Country Neighbors Part 30

Guessed he'd picked it up some'r's."

"Yes," said Ann, out of her daze, "so 't did." Yet she was not thinking of the hat as it might identify a thief, but of the brows under it, with a look she used to know.

"Why, Ann Barstow!" Mrs. John C. was saying, "you don't mean to tell me you see him yourself?"

Suddenly it seemed to Ann as if it were not the young tramp they were recalling, but her brother himself.

"No," she said defiantly. "I jest put in a word, that's all."

Mrs. John C. swept on in the strain of her hopeful heralding.

"So, soon as Sam told that--'twa'n't more 'n half an hour ago--I says to him, 'You go an' stir up some o' the boys, an' 'long towards ten o'clock you jest surround the old Pelton house an' git him, tea-set an' all.

Stan's to reason,' says I, 'it's an old deserted house, an' he's goin'

to git part of a night's rest there. 'Fore mornin' he'll be up an' put for some banjin'-place he's got, an' then that silver'll be melted up an' you never'll see hide nor hair on 't again.' One spell I thought mebbe he was goin' to build up a fire in the old fireplace an' melt it right then an' there; but John says 'tain't likely. Says you need more heat'n that to melt up silver." She paused for want of breath.

"Be they goin' to do it?" asked Ann faintly.

"Who?"

"Them young folks. Be they goin' to surround him an' take him up?"

"Well, I guess they be," said Mrs. John C., rising and drawing her shawl about her. "They will if they've got any seem to 'em. So I told 'em when they was talkin' on 't over."

Ann followed her to the door.

"If they should come acrost the tea-set," she hesitated, "mebbe they'd git hold o' that an' let him go."

Mrs. John C. gave her a rea.s.suring touch with her capable right hand.

"Don't you worry," she said, out of cheerful experience of her own enterprise. "I see to that. I says to John C., 'He ain't a-goin' to slip out an' git away. It's goin' to be done accordin' to law an' order,' I says. 'I sha'n't sleep a wink till that scoundrel's landed in jail.' So I says to John C., 'You harness up the colt an' ride over an' git the sheriff, an' when the boys pitch onto him, have him ready to clap the handcuffs on.' Don't you worry, Ann. You'll see your tea-set yit."

Ann stood at the door, hearing her walking heavily away, and a gentle rage possessed her when she noted how broad her back looked, how capable of carrying burdens to their goal. She was deeply attached to Mrs. John C., but she realized how impossible it was to block her purposes.

Hitherto they had all seemed beneficent ones; but now Ann felt something of the indignant protest that always surged in her when she saw a sleek and prosperous cat baiting a mouse. She went in and sat down again, with a double anxiety upon her. It was not only her tea-set she lamented, but the hardness of life wherein any creature should be worried down and caught. And she remembered, as she did not in loyalty allow herself to remember often, that her brother also had been wild.

Suddenly something roused her. It was not so much a thought as a touch upon her heart, and she sat up straight, as full of fire and purpose as Mrs. John C. herself, only it was purpose of another kind. Mrs. John C.

had the force of weight, and in Ann there were tense fibres of youth, not yet done thrilling. She threw her little shawl over her head and hurried out of the house. For an instant she paused, with a new impulse of caution, to lock the door. Then with a scorn of her present possessions, her one treasure gone, she latched it only, and took the wood-path to the swamp. Ann walked with a trained delicacy and caution suited to the woods. The thrilling of the frogs grew louder, and shortly she was at the old lightning oak that served her for a landmark. Before her lay the boggy place where she came in all warm seasons of the year for one thing or another: the wild marsh-marigold,--good for greens,--thoroughwort, and the root of the sweet-flag. P'ison flag grew here, too, the st.u.r.dy, delicate iris that made the swamp so gay.

Ann stayed a moment for breath. Haste had driven the blood to her face, and the cool spring air seemed to generate in her the heat of summer.

Until now she had loved the sound of the frogs, piping in the spring, but in the irritation of her trouble she spoke aloud to them: "Can't anybody be allowed to hear themselves think?" The haste of her errand tapped her again upon the arm, and she picked up the board which was one of the tools of her trade, left always at the foot of the lightning oak, and with it skirted the swamp to the east where the tussocks were large.

Then, throwing her board before her from one foothold to another, she crossed the swamp. Twice she had fallen, and her dress was wet. She was muddy to the knees, but she wrung out her heavy skirts and ran along the path she knew to the door of the deserted house.

Ann thought she had never seen a place so still. It had the desolation of a spot where life has been and where it is no more. She listened a moment, her eyes searching the dark bulk of the house, her hand upon her racing heart. She smelled smoke. Then she called:--

"You there? I know ye be. Open the door."

There was no sound. She tried the door, and, finding it bolted, shook the handle with all the force of her strong arms.

"You let me in," she called again. "I've got suthin' to say to ye. It's suthin' you'll be glad to hear."

But after she had waited a moment in the taunting stillness, she withdrew a little, that her voice should reach him, wherever he might be.

