The earliest frost of late September had brought its tang to the air
with a snappy assertion of the changing season, when Parish Thornton
first broached to Dorothy an idea that, of late, had been constantly in
his mind. Somehow that morning with its breath of shrewd chill seemed to
mark a dividing line. Yesterday had been warm and languorous and the day
before had been hot. The ironweed had not long since been topped with
the dusty royalty of its vagabond purple, and the thistledown had
drifted along air currents that stirred light and warm.
"Honey," said the man, gravely, as he slipped his arm about Dorothy's
waist on that first cold morning, when they were standing together by
the grave of her grandfather, "I hain't talked much erbout hit--but I
reckon my sister's baby hes done hed hits bornin' afore now."
"I wonder," she mused, as yet without suspicion of the trend of his
suggestions, "how she come through hit--all by herself thetaway?"
The man's face twitched with one of those emotional paroxysms that once
in a long while overcame his self-command. Then it became a face of
shadowed anxiety and his voice was heavy with feeling.
"I've done been ponderin' thet day an' night hyar of late, honey. I've
got ter fare over thar an' find out."
Dorothy started and caught quickly at his elbow, but at once she removed
her hand and looked thoughtfully away.
"Kain't ye write her a letter?" she demanded. "Hit's walkin' right
inter sore peril fer ye ter cross ther state line, Cal."
"An' yit," he answered with convincing logic, "I'd ruther trust ter my
own powers of hidin' out in a country whar I knows every trail an' every
creek bed, then ter take chances with a letter. Ef I wrote one hit would
carry a post-office mark on ther envellop ter tell every man whence hit
come."
She was too wise, too sympathetic, and too understanding of that clan
loyalty which would deny him peace until he fulfilled his obligation, to
offer arguments in dissuasion, but she stood with trouble riffles in her
deep eyes until at last she asked:
"When did ye aim ter start--over yon?"
"Hit ought ter be right soon now, while travellin's good. Come snowfall
hit'll git ter be right slavish journeyin'--but I don't 'low ter tarry
there long. I kain't noways be content away from ye."
The thoughts that were occupying Dorothy were for the most part silent
ones but at length she inquired:
"Why don't ye bring her back with ye, ter dwell hyar with us--her an'
ther baby?"
Thornton shook his head, but his heart warmed because she had asked.
"Hit wouldn't do--jest yit. Folks mout seek ter trace me by follerin'
her. I kin slip in thar an' see her, though, an' mebby comfort her some
small degree--an' then slip back home ergin without no man's knowin'
I've ever been thar."
Instinctively the wife shuddered.
"Ef they _did_ find out!" she exclaimed in a low voice, and the man
nodded in frank comprehension.
"Ef they did," he answered, candidly, "I reckon hit would be hangin' or
ther penitenshery fer me--but they hain't agoin' ter."
"I don't seek ter hinder ye none," she told him in a faltering voice,
"despite hit's goin' ter nigh kill me ter see ye go. Somehow hit seems
like I wouldn't be so skeered ef ye war guilty yoreself ... but ter hev
ye risk ther gallers fer somethin' ye didn't nuver do----"
The words choked her and she stopped short.
"I'm goin' ter hev a mouty strong reason fer seekin' ter come home
safe," he said, softly. "But even ef hit did cost me my life, I don't
see as I could fail a woman thet's my sister, an' thet's been facin' her
time amongst enemies, with a secret like thet hauntin' her day an'
night. I've got ter take ther chanst, honey."
A sound came to them through their preoccupation, and they looked up to
see Bas Rowlett crossing the stile.
His case-hardened hypocrisy stood valiantly by him, and his face
revealed nothing of the humiliation he must feel in playing out his
farcical role of friendship before the eyes of the man to whom it was so
transparent.
"I war jest passin' by," he announced, "an I 'lowed I'd light down an'
make my manners. I'd love ter hev a drink of water, too."
Without a word Parish turned and went toward the well and the visitor's
eyes lit again to their avid hunger as he gazed at the girl.
Abruptly he declared: "Don't never fergit what I told ye, Dorothy. I'd
do most anything, fer _you_."
The girl made no answer, but she flushed under the intensity of his
gaze, and to herself she said, as she had said once before: "I wonder
would he do sich a thing fer me as Cal's doin' fer his sister?"
