First word of the tragedy came to Will Bissell’s store at seven o’clock
in the evening of the next day but one; and the manner of the coming was
this:
The day had been lowering and sultry; such a day as Fraternity was
accustomed to expect in mid-August, when the sun was heavy on the land
and the air was murky with sea fogs blown in from the bay. A day when
there seemed to be a malignant spirit in the very earth itself; a day
when to work was torment, and merely to move about was sore discomfort.
A day when dogs snarled at their masters, and masters cursed at their
dogs; when sullen passions boiled easily to the surface, and tempers
were frayed to the last splitting strand.
No breath of air was stirring as the evening came down. The sun had
scarce shown itself all day; the coming of night was indicated only by a
growing obscurity, by a thickening of the murky shadows in the valleys
and the gray clouds that hid the hills. Men slighted their evening
chores, did them hurriedly or not at all, and made haste to get into the
open air. From the houses of the village they moved toward Will’s store;
and some of them stopped on the bridge above the brook, as though the
sound of running water below them had some cooling power; and some
climbed the little slope and sat on the high steps of the store. They
talked little or none, spoke in monosyllables when they spoke at all.
They were too hot and weary and uncomfortable for talking.
No one seemed to be in any hurry. The men moved slowly; the occasional
wagon or buggy that drove into town came at a walk; even the automobiles
seemed to move with a sullen reluctance. So it was not surprising that
the sound of a horse’s running feet coming along the Liberty road should
quickly attract their ears.
They heard it first when the horse topped the rise above the mill,
almost a mile away. The horse was galloping. The sounds were hushed
while the creature dipped into a hollow, and rang more loudly when it
climbed a nearer knoll and came on across the level meadow road toward
the town. The beat of its hoofs was plainly audible; and men asked each
other whose horse it was, and what the hurry might be; and one or two,
more energetic than the rest, stood up to get a glimpse of the road by
which the beast was coming.
Just before it came into their sight they heard it stop galloping and
come on at a trot; and a moment later horse and rider came in sight, and
every man saw who it was.
Jean Bubier exclaimed, “It is M’sieu’ Semler.”
And Judd echoed, “Dane Semler. In a hell of a hurry, too.”
Then the man pulled his horse to a stand at the foot of the store steps
and swung off. He had been riding bareback; and he was in the garments
which he was accustomed to wear when he went fishing along the brooks.
They all knew him; for though he was a man of the cities he had been
accustomed to come to Fraternity in June for a good many years. They
knew him, but did not particularly like him. There was always something
of patronage in his attitude, and they knew this and resented it.
Nevertheless, one or two of them answered his greeting. For the rest,
they studied him with an acute and painful curiosity. There was some
warrant for their curiosity. Semler, usually an immaculate man, was hot
and dusty and disordered; his face was white; his eyes were red and
shifting, and there was an agonized haste in his bearing which he was
unable to hide.
He asked, almost as his foot touched ground, “Anyone here got a car?”
Two or three of the men had come in automobiles; and one, George Tower,
answered, “Sure.”
Tower was a middle-aged man of the sort that remains perpetually young;
and he had recently acquired a swift and powerful roadster of which he
was mightily proud. It was pride in this car, more than a desire to help
Dane Semler, that prompted his answer.
Semler took a step toward him and lowered his voice a little. “I’ve had
bad news,” he said. “How long will it take you to get me to town?”
That was a drive of ten or a dozen miles, over roads none too good.
Tower answered promptly: “Land you there in twenty minutes.”
“I’ll give you a dollar for every minute you do it under half an hour,”
said Semler swiftly; and Tower got to his feet.
“Where’s your grip?” he asked.
Semler shook his head. “I’m having that sent on. Can’t wait. I’m ready
to start now.” He looked toward the men on the steps. “Some of you take
care of the horse,” he said quickly. “Garvey will send for it.”
Garvey was the farmer at whose house Semler had been staying. Will
Bissell took the horse’s bridle and promised to stable the beast till
Garvey should come. Tower was already in his car; Semler jumped in
beside him. They were down the hill and across the bridge in a
diminuendo roar of noise as the roadster, muffler cut out, rocketed away
toward town. Two or three of the men got to their feet to watch them go,
sat down again when they were out of sight.
