it,” he reminded her. “Don’t you do that any more, Agnes.”
“I guess a little brandy won’t hurt Wint Chase,” she told him.
“Don’t you do it any more,” he repeated, finality in his tones. She said
nothing; and after a little he asked, looking toward her wistfully in the
shadows of the porch: “What did you do it for, Agnes? What did you do it
for, anyway?”
She shrugged impatiently. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“What did you do it for?” he insisted. There was an implacable strength
in Amos; she knew she could not escape answering. Nevertheless, she
evaded again.
“Oh, no reason.”
“What did you do it for?” he asked, mildly, for the third time; and Agnes
stamped to her feet. When she answered, her voice was harsh and hard and
indescribably bitter.
“Because I wanted to get him drunk,” she said. “He’s so funny when he’s
that way. That’s why.”
She stared down at him defiantly; and Amos saw hard lines form about
her mouth. Before he could speak, she was gone indoors.
Amos sat there for a long while, after that, thinking.... His thoughts ran
back; he remembered Agnes as a baby, as a schoolgirl. She was a young
woman, now.
He thought to himself, a curiously helpless feeling oppressing him: “I
wish her mother hadn’t’ve died.”
 CHAPTER IX

A WORD FROM JOAN

W INT found himself unable to put Hetty out of his mind, next day. He
had overslept, was late for breakfast, and ate it alone with Hetty
serving him. When she came into the dining room, he said:
“Good morning.”
Hetty nodded, without answering. And he asked cheerfully: “Well, how’s
the world this morning?”
She said the world was all right; and she went out into the kitchen again
before he could ask her anything more. Wint, over his toast and coffee,
wondered. He was beginning to have some suspicion as to what was wrong
with Hetty. But—he could not believe it. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
A certain burden of work shut down on him that day and the next, so that
he forgot her in his affairs. He saw her every day, of course; but they were
never alone together. His mother was always about. And there were other
matters on Wint’s mind. He was glad to be able to forget her. Wint, like
most men, was willing to forget a perplexity if forgetting were possible.
And Hetty kept out of his way, and seemed to resent his interest.
He met Agnes on the street one morning, and she stopped him and talked
with him. She was very gay and vivacious about it, touching his arm in a
friendly way now and then to emphasize some meaningless word. Her hand
was on his arm thus when he saw Joan coming, a little way off. He did not
know that Agnes had seen her some time before, without seeming to do so.
Agnes discovered Joan now with a start of surprise, and she took her hand
off Wint’s arm in a quick, furtive way, as though she did not want Joan to
see. Yet Joan must have seen. Wint was uncomfortably conscious that he
had been put in an awkward light; but he supposed the whole thing was
chance. Nothing more.
Agnes exclaimed: “Why, Joan, we didn’t see you coming.” Her words
conveyed, subtly enough, the impression that if they had seen Joan coming,
matters would have been different; and Wint scowled, and looked at Joan,
and wondered if she was going to be so foolish as to mind. Then Agnes
turned to him and said:
“Run along, Wint, I’ve something to say to Joan.” And he looked at
Joan, and thought there was pique in her eyes; and he went away in such a
mood of sullen resentment as had not possessed him for months. It stayed
with him all that day: he reverted into the prototype of the old, sulky,
stubborn Wint who had made all the trouble.
Agnes and Joan walked uptown together, and Agnes chattered gayly
enough. Agnes had always a ready tongue, while Joan was of a more silent
habit. Agnes said Wint had come down to see her, a few days before.
“That is, of course,” she explained, “he pretended he came to see dad.
But he telephoned, and I told him dad wasn’t at home, but he came anyway.
We sat on the porch and drank lemonade. That night the moon was full.
Wasn’t it the most beautiful night, Joan? I think Wint’s a peach. I always
did. I never could see why you and he quarreled. Seems to me you were
awfully foolish. I’ll never have a fuss with him, I can tell you.”
There was too much sincerity in Joan for this sort of thing; she was
almost helpless in Agnes’s hands. That is, she did not know how to counter
the other girl’s shafts. She did say: “Wint and I haven’t really quarreled.
We’re very good friends.”
Agnes nodded wisely, and said: “Oh, I know.” She looked up at Joan.
“Was it about that Hetty Morfee, Joan? I know it’s none of my business, but
I can’t help wondering. I shouldn’t think you’d mind that. Men are that way.
I know it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. Not if—Well, I sha’n’t
quarrel with Wint over Hetty, I can tell you.”
