A Message
When Judith stole noiselessly into the house and up to her room, she
could hear the boys preparing for bed in their own quarters, with
unwonted jesting and laughter, and even some occasional stamping about
which suggested horse-play; and her lip curled angrily as she recalled
Blatch's jug of corn whiskey.
She lay thinking, thinking; and at length there evolved itself in her
mind a plan for getting Creed safely out of the mountains by way of an
ancient Cherokee trail that ran down the gulch through a distant corner
of the old Turrentine place. By this route they would reach the railroad
town of Garyville, quite around the flank of Big Turkey Track from
Hepzibah. She could do that. She knew every step of the way. The trail
was a disused, forgotten route of travel, long fenced across in several
places, and scoured out of existence at certain points by mountain
streams; but she had known every foot of it in years past; she could
travel it the darkest night; and Selim was her own horse; she need ask
nobody.
When she got so far, came the pressing question of how to send word to
Creed. She must see and warn him before the men put their plan into
practice. But she was well aware that she herself was under fairly close
espionage, and that her first move in the direction of Nancy Card's cabin
would bring the vague suspicions of her household to a certainty. Where
to find a messenger? How to so word a message that Creed would answer it?
These were the questions that drove sleep from her pillow till almost
morning.
She rose and faced the dawn with haggard eyes. Unless she could do
something this was the last day of Creed's life. In a tremor of
apprehension she got through her morning duties, cooking and serving a
breakfast to the three boys, who made no comment on their father's
absence, and whose curious looks she was aware of upon her averted face,
her down-dropped eyelids. She felt alone indeed, with her uncle gone, and
the boys who had been as brothers to her almost since babyhood suddenly
become strangers, their interests and hers hostile, destructive to each
other.
Woman will go to woman in a pinch like this, and in spite of her
repugnance at the thought of Huldah, Judith late in the afternoon made
her way over to the Jim Cal cabin and asked concerning its mistress'
toothache.
"Hit's better," said Iley briefly. Her head was tied up in a medley of
cloths and smelled loud of turpentine, camphor, and a lingering bouquet
of assafoetida. She was not a hopeful individual to enlist in a
chivalrous enterprise.
"Huldy git back yet?" Judith asked finally.
"No, an' she needn't never git back," snapped Iley. "Her and Creed
Bonbright kin make out best they may. I don't know as I mind her bein'
broke off with Wade. One Turrentine in the fambly's enough fer me."
"Air her and Creed Bonbright goin' to be wedded?" inquired Judith
scarcely above her breath.
"_Air_ they?" echoed Xantippe, settling her hands on her hips and
surveying Judith with an angry stare, the dignity of which was sadly
impaired by a yellow flannel cloth-end which persisted in dabbling in her
eye. "Well, I should hope so! I don't know what gals is comin' to in this
day an' time--follerin' 'round after the young men like you do. Ef I'd a'
done so when I was a gal my mammy'd have took a hickory to me. That's
what she would. Here's Jim Cal be'n rarin' around here like a chicken
with its head off 'caze Huldy run away with Creed Bonbright, and here
_you_ air askin' me do I think Creed and Huldy is apt to marry. What kind
of women do ye 'low the Spiller gals is, anyhow?"
Judith turned away from so unpromising an ally. She was accused of
running after Creed Bonbright. When he got her message it would be with
Huldah Spiller beside him to help him read it. The thought was bitter. It
gave that passionate heart of hers a deadly qualm; but she put it down
and rose above it. Huldah or no Huldah, she could not let him die and
make no effort.
Leaving Jim Cal's cabin she walked out into the woods, and only as she
turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back to find Iley furtively
peering after her from the corner of the house did she realise that the
woman's words had been dictated because she had been taken into the
confidence of the men and set to keep an eye on Judith.
At the conviction a feeling of terror began to gain ground. She was like
a creature enmeshed in a net weak in its cordage, but many-stranded and
hampering; turn whichever way she would some petty restriction met her.
She moved aimlessly forward, reasonably sure that she was not followed or
observed, since she was going away from rather than toward the Card
place. About a mile from the cabin of old Hannah Updegrove, a weaver of
rag carpet, she suddenly came upon two little creatures sitting at a
tree-foot playing about one of those druidical-looking structures that
the childhood of the man and the childhood of the race alike produce. It
was Little Buck and Beezy come to spend the day with old Hannah who, on
their father's side, was kin of theirs, and making rock play-houses in
the tree-roots to put over the time. Judith ran to the children, gathered
them close, and hugged them to her with whispered endearments in which
some tears mingled.
Then for half an hour followed the schooling of Little Buck for the
message which he was to carry, and which Beezy must be so diverted that
she would not even hear.
Judith plaited grass bracelets for the fat little wrists, fashioned
bonnets of oak leaves, pinning them together with grass stems, and then
sending Beezy far afield to gather flowers for their trimming. On long
journeys the little feet trudged, to where the beautiful, frail, white
meadow lilies rose in clumps from the lush grass of the lowlands. She
fetched cardinal flowers from the mud and shallow water beyond them, or
brought black-eyed Susans from the sun of open spaces. And during these
expeditions Judith's catechism of the boy went on.
"How you goin' to git home, Little Buck?"
"Pappy's a-comin' by to fetch us."
"When?"
"A little befo' sundown?"
"You goin' straight home?"
"Yes, Jude, we' goin' straight home to Granny, why?"
"Never mind, honey. Is Creed there at yo' house?"
A silent nod.
"Is--honey, tell Jude the truth--is it true that he ain't bad hurt? Could
he ride a nag?"
Little Buck looked all around him, drew close to his big sweetheart, and
pulled her down that he might whisper in her ear.
"I know somethin' that Granny and Creed don't know I know, but I mus'n't
tell it to anybody--only thest you. Creed--no, he ain't so awful bad
hurt--he walks everywheres most--he's a-goin' to take the old nag and go
over to Todd's corner to see yo' Unc' Jep, about moonrise to-night. They
said that--Granny an' Creed. An' they fussed. Granny, she don't want him
to go; but Creed, he thest will--he's bull-headed, Creed is."
Judith caught her breath. They had got the message to him then, and he
was going. Well, her appointment with him must be first.
"Little Buck, honey, ef you love me don't you forget one word I say to
you now," she whispered chokingly, holding the child by both hands.
He rounded eyes of solemn adoration and acquiescence upon her.
"You say to Creed Bonbright that Judith Barrier says he must come to her
at the foot of Foeman's Bluff--on yon side--as soon after dark as he can
git there. Tell him to come straight through by the short cut; hit'll be
safe; nobody'll ever study about him comin' in this direction. As soon
after hit's plumb dark as he can git there--will ye say that? Will ye
shore tell Creed an' never tell nobody but Creed?"
"But he won't go," said Little Buck wisely. "Granny's scared to have him
go to talk to yo' Unc' Jep, but she'd be a heap scareder to have him come
to you, 'caze you' one o' the Turrentines too--ain't ye, Judith?"
Judith's face whitened at the weakness of her position.
"I would come, Judith, becaze I love you an' you love me--but Creed, he
won't," said the boy.
"You tell him Little Buck," she whispered huskily, terror and shame
warring in her face, "tell him that I do love him. Tell him I said for
God's sake to come--if he loves me."
The child's eyes slowly filled. He dropped them and stood staring at the
ground, saying nothing because of the blur. Finally:
"I'll tell him that--ef you say I must," he whispered. And loving, tender
Judith, in her desperate preoccupation, never noted what she had done to
her little sweetheart.