Mary, now a different creature from what she was the day before,
accompanied Charles to the cotton-field after breakfast. "You have done
an enormous amount for half a day," she said. "You must not drive
yourself like that. I know why you are doing it, but you must not. It
would be wrong for us to permit it. From your accent I take you to be a
Northerner, but you are acting like a cavalier of the old South. I
appreciate it--I appreciate it, but I can't let you do so much."
"What, that?" he began. "As if that were anything! Why, Miss Rowland--"
His emotions swept his power of utterance away from him, and he stood,
hoe in hand, helpless under the spell of her storm-swept beauty and
appealing womanhood. He wanted to aid her more materially. He wanted to
offer his services in behalf of her brothers. He would have given his
life--in his eyes it was a futile thing at best--for her cause; and yet
he knew himself to be helpless. A woman's intuition is a marvelous
thing, and when it permits itself to fathom a man's love it is as sure
as the law of gravitation. She understood. Her dawning comprehension
beamed faintly in her stricken face. He saw her breast rise tremulously
and fall.
"I think I know what you started to say," she faltered. "And it is very,
very sweet of you when you have known us such a short time. Isn't it
strange that it should be like this? I know I can trust you--something
makes me feel sure of it--and you have impressed my father the same way,
and even critical Aunt Zilla."
He leaned on his hoe-handle. He now felt more sure of his utterance. "I
want to help you," he cried. "I know how terribly you must feel over
this matter. You are too young and gentle and frail for this dastardly
thing to rest on you. I must do something to beat it off. I--"
"There really is nothing," she half sobbed. "As much as I love my
brothers I'd rather see them dead than on trial for murder. Why, Mr.
Brown, the sheriff wants to put them in that dirty jail at Carlin! I saw
it once. The cells are iron cages in the center of big rooms walled
about with brick. Oh, oh, oh!"
He longed to comfort her, but there was nothing that he could say. The
keenest pain of his entire life seemed to be wrenching his heart from
his body. The still fields, the slanting sunlight on the long rows of
cotton-plants, the cloud-draped mountains, grimly mocked him in their
placid inactivity when it seemed to him that the very universe ought to
be striving in her behalf.
"Oh, it will be only a question of time," she moaned. "They can't hide
in the mountains long, and if Tobe Keith dies--oh, oh! if he dies--"
She had suddenly noticed a horseman dismounting at the gate. He was fat,
rather gross-looking, of medium height, and middle-aged. His hair and
eyes were dark, and he had a heavy brown mustache twisted to points,
which was after the manner of the mountaineers.
"It is Albert Frazier, the sheriff's brother," Mary explained.
"The sheriff's brother!" Charles started.
"We needn't be afraid of him," Mary said, somewhat confused. "In fact, I
think he has come to try to help me. He--he is a--a friend of mine. He
has been paying attention to me for almost a year. He sees me. He is
coming here. Wait. Don't go to work yet. I want you to meet him."
"Paying attention to you!" Charles's subconsciousness spoke the words
rather than his inert lips. It may have been the sheer blight in his
face and eyes that caused the girl to offer a blushing explanation of
her words.
"I don't mean that we are engaged--_actually engaged_," she said. "It is
only a sort of--of understanding. He says he loves me. He has done us a
great many favors. You see he has influence in various ways. But I have
never really encouraged him to--to--You know what I mean. But he is
very persistent and very hot-tempered, domineering, too. But, oh, what
does that matter--what does anything matter? Right now he may be coming
to tell us that--that Tobe Keith is dead."
Charles said nothing, for Frazier was near at hand. His keen brown eyes
rested on Charles, half inquiringly, half suspiciously. He carried a
riding-whip with which he lashed the horse-hairs from his trousers with
a quick, irritated stroke.
"Good morning," he said, as he tipped his broad-brimmed felt hat. "Out
here giving instructions, eh? I heard you'd hired help."
She made a failure of the smile she tried to force. It was a pale,
piteous pretense. "Mr. Frazier--Mr. Brown," she introduced them.
Frazier did not offer his hand, and so Charles did not remove his own
from his hoe-handle. He simply nodded. It would have been hard to do
more, for instinctively he disliked the man. The feeling must have been
returned, for Frazier all but sneered contemptuously.
"I heard of Mr. Brown at the hotel in town," he said. "Circus man, eh.
You fellows are always dropping in on us mountain folks. Well, well, we
need your help now in the fields. Niggers are no good."
"Have you heard about my brothers?" Mary here broke in.
"Yes. That's what I rode out for, Mary. I knew you'd be crazy. You are
funny that way--as if you can keep boys like these two down."
"But how is Keith?" Mary reached forward and caught the lapel of his
coat entreatingly. She appeared quite unconscious of what she was doing,
and as he answered Frazier took her frail fingers into his burly clasp,
and for a moment held them caressingly, a glint of passion in his eyes.
Had she been his wife the sight could not have been more painful to
Charles. It did not excite his anger; somehow it only heaped fresh
despair upon the depression which had almost unmanned him.
"Oh, Keith? Yes, I knew that would be the first question," Frazier said.