Joan had turned white. She could not help it; and Agnes saw, and added
cheerfully:
“Of course, you can’t believe half you hear, anyway. But they do say that
she.... No, I’m not going to.... I never was one to tell nasty stories about
people, Joan.”
Joan could not say anything to save her life. She had to get away from
Agnes, and she managed it as quickly as she could. She was profoundly
troubled, profoundly unhappy. She had not realized how much Wint meant
to her. The things which Agnes intimated made her physically sick with
unhappiness at their very possibility. She finished her errands as quickly as
she could, and hurried home. On the way, she passed Agnes and Jack Routt
together, and they spoke to her, and she responded, holding her voice
steady. She was miserably hurt and unhappy.
At home, she shut herself in her room to think. There was a picture of
Wint on her bureau, a snapshot she had taken two or three years before.
Wint had changed since then. The pictured face was boyish and round and
good-natured; Wint’s face now had a strength which this boy in the picture
lacked. Wint was a man now, for good or ill.
She had, suddenly, a surge of loyal certainly that it was for good, and not
for ill, that Wint was become a man. There was an infinite fund of natural
loyalty in Joan; she had been prodded by Agnes into a panic of doubt, but
when she was alone, this panic passed. A slow fire of anger at Agnes began
to burn in her; anger because Agnes had meant to injure Wint, not because
Agnes had hurt her. In Wint’s behalf she took up arms; she considered
Agnes; she questioned the girl’s motives, she went over and over the
incident, trying to read a meaning into it.
There is an instinctive wisdom in woman which passes anything in man.
In that long day alone, thinking and wondering and questioning, Joan came
very near hitting upon the whole truth of the matter. Nearer than she knew.
She came so near that before Wint appeared that evening—he had arranged,
a day or two before, to come and see her—she had begun to hate Jack
Routt.
She did not know why this was so. She had never particularly liked Jack
Routt; yet he had always been cheerful, an amiable companion, a good
fellow. Also, he was Wint’s friend, and Joan was loyal to Wint’s friends as
she was to Wint. But—All that day, she had thought, again and again, of
Jack’s eyes when she saw him with Agnes. She told herself there had been
something hidden in them, something she could not define, something
meanly triumphant. She mistrusted him; and before Wint came to her, she
hated Routt. And feared him.
Nevertheless, she and Wint talked of matters perfectly commonplace for
most of that evening together. They were apt to talk of commonplace things
in these days; because safety lay in the commonplace. There was a strange
balance of emotions between Wint and Joan. A little thing might have
tipped it either way. At times, Wint wished to bring matters to an issue; he
wished to cry out to Joan that he loved her. But he was restrained by a
desperate fear that she was not ready to hear him say this. He was afraid she
would cast him out once more. And—he could not bear the thought of that.
It was something to be able to see her, talk with her, be near her. He dared
not risk losing this much.
Thus they talked of ordinary matters, till Wint got up to go at last. Joan
went out on the porch with him; he stopped, on one of the steps, a little
below her. He had said good-by before Joan found courage. She asked,
then:
“Wint! Will you let me?... There’s something I want to ask you.”
He was surprised; his heart began to pound in his throat. “To ask me?”
he repeated. “Why—all right, Joan. What is it?”
“Are you and Routt pretty good friends, Wint?”
“Yes,” he said, at once. “Jack’s the best friend I’ve got.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course. What’s the idea, Joan?”
She said reluctantly: “I don’t know. Only—I don’t seem to trust him. I
don’t like him. I’m afraid of him.”
He laughed. “Good Lord! Jack’s harmless; he’s a prince.”
“I don’t think he’s as loyal to you as you are to him,” she said.
Wint exclaimed impatiently: “The way you girls get down on a fellow!
Jack’s all right.”
Wint’s impatience made Joan quieter and more sure of herself. “I’m not
sure,” she repeated, and smiled a little wistfully. “Just—don’t trust him too
far, Wint.”
“I’d trust him with all I’ve got,” Wint said flatly. “I think you’re—I’m
surprised at you, Joan.” The stubborn anger roused in the morning when
Joan came upon him with Agnes reawoke in Wint. His jaw set, and his eyes
were hard.
Joan was troubled; she wanted to say more, but she did not know how.
And—she could not forget Hetty. She had not meant to speak to Wint of
Hetty; but Joan was woman enough to be unable to hold her tongue. Also,
Wint’s loyalty to Routt had angered her; she was willing to hurt him—as
men and women are always willing to hurt the thing they love. She said
slowly:
 “Did you know people are beginning to talk about Hetty Morfee, Wint?
