|IT was the evening of the following day. Ethel had heard of the return
of Jeff Warren and was quite disturbed. Since early morning Paul had
been away, and Ethel fancied that he was unaware of the arrival of the
little family. In many ways she pitied Paul, and she gravely feared for
his safety, for there was no mincing the fact that Jeff Warren was a
most dangerous man, with a quick, uncontrollable temper. Mrs. Tilton,
Mrs. Mayfield, Cato, and Aunt Dilly were all discussing the situation.
That the two men would meet was not to be doubted; that Paul would have
to defend himself or be injured was regarded as a certainty.
Ethel was at the window of her room just as the night began to fall,
when Paul came in at the gate, and, with a weary step, advanced up the
walk toward the house. Hoag was seated on the veranda, and Ethel heard
the posts of his chair jar the floor as he rose and descended the steps.
The two men met almost beneath her open window. Ethel was aware that
their words might not be intended for other ears, and yet she was
chained as by some weird and ominous spell to the spot. She dropped on
her knees, leaned against the window-sill, and peered cautiously through
the overhanging vines.
“Oh, yes, I heard he was here,” she caught Paul's reply to an obvious
question, and she was sure there was an odd, changed tone in his voice
which seemed to have lost its old hopeful vitality. She saw him take his
handkerchief from his pocket and slowly wipe his brow as he stood with
his dusk-draped profile toward her.
“Well, I just thought I'd put you on your guard,” Hoag was heard to say,
with an unction of tone which men of his own type could have fathomed
better than a delicate, frightened woman. “I'm sure I'd appreciate it
to have a friend of _mine_ come to me at such a ticklish time. I know
you've got grit. I've seed it put to a test. That's why folks are
a-talkin' at such a rate. The opinion of one an' all is that what you
did once you can an' will do ag'in.”
Ethel held her breath to catch Paul's tardy words. His head was lowered
when he spoke. “So they think I'll shoot him again, do they--they think
that?”
“You bet they know you won't let the skunk run roughshod over you, an'
he's ready an' waitin'--bought 'im a gun right off--looked all about for
you to-day, I'm told, an' some say he hinted that you'd skipped clean
out to keep from facin' the music. I haven't met him. I hain't no use
for the puppy, an' never did have. You've got a gun, haven't you?”
“No, I haven't owned one since I got back from the West.”
“You don't say--well, you'd better git one. I've got three. You can take
your pick if you want to, but for the Lord's sake don't mix me up in it.
I just offer it to you as I would to any other man in my employ.”
“Thank you.” They were moving toward the house, and the roof of the
veranda hid them from the eyes of the awed and frightened observer.
Ethel heard Paul uttering some unintelligible words in the hall below,
and then he came up the stairs and entered his own room. She stood in
the center of the floor, trembling from head to foot. He had been such a
wonderful friend to her; under his advice she had soared to heights she
had never reached before, and yet now he himself, strong as he had been
in her behalf, was in peril--peril he was too brave to see. She heard
her uncle's ponderous step as he strode through the long hall to the
kitchen, and then it occurred to her to pray for guidance. She sank down
on the edge of her bed and folded her delicate hands between her tense
knees. Her lips moved, but she was not conscious of the words mutely
escaping her lips. Suddenly she sprang up and started to the door, for
Paul had left his room and was going down the stairs with a firm and
hurried stride. Her hand on the door-knob, she leaned out into the
darkened hall and peered after him. She had an impulse to call to him,
yet the thought that she had no excuse for stopping him which would not
reveal the fact that she had been eavesdropping checked both her voice
and movement. She heard him crossing the veranda swiftly, and, returning
to the window, she saw him on the walk striding toward the gate. Again
she tried to cry out to him, and again she failed. As he reached the
gate and passed out into the road she prayed that he would go toward the
village rather than toward the cabin in which his stepfather lived. Her
breast seemed to turn to stone the next instant, for he was taking the
shortest cut toward the cabin. How calmly, fearlessly, he moved! How
erectly he walked, and it was perhaps to his death! Ethel staggered back
to her bed, sank on it face downward, and began to sob, began to pray as
only he had taught her to pray, with all her young soul bent to its holy
purpose.
Paul strode on through the gloaming. Overhead arched the infinite symbol
of endlessness, with here and there a twinkling gem of light. On either
side of him the meadows and fields lay sleeping, damp with rising dew.
Fireflies were flashing signals to their fellows; insects were snarling
in the trees and grass; a donkey was braying in the far distance; dogs
were barking.
As Paul approached Warren's cabin the firelight from within shone
through the open door out upon the bare ground in front. He paused for
a moment, undecided as to how he should make his presence known--whether
he should call out from where he stood, after the manner of mountain
folk, or approach the threshold and rap. Just then a bulky, top-heavy
looking object turned the corner of the cabin and advanced to the
wood-pile near by. It was a man carrying a bunch of fagots on his
shoulder. He threw it down, and, seeing Paul for the first time, he drew
himself erect, staring through the darkness.
“Who goes thar?” he grunted.
Paul was about to reply when Warren suddenly grasped the handle of an
ax, and swiftly swinging it to one side as if ready to strike a blow, he
panted: “Oh, it's _you_--is it? Well, I've been expectin' you all day.
