Chapter 18
Would-be Rapist Riddled (1851)
I saw something new—to me, that is—when I was fifteen, in 1851. I had already seen more than my share of violence, but never before involving a woman.
I saw Melicent Holliday shoot a man dead. A drunken young emigrant proposed to raid the “Welshman’s house”—as he called it, although the man had been dead for years—all alone one dark and threatening night.
This house stood halfway up a hill on the outskirts of town. Its sole occupants were this poor but quite respectable widow, Mrs. Holliday, and her blameless daughters. The invading ruffian woke the whole village with his ribald yells and coarse challenges and obscenities. I went up there with a comrade—John Briggs, I think it was—to look and listen. The figure of the man was dimly visible; the women were on their porch, not visible in the deep shadow of its roof, but we heard the elder woman’s voice. She had loaded an old musket with slugs and she warned the man that if he staid where he was while she counted ten it would cost him his life. She began to count, slowly; he began to laugh. He stopped laughing at “six”; then through the deep stillness, in a steady voice, followed the rest of the tale: “Seven … eight … nine”—a long pause, we holding our breaths—“ten!” A red spout of flame gushed out into the night and the man dropped with his breast riddled to rags. Then the rain and the thunder burst loose and the waiting town swarmed up the hill in the glare of the lightning like an invasion of ants. Those people saw the rest; I had had my share and was satisfied. I went home expecting to have nightmares, and was not disappointed.
EDITOR’S NOTES: This episode was the inspiration for the scene in chapter 29 of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn where Huck witnesses the foiled attempt on the part of a vengeful “Injun Joe” and his partner-in-crime to accost a widow late at night in her house on Cardiff Hill outside of St. Petersburg; Huck runs to the home of a Welshman and his strapping sons, who fly to the rescue of their neighbor.
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Bernard DeVoto describes this event slightly more coarsely. His Mark Twain’s America records it thus:
Another youth . . . got drunk and announced, loudly, his intention of going to a widow’s house and seducing, or raping, her daughters. The boy Sam and a comrade skulked through the shadows while the rough made his way toward the widow’s, shouting ribaldries. The widow stood on the porch, displaying a musket. She told the ruffian that he might go away in safety while she counted ten. She began to count. The fool stood there, gaping in the darkness, swaying stuperously on his feet. She paused at “nine” for a long interval. Then she said “ten” and darkness was shattered by the gush of flame. The whole charge struck the ruffian in the chest.
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