"Just the man I'm looking for!" said Lawrence.
He was brisk, alert, important, and had an official air which was explained when Marley observed, on the lapel of his coat, the badge of blue ribbon that proclaimed an officer of the fair.
"I have charge of the tickets this year," he said. "Want to go? I'll pass you in."
"I'll have to go around to the office and tell Powell," he said. "I was away all day yesterday."
"Oh, nonsense," replied Lawrence, "that won't make any difference; he's been full for two days. This is his big time."
Marley had a pang as he saw with what small seriousness Lawrence regarded his relation to the law; it reflected, doubtless, the common attitude of the community toward him and his efforts.
"I've got to hurry," Lawrence went on; "I've got a rig waiting here; you can ride out with me."
It was one of the incomparable afternoons that autumn brings to Ohio; the retreating sun was flashing in the high, blue sky; the air was fresh and Marley felt it full of energy and hope. Lawrence drove rapidly through the throng of hurrying vehicles that crowded the road to the fair-grounds, stirring up a cloud of dust that covered everything with its white powder.
Lawrence left him at the gate, being too full of business to engage in the weary search for pleasure, and Marley set out alone across the scorched and trampled turf for the grand stand, black with people for the races. He could hear the nervous clamor of the bell in the judges' stand, the notes of the hand-organ at the squeaking merry-go-round, the incessant thumping of the bass drum that made its barbaric music for the side-show, and the cries of venders, dominating all the voices of the thousands bent in their silly way on pleasure. Once, calling him back to the real, to the peace of the commonplace, he heard the distant tones of the town clock in the tower that stood, a mile away, above the autumnal trees.
He pressed into the space between the grand stand and the whitewashed fence that surrounded the track; through the palings he could see the stoop-shouldered drivers, bent over the heavily breathing trotters they jogged to and fro; above him, in the grand stand, he could distinguish cries and laughs, now and then complete excited sentences, sometimes voices he knew. All around him the farmers, clumsy in their ready-made clothes and bearing their buggy whips as some insignia of office, solemnly watched the races and talked of horses.