I knowed you'd hear I'd come, an' not lose time..Well, I hain't got no
gun--my fool women folks took--”
“I haven't either, Jeff,” Paul laughed, appeasingly. “You've got the
best of it this time; I'm at your mercy, and I'm glad of it. Turn about
is fair play, and if you want to you can brain me with that ax. I really
think I deserve it, Jeff. I've had seven years to regret what I did, and
I don't want to lose a minute to tell you that I am sorry--sorry as ever
a man was in this world.”
Silence fell. Warren leaned on his ax-handle and stared with wide eyes
and parted lips. When he finally spoke his breath hissed through his
teeth.
“Say, young feller, if you've come here to poke fun at me I tell you now
you've--”
“I'm in no mood for that, Jeff,” Paul broke in, with increased
gentleness. “I've done you a great injury. I was a silly boy at the time
and I've sorely repented. I've come to beg your pardon--to beg it as
humbly as I know how.”
“Good God! You--you say--you mean--”
“I'm sorry, that's all, Jeff. I want to see my mother. You've got more
right to her than I have now, after my conduct, but I want to see her
and ask her to forgive me, too. A man has but one mother, Jeff, and the
time comes to all men when they know what it means to lose one. Is she
in the house?” There was an awkward pause. Warren stood swaying like
a human tree touched in every branch, twig, and leaf by clashing winds
which had never so met before.
“Why, I thought--we thought--folks _all_ thought”--Warren dropped his
ax, made a movement as if to regain it, then drew his lank body erect,
and stood staring through the gloom.
“I know,” Paul laughed softly and appealingly, “they think blood, and
nothing but blood, can wash out a difference like ours; but there is a
better way, Jeff, and that is through good-will. We've been enemies long
enough. I want to be your friend. You've taken care of my mother and
aunt all these years, and I am genuinely grateful for it.”
Warren turned his shattered countenance aside. “I didn't look for you
to be this way at all--_at all_,” he faltered, huskily. “I reckon when I
heard you was back here I got mad because you was makin' your way up
so fast, and I've been steadily goin' down. The devil was in me, an' I
thought he was in you, too. Lord, I never dreamt that you'd walk up like
this to a--a--feller that--” Warren waved a dejected hand toward the
cabin--“that had fetched your mammy to a pig-pen of a shack right in the
neighborhood whar you are thought so much of.”
“A man doesn't deserve to be well thought of, Jeff, who considers
himself better in any way than a less fortunate fellow-being. If you
could really understand me you'd see that I actually think _more_ of you
than if you were well-to-do.”
“Oh, come off!” Warren sharply deprecated. “That's beyond reason. I used
to be proud. In fact, I reckon that's what drawed me so much to your
mother. I pitied her because your daddy made so little headway, but look
at me now. Lord, Lord, jest look! Why, he was a _king_ beside me. I've
plumb lost my grip.”
“I see--I know what you mean,” Paul said, sympathetically, “but you are
going to get it back, Jeff, and I'm going to do all I can to help. Is my
mother in the house?”
“No; the calf got to the cow, an' the two wandered off somewhar. Your ma
is down in the meadow close to the swamp tryin' to find 'em.”
“And my aunt?”
“Oh, Mandy--why, you see”--Jeff appeared to be embarrassed anew--“you
see, Mrs. Tobe Williams, who lives over in town, driv' by this evenin'
about an hour by sun, and--and said she'd had so much trouble gettin' a
woman to--to cook for her big family o' children that, if Mandy wouldn't
mind helpin' her out in a pinch, she would pay well for it. I put my
foot down ag'in it, but Mandy wouldn't listen to reason, an' got in
the buggy and went. It seemed to me that was my last straw. If killin'
myself would aid anybody the least bit I'd gladly--”
Warren's voice broke, and he stood quivering from head to foot in the
effort to control his emotion. Paul advanced and extended his hand. “We
must be friends, Jeff,” he said, with feeling. “Between us, we can make
both of them happy.”
“Between us! You say--”
Warren clasped the outstretched hand and clung to it as if for some
sort of support in the strange new storm which was tossing him as he had
never been tossed before.
“I can't make you out, Paul,” he fairly sobbed; “by God, I can't! Seems
like you are foolin', an' then ag'in I know you ain't--yes, I _know_ you
ain't!”
“No, I'm in earnest,” Paul returned. “Do you think my mother will be
back soon?”
“Yes; but you stay here an' let me step down whar she's at,” Warren
proposed, considerately. “She ain't so well--in fact, she might get
upset if--if she saw' you all of a sudden. I'll run down an'--an' tell
her you are friendly. That'll be the main thing. She's been afraid you
an' me would act the fool ag'in. She will be relieved and astonished.
You wait here. I'll go tell 'er.”
When Warren had stalked away in the gloom Paul went to the cabin-door
and glanced within. The pine-knots burning under the open fire of logs,
the ends of which rested on stones, lighted the poor room, from which
musty odors emerged, and he shuddered and turned away. Passing around
the cabin, he approached the neat cottage near by. He went up on the
little vine-clad porch and peered through the window's and side-lights
of the door. Putting his hand into his pocket, he took out a key, and,
thrusting it into the lock, he opened the door and entered. Striking a
match, he held it above his head and went into all the rooms.