“I reckon it wasn’t Jim,” she sighed. “It was my daily prayer fer a long time that he mought come back, but thar ain’t no sech luck fer me. I’ve done give up. I am a destitute, lonely woman, an’ I cayn’t stan’ all this commotion an’ wrangle much longer. Ef I had him to work fer now, I wouldn’t keer; I’d wear my fingers to the bone; but fer people that ain’t no speck o’ kin an’ hain’t no appreciation fer what a body does it’s different.” The corners of her mouth were drawn down, and she put her thin hand up to her eyes.
“I don’t b’lieve you’d know ’im ef you was to see ‘im,” he said, laughing artificially and taking her hand in his.
She started. A shiver ran through her frame, and her fingers clutched his convulsively. “What do you mean?” she gasped. “Oh, my Lord, what does the man mean?”
“The’ ain’t much doubt in my mind that he’s alive an’ ort to have a thousand lashes on his bare back fer neglectin’ his old mammy,” he said, trying to hide the tremor in his voice.
A startled light of recognition dawned in her eyes and illumined her whole visage. She stared at him with dilating eyes for an instant, and then fell into his arms. “Oh, Jim, I declare I cayn’t stan’ it! It will kill me! It will kill me!” she cried, putting her arms about his neck and drawing his head down to her.
“I’m as glad as you are, mother,” he replied, tenderly stroking her white hair with his rough hand; “no feller livin’ ever wanted to see his mammy wuss.”
Then there seemed nothing further for either of them to say, and so he led her on to the house and to the chair he had left a few moments before.
“I’ve let the cat out ’n the bag,” he said, shamefacedly, answering their glances of inquiry. “I had to mighty nigh tell her point-blank who I was.”
“I never ‘lowed I’d see ’im ag’in,” Mrs. Bradley faltered, in a low, tearful tone. “I am that thankful my heavenly Father let me live to this day. I’d suffer it all over an’ over ag’in fer this joy.”
Sanders was silent, and his wife; and the children, barelegged and dirty-faced, sat on the grass and mutely watched the bearded stranger and his mother in childish wonder. Bradley said nothing, but he moved his chair nearer to his mother’s and put his strong arm around her. Sanders broke the silence.
“What have you been follerin’, Bradley?” he asked.
“Sellin’ goods.”
“Clerkin’ fer somebody?”
“No; had a ‘stablishment o’ my own.”
“You don’t say!” and Sanders looked at Bradley’s seedy attire and then at his wife significantly.
“Yes; I made some money out thar. The night ‘fore I left, a feller offered me ten thousand dollars in cash fer my stock o’ goods, an’ I tuk ’im up. I didn’t wait to put on my Sunday clothes; these is the things I worked in, handlin’ dirty groceries. I hain’t the pertic’lar sort. I’ve got some bonds an’ rale estate that kin remain jest as well whar they are at present. I’ve come back here to stay with mother. I couldn’t stand it to be alone much longer, an’ I wouldn’t ax ’er to move to a new country at ’er age.”
Sanders and his wife stared at him in astonishment. Mrs. Bradley leaned forward and looked intently into his face. She was very pale and quivered with new excitement, but she said nothing.
“My Lord, you’ve had luck!” exclaimed Sanders, thinking of something to say finally. “What on earth are you gwine to invest in here, ef it hain’t no harm to ax?”
“I ‘lowed I’d buy a big plantation. They are a-goin’ cheap these times, I reckon. I want a place whar a livin’ will come easy, an’ whar I kin make mother comfortable. She’s too old to have to lay ’er hand to a thing, ur be bothered in the least. I want to be nigh some meetin’-house of her persuasion, an whar she kin ‘sociate with other women o’ her age. I don’t expect to atone fer my neglect, but I intend to try my hand at it fer a change.” Mrs. Bradley lowered her head to her son’s knee, and began to sob softly. Then Mrs. Sanders got up quickly. “I smell my bread a-burnin’,” she said. “I ’ll call y’all into supper directly. We hain’t pretendin’ folks, Mr. Bradley, but yo’ ‘re welcome to what we got. You needn’t rise, Mrs. Bradley; I kin fix the table.”
Aunt Milly’s cabin was brightly illuminated. Crude tallow dips in the necks of cracked jugs and bottles spangled a dark clothless table, a slanting heap of blazing logs filled the wide rock-and-mud chimney, and a bonfire of pine knots at the “wash-place” near the door outside threw a red light far down the road which led past a row of cabins to the residence of Aunt Milly’s owner, Mr. Herbert Putnam.
The season’s crop of corn had been hauled up from the fields to the cribs. Frost had come; persimmons were ripe, and Aunt Milly was going to give the first opossum supper of the fall. Her two boys, Len and Cæsar, had caught two fat opossums the night before, and she had dressed the game and left it in a couple of pans out on the roof—“ter let de fros’ bite de wil’ taste out ’n it en tender it up ‘fo’ bilin’ en bakin’.” She had given this explanation to her husband, Uncle Rastus, who had been irritated by her rising two or three times in the night “ter see ef dem cats wuzn’t atter dat meat.”
Uncle Rastus was sick; he had taken a severe cold, which had settled on his lungs and given him a cough. Hearing the negroes singing as they came through the fields from the neighboring plantations, he left his bed in the lean-to shed and hobbled slowly into the glare of candlelight. He sniffed the aroma of coffee and baked meat and intently surveyed the preparations his wife had made.
“I heer um—dat Nelse’s tenor en Montague’s bass; dey all comin’. I never heer sech er racket!” As he spoke he put a quilt down on the floor in the chimney-corner and lay down and pushed out his long bare feet to the fire.
“I reckon I got my heerin’,” she replied, eying him reprovingly. “Look a-heer, Rastus, who seh you might git up? You know you gwine hat er wuss achin’ dan ever in yo’ ches’ ef you lie dar over dem cracks des atter you got out ’n dat warm bed.”
“Lemme ‘lone,” he said, in an offhand tone; “you reckon I ain’t gwine be at yo’ ’possum supper, en mebby it de las’ night on dis yer plantation—huh?”
His words evoked no reply, for the guests were now near the door, and she had advanced to meet them. Nelse and Montague, two tall, lank negroes, slouched in and dropped their hats on the floor. They were followed by Aunt Winnie and her husband and a crowd of negroes of all ages and sizes. As the guests filed in at the door and huddled round the fire and Rastus’s perpendicular feet, each put a silver quarter into a bowl on the end of the table.
“I don’t ‘grudge you mine, Aunt Milly,” said Aunt Winnie, feelingly. “My goodness, you is hat ernough trouble, wid yo’ marster bein’ so po’ en Une’ Rastus so sickly en y’all gwine be put up on de auction-block ter-morrer en no idee whar you gwine nex’. How much y’ reckin you gwine ter fetch, Aunt Milly?”
For reply Aunt Milly simply shrugged her fat shoulders as she went round among her guests and took their bonnets and shawls, which she piled promiscuously on a chest in the corner.
