It was the day after Thanksgiving. Bill was twirling the chambers of
his revolver around. His face was grim. Jap halted in the door of
their bedroom.
"Going gunning for Jones?" he asked lightly.
Bill turned, and the black look on his face startled Jap.
"I am," he said deliberately, "and I will come back to jail or in my
coffin."
Jap caught the revolver from his hand.
"Bill," he said sharply, "wake up!"
Bill threw a letter to him, and continued his hasty toilet. Jap read:
"Dear Will,--
"Come to me. I am almost crazy. Wilfred accused me of giving you
information against his father that beat him in the election, and he
struck me in the mouth. He said he only married me to spite you, and
he hates me. I will meet you at the section house, where the train
slows up for the switch, at six o'clock. I want you to take me away, I
don't care where. I don't love anybody but you, and I can't live with
Wilfred another night. I don't care whether anybody ever speaks to me
again, if you will take me and love me.
"Your distracted ROSALIE."
Jap stared at the note as if it had been a snake-tressed Medusa that
turned him to stone. He stood rigid and paralyzed as Bill said, deadly
calm:
"I am going to Barton, and I am going to shoot that dog."
"And after that?" Jap's voice was toneless.
"After that!" Bill broke out fiercely. "After that, what more?"
Jap drew Bill around to face him. Rivers of fire seemed suddenly to
course through his body, and an unprecedented rage burned up within him.
"You are not going to Barton, and you are not going to meet that
foolish light-o'-love at the section house," he said sternly.
"Who will stop me? Not you, Jap, for even if an angel from heaven
tried to bar my way, I would brush it aside. I wanted to kill him when
he stole her away and----"
Jap shook him angrily.
"No one stole her, Bill. Have you forgotten the insolent, flippant
letter she wrote you?"
Bill shook Jap's hand from his shoulder.
"It's no use, Jap. I am going to kill him!"
Jap set his teeth and his gray eyes blazed as he gripped Bill's arms
and shoved him into a chair.
"I will have you locked up, you foolish hot-head," he exclaimed, "and
give Wilfred Jones a few hours to consider his attitude toward his
wife. She _is_ his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that
fact from sight. Do you want to hang, because you were a damned fool?
I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder
in another man's home--no matter how great your feeling of injustice.
Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."
"But he struck her," gulped Bill.
"I have known times," declared Jap vehemently, "when, if I had been of
the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thrashing
Rosy Raymond. Not having been Jones, I had to content myself with
kicking the furniture around. I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I
rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both
sides. If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will
hold him while you give him the licking he deserves. More than that, I
will help Rosy to get a divorce. Isn't that fair enough, Bill? What
is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on
the gallows? Tell me, who profits? For the woman, disgrace. For
you---- Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead
man, Jones."
Bill glowered at him.
"You had no mother, Bill, because she died when she gave you to the
world. I had no mother, because Providence gave me where I was a
burden. But God gave both of us a mother. Bill, before you go any
farther with this adventure--misadventure--I want you to kneel with me
before Flossy's picture and ask for her approval and her blessing.
Because, Bill, brother, she knows. And what do you suppose will be her
counsel? What would Flossy want you to do?"
He took the photograph from the table and held it out to Bill. The
brown eyes remained downcast. The hands opened and closed
spasmodically. Jap lowered the picture so that Bill's eyes could not
choose but meet the loved face. A great, gulping sob shook him, and he
dashed into the other room and slammed the door. Jap's tense features
relaxed into a smile. He knew that Flossy had won.
"Will you let me go to Barton instead of you?" he asked through the
closed door. There was no reply, and he turned the knob. Bill was
staring stolidly from the window. "I won't carry healing oil if the
case doesn't call for it," he insisted. "You will believe me, boy?"
"It's your job," Bill said, in smothered, tear-drenched tones.
