He shrank away, whimpering.
"No, no! Boss'll kill poor Beelzebub! Missis won't tell Boss?"
To her horror his hand shot out and fastened upon her skirt. But she
could not have moved in any case. She stood staring down at him,
cold--cold to the very heart with foreboding.
"No," she said at last, and it was as if she stood apart and listened to
another woman, very calm and collected, speaking on her behalf. "I will
never tell him, Beelzebub. You will be quite safe with me. So tell me
what you mean! Don't be afraid! Speak plainly! When did Boss kill a
white man?"
There must have been something of compulsion in her manner, for, albeit
quaveringly and with obvious terror, the negro answered her.
"Down by Bowker Creek, missis, 'fore you come. Boss and the white man
fight--a dam' big fight. Beelzebub run away. Afterwards, Boss, come on
alone. So Beelzebub know that Boss kill' the white man."
"Oh, then you didn't see him killed! You don't know?"
Was it her own lips uttering the words? They felt quite stiff and
powerless.
"Beelzebub run away," she heard him repeating rather vacantly.
"What did they fight with?" she said.
"They fight with their hands," he told her. "White man from Bowker Creek
try to shoot Boss, and make Boss very angry."
"But perhaps he wasn't killed," she insisted to herself. "Of course--of
course, he wasn't. You shouldn't say such things, Beelzebub. You
weren't there to see."
Beelzebub shuffled in the straw and whined depreciatingly.
"Tell me," she heard the other woman say peremptorily, "what was the
white man's name?"
But Beelzebub only moaned, and she was forced to conclude that he did
not know.
"Where is Bowker Creek?" she asked next.
He could not tell her. His intelligence seemed to have utterly deserted
him.
She stood silent, considering, while he coiled about revoltingly in the
straw at her feet.
Suddenly through the afternoon silence there came the sound of a horse's
hoofs. She started, and listened.
Beelzebub frantically clutched at her shoes.
"Missis won't tell Boss!" he implored again. "Missis won't----"
She stepped desperately out of his reach.
"Hush!" she said. "Hush! He will hear you. I must go. I must go at
once."
Emergency gave her strength. She moved to the trap-door, and, she knew
not how, found the ladder with her feet.
Grey-faced, dazed, and cold as marble, she descended. Yet she did not
stumble. Her limbs moved mechanically, unfalteringly.
When she reached the bottom she turned with absolute steadiness and
found Brett Mercer standing in the doorway watching her.