You and Hetty!”
Wint’s anger flamed; he flung up his hand disgustedly. “You women.
You’re always ready to jump on each other. Why can’t this town let Hetty
alone?”
“I only meant—” Joan began.
“I don’t care what you meant,” Wint told her. “You ought not to pass
gossip on, Joan. I hate it.”
“I don’t see why you have to defend her,” she protested; and he said
hotly:
“I’m not defending her. She doesn’t need defending. If she did, I would,
though. Hetty’s all right.”
Joan drew back a little into the shadow of the porch. After a moment, she
said:
“Good night, Wint.”
He said harshly: “Good night. And for Heaven’s sake, forget this
foolishness. Routt and Hetty.... They’re all right.”
She did not answer. He said again: “Good night,” and he turned and went
down to the gate, and away.
Joan watched him go. She thought she ought to be angry with him, and
hurt. She was surprised to discover that she was rather proud of Wint,
instead; proud of him for being angry, even at her, for the sake of his friend,
and for the sake of Hetty.
She was troubled, because she thought he was wrong; but she was
infinitely proud, too, because he had stuck by his guns.

CHAPTER X

THE STREET CARNIVAL

J OAN’S warning as to Jack Routt, her word as to Hetty, and Wint’s

rejection of both warning and advice did not lead to a break between
them. They met next day, and Wint had the grace to say to her:
 “I’m sorry I talked as I did yesterday, last night. I was tired, and—all
that. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Joan told him. “It’s natural for you to stick by your
friends.”
“I needn’t have talked so to you, though.”
She laughed, and said he had been all right. “I guess you’ve been
imagining you were worse than you really were,” she told him. “It’s quite
all right, really.”
“But I’m sorry you—dislike Jack,” he said. “He’s an awfully decent
sort.”
“Is he?” she asked. “Then I’m glad you and he are friends.”
“That’s the stuff,” Wint told her. “That’s the way to talk.”
Thereafter, for a week or so, life in Hardiston went quietly. V. R. Kite
still bided his time; there was no liquor being sold; Ote Runns went home
sober, day after day, with a look of desperate longing in his eyes. That
sodden man who had embraced Wint in the Weaver House so long, whom
Wint had jailed more than once for his drinking, suffered as much as Ote, or
more. He came to Wint and unbraided him for what he had done. “It ain’t
the way to treat a fellow,” he told Wint, pleading huskily. “You know how it
is. I just gotta have a drink, Mister Mayor. I just gotta. I told Mrs. Moody
she’s gotta give me a drink, and she told me you wouldn’t let her. You ain’t
got a thing against me, now, have you?” The miserable man’s fingers were
twitching, his lips twisted and writhed. “If I don’t get a drink, I’m a-going
to kill some-buddy, I am.”
Wint did not know what to do. He could see at a glance that the man was
suffering a very real torment. He had himself never become so soaked with
alcohol that his system cried out for it when he abstained; but he knew what
torture this might be. He had an idea that candy would alleviate the man’s
distress; but the idea seemed to him ridiculous, and he put it aside. Yet there
was an obligation upon him to do something.
He did, in the end, a characteristic thing, an impulsive thing; and yet it
was sensible, too. There was no saving this man. Highest mercy to him was
to let him drink himself to death. Wint told him to come to the house that
night; and he gave the poor fellow a quart bottle from his father’s store. The
derelict wandered away, calling Wint blessed. They found him under a tree
in the yard next door, in the morning, blissfully sleeping.
 The story got around, as it was sure to do. The man told it himself; he
boasted that Wint was a good fellow. V. R. Kite heard of it, and waved his
clenched fists and swore at Wint by every saint in the calendar. Also, he
sent for Jack Routt. “We’ve got him,” he cried. “He can’t put over a thing
like this on me, Routt. I’ll not stand for it. I’ll run him out of town. Or get
out myself. Damn it, Routt, he’s a hypocrite! He’s a whited sepulcher. I’ll
—”
Routt laughed good-naturedly, and held up a quieting hand. “Hold on,”
he said. “We’ll have better than this on Wint before long. Good enough so
that I—I’ll tell you a secret, Kite.”
Kite looked suspicious, and asked what the secret was; but Routt decided
not to tell. Not just yet. “Wait till the time comes,” he told Kite. “A little
later on.”
So Kite waited.
