The next afternoon, as Henley was on his way home from the store, and
was passing a corn-field owned by Sam Pitman--a farmer of weak character
and sullen disposition who had been a moonshiner as long as the law had
permitted the business to yield profits--he was surprised to see Dixie
near the centre of the field. She was bending over something or
somebody, and, fearing that an accident had happened, he hastily climbed
the fence and walked rapidly over the ploughed soil toward her. He could
not make out what the object of her attention was till he was quite
near, and then he saw that it was a little boy about ten years of age
who was seated on the ground and, till now, hidden by the corn-stalks
and their succulent blades, which, as he sat, rose higher than his
yellow, ill-kempt head. Dixie heard Henley's step and turned a very
grave face on him.
"It's the poor little orphan Sam Pitman adopted by law the other day,"
she informed him in a gentle aside, as her hand rested tenderly on the
child's head, which was supported by his frail knees in their ragged and
patched covering. "I've had my eye on him all evening. He's hoed out all
this since dinner." She waved an indignant hand over the patch of corn
immediately about them. "I couldn't have done more myself, and I know
what work is. Yes, I was watching him, and awhile ago I saw him stagger
an' fall. He'd fainted from overheat. I come as quick as I could. I got
water in his hat and dashed it on him--look how wet it made him, but it
revived him. He wanted to work on, but I made him stop and set down.
He's timid and shy before you, but me 'n him are great friends, ain't
we, Joe? He helped me hunt eggs the other day"--she was running on now
in a tender, caressing tone--"and I gave him some of my pie. He could
crawl to places I never got at before, and we raked in a peck that would
have been a dead loss, for I've already got too many broods."
"I heard Pitman had got a boy," Henley said, guardedly, "and I wondered
what the Ordinary meant by turning such a little fellow over to a man
like him. It seems like there was only one or two applications, and the
boy had to be sent somewhere right off. Do you feel better now, Joe?"
"Yes, sir," the child answered. "It wasn't nothing. It didn't hurt a
bit."
Henley caught Dixie's quick upward glance. "Ain't it pitiful?" she said,
with a shake of her head and a catch in her full voice. "Huh, 'didn't
hurt,' I say! You dear little boy!"
With a brave smile the lad stood up to the full height of his spare
frame. He was still pale, and his hair was matted down over his brow by
the douche it had received. His little, cotton, checked shirt was open
at the neck, disclosing a rather low chest. He stooped down and picked
up the hoe, which was of the regulation size and weight used by men.
Dixie was protesting against his working more that day, when, looking
behind her, she saw the foster-father of the boy approaching.
"What's the matter here?" the farmer growled, eying the group
distrustfully with his small gray eyes under pent-house brows. He was
short of stature, sinewy, and grizzled as to head and bristling beard.
"Miss Dixie says the boy fainted," Henley answered. "I saw her here,
and come over to see what was wrong. The little fellow don't look overly
stout."
"Nothing's the matter with 'im," Pitman retorted, visibly angered by
what he regarded as the interference of outsiders in his private
affairs.
"Well, I know he fainted," Dixie said, calmly, "but we won't argue about
it. I'll tell you one thing, though, Sam Pitman, if this thing goes
on--I say, if Joe is overworked like this any more--a single other
time--and it comes to my knowledge, I'll take you smack-dab to court. I
don't meddle in things that don't concern me, as a general thing, but
I'll take this in hand and I'll clutch it tight."
"You'll do wonders," Pitman sneered, but with a guarded glance at
Henley, who had, on one occasion, knocked him down in some dispute over
a debt at the store. He turned to the boy and took the hoe from him.
"You go drive up that cow. I'll finish this patch myself, and don't you
dare come back and say you can't find her, nuther. If you know what's
good for you, you fetch 'er home."
Leaving Pitman at work in the corn, and with the boy trudging homeward,
Henley and Dixie made their way out to the road. At the fence he threw
down several rails and aided her to step over the remaining ones. When
he had put the rails back in their places and joined her he was struck
by the altered expression of her face.
"I've wanted to see you all day," she began, her grave glance on the
ground, "and it looks like this meeting is providential. I want to get
it all plumb out, Alfred, and have it off my mind. I don't know when a
thing has bothered me so much. It seemed like such a little thing at the
time, but a whopping big one now. You 'n me have been too good friends,
Alfred, to let deception of any sort whatever come between us. Please
don't look at me so straight; I'll never get through it if you do. You
think I'm as good as the general run of girls, I'll be bound, and yet I
ain't."
"I'll take the risk on that," he laughed, incredulously. "I know what
you are--you are true blue. You've just showed the stripe you're made
of. In a minute you'd have fought that skunk back there like a mad
wildcat. For the time, at least, you was loving that pore boy as if he
was your own."
