It was dusk the following evening. Virginia was at the cow-lot when her
uncle came lazily up the road from the store and joined her. "Well," he
drawled out, as he thrust his hands into his pocket for his pipe, "I
reckon I'm onto a piece o' news that you and your mother, nor nobody
else this side o' Wilson's shebang, knows about. Mrs. Snodgrass has just
arrived by hack from Darley, where she attended the circus and tried to
get a job to beat that talking-machine they had in the side-show. It
seems that this neighborhood has furnished the material for more
excitement over there than the whole exhibition, animals and all."
"How is that, uncle?" Virginia asked, absent-mindedly.
"Why, it seems that a row has been on tap between Langdon Chester and
Luke King for, lo, these many months, anyway, and yesterday, when the
population of Darley turned out in as full force to meet Luke King as
they did the circus parade, why it was too much for Chester's blood. He
kept drinking and drinking till he hardly knew which end of him was up,
and then he met Luke at the Johnston House face to face. Mrs. Snod says
Langdon evidently laid his plans so there would have to be a fight in
any case, so he up and slandered that good old mammy of King's."
"Oh, uncle, and they fought?" Virginia, pale and trembling, gasped as
she leaned for support on the fence.
"You bet they did. Mrs. Snod says the vile slander had no sooner left
Chester's lips than King let drive at him right between the eyes. That
knocked Langdon out of the ring for a while, and his friends took him to
a room to wash him off, for he was bleeding like a stuck pig. King was
to come out here last night, but Mrs. Snod says he was afraid Chester
would think he was running from the field, and so he stayed on at the
hotel. Then, this morning early, the two of them come together on the
street in front of the bank building. Mrs. Snod says Chester drawed
first and got Luke covered before he could say Jack Robinson, and then
fired. Several shots were exchanged, but the third brought King to his
knees. They say he's done for, Virginia. He wasn't dead to-day at
twelve, but the doctors said he couldn't live an hour. They say he was
bleeding so terrible inside that they was afraid to move him. I'm here
to tell you, Virgie, that I used to like that chap; and when he got to
coming to see you, and I could see that he meant business, I was in
hopes you and him would make a deal, but then you up and bluffed him off
so positive that I never could see what it meant. Why, he was about the
most promising young man I ever--But look here, child, what's ailing
you?"
"Nothing, uncle," Virginia said; and, with her head down, she turned
away. Looking after her for a moment in slow wonder, Sam went on into
the farm-house, bent on telling the startling news to his sister-in-law.
As for Virginia, she walked on through the gathering dusk towards Ann
Boyd's house. "Dead, dying!" she said, with a low moan. "It has come at
last."
Farther across the meadow she trudged, unconscious of the existence of
her physical self. At a little stream which she had to cross on
stepping-stones she paused and moaned again. Dead--actually dead! Luke
King, the young man whom the whole of his state was praising, had been
shot down like a dog. No matter what might be the current report as to
the cause of the meeting, young as she was she knew it to be the outcome
of Langdon Chester's passion--the fruition of his mad threat to her.
Yes, he had made good his word.
Approaching Ann's house, she entered the gate just as Mrs. Boyd came to
the door and stood smiling knowingly at her.
"Virginia," she called out, cheerily, "what you reckon I've got here?
You could make a million guesses and then be wide of the mark."
"Oh, Mrs. Boyd!" Virginia groaned, as she tottered to the step and
raised her eyes to the old woman's face, "you haven't heard the news.
Luke is dead!"
"Dead?" Ann laughed out impulsively. "Oh no, I reckon not. Come in and
take a chair by the fire; you've got your feet wet with the dew."
"He's dead, he's dead, I tell you!" Virginia stood still, her white and
rigid face upturned. "Langdon Chester, the contemptible coward, shot him
at Darley this morning."
"Oh, _that's_ it, is it?" A knowing look came into Ann Boyd's face. She
stroked an impulsive smile from her facile lips, but Virginia still saw
its light in the twinkling eyes above the broad, red hand. "You say he's
dead? Well, well, that accounts for something I was wondering about just
now. You know I am not much of a hand to believe in spiritual
manifestations like table-raising folks do, but I'll give you my word,
Virginia, that for the last hour and a half I'd 'a' sworn Luke King
_himself_ was right here in the house. Just now I heard something like
him walking across the floor. It seemed to me he went out to the shelf
and took a drink of water. I'll bet it's Luke's spirit hanging about
trying to tell me good-bye--that is, if he really _was_ shot, as you
say." Ann smiled again and turned her face towards the inside of the
room, and called out: "Say, Ghost of Luke King, if you are in my house
right now you'd better lie low and listen. This silly girl is talking so
wild the first thing you know she will be saying she don't love Langdon
Chester."
"Love him? what's the matter with you?" Virginia panted. "I hate him.
You know I detest him. I'll kill him. Do you hear me? I'll kill him as
sure as I ever meet him face to face."
Ann stared at the girl for a moment, her face oddly beaming, then she
looked back into the room again. "Do you hear that, Mr. Ghost? She now
says she'll kill Langdon Chester on sight. She says that after sending
_you_ about your business for no reason in the world. You listen good.
Maybe she'll be saying after a while that she loved you."
"I _did_ love him. God knows I loved him!" Virginia cried. "I loved him
with every bit of my soul and body. I've loved him, worshipped him,
adored him ever since I was a child and he was so good to me. He was the
noblest man that ever lived, and now a dirty, sneaking coward has
slipped up on him and shot him down in cold blood. If I ever meet that
man, as God is my Judge, I'll--" With a sob that was almost a shriek
Virginia sank to the door-step and lay there, quivering convulsively.
A vast change swept over Ann Boyd. Her big face filled with the still
blood of deep emotion. She heaved a sigh, and, turning towards the
interior of the room, she said, huskily:
"Come on, Luke; don't tease the poor little thing. I wouldn't have
carried it so far if I could have got it out of her any other way. She's
yours, dear boy--heart, soul, and body."
Hearing these words, Virginia raised her head in wonder, just as Luke
King emerged from the house. He bent over her, and tenderly raised her
up. He was drawing her closer to him, his fine face aflame with tender
passion, when Virginia held him firmly from her.
"Don't! don't!" she said. "If you knew--"
"I've told him everything, Virginia," Ann broke in. "I had to. I
couldn't see my dear boy suffering like he was, when--"
"You know--" Virginia began, aghast, "you know--"
"About you and Chester?" King said, with a light laugh. "Yes, I know all
about it, and it made me think you the grandest, most self-sacrificing
little girl in all the world. So you thought I was dead? That was all
gossip. It was only a quarrel that amounted to nothing. I understand,
now that he is sober, that Chester is heartily ashamed of himself."
Half an hour afterwards Ann stood at the gate and saw them walking
together towards Virginia's home. She watched them till they were lost
from her sight in the dusk, then she went back into the house. She stood
over the low fire for a moment, then said: "I won't get any supper
ready. I couldn't eat a bite. Meat and bread couldn't shove this lump
out of my throat. It's pretty, pretty, pretty to see those two together
that way. I believe they have got the sort of thing the Almighty really
meant love to be. I know _I_ never got that kind, though, as a girl, I
dreamt of nothing else--nothing from morning till night but that one
thing, and yet here I am this way--_this way_!"