There was a moment’s thoughtful silence before someone said, “What do
you make o’ that? Semler in some hurry, I’d say.”
Jean Bubier laughed a little. “One dam’ hurry,” he agreed.
“Like something was after him--or he was after someone.”
Judd the mean cackled to himself. “By Gad,” he cried, “I’ll bet
Evered’s got on to him. I’ll bet Evered’s after that man. No wonder he
run.”
The other men looked at Judd, and they shifted uncomfortably. Will
Bissell had gone round to stable the horse; Lee Motley had not yet come
to the store, nor had Jim Saladine. Lacking these three there was no one
to silence Judd, and the man might have gone on to uglier speech.
But he was silenced, and silenced by so inconsiderable a person as Zeke
Pitkin. Zeke drove up just then, drove hurriedly; and they saw before he
stopped his horse that he was shaking with excitement.
He cried out, “Hain’t you heard?”
Judd answered, “Heard what? What ails you, Zeke?”
Pitkin scarce heard him, he was so intent on crying out his dreadful
news. It came in a stumbling burst of half a dozen words.
“Evered’s red bull’s killed Mis’ Evered,” he stammered.
V
Evered’s red bull was a notorious and dangerous figure in the
countryside. It was like some primordial monster of the forests, and
full as fierce of temper. Evered had bought it two years before, and two
men on horseback, with ropes about the creature’s neck, brought it from
town to his farm. Evered himself, there to receive it, scowled at their
precautions. There was a ring in the monstrous beast’s nose; and to this
ring Evered snapped a six-foot stick of ash, seasoned and strong.
Holding the end of this stick he was able to control the bull; and he
set himself to teach it fear. That he succeeded was well enough
attested. The bull did fear him, and with reason. Nevertheless, Evered
took no chances with the brute, and never entered its stall without
first snapping his ash stick fast to the nose ring. Those who watched at
such times said that the bull’s red eyes burned red and redder so long
as Evered was near; and those who saw were apt to warn the man to take
care. But Evered paid no heed to their warnings; or seemed to pay no
heed.
The bull had never harmed a human being, because it had never found the
opportunity. Men and women and children shunned it, kept well away from
its stout-fenced pasture, its high-boarded pen and its stall. The
creature was forever roaring and bellowing; and when the air was still
its clamor carried far across the countryside and frightened children
and women, and made even men pause to listen and to wonder whether
Evered’s bull was loose at last. Some boys used to come and take a
fearsome joy from watching the brute; and at first they liked to tease
the bull, pelting it with sticks and stones. Till one day they
came--Jimmy Hills, and Will Motley, and Joe Suter, and two or three
besides--with a setter pup of Lee Motley’s at their heels. The pup
watched their game, and wished to take a hand, so slipped through the
fence to nip at the great bull’s heels; and the beast wheeled and pinned
the dog against the fence with its head like a ram, and then trod the
pup into a red pudding in the soft earth, while Will Motley shrieked
with rage and sorrow and fear.
Evered heard them that day, and came down with a whip and drove them
away; and thereafter a boy who teased the bull had trouble on his hands
at home. And the tale of what the brute had done to that setter pup was
told and retold in every farmhouse in the town.
Evered, even while he mastered the bull and held it slave, took pains to
maintain his dominance. The stall which housed it was stout enough to
hold an elephant; the board-walled pen outside the stall was doubly
braced with cedar posts set five feet underground; and even the
half-mile pasture in which, now and then, he allowed the brute to range,
had a double fence of barbed-wire inside and stone wall without.
This pasture ran along the road and bent at right angles to work down to
the edge of the swamp. It was, as has been said, about a half mile long;
but it was narrow, never more than a few rods wide. It formed the
southern boundary of Evered’s farm; and no warning signs were needed to
keep trespassers from crossing this area. When the bull was loose here
it sometimes ranged along the fence that paralleled the road, tossing
its great head and snorting and muttering at people who passed by, so
that they were apt to hurry their pace and leave the brute behind.
