Free The Web and The Root by Thomas Wolfe Page B

frightened boys were now picking up the fourth, stunned, befuddled, badly frightened, not knowing whether a single bone had been left unbroken in his body, whether he was permanently maimed, or whether he would live to walk again.
    “Carl—Carl—are you hurt bad? How’s your arm?” said Sidney Purtle.
    “I think it’s broken,” groaned that worthy, clutching the injured member with his other hand.
    “You—you—you hit him with your bat,” Sid Purtle whispered. “You—you had no right to do that.”
    “His arm may be broken,” Harry Nast said, in an awed tone.
    “I meant to break it,” Nebraska said calmly. “He’s lucky that I didn’t break his God-damn head.”
    They looked at him with horrified astonishment, with a kind of fascinated awe.
    “You—you could be arrested for doing that!” Sid Purtle blurted out. “You might have killed him!”
    “Wouldn’t have cared if I had!” Nebraska said firmly. “He ought to be killed! Meant to kill him!”
    Their eyes were fixed on him in a stare wide with horror. He returned their look in Indian-wise, and moved forward a step, stillholding his bat firm and ready at his shoulder.
    “And I’ll tell you this—and you can tell the rest of ’em when you get back to your side of town. Tell ’em I’m ready to brain the first West Side—who comes here looking for trouble. And if any of you ever bother Monk again, I’ll come right over there and climb your frame,” Nebraska Crane asserted. “I’ll come right over there and beat you to death…. Now you clear out! We don’t want you on our street no longer! You get out of here!”
    He advanced upon them slowly, his hard black eyes fixed firmly on them, his hands gripped ready on his bat. The frightened boys fell back, supporting their injured comrade, and, muttering furtively among themselves, limped hastily away down the street. At the corner they turned, and Sid Purtle put his hands up to his mouth and, with a sudden access of defiance, yelled back loudly:
    “We’ll get even with you yet! Wait till we get you over on our side of town!”
    Nebraska Crane did not reply. He continued to stare steadily towards them with his Indian eyes, and in a moment more they turned and limped away around the corner and were lost from sight.
    When they had gone, Nebraska took his bat off his shoulder, leaned gracefully on it, and, turning towards the white-faced boy, surveyed him for a moment with a calm and friendly look. His square brown face, splotched large with freckles, opened in a wide and homely smile; he grinned amiably and said:
    “What’s the trouble, Monkus? Were they about to get you down?”
    “You—you—why, Nebraska!” the other boy now whispered—“you might have killed him with that bat.”
    “Why,” Nebraska answered amiably, “what if I had?”
    “Wuh—wuh—wouldn’t you care?” young Webber whispered, awe-struck, his eyes still with wonder, horror, fascinated disbelief.
    “Why, not a bit of it!” Nebraska heartily declared. “Good riddance to bad rubbish if I had killed him! Never liked that redhead of his’n,anyway, and don’t like none of that crowd he runs with—that whole West Side gang! I’ve got no use for none of ’em, Monkus—never did have!”
    “B-but, Bras,” the other stammered, “wouldn’t you be afraid ?”
    “Afraid? Afraid of what?”
    “Why, why—that you might have killed him.”
    “Why, that’s nothin’ to be afraid of!” said Nebraska. “Anyone’s likely to get killed, Monk. You’re likely to have to kill someone almost any time! Why, look at my old man. He’s been killin’ people all his life—ever since he’s been on the police force, anyway! I reckon he’s killed more people than he could remember—he counted up to seventeen one time, an’ then he told me that there was one or two others he’d clean lost track of! Yes!” Nebraska continued triumphantly, “and there was one or two before he joined the force that no one ever