From the Valley of the Missing Part 72

"Yer hook's killed our little 'un, Lemmy--my little 'un, my little 'un!"

"Oh, no, no, he isn't dead!" cried Ann. "He can't be dead!" She let go her hold on Fledra, and, with Scraggy, bent over Everett. "Oh, he breathes! But he isn't your son?"

"Yep; he be Lemmy's boy and mine," answered Scraggy, lifting her eyes once more to Ann. "Look! He were hurt here by the hook when he were a baby." She drew aside Everett's tattered shirt-front and displayed a long white mark.

Ann staggered back. Everett had said to her:

"My mother will know me by the mark on my breast."

So this was the end of Everett's dream!

"He didn't love his mammy very much," Scraggy went on, "nor his pappy, nuther; but it were 'cause he didn't know nuther one of us very well, and Lem didn't love him nuther. And now they've fit till he's dead!

Lemmy's sick, too. Look at his face! He can't swaller when he's sick like that." She left Everett and crawled to Lem.

"Can ye drink, Lemmy?" she asked sorrowfully.

The grizzled head shook a negative.

"Be ye dyin?"

This time Crabbe's head came forward in a.s.sent.

"Then ye dies with yer little boy--poor little feller! He were the bestest boy in the hull world!" Here she placed an arm under Everett's neck; throwing the other about Lem, she drew the two men together before she resumed. "And Lemmy was the bestest man and pappy that anybody ever see!"

Screech Owl's last words were nearly drowned by the shrill whistle of a steamer. A minute later Ann and Fledra heard running footsteps coming from the direction of the lake. There was no knock; but a quick jerk of the latch-string flung wide the door--and Fledra was in Horace's arms.

"Thank G.o.d, my little girl is safe!" he murmured.

Then he glanced over her head, his horrified attention centered upon the group on the floor.

Scraggy looked up at him, still holding Lem and Everett.

"I'm glad ye comed, Mister. Can't ye help 'em any?"

For many minutes they worked in silence over the father and son. Once the brilliant eyes of Brimbecomb opened and flashed bewilderedly about the room, until he caught sight of Ann. A smile, sweet and winning, curved his lips. Then he lapsed into unconsciousness again.

"Oh, I want him to speak to me, Horace," moaned Ann, "only a little word!"

"Wait, Dear," said Horace. "We're doing all we can.... I believe that man over there is dead."

He made a motion as if to lean over the scowman; but Scraggy pushed him back.

"No, my Lemmy ain't dead," she wailed, "course he ain't dead!" She placed her lips close to the dying man's ear, and called, "Lemmy, Lemmy, this be Scraggy!"

The hooked arm moved a trifle, and then was still. The fingers of the left hand groped weakly about, and Scraggy, with a sob, lifted the arm and put it about her. Had the others in the room been mindful of the action, they would have seen the man's muscles tighten about the woman's thin neck. Then presently his arm loosened and he was dead.

Everett's eyes were open, and he was trying to speak.

"Is--Ann--here?" he whispered faintly.

"Yes, Dear, I am here, right close beside you. Can't you feel my hands?"

His head turned feebly, and his fingers sought hers.

"I have been--wretchedly--wicked!"

His voice was so low that Horace did not catch the words; but Scraggy heard, and crawled from Lem to Miss Sh.e.l.lington's side.

"Missus, will ye tell my little boy-brat that his mammy be here? Will ye say as how I loved him--him and Lemmy, allers?"

Her haggard face was close to Ann's, and the latter took in every word of the low-spoken pet.i.tion. Miss Sh.e.l.lington bent over the dying man.

"Everett," she said brokenly, "your own mother is here, and she wants you to speak to her."

Brimbecomb partly rose, and, in scanning those in the hut, his eyes fell upon Screech Owl. The tense agony seemed for an instant to leave his face, and it fell into more boyish lines.

"Little 'un--pretty little 'un," whispered Scraggy "yer mammy loves ye, and Lemmy loved ye, too, if he did hit ye!"

Screech Owl hung over him many minutes in a breathless silence; but when Vandecar came in Everett, too, was dead. Then, at last, Scraggy moved toward the door, and, with the same wild cry that had haunted the settlement for so many years, sprang out into the night.

From her hiding place in the gulch, Scraggy saw Vandecar and the rest mount the hill. When they had disappeared, she slunk down the lane and made straight for Lon's hut. With dread in her eyes, she stood for sometime before the dark shanty, and then swayed forward to the window.

When she reached it, superst.i.tion forced her back; but love proved stronger than fear, and she looked into the room. So dark was it within that she could see only the white mound on the floor--the mound made by the dead father and son. They were hers--all that was left of the men she had loved always! Scraggy tried the door; but found it locked. Then she attempted to move the window; but it, too, had been fastened. With a stone she hammered out the gla.s.s, making an opening through which she dragged her body. As she stood there in silent gloom, the very air seemed to hang heavy with death. In the dark Scraggy broke out into sobs, and was seized with spasms of shivering; she had no strength to move forward or backward.

But again love drove her on, and some seconds pa.s.sed before she found matches to light the candle. When the dim flame lighted up the room, she turned slowly to the middle of the floor. Tremblingly she drew down the covering and looked upon her dead. They were hers--these men were hers even in death! Chokingly she stifled her sobs, and then the decision came to her that she would keep a night vigil until break of day. Of the two, Screech Owl knew not which she loved better.

"Ye both be dead," she moaned, looking first at Lem then at Everett; "dead so ye'll never breathe no more! But Scraggy loves ye.... G.o.d! ye nuther one of ye knows how she loves ye! There weren't no men in the hull world as good as ye both was.... Lemmy didn't know ye was his, little 'un, and ye didn't know Lemmy were yer daddy. I'll stay with ye both till the day."

Saying this, she crouched low between Crabbe and Brimbecomb, and, encircling each neck with an arm, thrust her face down close between them.

Lon Cronk's old clock on the shelf ticked out the minutes into the somberness of the hut. The waves of the lake, breaking ceaselessly upon the sh.o.r.e, softened the harsh, uneven croaks of the marsh-frogs with their harmony. Through the broken window drifted the night noises, and the wind fluttered the candle-flame weakly. Suddenly Screech Owl thought she heard a voice--a voice filled with tender sympathy and pathos.

Without disengaging her arms, she lifted herself and searched with dim eyes even the corners of the hut. Misty forms shaded to ghost-gray seemed to steal out and group themselves about her dead. She took her arm from Everett and brushed back the straggling locks that blurred her sight.

The voice spoke again, p.r.o.nouncing her name in low, even tones. Once more she wound her arm about Everett, and pressed herself down between her beloveds. Her eyes, protruding and fearful, saw the candlelight grow dimmer.

"Lemmy, Lemmy," she gasped between hard-coming breaths, "I'm comin'

after ye and our pretty boy! Wherever ye both be--I come--"

A film gathered over Scraggy's eyes, and her words were cut short by the pain of the intermittent flutterings of her heart. She fell lower, and with a last weak effort drew the heads closer together. Then Scraggy's spirit, which had ever sought her lover and her son, took flight out into the vast expanse of the universe, to find Everett and Lem.

Governor Vandecar bent over his wife.

"Darling," he murmured, "I have brought you back your other baby. Won't you turn and--look at--her?"