"We are not talking about that--that's nothing," she said. "No woman
that is half a one could see the dreamy blue eyes of that lonely boy,
and know what he's going through, and not want to hug 'im up to her
breast and pet 'im and comfort 'im. I saw him the day Pitman fetched him
here. He sat out under the trees all day long. I watched him from my
field, and I could see 'im wiping his eyes on his sleeve. He kept it up
from morning till night. Sometimes, Alfred, I doubt the goodness of God
Almighty. I know it's a sin to say so, but I can't help it. I've talked
a heap to Joe off and on, an' he's had more put on 'im than a grown
person ought to bear. Poor thing! he misses his Ma. From what he says I
judge she was good and tender. I had a queer dream the other night. I
seemed to see a woman in my room; she was crying, and, as plain as I can
hear yore voice this minute, I heard her say: 'Don't let 'em abuse
'im--he's weak and he can't stand it,' and with that she seemed to melt
away. But that is clean off the track. I've got a confession to make to
you, and I am so ashamed I hardly know what to do. Alfred Henley, I've
told you a lie--a cold, deliberate lie. Can you respect anybody that
will tell a lie?"
"Well, I wouldn't have much respect for myself then," he said, his eyes
large in wonder over what she was driving at. "I've lied as many times
as an average clock can tick in a lifetime. I've told a dozen lies to
sell a pair of shoes, and forty to sell a hoss."
"Hush joking," she said. "Listen. When I told you that fellow was dead I
was lying. I didn't intend to fool you, but I got in an awful tangle,
and you had to take your chance along with the rest. When I went to the
train that day and that fool didn't heave in sight I smelt a mouse. I
went to the post-office and got a letter from him. It was the most
wishy-washy concoction that was ever put on paper. He never, at any
time, had marry in the back of his head. He was just seeing how far he
could go with me to pass time. Some men are that way. They are powerful
interested till they get a girl to commit herself, and then they begin
to twist and turn or call it all off on the spot. As long as I kept this
'un in doubt he wrote the softest gush that ever flowed from a pen. But
when I wrote that I was ready--actually ready and waiting--well, that
was another proposition. He plumb lost his nerve."
"The scoundrel!" Henley burst out, grown red in the face. "He is below
contempt. I was afraid he was a sneak the minute I saw his picture. I'd
have stopped you if I'd known how."
"Well, it was nobody's fault but mine." Dixie was trying to divest her
brave voice of a certain quavering. "Folks say I've got a long head on
me--you amongst 'em--but if any God-forsaken female on this round globe
ever made a bigger fool of herself than I did that whack I'd like to
shake hands with her. I shall see myself setting in that wagon in my new
togs waiting for that train to blow--I'll see that sickening sight till
I draw my last whiff of air. Oh, you don't know! Being a man, you can't
understand what a woman's pride is. Fate has hit me hard licks, but
letting me get my outfit ready, clean up the house, and cook enough
ahead to last a week, and come to town with my own hoss and wagon to
haul a trifling man to the altar who was _jest joking with me_--well,
that's what made me lie."
"God knows, it was enough," Henley answered in his throat. "The banners
toted by the angels have such mottoes as your lie on 'em."
"I was forced to it to protect myself," Dixie said. "You see, Alfred, Ma
is kind o' high strung and liable to fly off the handle and talk before
folks. She thinks I'm all right, and she'd have raised the roof off the
house and let all the country know my plight if I hadn't acted, and
acted quick. I drove home slow that day and studied up a plan. Death was
the only thing that would do any good, and so I killed him. I liked that
part of it, anyway. I wouldn't have lied to you, but I'd done it so
often at home, and with such a straight face, that it had got to be a
settled habit. But I jumped from the frying-pan into the fire in one
way, for they both weep and wail over him--think o' that, and me feeling
like I could pull his ears clean out of his head and stomp 'em into the
ground."
"Oh, they take it that way!" exclaimed Henley.
"That's what they do," said the girl. "I attend that fellow's funeral
sixteen times a day. They want me to put on black--to put on--huh! when
the fool has already made me spend my last dollar on an outfit
that--shucks! Well, you see what I've got my foot into. I had actually
to clap my hand over Ma's mouth the other day while Carrie Wade was
there making her brags to keep Ma from telling of my great loss. Carrie
would see through it, you know she would, and I'd never hear the end of
it. Ma was dead bent on letting folks know, till I worked a trick on
her. I told her, I did, that men didn't like to marry widows, and if I
ever expected to get a husband I must keep Pete's death quiet. With that
understanding they both agreed to hold their tongues. But it's funny,
ain't it?" she ended with a laugh--"you with your tombstone trouble at
home, and me with a dead bridegroom to look after, and one that treated
me like a hound-pup in the bargain?"
Henley laughed now, for she was laughing. "I'm not going to let mine
bother me any more," he said, "now that I've heard what you are going
through."
"And you'll forgive me for the lie I told you?" she asked anxiously, as
she turned to leave him at a point where their ways parted.
"I would for a million of its sort," he said, fervently. He raised his
hat and smiled, and stood watching her till she was out of sight in the
apple-orchard she had to traverse to reach the cottage.