It was timid Zeke Pitkin, on his way to North Fraternity, who saw the
bull break its fence on the afternoon that Mary Evered was killed. Zeke
did not usually take the road past Evered’s place, because he did not
like to pass under the eye of the bull. But on this day he was in some
haste; and he thought it likely the bull would be stalled and out of
sight, and on that chance took the short hill road to his destination.
When he approached Evered’s farm he began to hear the bull muttering and
roaring in some growing exasperation. But it was then too late to turn
back without going far out of his way, so he pressed on until he came in
sight of the pasture and saw the beast, head high, tramping up and down
along the fence on the side away from the road. Zeke was glad the bull
was on that side, and hurried his horse, in a furtive way, hoping the
bull would not mark his passing.
When he came up to where the brute was he saw that the bull was watching
something in Evered’s woodlot, beyond the pasture; and Zeke tried to see
what it was. At first he could not see; but after a moment a dog yapped
there, and Zeke caught a glimpse of it; a half-bred terrier from some
adjacent farm, roving the woods.
The dog yapped; and the bull roared; and the dog, its native impudence
impelling it, came running toward the pasture, and began to dance up and
down, just beyond the bull’s reach, barking in a particularly shrill and
tantalizing way.
Zeke yelled to the dog to be off; but the dog took his yell for
encouragement, and barked the harder; and then Zeke saw a thing which
made him turn cold.
He saw the bull swing suddenly, with all its weight, against the high
wire fence; and he saw one of the posts sag and give way, and another
smashed off short. So, quicker than it takes to tell it, the bull was
floundering across the barbed wires, roaring with the pain of them, and
Zeke saw it top the wall, tail high and head down, and charge the little
dog.
Zeke might have tried to drive the bull back into its pasture; but that
was a task for a bold man, and Zeke was not bold. He whipped his horse
and drove on to warn Evered; and when he looked back from the top of the
hill the bull and the dog had disappeared into the scrub growth of
alder and hardwood along a little run that led down to the swamp. He
whipped his horse again, and turned into the road that led to Evered’s
farmhouse.
When he got to the farmhouse there was no one at home; and after he had
convinced himself of this Zeke drove away again, planning to stop at the
first neighboring farm and leave word for Evered. But after a quarter of
a mile or so he met the butcher, and stopped him and told him that the
bull was loose in his woodlot.
Evered asked a question or two; but Zeke’s voluble answers made him
impatient, and he left the other and hurried on. At home he stabled his
horse, got his ash stave with the snap on the end, and as an
afterthought went into the house for his revolver. He had no illusions
about the bull; he knew the beast was dangerous.
While he was in the house he marked that his wife was not there, and
wondered where she was, and called to her, but got no answer. He knew
that John and Ruth MacLure, his wife’s sister, were in the orchard on
the other side of the farm from the pasture and woodlot; and he decided
that his wife must have gone to join them there. So with the revolver in
his pocket and the stave in his hand, Evered went down past the barn and
through the bars into the woodlot. Somewhere in the thickets below him
he expected to find the bull. He could hear nothing, so he understood
that the little dog which had caused the trouble had either fled or been
killed by the beast. He hoped for the latter; for he was an impatient
man, and angered at the whole incident. Also, the sultry heat of the day
had irked him; irked him so that he had cursed to himself because his
wife was not at home when he wished to speak to her.
In this impatient mood he began to work down through the woodlot. He
went carefully, knowing the treacherous temper of the brute he was
hunting. He passed through a growth of birches along a little run, and
across a rocky knoll, and through more birches, and so came out upon the
lower shelf of his farm, a quarter of a mile from the house, and halfway
down to the borders of the swamp.