“She’s wuff all she ’ll bring, I boun’ yer,” said Nelse, who was standing almost astride of Rastus’s head. “As for me, Aunt Milly, I’d er sight ruther be put up on de auction-block at de court-house dan ter be sol’ in er slave-mart. Dey hat me on sale in New Orleans fur two weeks han’ runnin’, settin’ bolt up in er long room wid er passel er niggers dey call Cre-owls, en people constant er-lookin’ at me en axin’ my price. Dey feed you on de fat er de lan’ en keep you dressed up, but you never know is yer gwine ter be er ditch-digger ur somebody’s ca’ge-driver. On de block it soon over en you know whar you gwine, en ef er nigger is sharp he kin manage er li’l en git on de good side er some white man he likes.”
“Marse Geo’ge Putnam ’ll buy y’all, you know he will,” remarked Aunt Winnie to Ras-tus, who had sat up on his quilt and been listening eagerly to Nelse. “He ’ll be on’y too glad er de chance ter spite Marse Herbert en rake in some mo’ uv his paw’s old slaves. He already bought up all de lan’ ‘cep’ de li’l patch Marse Herbert’s house stan’ on, en now de house en dis yer fambly er niggers is all dat is lef’ fer ’im ter want. My white folks seh ten yeer ergo dat Marse Geo’ge never will res’ satisfied till his po’ brother is flat on his back destitute. Seem lak he in his glory when he hear dat suppen o’ Marse Herbert’s is up fer sale, so he kin buy it in. I hain’t never seed two sech brothers; dey hain’t ‘change one word in ten yeer; en all kase ole Marse Putnam lef’ Marse Herbert de ol’ home place en want ’im ter hol’ on ter it.”
Uncle Rastus looked up suddenly. His face was full of angles, and his dark eyes flashed in the firelight. “I hope he won’t buy me,” he grunted; “ef I cayn’t stay wid Marse Herbert, de younges’ en po’es’ er ol’ marster’s chillun, I want ter go clean off ’mongst strangers. Dismeer-talkin’!”
The pathos of this remark struck most of the listeners; but Montague, who, for reasons of his own, disliked old Rastus, was unmoved by it. “You needn’t trouble ’bout wharyougwine,” he said, with contemptuous emphasis on the “you,” and he pushed a little black girl to one side that he might watch the effect of his words on Rastus. “De won’t be any big scramblin’ atter you; who want ter buy er nigger des ter git ter bury ‘im dese hard times?”
“Be ershamed, Montague,” remonstrated Aunt Winnie; “be ershamed er yo’se’f!”
“He ain’t got no raisin’!” blurted out Aunt Milly. “Unc’ Rastus ain’t gwine ter listen ter dat black fool.”
“I des know what white folks seh, dat’s all,” insinuated Montague, sullenly. “Marse Herbert come over ter see my marster ter-day, en I heerd um talkin’ in de stable-yard. Marse Herbert ’low he’d been countin’ on payin’ off his pressin’ debt wid whut dis fambly er niggers would fetch, en’d laid his plans ter hol’ on ter his house en go Wes’ en mek money ter pay de intrusten lif’ de mortgage, but des den Une’ Rastus, de mos’ valuables’ one, tuk sick, en now Aunt Milly an’ de chillun won’t fetch ernough ter do much good.”
This announcement produced an impression. Aunt Milly was plainly too much astonished even to protest against the brutality of the revelation. Rastus took a fresh hold on his thin knees with his arms, coughed deeply and painfully, and looked Montague straight in the eyes.
“Is you tellin’ de trufe?” he asked, “Isyou?”
“I hain’t no reason to tell you er lie, Unc’ Rastus.”
From that moment Montague had the contempt of the whole room. Aunt Milly was evidently recompensed by this, for she simply looked into the sympathetic faces around her and made no sound. Rastus lay back on his quilt silently, and languidly thrust his feet back to the fire.
Aunt Milly’s voice sounded cold and equivocal in her effort to smother her emotions when she said, “Well, come on, y’all, an’ git yo’ ’possum an’ biscuit ‘fo’ dey git co’.” The last words of her invitation were drowned in the scrambling and shuffling of feet as the crowd surged toward the table. A whole opossum embedded in a great heap of fried sweet potatoes was placed by Len and Cæsar on each end of the long table, and Aunt Milly followed them with a great bucket of coffee and pans of smoking biscuits.
They were all seated and had begun the feast, when, to their astonishment, Rastus rose and staggered to a vacant place at the end of the table.
“Whar my ‘possum, Aunt Milly?” he demanded, with pretended pique. “On my soul, I b’lieve you tryin’ ter lef’ me out.”
“Go back ter yo’ bed, Rastus,” she scolded, gently. “What kin got in you? you ain’t eat nothin’ in er mont’ ‘cep’ er li’l soup en gravy, en now you want ter founder yo’se’f on ’possum meat.”
He shoved his plate impatiently toward her. “Gimme some er dem taters en dat ‘possum. You heer me?”
“You too sick, Rastus,” protested Aunt Milly, with maternal persuasiveness. “Go lie down, en I ’ll fix you some er yo’ good soup.”
“I know Iwuzsick,” he replied; “but I want ter tell y’all, I ain’t now; I’m cuored well en soun’.” As he spoke these words, accompanied by a heroic attempt to hold himself erect in his chair, Aunt Milly recalled the strange look of desperate determination that had possessed his face when Montague had finished speaking, and she kept silent. Both sides of the long table were curiously looking at the invalid. “I’m er li’l weak yit, but I ain’t sick,” he went on, bracing himself with a thin hand on each side of the table. “You know dat conjure doctor on de river plantation? Well, he come by here dis mawnin’ ‘fo’ day, he did—des ez I wuz gittin’ up ter git er armful er firewood, en—”
“Why, you know dat ain’t so, Unc’ Ras-tus,” broke in Aunt Milly, “kase I got up fus’ dis mawnin’, en you wuz soun’ ersleep.”
“‘Twuz long ‘fo’ you got up, Aunt Milly,” added the old man, glibly, as he warmed up to his fiction. “Well, dat conjure doctor rode by de do’ on er white hoss, he did, en seh to me, ‘Rastus, you sick, en you mus’ git well ‘fo’ yo’ marster puts you up for sale, so you kin bring what you is wuff ter he’p him out ’n his scrape.’ En he up en ax me has I my rabbit-foot erbout me, en I tuk it out ’n my weskit pocket, en he seh, ‘Well, put it in de hot ashes in de back er de chimbly tell you hear er dog bark, en den tek it out en wash it clean in spring-water, en den keep it by you night en day,’ en when I done ez he tol’ me I got well.”
A chorus of wondering ejaculations rose from the superstitious listeners, and for a moment opossum meat and potatoes were forgotten. Aunt Milly looked at her husband tenderly. “Dat nigger would die fer Marse Herbert,” she thought. “He dat sick now he cayn’t hol’ his haid up; de sight er dat ’possum meat is gaggin’ ‘im, but he ’ll kill me ef I let on.”
“I don’t want yo’ ol’ ’possum meat,” said Rastus, rising and moving back to the fire. “I’m gwine ter lie down an’ git rested up fer ter-morrer. Ef dey ’ll let me, I ’ll dance er breakdown on dat auction-block en turn one er my han’-springs.”