"I know all about it. You've took my silver tea-set an' you've got it in there now. Other folks knows it, too, an' about moonrise they're comin'

here an' surround the house an' make you give it up." She paused for an eager breath. The futility of the moment choked her. "You hear to me,"

she called again, in her strained, beseeching voice. "'Twon't do ye no good to hide, for they know you're there. An' 'twon't do ye no good to fight, for there's a whole b'ilin' of 'em, an' like 's not they've got guns. Now when I'm gone--I'm goin' right off home now--you slip out the back o' the house an' go as straight as you can cut, right acrost the pastur'. That'll bring ye to a lane. You turn to your right an' foller it, an' it'll take ye onto the high-road. Then you take that an' keep to your left. T'others'll come from the right. An' if you find a good hidin'-place, you better clap the tea-set into it, under some brush or suthin', an' come back arter it some other time. Ye see, they've started up the sheriff an' I dunno what all. Mis' John C.'s puttin' on 't through, an' mebbe they've telegraphed over the country by this time.

'Tain't any small matter, takin' a silver tea-set so. I'm terrible worried about ye. There! Now I'm goin'. You wait a minute, if ye don't want me to see ye. Then you can put."

But when she had taken a dozen steps on her homeward way, she returned as hastily. Her voice broke again upon the stillness, with a thrill in it of renewed beseeching. "Look here, you! One thing you do, fust thing arter you git away from here. You see 'f you can't find some work an'

you do it." The present experience seemed to have fallen away from her.

She might have been addressing the boy who also had been wild in those years so long ago. "You keep on this way an' you'll end in jail an' I dunno but suthin' that's wuss. Mebbe n.o.body won't ketch ye this time,--you better melt the tea-set up soon as ever you can,--but some time they will. Now you mind what I tell ye."

This time she did turn away, and with her light and knowing step plunged into the woods. Once there, as she remembered afterwards, her knees seemed to fail her, but she went weakly on, until, at a good distance from the house, she sat down on a bank under the sighing pines and leaned against a tree to let the cool air touch her face. "My suz!" she breathed. Her mind was all a mingling of past and present, but chiefly it seemed to be invaded by a young face, sullen sometimes like the tramp's, and then again gay with laughter.

When she came to her every-day frame of mind, the woods were still, and to her vivid sensibilities more deserted. She made no doubt the thief was gone in the way she had marked out for him. Ann had a childlike sense that he would believe her, because she meant so well. She took her own path soberly home again, not across the marsh this time, but half the way by the high-road. At one point she caught the sound of voices, subdued to the mysterious note of the hour itself. She stepped over a stone wall and lay down in the damp bracken there, and in a moment, as she expected, the cautious steps went by her on their quest, a party of eight or ten, as she judged, raising her head cautiously from her retreat to look and listen. Then she lay down again, chuckling softly as she did when the mouse escaped, even though it was to gnaw her cheese.

And presently she took the road, and so went home.

Ann could not go to bed that night. It was not that she expected news, but she had a feeling that powers were abroad to shape and guide things, and that, though humbly, she must be among them. Perhaps it was the excitement of the time and stirring memories, but, for whatever reason, it seemed to her that her "folks" were all about her, strengthening her to the kindnesses and the loyalties of life. She was not in the habit of praying; but as she lay upon the lounge in the kitchen, between waking and sleep, she kept saying to some hidden power: "You look out for him. Young folks don't know half the time what's best for 'em." And toward morning, in her confused state between life and sleep, she hardly knew whether it was her brother she prayed for or the unknown man. Once she heard a quick, sharp noise as if a window opened. She started up.

"Yes, yes!" she called, out of her dream. "You want me? I'm right here."

But no one answered, and she settled again to sleep.

It was seven o'clock when she opened her eyes to find the kitchen flooded with light. It was a brilliant day, but she was stiff and cold.

After she had started her fire, she went into the bedroom to comb her hair, and glanced into the little blurred mirror she sometimes found her only company. The window was wide, the fresh May air blowing in, and there under the window on the floor was her silver tea-set. Ann sat down before it and gathered it into her arms as if it were a child. The tears ran down her cheeks. "To think," she kept saying, "to think he fetched it back. Only to think on 't!" And while she sat there, very happy with the tea-set in her lap, she heard a step she knew. She came swiftly to her feet. Then she put the silver on her bureau in a shining row, and questioned her face in the gla.s.s. The tears were on it still, but that hardly mattered on a face that smiled so hard. But she did wipe away the drops with her ap.r.o.n, and then hurried into the kitchen to meet her visitor. Mrs. John C. was bedraggled from loss of sleep, and defeat sat upon her shining brow.

"Well, Ann," she said gloomily, "I ain't got any news for ye. He wa'n't there, arter all, though there'd been a fire an' they found he cooked himself some eggs. But they're goin' to beat up the woods arter breakfast, an' if he's above ground he's goin' to be took."

Ann could scarcely sober her smiling mouth.

"You tell 'em it's all right," she announced jubilantly. "Where do you s'pose I found it? In my bedroom, arter all."

Mrs. John C. regarded her with blighting incredulity. Ann had been guiltily careless, and yet she expressed no grief over the trouble she had made. It was beyond belief.

"Ann Barstow," said she, "you don't mean to tell me you had this whole township up traipsin' the woods all night, an' me without a wink o'

sleep, an' that tea-set in your bedroom, arter all?"

Ann did flush guiltily. Her eyes fell.

"You beseech 'em not to think hard of me," she urged. "I never do put it in my bedroom,--you know yourself them two places I keep it in,--but there 'twas."

Mrs. John C. turned majestically to be gone. She spoke with an emphasis that seemed, even to her, inadequate.

"Well, Ann Barstow, I should think you was losin' your mind."

"Mebbe I be," said Ann, joyously, following her to the door. "Mebbe I be. But there's my tea-set. I'm terrible pleased."

THE OTHER MRS. DILL