Toward the end of June, the street carnival came to town for a week’s
stay. These carnivals are indigenous to such towns as Hardiston. They
resemble nothing so much as an aggregation of the added attractions which
usually go with a circus, broken loose from the circus and wandering about
the country alone. A merry-go-round reared its tent and set up it clanking
organ at Main and Pearl streets. Down the hill below the tent, the snake-
eating wild man had his lair; and below him, again, there was an “Ocean
Wave.” Along Pearl Street in the other direction the Museum of Freaks and
the Galaxy of Beauty were located. Main Street itself was given over to
venders of popcorn, candy, hot dogs, ice-cream sandwiches, lemonade,
ginger pop, and every other indigestible on the calendar. There also, you
might, for the matter of a nickel, have three tries at ringing a cane worth six
cents, or a knife worth three. Or you might take a chance in the great lottery,
where every entrant drew some prize, even if it were only a packet of
hairpins. The arts and crafts were represented by a man who would twist a
bit of gilded wire into likeness of your signature for half a dollar.
The first tents of the carnival began to rise one Saturday morning; and all
that day and the next, the boys of the town and the grown-ups, too, watched
the show take shape. It was almost as good as a circus. At noon on Monday,
the carnival opened for business, with the ballyhoo men in full voice before
every tent. The moderate afternoon crowd grew into a throng in the
evening, when the kerosene torches flared and smoked on every pole, and
the normal things of daylight took on a dusky glamour in the jerky
illumination of the flares.
Every one went uptown to the carnival that first evening. Wint was there,
and Jack Routt, Agnes, Joan, V. R. Kite—every one. In mid-evening, the
quieter folk drifted home, but Wint stayed to watch what passed. A little
after eleven, he bumped into a drunken man.
In spite of his warning to the advance agent of this carnival, Wint had
been expecting to see drunken men. It was the nature of the carnival breed.
He wandered back and forth till he came upon Jim Radabaugh, and called
the marshal aside.
“Jim,” he said, “they’re selling booze.”
Radabaugh shifted that lump in his cheek, and spat. “So?” he asked
mildly.
“I want it stopped,” said Wint. “If you pin it on the carnival bunch, I’ll
shut them up.”
“I’ll see,” Radabaugh promised.
“Come along, first, and let’s talk to the boss,” Wint suggested; and they
sought out that man. He was running the merry-go-round; a hard little
fellow with a cold blue eye. Wint introduced himself; and the man shook
hands effusively.
“My name’s Rand,” he said. “Mike Rand. Glad t’ meet you, Mister
Mayor.”
Wint said: “That’s all right,” and he asked: “Did your advance man give
you my orders?”
“What orders?”
“I told him I didn’t want any booze peddling.”
“Sure, he told me.”
Wint jerked his head backward toward Main Street. “I ran into a drunk
up there,” he said.
Rand grinned. “Can’t help that. We’re not selling any.”
“I’m holding you responsible,” said Wint. “If there’s any sold, I’ll cancel
your permits.”
The little man stared at him bleakly. “You’ve got a nerve. You can’t pin
anything on us.”
 “I can’t help that,” Wint told him. “In fact, I don’t care. If there’s booze
sold, you get out. If I pin in on any man, he goes to jail. Is that clear?”
“What is this town, anyway—a damned Sunday school?”
“If you like,” said Wint sweetly; and he and Radabaugh turned away.
Rand’s engine man left his throttle to approach his chief and ask:
“What’s up? Who was that?”
“Mayor of this burg and the marshal. Say we’ve got to shut down on the
booze.”
“Like hell!”
Rand grinned. “Sure. He can’t run a whoozer on me.”
When he left Radabaugh, Wint ran into Jack Routt, and they strolled
about together through the crowd. Once they saw Hetty, and Wint thought
she was unnaturally cheerful and gay. He wondered if it were possible she
had been drinking again; and he stared after her so long that Routt asked:
“Takes your eye, does she?’
“I was wondering,” said Wint.
Routt touched his arm. “You take it from me, Wint, you want to keep
clear of her. I’d get her out of the house, if I were you. They’re beginning to
talk.”
Wint asked angrily: “Who’s beginning to talk? What about?”
“Everybody. About Hetty—and you, naturally.”
“I wish they—I wish people in this town would mind their own
business.”
Routt grinned and said: “You act as though there was something in it.”
“Don’t be a darned fool.”
“Well, I’m telling you what people say. If I were you—you’re a public
official, you know, in the public eye—I’d be careful. Tell your mother to get
rid of her. Safest thing to do.”
“I’m not looking for safe things to do.” Wint liked the defiant sound of
that.
