LET HIM HANG
The will was duly signed and witnessed, and bore a notarial seal. It was
dated in the hand of the testator, in addition to the acknowledgment of
the notary, all regular, and unquestionably done.
"His son!" said Sol, amazed, looking around with big eyes. "Why, Isom he
never had no son!"
"Do we know that?" asked Judge Little, as if to raise the question of
reasonable doubt.
Son or no son, until that point should be determined he would have the
administration of the estate, with large and comfortable fees.
"Well, I've lived right there acrost the road from him all my life, and
all of his, too; and I reckon I'd purty near know if anybody knowed!"
declared Sol. "I went to school with Isom, I was one of the little
fellers when he was a big one, and I was at his weddin'. My wife she
laid out his first wife, and I dug her grave. She never had no children,
judge; you know that as well as anybody."
Judge Little coughed dryly, thoughtfully, his customary aspect of deep
meditation more impressive than ever.
"Sometimes the people we believe we know best turn out to be the ones we
know least," said he. "Maybe we knew only one side of Isom's life. Every
man has his secrets."
"You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?" asked Sol, taking
the scent avidly.
The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous,
scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and
white in her chair. She did not appear to see them; she was looking at
Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.
"That is not for me to say," answered the judge; and his manner of
saying it seemed to convey the hint that he _could_ throw light on
Isom's past if he should unseal his lips.
Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, "My
friend, John B. Little." Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way
of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching
back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old
key to some past romance in Isom's life.
"Laws of mercy!" said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which
surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.
"This document is dated almost thirty years ago," said the judge. "It is
possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the
premises to determine that."
"In sixty-seven he wrote it," said Sol, "and that was the year he was
married. The certificate's hangin' in there on the wall. Before that,
Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got
all of his learnin' and smart ways. I might 'a' went, too, just as well
as not. Always wisht I had."
"Very true, very true," nodded Judge Little, as if to say: "You're on
the trail of his iniquities now, Sol."
Sol's mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from
the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed
the true light of the situation had reached his brain.
"Walker--Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the
country to name a boy after--never was."
"His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!" corrected his wife.
"Oh!" said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about him as quickly as
it had puffed up. "I forgot about her."
"Don't you worry about that will, honey," advised Mrs. Greening, going
to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman's
shoulders; "for it won't amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and
even if he did by some woman he wasn't married to, how's he goin' to
prove he's the feller?"
Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof
that her argument was indubitable.
"It--can't--be--true!" said Ollie.
"Well, it gits the best of me!" sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed
head. "Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off
a joke like that on anybody."
"After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom's papers
in the chance of finding another and later will than this," said Judge
Little. "And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal
precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase----"
The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs,
as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understanding
nothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was required
of her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. He
proceeded:
"As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this document
for probate this afternoon."
Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deep
depository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocket
must have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron's
beard.
Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her
motherly arm.
"I think I'll go upstairs," said the young widow.
"Yes, you do," counseled Mrs. Greening. "They'll be along with the
wagons purty soon, and we'll have to git ready to go. I think they must
have the grave done by now."
The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and
faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol
and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.
"Ain't it terrible!" said one woman.
"Scan'lous!" agreed the other.
Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.
"Old sneaky, slinkin', miserly Isom!" she denounced. "I always felt that
he was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin' was too good
for him--he orto been hung!"
In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening's
vehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She sat
on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An
hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was
secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which
prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her
head upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.
Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that period
out of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No one
knew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so,
they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memory
of that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensate
for it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had not
come between her and Curtis Morgan that night--what night, how long ago
was it now?--how much kinder and happier for her indeed?
With the thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his
meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed,
cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that
hour. Old Isom would have been living still, going about his sordid ways
as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed
out of her life forever.
Joe was at the bottom of all this--spying, prying, meddling Joe. Let him
suffer for it now, said she. If he had kept out of things which he did
not understand, the fool! Now let him suffer! Let him hang, if he must
hang, as she had heard the women say last night he should. No act of
hers, no word----
"The wagons is coming, honey," said Mrs. Greening at her door. "We must
git ready to go to the graveyard now."