The scope and peril of that sacrifice seemed to stand between her and
all other thoughts.
Then Parish came back with a gourd dipper, and forced himself for a few
moments into casual conversation. Though to have intimated his purpose
and destination would have been a fatal thing, it would have been
almost as foolish to wrap in mystery the fact that he meant to make a
short journey from home, so as Bas mounted Parish said:
"I've got a leetle business acrost in Virginny, Bas, an' afore long I'm
goin' over thar fer a few days."
When Elviry Prooner had consented to come as temporary companion for
Dorothy, it seemed merely an adventitious happening that Sim, too, felt
the call of the road.
"I don't know es I've named hit to ye afore, Parish," he volunteered the
next day as the three sat around the dinner table, "but I've got a
cousin thet used ter be more like a brother ter me--an' he got inter
some leetle trouble."
"Is thet so, Sim?" inquired Parish with a ready interest. "War hit a
sore trouble?"
"Hit couldn't skeercely be holped--but he's been sulterin' in ther
penitenshery down thar at Frankfort fer nigh on ter two y'ars now.
Erbout once in a coon's age I fares me down thar ter fotch him tidin's
of his folks. Hit pleasures him."
Thornton began to understand--or thought he did, and again he inclined
his head.
"I reckon, Sim," he said, "ye wants ter make one of them trips now,
don't ye?"
"Thet's a right shrewd guess, Parish. Hit's a handy time ter go. I kin
git back afore corn-shuckin', an' thar hain't no other wuck a-hurtin'
ter be done right now."
"All right, Sim"--the permission came readily--"light out whenever ye
gits ready--but come back fer corn-shuckin'."
When Sim related to Bas Rowlett how free of complication had been the
arrangement, Bas smiled in contentment. "Start out--an' slip back--an'
don't let him git outen yore sight till ye finds out whar he goes an'
what he's doin'," came the crisp order. "He's up ter suthin' thet he
hain't givin' out ter each an' every, an' I'd love ter know what hit
is."
* * * * *
Along the ridges trailed that misty, smoky glamour with which Autumn
dreams of the gorgeous pictures she means to paint, with the woods for a
canvas and the frost for a brush.
Bas Rowlett had shaved the bristle from his jowl and chin and thrown his
overalls behind his cabin door. He had dressed him in high-laced boots
and donned a suit of store clothes, for in his mind were thoughts
livened and made keen with the heady intoxication of an atmosphere like
wine.
He knocked on the door of the house which he knew to be manless, and
waited until it was opened by Elviry Prooner.
His swarthy face with its high cheekbones bequeathed from the shameful
mixing of his blood in Indian veins wore a challenging smile of
daredeviltry, and the buxom young woman stood regarding him out of her
provocative eyes. Perhaps she owned to a revival of hope in her own
breast, which had known the rancour of unacknowledged jealousy because
this man had passed her by to worship at Dorothy Harper's shrine.
Perhaps Bas Rowlett who "had things hung up" had at last come to his
senses and meant, belatedly, to lay his heart at her feet. If he did,
she would lead him a merry dance of doing penance--but she would nowise
permit him to escape.
But Bas saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with
another tete-a-tete, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her
so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into
the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking
indignantly along the road toward Jake Crabbott's store at Lake Erie.
So Bas set his basket down and removed his hat and let his powerful
shoulders relax themselves restfully against the door frame. He was
waiting for Dorothy, and he was glad that the obnoxious Elviry had gone.
After a little Dorothy appeared. Her lips were innocent of the flippant
sneer that the other girl's had held and her beauty was not so
full-blown or material.
Bas Rowlett did not rise from his seat and the young woman did not
expect it. Casually he inquired: "Is Parish hyar?"
The last question came so innocently that it accomplished its purpose.
Bas seemed to hope for an affirmative reply, and his manner robbed his
presence of any apparent intent of visiting a husbandless wife. Since no
one but himself knew that his jackal Sam Squires was at that moment
trailing after Parish Thornton as the beagle courses after the hare, he
could logically enough make such an inquiry.
"No. Didn't ye know? He started out soon this mornin'. I reckon he's fur
over to'rds Virginny by now."
"Oh!" Bas Rowlett seemed surprised, but he made prompt explanation. "I
knowed he hed hit in head ter go--but I didn't know he'd started yit."