He remembered, when he had come thus far, that there was a spring in the
hillside a little below him, with two or three old trees above it, and
some clean grass beside it. His wife occasionally came here in the
afternoon, when her work was done, to sit and read or rest or give
herself to her thoughts. Evered knew of this habit of hers; but till
this moment he had forgotten it. The spot was cool; it caught what air
was stirring. He had a sudden conviction that she might be there now;
and the idea angered him. He was angry with her because by coming down
here she had put herself in a dangerous position. He was angry with her
because he was worried about her safety. This was a familiar reaction of
the man’s irascible temperament. Two years before, when Mary Evered took
to her bed for some three weeks’ time with what was near being
pneumonia, Evered had been irritable and morose and sullen until she was
on her feet again. Unwilling to confess his concern for her, he
expressed that concern by harsh words and scowls and bitter taunts, till
his wife wept in silent misery. His wife whom he loved wept in misery
because of him.
Thus it was now with him. He was afraid she had come to the spring; he
was afraid the bull would come upon her there; and because he was
afraid for her he was angry with her for coming.
He went forward across the level rocky ground, eyes and ears alert; and
so came presently atop a little rise from which he could look down to
the spring. And at what he saw the man stopped stock-still, and all the
fires of hell flared up in his heart till he felt his whole body burn
like a flaming ember.
His wife was there; she was sitting on a low smooth rock a little at one
side of the spring. But that was not all; she was not alone. A man sat
below her, a little at one side, looking up at her and talking
earnestly; and Mary Evered’s head was drooping in thought as she
listened.
Evered knew the man. The man was Dane Semler. Dane Semler and his wife,
together here, talking so quietly.
They did not see him. Their backs were toward him, and they were
oblivious and absorbed. Evered stood still for a moment; then he was so
shaken by the fury of his own anger that he could not stand, and he
dropped on one knee and knelt there, watching them. And the blood boiled
in him, and the pulse pounded in his throat, and the breath choked in
his lungs. His veins swelled, his face became purple. One watching him
would have been appalled.
Evered was in that moment a terrible and dreadful spectacle, a man
completely given over to the ugliest of angers, to the black and
tempestuous fury of jealousy.
He did not stop to wonder, to guess the meaning of the scene before him.
He did not wish to know its explanation. If he had thought soberly he
must have known there was no wrong in Mary Evered. But he did not think
soberly; he did not think at all. He gave himself to fury. Accustomed to
yield to anger as a man yields to alcohol, accustomed to debauches of
rage, Evered in this moment loosed all bounds on himself. He hated his
wife as it is possible to hate only those whom we love; he hated Dane
Semler consumingly, appallingly. He was drunk with it, shaking with it;
his lips were so hot it was as though they smoked with rage.
The man and the woman below him did not move. He could catch, through
the pounding in his own ears, the murmur of their voices. Semler spoke
quickly, rapidly, lifting a hand now and then in an appealing gesture;
the woman, when she spoke at all, raised her head a little to look at
the man, and her voice was very low. Evered did not hear their words; he
did not wish to. The very confidence and ease and intimacy of their
bearing damned them unutterably in his eyes.
He was like a figure of stone, there on the knoll just above them. It
seemed impossible that they could remain unconscious of his presence
there. The unleashed demons in the man seemed to cry out, they were
almost audible.
But the two were absorbed; they saw nothing and heard nothing; nothing
save each other. And Evered above them, a concentrated fury, was as
absorbed and oblivious as they. His whole being was so focused in
attention on these two that he did not see the great red bull until it
came ponderously round a shoulder of the hill, not thirty paces from
where the man and woman sat together. He did not see it then until they
turned their heads that way, until they came swiftly to their feet, the
man with a cry, the woman in a proud and courageous silence.
The bull stood still, watching them. And in the black soul of Evered an
awful triumph leaped and screamed. His ash stave was beside him, his
revolver was beneath his hand. There was time and to spare.
He flung one fist high and brought it smashing down. It struck a rock
before him and crushed skin and knuckles till the blood burst forth. But
Evered did not even know. There was a dreadful exultation in him.
He saw the bull’s head drop, saw the vast red bulk lunge forward, quick
as light; saw Semler dodge like a rabbit, and run, shrieking, screaming
like a woman; saw Mary Evered stand proudly still as still.
In the last moment Evered flung himself on the ground; he hid his face
in his arms. And the world rocked and reeled round him so that his very
soul was shaken.
Face in his arms there, the man began presently to weep like a little
child.