“Did they see you?” Pete demanded anxiously.
“I don’t think so.” Hugh was breathing fast; he had evidently fled
across the snow at top speed.
“Get in, then, quick--out of sight.” Pete was already tearing up boards
above that long-waiting place of hiding. Hugh was about to step down
into it when he glanced up and saw Sylvie. She was standing as the
unseeing stand in moments of frightened bewilderment, her hands clasped,
her head turning from side to side. “Look here,” whispered Hugh, still
absorbed in his own danger, “don’t let them know that Sylvie just
wandered in here. Don’t let them start asking her any questions; it’s
too dangerous. Let her be--one of the family.” He smiled maliciously.
“Let her be your wife, Pete.” Then, as though that picture had fired his
love through its hint of jeopardy, he held out both arms suddenly: “Come
here, Sylvie--lead her to me, Pete.”
The boy obeyed. But as her uncertain arms trembled about Hugh’s
shoulders Pete turned sharply away. He heard the quick, anxious murmur
of their voices:
“Hugh, dearest--are you afraid?” And his: “Trust me, little darling.
Love me.” A kiss.
Then a sharp, whispered summons: “Quick, can’t you, Pete? Get these
boards down.”
When Pete turned, Hugh had dropped into the darkness, and Sylvie stood
flushed and with her hands over her face.
Bella had meantime been collecting the most characteristic of Hugh’s
belongings--those that could not be supposed to belong to Pete--and now
thrust them down into the hiding-place. The boards were rearranged, the
rug laid evenly over them. Then the three stood staring at one another,
listening helplessly to the nearing sounds.
“Oh, Pete,” Sylvie gasped, “tell me what I must do--or what I ought to
say.”
“Tell them,” said Bella, “what Hugh told you--that you are Pete’s wife.
They’ll be looking for a different household from that, and it will help
to put them off.”
“But--but Pete won’t look old enough.”
“Yes, he will. He looks older than you,” Bella declared harshly. “You
sit down and keep quiet; that’s the best you can do; and for God’s sake
don’t look so scared. There’s a grave outside to show them, and nobody
digs up a six-year-old grave. They won’t find Hugh. Nobody’s ever
seen him. Don’t shake so, Sylvie. They may not even be after him; this
country has sheltered other outlaws, you know. Hush! I hear them. I’ll
be in the kitchen. Pete, be taking off your outdoor clothes. They’ll
have seen Hugh’s tracks even if they haven’t seen him, so somebody’s
got to have just come in. Be whistling and talking, natural and calm.
Remember we’re all at home, just quiet and happy--no reason to be
afraid. That’s it.”
Through her darkness Sylvie heard the knocking and Pete’s opening of
the door, the scraping of snow, the questions, the simplicity of Pete’s
replies.
Then she was made known. “My wife, gentlemen!” And a moment later: “My
mother!” And she heard Bella’s greeting, loud and cheerful like that
of a woman who is glad to see a visitor. Chairs were drawn up and
cigarettes rolled and lighted. She smelt the sharp sweetness of the
smoke. There was brief talk of the weather; Sylvie felt that while
they talked, the two strangers searched the place and the faces of its
inmates with cold, keen, suspicious eyes. She was grateful now for her
blindness. There came a sharp statement:
“We’re looking for Ham Rutherford, the murderer.” Sylvie’s heart
contracted in her breast.
“Well, sir,” laughed Pete, in his most boyish, light-hearted fashion,
“that sounds interesting. But it’s a new name to me.”
“It’s an old case, however,” said the man, the man who spoke more like
an Easterner than the sheriff. “Fifteen years old! They’ve dug it up
again back East. The daughter of the man that was killed came into some
money and thinks she can’t spend it any better than in hunting down her
father’s murderer. Now, we’ve traced Rutherford to this country, and
pretty close to this spot. He made a getaway before trial, and he came
out here fifteen years ago. About two years later he sent back East for
his kid brother--he’d be about your age now, Mr.--what you say your name
was?--Garth, Peter Garth. You’ll have to excuse the sheriff; he’s bound
to search your place.” Sylvie had heard the footsteps going through
the three rooms. “A woman named Bertha Scrane, a distant cousin of
Rutherford’s to whom he’d been kind, brought the child out. Now,
Missis--what’s your name?”
“Bella Garth,” she said tranquilly. “I came out here with my husband,
who died six years ago. He’s buried out there under the snow. I’ve lived
here with my son and my son’s wife.”
“Yes. It’s not the household we’d been expecting to find. It’s a lonely
place, Missis.” He looked at Sylvie. “I should think you’d prefer going
to some town.”
“We’re used to it here now,” Bella answered.
“How’d your husband happen here, ma’am?”
“His health was poor; he’d heard of this climate, and he wanted to try
trapping. He got on first-rate until the illness came so bad on him, and
Pete’s done well ever since. We haven’t suffered any.”