“He certny is cuored,” said Aunt Winnie, gladly. “Dese conjure doctors beat de ol’ sort all ter pieces.”
The supper over, Aunt Milly slowly counted out her earnings and put them away; the table was moved back against the wall; Nelse got out his bones and began to play, and Len and Cæsar danced jigs till they sank to the floor in exhaustion. After this, plantation songs were sung, ghost-stories were told, and it was late when they went back to their homes.
The following day was a fine one. The air was bracing, and the sun shone brightly. The autumnal foliage had never appeared more beautiful; every color in nature seemed lavished on the hills near by, and the mountains, twenty miles away, blue as the skies in spring and summer, had faded into a beautiful pink.
The court-house and auction-block were in a village two miles from the plantations of the two Putnam brothers. Uncle Rastus and his family were sent over in the wagon of Herbert Putnam’s overseer, and Lawyer Sill came by in his buggy and drove Herbert to the sale.
“I thought I would stay away and let you attend to it for me,” said Herbert Putnam; “but my daughter thinks I ought to go. Brother George will be there to bid them in. He wouldn’t miss the opportunity to humiliate me again for anything.”
“You ought to be on hand,” replied Sill, as the other got into the buggy. “Your negroes worship you, and would feel hurt if you were not present. Your brother has acted very badly, and has made himself unpopular by it.”
“It was my father’s wish that I hold the home place, but George never could forgive me for it. If he had advanced money to me, as he has to total strangers, I should have paid out all right. He has a better head for business than I have.”
A hundred wagons, buggies, and carriages were scattered over the court-house common, the hitching-racks were hidden by mules and horses, and a considerable crowd of people, white and black, were clustered around the auction-block to the right of the court-house door, near the massive log jail. In the edge of the crowd an old darky was selling “ground-peas,” and his white-headed wife was threading her way through the crowd, retailing hot gingerbread from a basket and fresh cider from a capacious jug with a corncob stopper. In some of the carriages elegantly dressed ladies sat; young men, the gallants among the gentry of the county, with broad hats, and trousers in their bootlegs, conversed with them from the backs of restive mettlesome horses.
Colonel George Putnam sat in his carriage with his wife and son, but when his brother drove up with Lawyer Sill, he alighted and approached his own lawyer, who was talking with a group of planters.
“Burton,” said he, in a low tone, “remember, you are to bid for me; I don’t want to be conspicuous, but I will have those negroes. I don’t want any of my father’s estate to go into the hands of strangers.”
“All right,” replied Burton; “we won’t have much trouble. Old man Staley has thrown out some intimation that he intends to do some bidding, but he’s afraid of his shadow, and when he sees you are in the fight he ‘ll draw in his horns.”
“I don’t think so. Staley is no friend of mine, and will try to run the price up on me out of spite. I looked over them a while ago as they came up,” the colonel went on, glancing at the wagon in which Uncle Rastus and his wife and sons were seated. “They all seem in pretty fair condition except Rastus. He says he has had a little spell of fever, but that he is all right now.”
“He is thin, but as sound as a dollar,” said Burton, lightly. “He jumped out of the wagon just now as nimbly as a kitten and unhitched the mules in a hurry. I told him I heard he had been sick, and he laughed and said he could do more work than ten ordinary darkies.”
“Well, keep your eye on Staley. My brother has wasted everything my father left him, and I owe it to our name to retain as many of our old slaves as I can. You told me you would find out the amount of the mortgage on the old place.”
“McPherson lent him five thousand on it.”
“And he expects to make that out West and keep the interest paid! He ‘ll never do it in the world.”
Burton glanced across the crowd at the seedy-looking man with the pale face and iron-gray hair, and his reply was tinged with feeling:
“You ‘re purty hard on ‘im, colonel; it’s none o’ my business, but he’s a powerful good fellow. Seems to me, as he was the only brother you have, you might have helped him a little.”
The planter’s eye fell, and an angry flush came into his dark face. “You don’t know anything about it, Burton,” said he, quickly. “I acknowledge we had some words about the will, but he set afloat the rumors about my treatment of him when I was a candidate for the legislature, and it was through him that I was beaten.”
Burton wished to change the subject. “I see the auctioneer and the negroes going to the block,” he said. “Look at old Rastus; he prances around like a two-year-old colt. I reckon you can fatten him up; a little sickness does ’em good sometimes.”
The crowd drew closer round the platform upon which the red-faced auctioneer had sprung and was placing chairs for Rastus and his family. All of them except Rastus himself seemed awed by the solemnity of the occasion. “Who gwine buy me?” he laughed, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. “I been er li’l sick, but I’m pickin’ up now, en kin hol’ my own wid any nigger in dis county. Who want me? Speak up quick.”
“Dry up,” laughed the auctioneer, and he playfully jerked off the old man’s hat and laid it in the latter’s lap. “Don’t you know ernough not to come ‘fo’ company with yore hat on? Who’s goin’ to sell this batch of niggers, you or me? Ef you are, I ’ll git down and bid on you. I want somebody to look after my thoroughbreds.”
This sally evoked a wave of laughter from the crowd, and Rastus joined in with as much enjoyment as if he had caused it. Herbert Putnam drew Sill aside.
“Rastus is shamming,” he whispered; “he is as sick as he can be right now. He’s doing it in order to bring a better price, to help me out. Dr. Wilson said the other day that he might live to be an old man, but that he’d never be able to work any more.”
“Good gracious!” ejaculated Sill; “who ever heard the like? He’s a hero.”
Herbert Putnam’s eyes glistened and his voice was unsteady as he spoke. “I’d give my right arm rather than part with him. If I were able, he and his should be free to-day.” The auctioneer began to gesticulate and shout: “Six hundred has been bid on Rastus, by Mr. Burton over thar, to start the game. Only six hundred for one of the best buck negroes in the county. Seven hundred! That’s right, Mr. Staley; he’s the very man you want. Seven hundred; eight do I hear it? Thank you; Mr. Burton don’t intend to take a back seat. All right; nine hundred! Nine-fifty do I hear it, Mr. Burton? Nine-fifty it is. Mr. Staley has got a thousand ready for him; a thousand has been bid; anybody else in the fight? Old Rastus is thin, but he could throw a bull a rod by the tail. One thousand only on a two-thousand-dollar negro. Do I hear more?”
George Putnam’s face darkened angrily as he watched the excited features of old man Staley. He drew Burton’s ear down to his lips: “Bid twelve hundred, and knock him out and be done with it,” he whispered; “it will scare him to death.”
“Twelve hundred,” said Burton, without a change of countenance, and silence fell on the chattering, speculating crowd; even the voluble auctioneer showed surprise by not at once echoing the bid. Old Rastus took advantage of the pause; he sprang up and clapped his hands and knocked his heels together. “I ain’t no thousand-dollar nigger,” he cried. “I b’longs ter Marse Herbert Putnam, I does; de ain’t no cheap nigger on dis yer block.”
“Twelve hundred dollars!” repeated the auctioneer, impressively, and there was something vaguely respectful in the way he pushed Rastus back into his chair. “Twelve hundred! Mr. Staley, don’t back out; you need ’im wuss than anybody else. Is it twelve-twenty-five?”
