Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/405

 "Get out!" snapped the gaunt man.

Mechanically, his legs limp, Frank staggered out. He looked up at the moon. "It's the last time I'll ever see the moon—see the stars—hear voices. Never again to walk on a fresh morning!"

"What are you going to do?" he said, hating them too much to be afraid.

"Well, dearie," said the driver, with a dreadful jocosity, "you're going to take a little walk with us, back here in the fields a ways."

"Hell!" said the bartender, "let's hang him. Here's a swell tree. Use the tow-rope."

"No," from the gaunt man. "Just hurt him enough so he'll remember, and then he can go back and tell his atheist friends it ain't healthy for 'em in real Christian parts. Move, you!"

Frank walked in front of them, ghastly silent. They followed a path through the cornfield to a hollow. The crickets were noisily cheerful; the moon serene.

"This'll do," snarled the gaunt one; then to Frank: "Now get ready to feel good."

He set his pocket electric torch on a clod of earth. In its light Frank saw him draw from his pocket a coiled black leather whip, a whip for mules.

"Next time," said the gaunt one, slowly, "next time you come back here, we'll kill you. And any other yellow traitor and stinker and atheist like you. Tell 'em all that! This time we won't kill you—not quite."

"Oh, quit talking and let's get busy!" said the bartender.

"All right!"

The bartender caught Frank's two arms behind, bending them back, almost breaking them, and suddenly with a pain appalling and unbelievable the whip slashed across Frank's cheek, cutting it, and instantly it came again—again—in a darkness of reeling pain.

Consciousness returned waveringly as dawn crawled over the cornfield and the birds were derisive. Frank's only clear emotion was a longing to escape from this agony by death. His whole face reeked with pain. He could not understand why