Routt nodded. “I’d be worried, if it was me. That’s all.”
“I’m not worried,” said Wint. “Hetty’s all right. And if she weren’t—I
don’t propose to be scared.”
“We-ell, it’s your funeral,” Routt told him.
 Wint laughed. “I guess it’s not as bad as that. It’s almost twelve. I’m
going home.”

CHAPTER XI

FIRST BLOOD

I T was upon the carnival that Wint was to score first blood in his fight to
clean up Hardiston. Mike Rand, carnival boss, was a hard man, willing to
take a chance, afraid only of being bluffed. So he took Wint’s warning as
a challenge. Nevertheless, for the sake of making things as sure as might be,
he went to see V. R. Kite. He and Kite had known and understood each
other for a good many years.
He dropped in to see Kite Tuesday morning; and the little man
remembered his church connections and his outward respectability, and
worried for fear some one had seen Rand come in. His worry took the form
of resentment at Rand’s imprudence. “Ought to be more careful,” he
protested. “Have more sense, man. I have to watch myself in this town.
Don’t you know that? I have a position to keep up. You’re all right, of
course.” This as Rand’s eyes hardened in a stare that made Kite wince. “But
I can’t afford to be hitched up with you openly. It wouldn’t do either of us
any good.”
Rand said dryly: “You don’t need to worry about me. I can stand it.”
“I can be useful to you now, whereas my usefulness would be gone if I
were less respected.”
“Respected, hell!” said Rand without emotion. “Don’t they call you ‘The
Buzzard’ around here? I’ve heard so. That don’t sound respectful.”
“That’s a jest,” said Kite. “Nothing more.”
“Pinned on you by this shrimp Mayor, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Good-naturedly. He was drunk.”
“Drunk? Him?” Rand lifted his hands in pious horror. “I thought he was
one of these ‘lips-that-touch-liquor-shall-never-touch-mine’ guys, to hear
him talk.”
“He’s not drinking now; not openly. He was a sot, a few months ago.
Dead drunk in the Weaver House, the night he was elected Mayor. I saw
him there.”
Rand drawled: “I’ll say this is some town.” He leaned forward. “What I
want to know is: how about this booze? He serves notice on me that I’m
responsible if any’s sold. How about it? Will he go through? Or is it a
bluff?”
Kite considered. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Has he shut you down?”
“He gave us orders not to sell; and we’re not selling. But we’re not idle.
We’re preparing to spring a mine under that man.”
“He’s got you bluffed.”
Kite’s face twisted with a sudden rush of fury. “I tell you, we’re going to
destroy him—blast him!—in our own good time.”
Rand studied the little man; then he nodded. “Well, that’s all right. Just
the same, he’s got you shut down.”
“Yes.”
“Has he pulled any one yet for selling?”
“No.”
“How about the marshal? Is he reasonable?”
“I believe he will obey the Mayor’s orders.”
“Only question is the Mayor’s nerve, then?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t tried it out?”
“No; we’re waiting to strike when we’re sure of winning.”
“Hell!” said Rand disgustedly. “He’s got you bluffed. I don’t believe he’s
got the nerve to go through with it; but one thing’s sure. He’s got your
number, you old skate.”
Kite answered hotly: “If you’re so brave, why don’t you go ahead and
fight him?”
“Are you with me?”
“I’m not ready to fight.”
Rand got up. “Well, I am. I never dodged a fight yet. You watch, old
man; you’ll see the fur fly yet.”
 He stalked out, head back and shoulders squared aggressively. Kite
watched him go, and nodded to himself with a measure of satisfaction. He
was perfectly willing to see Wint forced to fight—provided some one
besides himself did the forcing. Rand looked like a fighter.

Wint and Jack Routt met, on the way uptown after supper that day. Routt
asked if Wint were going to the carnival again, and Wint nodded. “Keeping
an eye on it,” he said.
They went to the Post Office first; and Routt stopped at his office.
“Come up,” he said. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Wint went up with him. Routt dropped a letter or two on his desk; then
from a lower drawer produced a bottle. “Don’t mind if I mix myself a
highball, do you, Wint?” he asked cheerfully. “I don’t suppose you’ll feel
called on to arrest me.”
“Go ahead,” Wint said. Routt poured some whisky into a glass, filled it
from a siphon.
“You’re wise to leave the stuff alone,” he said, between the first and
second sips from the glass. “It’s bad stuff unless a fellow can handle it.”
