She knew from the snapping and cracking of lumber and metal about the house that it was growing colder, and she drew the covers closer. Oh, what a country to live in! Whatever was to become of them! Her teeth chattered.
She thought she heard footsteps and raised her head slightly to listen. Faint at first, they were coming nearer. Whoever was out a night like this, she could not imagine. The person was walking in the middle of the road and his progress was uneven, stopping sometimes altogether, then going forward. Abreast the house the sound of heels grinding in the snow that was dry as powder was like the scrunching and squealing of the steel tire of a wagon in bitter weather.
They passed, grew fainter, finally stopped altogether. Mrs. Toomey moved closer to her husband. There was comfort in the nearness of a human being.
A shot! Her heart jumped--her nerves twanged with the shock of it. "That hit something!" The thought was almost simultaneous. The sound was more like an explosion--deadened, muffled somewhat--as of a charge fired into a bale of hay or cotton. For the space of a dozen heartbeats she lay with her mouth open, breathless in the deathly silence of the frozen night.
A scream! It must have reached the sky. Piercing, agonized--the agony of a man screaming with his mouth wide open--screaming without restraint, in animal-like unconsciousness of what he was doing.
"Jap!" She clutched his arm and shook him.
The screams kept coming, blood curdling, as if they would split the throat, tear it, and horrible with suffering.
"Jap!" She sat up and shook his shoulder violently.
"Wha's the matter?" he asked, sleepily.
"Did you hear that shot? Listen!"
"Some drunk," he mumbled.
"He's hurt, I tell you! Hear him!"
"Drug store's open."
"Oughtn't you to go to him?"
"Lemme be--can't you?" He again breathed heavily.
The screams kept coming, but each a little fainter. Either the man was moving on or the pain was lessening. Mrs. Toomey's heart continued to thump as she lay rigid, listening. She wanted to get up and look through the window, but the floor was cold and she could not remember exactly where she had left her slippers. Anyway, somebody else would go to him. It was a relief, though, when he stopped screaming.
Others whom the cries of agony awakened applied the same reasoning to the situation, with minor variations. "Tinhorn" in particular was disturbed because of their nearness. He raised his head from under a mound of blankets and frowned into the darkness as he wondered if, as Prouty's newly elected mayor, he would be criticized should he fail to go out and investigate. He was so warm and comfortable!