"And I made special inquiry before I left on that point, for everything
depends on it, of course. Well, little girl, nobody can possibly tell
yet. Our doctors in town are not expert surgeons, and they can't decide
just yet, it seems. The ball is lodged in the stomach somewhere, and
they seem to be afraid to probe for it. It was a good-sized piece of
cold lead and the fellow may kick the bucket any minute. You see--"
"Stop! She is fainting!" Charles cried.
He sprang forward, but Frazier had put his rough arm about her and began
to fan the ghastly face which now rested on his breast.
"By God! so she is!" Frazier said. "Get some water, man. Quick! I can
hold her, all right!"
"No, no, don't go!" said Mary, as she opened her eyes, drew herself
erect, and stood away from Frazier. "I felt faint, but it is all gone
now. Nothing is the matter with me. Go on! Tell me about my brothers."
Frazier glanced at Charles, half smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, you know as much about them as I do, I reckon," he said. "They came
this way. I know where they are by this time. I know, but my brother
doesn't," and Frazier laughed significantly. "You see it is like this,
little girl; my brother happens not to be on to these trips of mine out
here to see you. I have my reasons, and good ones at that, for not
letting him know. There is a part of my father's estate that is to be
divided when either me or John marries, and if he thought that I was
thinking of such a thing it might upset him a little. At any rate, he is
in the dark about us, so when he started out this morning after your
brothers I made it my business to throw him clean off the track. I told
him that they had gone exactly the opposite way and that I was sure they
would take a train for the West at Tifton, and show him a clean pair of
heels."
"Then--then he won't look for them here in the mountains?" Mary panted.
"Not for a while, anyway," Frazier returned. "And that is what I came to
tell you, little woman. I'm no fool and I am going to do everything in
my reach to keep the boys out of John's clutch till we can tell how
Keith gets on. John and I have worked together in tracking men down, and
he doesn't dream that I am against him in this. Thanks to me, he and his
deputies are working on a false scent altogether, and I'll keep them at
it if I turn the world over. You can depend on me, little girl. I'll
keep you posted. The boys will be safe where they are for a while, if
you will keep them fed."
"But do you think Keith will live?" Mary demanded, tremulously.
"The Lord only knows," Frazier said. "He is awfully low, it seems to me.
I reckon there is no use fooling you as to that. You may get bad news
any minute. But even if he dies we'll manage somehow to slip the boys
away. I know a feller now in the West. I get letters from him. Fifteen
years ago he shot a man in--"
"Don't, don't tell me about it!" Mary pleaded, her agonized eyes turning
to Charles, as if for protection that was not available from any other
source.
"No, what is the use of all that?" Charles blurted out.
"Don't chip in here!" Frazier thundered. "What do you mean by breaking
into my talk? Get back to your work! Are you paid to stand here idle?"
There was nothing he could say, and Charles dropped his head for a
moment. Mary was staring at him blankly. So vast was the tragedy
hovering over her that she quite failed to sense the tension between the
two men.
"Come on, let's go to the house," went on Frazier, continuing to scowl
at Charles even while he was putting his arm about the girl. "I have to
see your father about some money he wants to borrow at the bank. He
wants me to indorse a note for him."
"You know what to do, Mr. Brown," Mary said. "It will take you several
days to finish the cotton. After that we'll decide what next to do."
Charles doffed his hat and bowed as she turned away, Frazier's arm still
about her waist. He went to the unfinished row of cotton-plants and
began to work. His back was turned to the receding pair. How different
his outlook was from that of the day before! Then a veritable new
existence seemed to have opened out before him, an existence that was a
divinely bestowed transition from sordid misery to far-reaching
happiness. All the ills of life seemed to have taken wing, leaving him
free to grow and expand as the plants he was nurturing; but now there
was nothing to face but the grim fact that he was a drudging outcast
from conventional civilization. As he toiled on his breast ached under a
pain that was superphysical. Had he brought it on himself? he wondered.
Was all this the inevitable punishment for the reckless folly of his
youth? It might be so, he told himself, and the sacrifice he had made
for William and Celeste and Ruth was not sufficient. He had caused his
dying mother great mental distress; he had led young men astray; he had
been ostracized by his club and college fraternity; he had been
sentenced by a judge in a police court; he had disgraced his family. He
ceased working and looked toward the house. Mary and Frazier were still
in sight. The heavy arm was still about the slender waist. The fellow
bore himself with the air of a man confident of the prize he was
winning, and yet unconscious of its inestimable value. Charles stood
staring till they disappeared in the house, then he resumed his work,
but without any part of the interest of the day before. A wonderful
thing had happened to him. He had scoffed all his life at the idea of a
man's supreme devotion to any particular woman, and yet within only a
few hours he had found himself bound hand and foot, mind and soul, to a
young girl he had never seen before. What had brought it about? Ah, she
was suffering and he was suffering! It was the kinship of his soul to
hers. But what could come of it? he asked, gloomily. Nothing, not even
if she were to withhold her love from her present suitor, for Charles
could never prove himself worthy of her. She belonged to a proud old
family, and he was virtually a nameless man. For William's sake he had
promised to obliterate himself, and he must keep his promise. He toiled
on. The sun was hot and the perspiration oozed from him and dampened his
clothing. He worked with the despair of a shackled convict bent on
forgetting all that lay beyond his prison walls.