For more than an hour their talk went on in friendly channels of
reminiscence and commonplace, then the man lifted the basket he had
brought. "I fotched some 'simmons offen thet tree by my house. Ye used
ter love 'em right good, Dorothy."
"I does still, Bas," she smiled with that sweet serenity that men found
irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes
brimming melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until
she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a
brown study erbout somethin'."
He drew back his shoulders then, and enlightened, "Sometimes I gits
thetaway. I fell ter thinkin' of them days when you an' me used ter
gather them 'simmons tergether, little gal."
"When we was kids," she answered, nodding her head. "We hed fun, didn't
we?"
"God Almighty," he exclaimed, impetuously and suddenly. "How I loved
ye!"
The girl drew away, and her answer was at once sympathetic and
defensive. "Thet war all a right long time back, Bas."
The defeated lover came to his feet and stood looking at her with a face
over which the passion of his feeling came with a sweep and surge that
he made no effort to control.
In that instant something had slipped in Bas Rowlett and the madman that
was part of him became temporarily all of him.
"Hit hain't so long a time ago," he vehemently declared, "thet I've
changed any in hits passin'. So long es I lives, Dorothy, I'll love ye
more an' more--till I dies."
She drew back another step and shook her head reprovingly, and in the
gravity of her eyes was the dawning of indignation, disappointment, and
astonishment.
"Bas," she said, earnestly, "even ef Cal hadn't of come, I couldn't
nuver hev wedded with ye. He did come, though, an'--in thet way of
carin'--thar hain't no other man in the world fer me. I kain't never pay
ye back fer all thet I'm beholden ter ye ... fer savin' him an' fotchin'
him in when thet craven shot him ... fer stayin' a friend when most men
would hev got ter be enemies. I knows all them things--but don't seek
ter spile none of 'em by talkin' love ter me.... Hit's too late.... I'm
married."
For an instant he stood as though long-arrested passions were pounding
against the dams that had held them; then his words came like the
torrent that makes driftwood of its impediments.
"Ter hell with this man Thornton! Ye didn't never hev no chanst ter know
yore own mind.... Ye jest thinks ye loves him because ye pitied him. Hit
won't last noways."
"Bas," she spoke his name with a sharp and stinging note of command,
"I'm willin' ter look over what ye've said so fur--because of what I
owes ye--but don't say no more!"
In a frenzy of wild and sensuous abandon he laughed. Then leaping
forward he seized her and crushed her to him with her arms pinioned in
his and her body close against his own.
Her struggles were as futile as those of a bird held in a human hand--a
hand that takes no thought of how severely it may bruise but only of
making firm its imprisoning hold.
"I said 'ter hell with him'," repeated the man in a low voice but one of
white-hot passion. "I says hit ergin! From ther time thet ye fust begun
ter grow up I'd made up my mind thet ye belonged ter me--an' afore I
quits ye're _goin'_ ter belong ter me. Ye talks erbout bein' wedded an'
I says ter hell with thet, too! Mebby ye're his wife but ye're goin' ter
be my woman!"
The senses of the girl swirled madly and chaotically during those
moments when she strained against the rawhide strength of the arms that
held her powerless, and they seemed to her hours.
The hot breath of the face which had suddenly grown unspeakably horrible
to her burned her like a blast, and through her reeling faculties rose
that same impression of nightmare that had come to Parish when he lay
wounded on his bed: the need of altering at a flash her whole conception
of this man's loyal steadfastness to a realization of unbelievable and
bestial treachery.
The fact was patent enough now, and only the hideous possibilities of
the next few minutes remained doubtful. His arms clamped her so tightly
that she gasped stranglingly for breath, and the convulsive futility of
her struggles grew fainter. Consciousness itself wavered.
Then Rowlett loosened one arm and bent her head upward until he could
crush his lips against hers and hold them there while he surfeited his
own with an endlessly long kiss.
When again her eyes met his, the girl was panting with the exhaustion of
breath that sounded like a sob, and desperately she sought to fence for
time.
"Let me go," she panted. "Let me go--thar's somebody comin'!"
That was a lie born of the moment's desperation and strategy but,
somewhat to her surprise, it served its ephemeral purpose. Rowlett
released his hold and wheeled to look at the road, and with a flashing
swiftness his victim leaped for the door and slammmed it behind her.