"I can just make the 5:20," said Jap, as he caught up his hat and
overcoat from the foot of the bed where he had flung them. Then he
hurried to the station, with Rosy's foolish letter in his pocket.
Without looking to right or left he boarded the train that would have
carried Bill to his love tryst. Already the evening shadows were
beginning to settle, and it was almost dark when the local train ran
into the siding to permit the east-bound special to pass. He stood on
the steps of the rear coach as the wheels crunched with the stopping of
the train. Then he dropped quietly to the ground. The special, that
was wont to throw dust in the eyes of both Bloomtown and Barton, came
thundering by, and the friendly local took up its westward journey.
Jap hurried over to the cloaked figure that crouched in the shadow of
the little section house. Rosy crept out quickly, but retreated with a
cry of alarm when she saw that Jap, and not Bill, was coming to meet
her. He caught her by the arm and drew her into the light of an
electric bulb that glowed above the section boss's door. Scanning her
silly face for a moment, he said sharply:
"So you lied to Bill! There is no mark of a blow on your face."
"He--he did push me," she sobbed. "And I don't love him, anyway. It
was your fault that I ran away with Wilfred."
"My fault?" echoed Jap.
"Yes," she said, and her tone rasped with cruel spite. "What girl
wants to have her sweetheart only half hers? Jap Herron only had to
twist his thumb, and Bill would run like a foolish girl. I wanted a
whole man or none."
"Seems that you got one," commented Jap, "and don't appreciate him.
Now, Rosy, if you think you are going to ruin three lives by starting
this kind of a play, I am going to undeceive you. I am going to take
you home and look into this affair."
"I won't go!" she screamed. "He would kill me."
"What did you do?" demanded Jap, holding her tightly.
"I wrote him a note that I had run away with Bill," she confessed
sullenly.
For the first time Jap became conscious of the suitcase at her feet.
His grip on her arm tightened until she cried with pain.
"You idiotic little fool," he ground between his teeth. "Where is your
husband?"
"He went to the city this morning. He said he'd come home on the local
if he got through his business in time. Otherwise he wouldn't come
till the midnight train. I thought Bill could get a rig and drive to
Faber. I thought he could take me away somehow before Wilfred got the
news."
"News? Great God!" cried Jap. "And such as you could win the golden
heart of Bill Bowers! Come with me. If your husband takes the late
train, there is still time to destroy that note. If he is already at
home----"
"He'd go to the office first, anyway," Rosy cried. "But I don't want
to go home."
"You're going home, no matter what the consequences," Jap told her.
"And if you ever attempt to communicate with Bill again, I will have
you put in an asylum. You are not capable of going through life
sensibly."
He walked her rapidly up the railroad track and through the streets
that lay between the business part of Barton and her own pretty home.
On the corner opposite the house he stopped, while she ran across the
street in terror and rushed up the steps. She had told him that if all
was yet well, she would appear at the window. As he stood there, his
eyes glued on the great square of glass, some one touched him on the
arm. He turned. It was Wilfred Jones.
"Well, Daddy-long-legs," he said brusquely. "You think you turned a
pretty trick. Well, it was a fair fight, and I'm all over it."
Jap shook his hand mechanically, his eyes seeking the window from which
Rosy was peering.
"Tell Bill that bygones must be bygones," Jones continued, "for we want
to get the two papers together on the main issue. The old man will
come in on the senatorship on the strength of his race for governor.
And I want to tell you a secret that makes me very happy--and will make
Bill feel different. The doctor has just told me that these queer
spells and moods that Rosalie has been having lately mean--Jap, do you
understand? I will be a father before summer!"
Jap wrung Jones's hand, a whirl of fancies going through his head. As
he sought for suitable words of congratulation, a boy ran up.
"I been chasin' all over town ahuntin' for you, Mr. Herron," he said
breathlessly. "I got a telegram for you."
Trembling with dread, Jap tore it open and read:
"_Come home at once. Your sister Agnosia is here._--BILL."