Staley hesitated; his eyes fell before the concentrated stare of the silent crowd, and then he nodded. A murmur passed through the assembly, and Colonel Putnam grew white with anger. “Some one has put him up to this,” he said in a low tone to his agent. “Make it thirteen hundred.” And the next instant the auctioneer was flaunting the bid in the face of old Staley.
Herbert Putnam, unnoticed by any one, elbowed his way through the crowd to his brother and touched him on the arm. Their eyes met. “Pardon me,” said Herbert, “but I must speak to you.”
And George Putnam was drawn beyond the outskirts of the crowd. “I cannot keep quiet and see you cheated,” faltered Herbert, with his eyes averted. “A long time ago, when you and I were boys, you stood up for me, and I cannot forget that we are brothers. Don’t bid any more on Rastus; he is shamming; he is as sick as he can be, and is only pretending to be well to bring a high price.”
The two men gazed into each other’s eyes. George Putnam was quivering all over, and his face was softening. Impulsively he put out his hand, as if to apologize for his lack of words. “Let’s not be enemies any longer,” went on Herbert, as he pressed the extended hand. “I am sick and tired of this estrangement. I am going away, and I may never come back. I can’t keep up the old place as father thought I would, and you are welcome to it. Take it and care for it; mother’s and father’s graves are on it.”
George Putnam’s face was working; he strove to reply, but his voice clogged. He looked toward his son and wife in his carriage, and then back into his brother’s face. “God forgive me, Herb,” he said; “I’ve treated you like a dog. Old Rastus has been truer to you than your own brother. You shall not give up the old place; you must keep it. Wait!” And with those words he hurried to the platform.
The auctioneer had been proclaiming Staley’s reckless bid of thirteen-twenty-five, and the crowd was eagerly taking in the unusual sight of the two Putnam brothers in close conversation. Colonel Putnam reached the platform and signed the auctioneer to be quiet. Standing on the lower step, he was in the view of all.
“I want Rastus, and I am going to have him,” he said to the upturned faces. “I want him to give him back to my brother, who has been forced by my neglect to offer him for sale. Twenty thousand dollars is my bid—and Rastus is worth every cent of it.”
No one spoke as Colonel Putnam stepped back into the crowd. Old Rastus seemed the only one to thoroughly grasp the situation. “Bress de Lawd!” he exclaimed, and he slapped Aunt Milly on the back. “Dem boys done made up, en I fotch twenty thousand dollars! Whooee!”
“Twenty thousand dollars,” said the auctioneer, awkwardly. “Twenty thousand—do I hear—and sold to Colonel Putnam. I reckon the’ ain’t no use puttin’ up the others.”
There was great activity in the crowd. Everybody was trying to see the two brothers as they went arm in arm to Colonel Putnam’s carriage, and a moment later, when the vehicle with four occupants turned into the road leading toward George Putnam’s plantation, a unanimous cheer rose from the crowd.
The pedestrian trudged down the tortuous declivitous road of the mountain amidst the splendor of autumn-tinted leafage and occasional dashes of rhododendron flowers. Now and then he would stop and deeply breathe in the crisp air, as if it were a palpable substance which was pleasing to his palate. At such moments, when the interstices of trunks and bowlders would permit, his eyes, large with weariness, would rest on a certain farmhouse in the valley below.
“It’s identical the same,” he said, when he had completed the descent of the mountain and was drawing near to it. “As fer as I can make out, it hain’t altered one bit sence the day they tuk me away. Ef ever’thing seems purtier now, it may be beca’se it’s in the fall of the year an’ the maple-trees an’ the laurel look so fancy.”
Approaching the barn, the only appurtenance to the four-roomed house, farther on by a hundred yards, he leaned on the rail fence and looked over into the barnyard at the screw of blue smoke which was rising from a fire under a huge iron boiler.
“Marty’s killin’ hogs,” he said, reflectively. “I mought ‘a’ picked a better day fer gittin’ back; she never was knowed to be in a good humor durin’ hog-killin’.”
He half climbed, half vaulted over the fence, and approached the woman, who was bowed over an improvised table of undressed planks on which were heaped the dismembered sides, shoulders, and hams of pork. His heart was in his mouth, owing to the carking doubt as to his welcome which had been oozing into the joy of freedom ever since he began his homeward journey. But it was not his wife who looked up as his step rustled the corn-husks near her, but her unmarried sister, Lucinda Dykes.
“Well, I never!” she ejaculated. “It’s Dick Wakeman, as I am alive!” She wiped her hand on her apron and gave it to him, limp and cold. “We all heerd you was pardoned out, but none of us ‘lowed you’d make so straight fer home.”
His features shrank, as if battered by the blow she had unwittingly dealt him.
“I say!” he grunted. “Whar else in the name o’ common sense would a feller go? A body that’s been penned up in the penitentiary fer four years don’t keer to be losin’ time monkeyin’ round amongst plumb strangers, when his own folks—when he hain’t laid eyes on his—”
But, after all, good reasons for his haste in returning could not be found outside of a certain sentimentality which lay deep beneath Wakeman’s rugged exterior, and to which no one had ever heard him refer.
“Shorely,” said the old maid, taking a wrong grasp of the situation—“shorely you knowed, Dick, that Marty has got ’er divorce?”
“Oh, yes. Bad news takes a bee-line shoot fer its mark. I heerd the court had granted ’er a release, but that don’t matter. A lawyer down thar told me that it all could be fixed up now I’m out. Ef I’d ‘a’ been at home, Marty never would ‘a’ made sech a goose of ‘erse’f. How much did the divorce set ’er back?”
“About a hundred dollars,” answered Lucinda.
“Money liter’ly throwed away,” said the convict, with irrepressible indignation. “Marty never did quite sech a silly thing while I was at home.”
The old maid stared at him, a half-amused smile playing over her thin face.
“But it was her money,” she said, argumentatively. “She owned the farm an’ every stick an’ head o’ stock on it when you an’ ’er got married.”
“You needn’t tell me that,” said Wakeman, sharply. “I know that; but that ain’t no reason fer ’er to throw ’er money away gittin’ a divorce.”
Lucinda filled her hand with salt and began to sprinkle it on a side of meat. “Law me,” she tittered, “I ’ll bet you hain’t heerd about Marty an’ Jeff Goardley.”
“Yes, I have. Meddlin’ busybodies has writ me about that, too,” said Wakeman, sitting down on the hopper of a corn-sheller and idly swinging his foot.
“He’s a-courtin’ of ’er like a broom-sedge field afire,” added the sister, tentatively.
“She’s got too much sense to marry ’im after ’er promises to me,” said the convict, firmly.
“She lets ’im come reg’lar ev’ry Tuesday night.”
Wakeman was not ready with a reply, and Lucinda began to salt another piece of pork.
“Ev’ry Tuesday night, rain or shine,” she said.
The words released Wakeman’s tongue.
“Huh, he’s the most triflin’ fop in the county.”