“No, I guess not. You don’t look like you’d suffered.”
The talk went on, an awkward, half-disguised cross-questioning as
to Bella’s birthplace, her life before she came out, her husband’s
antecedents. She was extraordinarily calm, ready and reasonable with her
replies.
“Well, sir”--the sheriff strolled back into the room--“I reckon these
aren’t the parties we’re after. But look a-here, this is a description
of Ham Rutherford. Likely you might have had a glimpse of him since you
came into the country. When he made his getaway he was about thirty-two,
height five feet eight, ugly, black-haired, noticeable eyes, manner
violent. He was deformed, one leg shorter, one shoulder higher than the
other, mouth twisted, and a scar across the nose. He’d been hurt in a
fire when he was a child--”
Sylvie broke into a spontaneous ripple of mirth, the full measure of her
relief. “Goodness,” she said with utter spontaneity. “There’s certainly
never been a monster like that in this house, has there, Pete?”
It did more than all that had gone before to convince the inquisitors.
From that minute there was a distinct relaxation; the evening, indeed,
turned to one of sociability.
“We hate to inconvenience you, ma’am, but it seems like at this distance
from town we’ve got to ask you for supper and a place to sleep.”
If it had not been for the thought of Hugh in hiding, that supper and
the evening about the hearth would have been to Sylvie a pleasant one.
The men, apparently laying aside all suspicion, were entertaining;
their adventurous lives had bristled with exciting, moving, humorous
experience. It was Sylvie herself, prompted by curiosity, believing
as she did that the monster the sheriff had described bore no possible
resemblance to the man she loved, who asked suddenly:
“Do tell us about the man you’re hunting for now--this Rutherford? Tell
us about what he did.”
The Easterner gave her a look, and Bella, seeing it, chimed in: “Yes,
sure. Tell us about his crime.”
Pete stood up and rolled another cigarette. Try as he might to steady
his fingers, they trembled. He had never heard Hugh’s story. He did
not want to hear it. The very name of Rutherford that had, in what now
seemed to him another age, belonged to Hugh and to him was terrible
in his ears. A sickness of dread seized him. Fortunately the eyes of
neither of the men were upon him. Sylvie had their whole attention.
The detective spoke. “He was a storekeeper back in a university town,
way East, where I came from. He kept a bookshop and had a heap of
book-learning. I remember him myself, though I was a youngster. He was a
wonderful, astonishing sort of chap, though as ugly as the devil; had a
great gift of narration, never told the truth in his life, I guess, but
that only made him all the more entertaining. And he had a temper--phew!
Redhot! He’d fly out and storm and strike in all directions. That’s
what did for him. Some fool quarrel about a book it was, and the man,
a frequenter of the shop, a scholar, a scientist, professor at the
university, accused Rutherford of lying. Rutherford had a heavy brass
paper-cutter in his hand. The professor had a nasty tongue in his head.
Well, a tongue’s no match for a paper-cutter. The professor said too
much, called Rutherford a hump-backed liar and got a clip on the head
that did for him.”
“It’s an ugly story,” said Sylvie. Bella and Pete retained their
silence.
“Murder ain’t pretty telling, as a general thing,” remarked the sheriff.
“No, though I’ve heard of cases where a man was justified in killing
another man--I mean to save some one he loved from dreadful suffering,”
Sylvie replied.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t know about that. I’ve read stories that make it
look that way, but in all my experience, it’s the cowards and the fools
that kill, and they do it because they’re lower down, closer to the
beast, or perhaps to an uncontrolled child, than most of us.”
“But there was a time,” Bella said, with a smothered passion, “when an
insult to a gentleman’s honor had to be avenged.”
“Yes, ma’am,” drawled the sheriff, “in them history days things was
fixed up to excuse animal doin’s, kind of neater and easier and more
becomin’ than they are now. Well, Mr. Garth, can we have our beds? We’ve
kept these ladies up talkin’ long enough. Your mother looks plum wore
out.”
They slept in the bed usually shared by Pete and Hugh. Pete lay on the
floor in the living-room not far from his brother’s hiding-place--lay
there rigid and feverish, staring at the night. Sylvie, at Bella’s side,
slept no better. Her imagination went over and over the story of Ham
Rutherford’s crime. She saw the little dark bookshop, the professor’s
thin, sneering face, the hideous anger of the cripple, the blow, the
dead body, Rutherford’s arrest. And when her brain was sick, it would
turn for relief to the noble story of Hugh’s self-sacrifice, only to be
balked by a sense of unreality. What the detective had told, briefly
and dryly, lived in her mind convincingly; but Hugh’s romance, that had
glowed on his tongue, now lay lifeless on her fancy. Back her mind would
go to the bookshop, the gibing professor, the heavy paper-cutter.
In the dawn she heard Bella get up with a deep-shaken sigh and go about
her preparations for breakfast. But it was noon before the two men left.