Wint nodded uneasily. There was no physical craving in him;
nevertheless there was an acute desire to drink for the sake of drinking, for
the sake of being like other men, for the sake of defying the danger. “That’s
right,” he said. “I’m off it.”
“At that,” Routt remarked, the highball half gone, “I guess you’ve shown
you can take it or let it alone. I lay off of it myself, once in a while, just to
be sure I can.”
“Oh, I don’t miss it,” Wint said brazenly.
“Sure you don’t,” Routt agreed. “You’re no toper. Never were. Any one
likes to drink for the sake of being a good fellow. That’s all I drink for.” He
finished the glass, poured in a little more whisky. “Long as I’m sure I can
stop when I want to, the way you have done, I go ahead and drink whenever
I feel like it.”
Wint nodded. Routt looked at him with a curious intentness. “Another
glass here, if you’d like,” he said.
“I guess not.”
 Routt laughed. “All right. You know best. If you can’t let it alone when
you get started—”
“Oh, I can take a drink and quit.”
“Want one?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Routt chuckled. “Funny to see you afraid of anything,” he said. “I never
expected to see it.”
Wint got up abruptly. The old Wint would have reached for the bottle;
this was the new Wint’s impulse. But he fought it down, steadied his voice.
“Jack,” he said, a little huskily, “you’re a friend of mine. I don’t want to
drink, never. Don’t offer it to me. Some day I might accept. Don’t ever offer
me a drink, Jack. Please.”
Routt was ashamed of himself, and angry at Wint for making him
ashamed. “Hell, all right,” he said, and dropped the bottle into its place.
“Come on, let’s take the air.”
At a little after eleven that night, Mike Rand sought out Wint. Wint was
standing before the cane booth, watching the ring-tossers. Rand pushed up
beside him and touched his arm, and Wint looked around. The carnival boss
said harshly:
“Hey, you!”
Wint looked around at him, and said quietly: “Evening. What’s the
matter?”
“Your damned hick marshal has pulled one of my men. I want to bail
him out.”
Wint took a minute to consider this, get his bearings. He had not seen
Radabaugh all evening. He asked Rand: “You mean he’s made an arrest?
What’s the charge?”
“Claims the man was selling booze to a bum.”
“Was he?” Wint inquired gently.
“Was he” Rand growled. “No, of course not. You must think we’re bad
men, coming here to dirty your pretty little town. He was selling liver pills,
or pink tea. What the hell of it? I want to bail him out.”
“No bail accepted,” said Wint quietly. “He’ll have to stay in the
calaboose over night.”
 Rand exploded, as though he had been half expecting this. He said some
harsh things about Hardiston, and some harsher things about Wint, none of
which will bear repeating. In the midst of them, Wint stirred a little and
struck the man heavily in the mouth with his right fist; at the same time, his
left started and landed in the other’s throat, and the right went home again
on Rand’s hard little jaw. Rand fell in a snoring heap.
Wint was curiously elated. He looked around. A crowd had gathered, and
some of the carnival men were pushing through the crowd. There was a
belligerent look about them. Then he saw Marshal Jim Radabaugh elbowing
through the circle, and Wint was glad to see Jim. He called him:
“Marshal, here’s a man I’ve arrested.”
That halted Rand’s underlings. Rand himself was groaning back to
consciousness. Wint pointed down at him. “Take him to jail,” he said.
One of the carnival men protested. Wint turned to him. “Close up your
shows, all of you,” he told the man. “Your permit’s cancelled. Get out of
town to-morrow.”
Radabaugh had Rand on his feet; he gripped the man, his left hand
twisted in the other’s collar. Two or three of Rand’s men surged toward
them, and Radabaugh’s gun flickered into sight. It had a steadying effect; no
one pressed closer.
All the fighting blood had flowed out of Rand’s smashed lips. He was
whining now: “Come, old man, what’s the idea?” Wint and Radabaugh
marched him between them through the crowd. Two or three score curious,
cheering or cursing spectators followed them to the cells behind the fire-
engine house. Rand submitted to being locked up there with no more than
querulous protests. He seemed thoroughly tamed. He asked for a lawyer,
but Wint said there was no need of a lawyer that night. Two of the fire
department, on duty, had come out to see the business of locking up this
second prisoner. Radabaugh bade them keep an eye on the cells, and they
agreed to do so. Then the marshal scattered the crowd. Wint washed his
bruised hands in the engine house. After a little, Radabaugh came in; and
Wint asked:
“Is it true you got a man selling?”
“Yes. The capper at the lottery.”
“How’d you get him?”