“Looks like some o’ the neighbors is powerful bent on the match,” continued Lucinda, her tone betraying her own lack of sympathy for the thing in question. “Marty was a-standin’ over thar at the fence jest ‘fore you come an’ whirled all of a sudden an’ went up to the house. She said she was afeered her cracklin’s would burn, but I ’ll bet she seed you down the road. I never have been able to make ’er out. She ain’t once mentioned yore name sence you went off. Dick, I’m one that don’t, nur never did, believe you meant to steal Williams’s hoss, kase you was too drunk to know what you was a-doin’, but Marty never says whether she does ur doesn’t. The day the news come back that you was sentenced I ketched ’er in the back room a-cryin’ as’ ef ’er heart would break, but that night ‘Lonzo Spann come in an’ said that you had let it out in the court-room that you’d be glad even to go to the penitentiary to git a rest from Marty’s tongue, an’—”
“Lucinda, as thar’s a God on high, them words never passed my lips,” the convict interrupted.
“I ‘lowed not,” the old maid returned. “But it has got to be a sort of standin’ joke ag’in Marty, an’ she heers it ev’ry now an’ then. But I’m yore friend, Dick. I’ve had respect fer you ever sence I noticed how you suffered when Annie got sick an’ died. Thar ain’t many men that has sech feelin’ fer their dead children.”
Wakeman’s face softened.
“I was jest a-wonderin’, comin’ on, ef—ef anybody has been a-lookin’ after the grave sence I went off. The boys in the penitentiary used to mention the’r dead once in a while, an’ I’d always tell ’em about my grave. Pris ‘ners, Lucinda, git to relyin’ on the company o’ the’r dead about as much as the’r livin’ folks. In the four years that I was in confinement not one friend o’ mine ever come to ax how I was gittin’ on.”
“Marty has been a-lookin’ after the grave,” said Lucinda, in the suppressed tone peculiar to people who desire to disown deep emotion. She turned her face toward the house. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about yore bein’ neglected down thar, Dick. The Lord knows I’ve laid awake many an’ many a cold night a-wonderin’ ef they give you-uns enough cover, an’ ef they tuk them cold chains off ’n you at night. An’ I reckon Marty did, too, fer she used to roll an’ tumble as ef ’er mind wasn’t at ease.”
Wakeman took off his coat and rolled up his shirt-sleeves.
“I’m itchin’ to set in to farm-work ag’in,” he said. “Let me salt fer you, an’ you run up thar an’ tell ’er I’m back. Maybe she ’ll come down heer.”
Lucinda gave him her place at the table, a troubled expression taking hold of her features.
“The great drawback is Jeff Goardley,” she said. “It really does look like him an’ Marty will come to a understandin’. I don’t know railly but what she may have promised him; he has seemed mighty confident heer lately.”
Wakeman shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. He filled his hands with the salt from a pail and began to rub it on the pork.
Lingeringly the woman left him and turned up the slight incline toward the house. His eyes did not follow her. He was scrutinizing the pile of pork she had salted.
“Goodness gracious!” he grunted. “Lu-cindy has wasted fifteen pound o’ salt. Ef I’d ‘a’ done that Marty’d ‘a’ tuk the top o’ my head off. I wonder ef Marty could ‘a’ got careless sence she’s had all the work to look after.”
He had salted the last piece of meat when, looking up, he saw Lucinda standing near him.
“She wouldn’t come a step,” she announced, with some awkwardness of delivery. “When I told ’er you wuz down heer she jest come to the door an’ looked down at you a-workin’ an’ grunted an’ went back to ’er cracklin’s. But that’s Marty.”
The convict dipped his hands into a tub of hot water and wiped them on an empty salt-bag.
“I wonder,” he began, “ef I’d better—” But he proceeded no further.
“I think I would,” said the angular mind-reader, sympathetically.
“Well, you come on up thar, too,” Wake-man proposed. “I’ve always noticed that when you are about handy she never has as much to say as she does commonly.”
“I ’ll have to go,” said Lucinda. “Ef Marty gits to talkin’ to you she ‘ll let the cracklin’s burn, an’ then—then she’d marry Goardley out o’ pure spite.”
As the pair reached the steps of the back porch the convict caught a glimpse of a gingham skirt within, and its stiff flounce as it vanished behind the half-closed door-shutter suddenly flung an aspect of seriousness into his countenance. He paused, his foot on the lowest step, and peered into the sitting-room. Seeing it empty, he smiled.
“I ’ll go in thar an’ take a cheer. Tell ’er I want to see ‘er.”
His air of returning self-confidence provoked a faint laugh from his well-wisher.
“Yo’ ‘re a case,” she said, nodding her consent to his request. “You are different frum ‘most anybody else. Somehow I can’t think about you ever havin’ been jailed fer hoss-stealin’.”
“It all depends on a body’s feelin’s,” the convict returned. “Down thar in the penitentiary we had a little gang of us that knowed we wuz innocent of wrong intentions, an’ we kinder flocked together. All the rest sorter looked up to us an’ believed we wuz all right. It was a comfort. I ‘ll step in an’ git it over.”
He walked as erectly as an Indian up the steps and into the sitting-room. To his surprise Mrs. Wakeman started to enter the room from the adjoining kitchen, and seeing him, turned and began to beat a hasty retreat.
“Hold on thar, Marty,” he called out, in the old tone which had formerly made strangers suppose that the farm and all pertaining to it had been his when he married her.
She paused in the doorway, white and sullen.
“Ain’t you a-goin’ to tell a feller howdy an’ shake hands?” he asked, with considerable self-possession.
“What ’ud I do that fur?”
“Beca’se I’m home ag’in,” he said.
“Huh, nobody hain’t missed you.” The words followed a forced shrug.
“I know a sight better ’n that, Marty,” he said. “I know a woman that ‘ud take a duck fit jest when I was gone to drive the cows home an’ got delayed a little, would fret consider’ble durin’ four years of sech a—a trip as I’ve had. Set down here an’ let’s have a talk.”
“I’ve got my work to do,” she returned, after half a minute of speechlessness, her helpless anger standing between her and satisfactory expression.
“Oh, all right!” he exclaimed. “I ain’t no hand to waste time durin’ work hours with dillydallyin’. Any other time ’ll do me jest as well. I ‘lowed maybe it would suit you better to have it over with. I must git out the hoss an’ wagon an’ haul that hog-meat up to the smokehouse. Whar’s Cato? I ’ll bet that triflin’ nigger has give you the slip ag’in this hog-killin’, like he always did.”
Mrs. Wakeman stared at the speaker in a sort of thwarted, defiant way without deigning to reply; her sneer was the only thing about her bearing which seemed at all expressive of the vast contempt for him that she really did not feel. She felt that her silence was cowardly, her failure to assert her rights as a divorced woman an admission that she was glad of his return.
At this critical juncture Lucinda Dykes sauntered into the room and leaned against the dingy, once sky-blue wall. Her air of interested amusement over the matrimonial predicament had left her. It had dawned upon her, now that her sister had taken refuge in obstinate silence, that a vast responsibility rested on her as intermediary.
