Rabble on a Hill. Robert Edmond Alter

that fat old King is forever placin’ on us, that’s why. Free trade, that’s all we want! But that fatboy king won’t give it to us.

      “And Adams? Well, in the last ten years Adams must have held twenty jobs; and he’s lost every one of ’em. All right, so the Loyalists call him a thief; but out of those twenty jobs what does he have for it? Nothing. He’s as broke as you or me. Where’s all the money he’s supposed to have stolt?” He hunched forward on his stool.

      “I’ll tell you, Natty. I wouldn’t give a hoot in Hades if Hancock was the biggest smuggler and Adams the greatest thief in America! That ain’t what’s important about those men. The important thing is that they got the guts to speak their minds out when they see that something is wrong. And people listen to them! Because they got that certain something that draws folks to ’em like a magnet. Folks need a leader, Nat; they always have. Folks need somebody to stir ’em up. And that’s what Adams and Hancock are—rabble-rousers. And if they can talk peawits like you’n’ me into fightin’ for our independence, then I say let ’em go to it!”

      Nat looked at his new friend speculatively.

      “Shad, is that why you’re willing to fight for independence—because an Adams or a Hancock talked you into it?”

      Shad pawed at his face and glanced at his sweaty reflection in the makeup mirror, almost with a look of embarrassment.

      “Well, no, it ain’t. But then I ain’t like most folk. Most folk warn’t with me’n’ Georgie when we fought for our land agin the French’n’ Injuns. I got a stake in this here land, Natty. I lost friends because of it. Their blood is in it, like tap roots. Ain’t no European king gonna take that away from me!”

      Nat looked at himself in the mirror, thinking: I wish I could have been there with him. I wish I’d had friends like that.

      Nat had a cot in the dressing room, and Shad said that was all right: he’d sleep on the floor with a blanket, because, by grab, he’d slept on much worse in his time. So they blew out the fish-oil burning lamp and settled down for the night. But not for long.

      About midnight they heard the alley door slam and then the tramp of boots coming backstage toward the dressing room. Nat sat up and struck a tinder and got one of the lamps going again.

      Ralston Morbes, slim and elegant in tight-fitting black, stood in the doorway with his walking stick, surveying them with cold, hostile eyes. He was a weakly, handsome man with about as much warmth and friendliness as an iceberg. He liked to affect the airs of a romantic man of mystery.

      “So,” he said to Nat acidly, “you finally found a way to accomplish your purpose, eh?”

      “What are you talking about, Ral?”

      “You know well what I’m talking about! I’ve just come from seeing that prize nitwit Benny at the inn. He says I’m through. He says this fat bumpkin here is replacing me. And he says I have you to thank for it, as the bumpkin is your friend.”

      Shad sat up and blinked at Ralston like a sleepy baby. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked again. Ralston returned the look frigidly.

      “Did he say fat bumpkin?” Shad asked Nat.

      “Yes. Listen, Ral, what happened between you and Benny has nothing to do with me. I merely brought my friend here tonight and——”

      “Save your lame excuses, Towne,” Ralston snapped. “I’m not in the slightest interested. I don’t need this tuppence job! I don’t need any of you. Pack of ungrateful rebels; I should have washed my hands of you long ago. I have my own friends!”

      “Are you sure he said fat bumpkin?” Shad persisted.

      “Yes,” Nat said distractedly. “Ral, if you’d——”

      “That’s what I thought he said,” Shad muttered. “I just wanted to make sure, because it makes a difference.” He rubbed at his moist face and blew out his breath and hauled himself up from the floor.

      Ralston struck a sophisticated pose, leaning negligently on his stick. He studied Shad with arctic distaste.

      Shad hulked toward him. “You’re a mighty pretty man,” he commented. “But your mouth ain’t so pretty. Something ort a be done about it. You hadn’t ort a go about callin’ folks fat.”

      Ralston raised his stick and jabbed Shad’s expansive middle with the end of it. “Stand your distance, my man. Or I’ll break this over your stupid thick head.”

      Shad blinked at the stick planted in his navel.

      “You say you want that stick broke, brother?” He removed the cane from Ralston’s hand as though he were taking it from a baby. Then, holding it in both hands, he snapped it in two like a matchstick—not over his knee: just between his hands, in midair. He tossed the pieces over his shoulders and started lumbering toward Ralston again like a huge, trained walking bear.

      Ralston lost his poise. He fell back a step.

      “Stand away! Keep away from me, you great sweaty beast!”

      Shad reached out with his left, caught up some of the black finery covering Ralston’s chest, and yanked the elegant actor in close to him, seemingly all in one quick, effortless movement.

      Nat left his cot. “Shad! Don’t hurt him.”

      Shad looked back at him with a shocked expression.

      “Hurt him? My goodness, Natty, I ain’t about to hurt the poor skinny fella. All I was fixin’ to do was reset the slant of his hat.”

      He caught the brim of Ralston’s buckled hat in both hands and yanked straight down—Ralston’s head popping through the crown like a jack-in-a-box—saying: “There. Now that didn’t hurt him none, did it? Then I was planning on spinning him about like this——”

      He struck Ralston’s right shoulder with his flat hand, and Ralston, as helpless as a top, spun into an abrupt about-face, and Shad caught him by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants, saying: “Then I was going to walk him backstage, somewhat like this——”

      Nat, following, would have sworn that Ralston’s kicking feet never once touched the floor.

      “—till I found one a them buckets Benny uses for fires,” Shad continued, stopping by a row of filled buckets and picking up one of them and upsetting it with an appalling splash of water over Ralston’s head.

      “Then I was gonna turn him just so and aim him for the alley door and give him a little start on his way, like this——”

      He planted a huge booted foot in Ralston’s backside and propelled the helpless, drenched, bucket-headed man toward the door. Ralston, all arms and legs and no visible head, collided against the closed door, the bucket flying off, and collapsed in a soggy, dizzy heap on the floor. Shad rubbed his hands together energetically.

      “Now you see? That’s all I was gonna do. I wasn’t thinkin’ to hurt him for a minute!”

      The bedraggled, outraged actor lurched to his feet, got the door partway open, and clung to it as though for support. His eyes were no longer cold. They had the glassy hot look of a starved tiger.

      “You’ll pay!” he hissed. “Every one of you rebels will pay. And I’ll be there on the day of reckoning. Towne, you hear? I promise you—I’ll be there!”

      He slammed the door. He was gone. Shad shook his burly head and sighed. “Fella like that’s just as fancy-lookin’ as sugar. But I bet he could be mighty mean with a knife—if your back was turned.”

      Which reminded Nat of the dead man in the alley. They returned to the dressing room to study the powder horn. It was just an ordinary cow horn reconverted to hold powder. They emptied the powder out, and that didn’t tell them anything. Then Shad gave the horn a shake.

      “Something still in there.” So