“Cato went with some more niggers to a shindig over at Squire Camp’s yesterday an’ hain’t showed up sence,” she explained. “Ef I was you-uns—ef I was Marty, I mean—I’d turn ’im off fer good an’ all. Dick, sence you went off me nur Marty hain’t been able to do a thing with ‘im.”
The convict grunted. It was as if he had succeeded in rolling the last four years from his memory as completely as if they had never passed.
“Jest wait till I see the black scamp,” he growled. “I reckon I ’ll have to do every lick of the work myself.” With that Wakeman turned into the entry and thence went to the stable-yard near by.
“He hain’t altered a smidgin’,” Lucinda commented. “It may be kase he has on the identical same clothes; he’s been a-wearin’ striped ones down thar, you know, an’ they laid away his old ones. To save me I can’t realize that he’s been off even a week.” The old maid snickered softly. “He’s the only one that could ever manage you, Marty. Now Jeff Goardley would let you have yore own way, but Dick’s a caution! It’s always been a question with me as to whether a woman would ruther lead a man ur be led.”
There was a white stare in Mrs Wakeman’s eyes which indicated that she was pondering the man’s chief aggression rather than heeding her sister’s nagging remarks. The sudden appearance of the convict’s head and shoulders above a near-at-hand window-sill rendered a reply unnecessary. His face was flushed.
“Can you-uns tell me whar under the sun the halter is?” he broke forth, in a turbulent tone. “I tuk the trouble to put a iron hook up in the shed-room jest fer that halter, an’ now somebody has tore down the hook an’ I can’t find hair nur hide o’ the halter.”
Mrs. Wakeman tried to sneer again as she turned aside, and the gaunt intermediary, spurred on to her duty, approached the window.
“The blacksmith tuk that hook to mend the harrow with,” she said, with a warning glance at Marty. “You ’ll find the halter on the joist above the hoss-trough. Ef I was you, on this fust day, I’d try to—” But Wakeman had dropped out of sight, and muttering unintelligible sounds indicative of discomfiture, was striding toward the stable.
All the rest of that afternoon the convict toiled in the smoke-house, hanging the meat on hooks along the joists over a slow, partly smothered fire of chips and pieces of bark. When the work was finished his eyes were red from smoke and brine. He stabled the horse and fed him, and then, realizing that he had nothing more to do, he felt hungry. He wanted to go into the sitting-room and sit down in his old place in the chimney-corner, but a growing appreciation of the extreme delicacy of the situation had taken hold of him. He wandered about the stable-yard in a desultory way, going to the pig-pen, now empty and blood-stained, and to the well-filled corn-crib, but these objects had little claim on his interest. The evening shadows had begun to stalk like dank amphibious monsters over the carpet of turf along the creek-banks, and pencils of light were streaming out of the windows of the family-room. Suddenly his eyes took in the woodpile; he went to it, and picking up the ax, began to cut wood. He was tired, but he felt that he would rather be seen occupied than remaining outside without a visible excuse for so doing. In a few minutes he was joined by Lucinda.
“Dick,” she intoned, “you’ve worked enough, the Lord Almighty knows. Come in the house an’ rest ‘fore supper; it’s mighty nigh ready.”
He avoided her glance, and shamefacedly touched a big log he had just cut into the proper length for the fireplace.
“Cato, the triflin’ scamp, hain’t cut you-uns a single backlog,” he said, in a tone that she had never heard from him.
“We hain’t had a decent one sence you went off, Brother Richard,” she returned. “An’ a fire’s no fire without a backlog.”
Their eyes met. She saw that he was deeply stirred by her tenderness, and that opened the floodgates of her sympathy. She began to rub her eyes.
“Oh, Dick, I’m so miser’ble; ef you an’ Marty don’t quit actin’ like you are I don’t know what I will do.”
She saw him make a motion as if he had swallowed something; then he stooped and shouldered the heavy backlog and some smaller sticks.
“I ’ll give you-uns one more backlog to set by, anyhow,” he said, huskily.
She preceded him into the sitting-room and stood over him while he raked out the hot coals and deposited the log against the back part of the fireplace. Then she turned into the kitchen and approached her sister, who was frying meat in an iron pan on the coals.
“Marty,” she said, unsteadily, “ef you begin on Dick I ’ll go off fer good. I can’t stand that.”
Mrs. Wakeman folded her stern lips, as if to keep them under check, and shrugged her shoulders. That was all the response she made.
Lucinda turned back into the sitting-room, where the dining-table stood. To-night she put three plates on the white cloth; one of them had been Dick’s for years. She put it at the end of the table where he had sat when he was the head of the house. As she did so she caught his shifting glance and smiled.
“I want to make you feel as ef nothin’ in the world had happened, Dick,” she said. “I’ve been a-fixin’ you a bed in the company-room, but you jest must be sensible about that.”
“Law! anything will suit me,” he began. But the entrance of Marty interrupted his remark.
She put the bread, the coffee, the meat, and the gravy on the table, and sat down in her place without a word. Lucinda glanced at Wakeman.
“Come on, Dick,” she called out. “I ’ll bet yo’ ‘re hungry as a bear.”
He drew out the chair that had been placed for him and sat down. Now an awkward situation presented itself. In the absence of a man Marty always asked the blessing. Lucinda wondered what would take place; one thing she knew well, and that was that Marty was too punctilious in religious matters to touch a bite of food before grace had been said by some one. But just then she noticed something about Wakeman that sent a little thrill of horror through her. Evidently his long life in prison had caused him to retrograde into utter forgetfulness of the existence of table etiquette, for he had drawn the great dish of fried meat toward him and was critically eying the various parts as he slowly turned it round.
“What a fool I am,” he said, the delightful savor of the meat rendering him momentarily oblivious of his former wife’s forbidding aspect. “I laid aside the lights o’ that littlest shote an’ firmly intended to ax you to fry ’em fer me, but—”
Lucinda’s stare convinced him that something had gone wrong.
“Marty’s waitin’ fer somebody to ax the blessin’,” she explained.
“Blessin’? Good gracious!” he grunted, his effusiveness dried up. “That went clean out ’n my mind. But a body that’s tuk his meals on a tin plate in a row o’ fellers waitin’ fer the’r turn four years hand-runnin’, ain’t expected to—”
He went no further, seeming to realize that the picture he was drawing was tending to widen the distance between him and the uncompromising figure opposite him. He folded his hands so that his arms formed a frame for his plate, and said in a mellow bass voice: “Good Lord, make us duly thankful fer the bounteous repast that Thy angels has seed fit to spread before us to-night. Cause each of us to inculcate sech a frame of mind as will not let us harbor ill will ag’in our neighbors, an’ finally, when this shadowy abode is dispersed by the light of Thy glory, receive us all into Thy grace. This we beg in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”
He ended in some confusion. A red spot hovered over each of his cheek-bones. “I clean forgot that part about good crops an’ fair weather,” he said to Lucinda. “But you see it’s been four yeer sence I said it over, an’ a man o’ my age oughtn’t to be expected to know a thing like a younger person.”
“Help yorese’f to the meat an’ pass the dish to Marty.” replied Miss Dykes. “Ef I was you, I’d not be continually a-bringin’ up things about the last four yeer.”
He made a hurried but bounteous choice of the parts of meat on the dish, and then gave it over into the outstretched hands of Lucinda. Marty was pouring out the coffee. She passed the old-fashioned mustache-cup to her sister, and that lady transferred it to Wakeman. He sipped from it lingeringly.
“My Lord!” he cried, impulsively. “I tell you the God’s truth; sech good coffee as this hain’t been in a mile o’ my lips sence I went—sence I was heer,” he corrected, as Lucinda’s warning stare bore down on him.
After that the meal proceeded in silence. When he had finished, Dick went back to his chair in the chimney-corner near the battered woodbox. After putting away the dishes and removing the cloth from the table, Lucinda came and sat down near him. Mrs. Wake-man, casting occasional furtive glances toward the front door, appropriated her share of the general silence in a seat where the firelight faded. Richard wore an unsettled air, as if getting into old harness came as awkward as putting on the new had come when he married, years before. After a few minutes he became a little drowsy, and began to act naturally, as if by force of returning habit. He unlaced his shoes, took them off, rubbed the bottoms of his feet, thrust those members toward the fire, and worked his toes. He also took a chew of tobacco. Profound silence was in the room; the thoughts of three minds percolated through it. Marty picked up theChristian Advocateand pretended to read, but she dropped it in her lap and cast another look toward the door.
The rustling of the paper attracted Richard’s gaze.
“Is she expectin’—is anybody a-comin’?” He directed the question to Lucinda.
“I wouldn’t be much surprised,” was the answer. “It’s Jeff Goardley’s night.”
“You don’t say!” Each of the words had a separate little jerk, and the questioning stare of the convict’s eyes pierced the space intervening between him and his divorced wife. He spat into the fire, wiped his mouth with an unsteady hand, and caught his breath.
Silence again. Lucinda broke it.
“You hain’t never told us how you happened to git yore pardon,” she ventured.
“By a streak o’ luck,” Wakeman said, the languid largeness of his eyes showing that he was still struggling against the inclination to sleep. “T’other day the governor sent word to our superintendent that he was comin’ to see fer hisse’f how we wus treated. The minute I heerd it, I said to myself, I did, ‘Wakeman, you must have a talk with that man.’ So the mornin’ he got thar we wus all give a sort of vacation an’ stood up in rowslike fer inspection. When I seed ’im a-comin’ towards me I jest gazed at ’im with all my might an’ he got to lookin’ at me. When he got nigh me he stopped short an’ said:
“‘Looky’ heer, my man,’ said he; ‘yore face seems mighty familiar to me. Have I ever seed you before?’
“‘Not unless you remember me a-throwin’ up my hat in front o’ the stan’ an’ yellin’ when you wus stump-speakin’ in Murray jest ‘fore yore ‘lection,’ said I.
“Then he laughed kinder good-natured like, an’ said: ‘I’m sorry to see a voter o’ mine in a fix like yo’r ‘n. What can I do fer you?’
“‘I want to have a talk with you, yore Honor, an’ that bad,’ said I.
“‘I am at yore disposal,’ said he. ‘That’s what I’m heer fer. I ’ll ax the superintendent to call you in a moment. What is yore name?’
“‘Richard Wakeman, yore Honor,’ said I. “‘An’ one o’ the best men we ever had,’ said the superintendent.
“Well, they passed on, an’ in a few minutes I was ordered to come to the superintendent’s office, an’ thar I found the governor tilted back smokin’ a fine cigar.
“‘You wanted to have some ‘n’ to say to me, Wakeman?’ said he.
“I eased my ball an’ chain down on the skin of a big-eyed varmint o’ some sort, an’ stood up straight.
“‘I did, yore Honor, an’ that bad,’ said I.
“‘What is it?’ said he.
“‘I want to put my case before you, yore Honor,’ said I. ‘An’ I’m not a-goin’ to begin, as every convict does, by sayin’ he ain’t guilty, fer I know you’ve heerd that tale tell yo’ ‘re heartily sick of it.’
“‘But are you guilty?’ said the governor. ‘Ihaveseed men sent up fer crimes they never committed.’
“‘Yore Honor,’ said I, ‘I didn’t no more intend to steal that hoss o’ Pike Williams’s than you did—not a bit. Gittin’ on a spree about once a year is my main fault, an’ it was Christmas, an’ all of us was full o’ devilment. It was at the Springplace bar, an’ Alf Moreland struck me a whack across the face with his whip, an’ bein’ astraddle of a fine nag he made off. Pike’s nag was hitched at the rack nigh me, an’, without hardly knowin’ what I was doin’, I jumped on it an’ spurred off after Alf. I run ’im nip an’ tuck fer about seven mile, an’ then me an’ him rid on fer more whisky down the valley. The next day I was arrested, so drunk they had to haul me to jail in a wagon. They tried me before a jury o’ men that never did like me, an’ I got five yeer.’
“When I stopped thar to draw a fresh breath the governor axed, ‘Is that what you wanted to say, Wakeman?’
“‘Not a word of it, yore Honor,’ said I. ‘I jest wanted to put a straight question to you about the law. Ef you knowed that a man was a-sufferin’ a sight more on account of imprisonment than his sentence called fer, would that be right?’
“The governor studied a minute, then he kinder smiled at the superintendent, an’ said:
“‘That’s a question fer the conscience. Ef a man is imprisoned fer a crime, an’ jail life breaks his health down, an’ is killin’ ‘im, then he ort to be pardoned out.’
“Then I had ’im right whar I wanted ‘im, an’ I up an’ told ’im that I had a wife that was all the world to me, an’ that durin’ my term mischievous folks had lied ag’in me an’ persuaded ’er to git a divorce, an’ that a oily-tongued scamp was a-tryin’ to marry ’er fer what little land she had. I reminded ’im that I was put in fer stealin’, an that I had worked four yeer o’ my sentence, an’ that it looked like a good deal o’ punishment fer jest one spree, but that I wouldn’t complain, bein’ as I was cured of the liquor habit an’ never intended to put the neck of a bottle to my mouth ag’in, but that I did kinder want to hurry back home ‘fore too much damage was done.
“Well, I’m not lyin’ when I say the governor’s eyes was wet. All of a sudden he helt out his han’ to me an’ said:
“‘I feel shore you never intended to steal that hoss, Wakeman.’
“‘My wife never has believed it fer one instant,’ said the superintendent. ‘An’ it takes a woman to ferret out guilt.’
“The governor tuk a sheet o’ paper an’ a pen an’ said:
“‘Wakeman, I’m a-goin’ to pardon you, an’ what’s more, I inten’ to send a statement to all the newspapers that I’m convinced you are a wronged man. I’ve done wuss than you was accused of in my young days, an’ had the cheek to run fer the office of governor.’” Then the superintendent’s wife come in an’ stood up thar an’ cried, an’ axed to be allowed to unlock my manacles. She got out my old suit—this un heer—an’ breshed it ‘erself, an’ kept on a-cryin’ an’ a-laughin’ at the same time The last words that she said to me was:
“‘Wakeman, go home an’ make up with yore wife; she won’t turn ag’in you when you git back to the old place whar you an’ her has lived together so long, an’ whar yore child’s grave is.’”
The speaker paused. For a man so coarse in appearance, his tone had grown remarkably tender. Lucinda was staring wide-eyed, with a fixed aspect of features, as if she were half frightened at the unwonted commotion within herself and the danger of its appearing on the surface. Finally she took refuge in the act of raising her apron to her eyes.
Mrs. Wakeman had excellent command over herself, drawing upon a vast fund of offended pride, the interest of which had compounded within the last four years. Just at this crisis the steady beat of a horse’s hoofs broke into the hushed stillness of the room. Lucinda lowered her apron with wrists that seemed jointless bone, and stared at her sister.
“Are you a-goin’ to let that feller stick his head inside that door to-night?”
The question was ill-timed, for it produced only a haughty, contemptuous shrug in the woman from whom it rebounded. Wakeman did not take his eyes from the fire. They heard the gate-latch click, and then a heavy-booted and spurred foot fell on the entry step. The next instant the door was unceremoniously opened and a tall, lank mountaineer entered. He was at the fag-end of bachelorhood, had sharp, thin features, a small mustache dyed black, and reddish locks which were long and curling. He wore a heavy gray shawl over his shoulders. At first he did not see Wakeman, for his eyes had found employment in trying to discover why Marty had not risen as he came in. He glanced inquiringly at Lucinda, and then he recognized Richard.
“My Lord!” he muttered. “I had no idee you—I ‘lowed you—”
“I didn’t nuther,” Richard sneered, the red firelight revealing strange flashes in his eyes.
For some instants the visitor stood on the hearth awkwardly disrobing his sinewy hands. Finally, unheeding Lucinda’s admonitory glances toward the door, and the prayerful current from her eyes to his, he sat down near Marty. Ten minutes by the clock on the mantelpiece passed, in which time nothing was heard except the lowing of the cattle in the cow-lot and the sizzling of the coals when Richard spat. At last a portion of Wakeman’s wandering self-confidence resettled upon him, and it became him well. He crossed his legs easily, dropped his quid of tobacco into the fire, and with a determined gaze began to prod his squirming rival.
“Lookye heer,” he said, suddenly. “What did you come heer fur, anyhow?”
Goardley leaned forward and spat between his linked hands. He accomplished it with no slight effort, for the inactivity of his mouth, which was not chewing anything, had produced a hot dryness.
“I don’t know,” he managed to say. “I jest thought I’d come around.”
“Ride?”
“Yes, hoss-back.”
“Do you know whar you hitched?” Goardley hesitated and glanced helplessly at Marty, who, stern-faced, inflexible, was looking at the paper in her lap.
“I hitched under the cherry-tree out thar,” he answered, with scarcely a touch of self-confidence in his tone.
“Well, go unhitch an’ git astraddle of yore animal.”
Goardley blinked, but did not rise.
“I didn’t have the least idee you had got free, Dick, an’—”
“Well, you know it now, so git out to that hoss, ur by all that’s holy—”
Mrs. Wakeman drew herself erect and crumpled the paper in her bony hand.
“This is my house,” she said, “an’ I ain’t no married woman.”
The white fixity of Goardley’s countenance relaxed in a slow grin. An automatic affair it was, but as he took in the situation it was a recognition of the aid which had arrived at the last minute.
Wakeman stood up in his stockinged feet. He was still unruffled. “That’s a fact; the place is her ‘n,” he admitted. “But I ’ll tell you one article that ain’t. It’s that thar shootin’-iron on them deer-horns up thar, an’ ef you don’t git out ’n heer forthwith it ’ll make the fust hole in meat that it’s made in four yeer. Maybe me ’n Martyain’tman an’ wife, but when we wuz married the preacher said, ‘What the Lord has j’ined together let no man put asunder,’ an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to set still an’ see a dirty, oily-tongued scamp like you try to undo the Lord’s work. You know the way out, an’ I was too late fer hog-killin’. I went into the penitentiary fer jest one spree, but I ’ll go in fer manslaughter next time an’ serve my term more cheerful—I mought say with Christian fortitude.”
Cowardice produced the dominant expression in Goardley’s face. He rose and backed from the room. The convict thumped across the resounding floor to the door and looked out after the departing man.
“Run like a skeered dog,” he laughed, impulsively, as he turned back into the room. And then he waxed serious as he entered the atmosphere circling about Marty, who, with a stormy brow, sat immovable, her eyes downcast.
“I couldn’t help it, to save me,” he began, apologetically, to her profile. “But I reckon you an’ me can manage to git along like we used to, an’ I never would ‘a’ had any respect fer myself ef I had a-let that scamp set heer an’ think he was a-courtin’ of you right before my eyes.”
Marty made no reply. A flush of suppressed emotion had risen in her cheeks and was taking on a deeper tinge. Richard grunted, stepped half-way back to his chimney-corner, and looked at her again. Seeing her eyes still averted, he grunted aloud, and went to his chair and sat down. Several minutes passed. Then Lucinda’s prayerful eyes saw his hand, now quivering, reach behind him and draw his shoes in front of him. He put them on, but did not tie the strings.
“Somehow,” he said, rising, “somehow, now that I come to think of it, I don’t feel exactly right—exactly as I used to—an’ I reckon, maybe, I ort to go some’rs else. I reckon, as you said jest now, that in the eyes o’ some folks you ain’t no married woman, an’ I have been makin’ purty free fer a jail-bird. Old Uncle Billy Hodkins won’t set his dogs on me, an’ I ’ll go over thar tonight. After that the Lord only knows whar I will head fer. Uncle Billy never did believe I was guilty; he’s writ me that a dozen times.”
As he moved toward the door, in a clattering, slipshod fashion, Lucinda fixed Marty with a fierce stare.
“Are you a-goin’ to set thar an’ let Dick leave us fer good?” she hurled at her fiercely.
Marty made no reply save that which was embodied in a would-be defiant shrug, but the flow of blood had receded from her face.
“Ef you do, you ain’t no Christian woman, that’s all,” was Lucinda’s half-sobbing, half-shrieked accusation. “Yo’ ‘re a purty thing to set up an’ drink the sacrament with a heart in you that the Old Nick’s fire couldn’t melt.”
The convict smiled back at his defender from the threshold; then they heard him cross the entry and step down on the gravel walk. He had passed the bars and was turning up the side of a little hill, on the brow of which a few gravestones shimmered in the moonlight, when he heard his name called from the entry. It was Lucinda’s voice; she came to him, her hair flying in the wind.
“I ‘lowed,” he said, sheepishly, as she paused to catch her breath, “I jest ‘lowed I’d go up thar an’ see ef the water had been washin’ out round Annie’s grave. The last time I looked at it the foot-rock was a little sagged to one side.”
“Come back in the house, Dick,” cried the old maid. “Marty has completely broke down. She’s cryin’ like a baby. She has been actin’ stubborn beca’se she was proud an’ afeerd folks would think she was a fool about you. As soon as I told ’er you didn’t say that about bein’ willin’ to go to jail to git out ’n reach o’ ’er tongue, she axed me to run after you. She’s consented to make it up ef we will send over fer the justice an’ have the marryin’ done to-night.”