Judith of the Cumberlands Part 18

In the Night

In dark silence Judith made ready a late breakfast for the boys, leaving her coffee-pot as of custom on its bed of coals in the ashes, hot bread in the Dutch oven, and a platter of meat on the table. Jeff and Andy straggled in and ate, helping themselves mutely, with sidelong glances at her stormy face.

During the entire forenoon Wade was off the place, but the twins put in their time at the pasture over the breaking of a colt to harness. Old Jephthah was in his room with the door shut. Jim Cal, almost immediately on Creed's departure, had retired to the shelter of his own four walls, and, sick and trembling, taken to his bed, after his usual custom when the skies of life darkened.

Dinner was got ready with the same fury of mechanical energy. During its preparation Iley stole to the door and looked in. The only women on the place, held outside the councils of the men, she longed to make some unformulated appeal to Judith, to have at least such help and comfort as might come from talking over the situation with her. But when the desolate dark eyes looked full into hers, and uttered as plainly as words the question that the sister dreaded, Jim Cal's wife turned and fled.

"She might as well 'a' said 'Huldy,'" whimpered the vixen, plucking at her lip and hurrying back, head down, to her own cabin.

The day dragged its slow length. The sun in the doorway had crept to the noon-mark, and away again. Flies buzzed. A cicada droned without. The old hound padded in to lie down under the bed.

After dinner Jephthah went away somewhere, and the boys gathered in their room, whence Judith could hear the clink and snap which advised her that the guns were having a thorough overhauling, cleaning, and oiling. She looked helplessly at the door. What could she do? Follow Creed as Huldah had done? At the thought, all her bitterness surged back upon her. What had she been able to accomplish when she stood face to face alone with him on the woods-path? Nothing. She turned and addressed herself once more savagely to her tasks. That was what women were for--women and mules. Men had the say-so in this world. She--she the owner of this house, its real mistress--was to cook three meals a day for the men folks, and see nothing and say nothing.

Supper was the only meal at which the entire family gathered that day. It was eaten in an almost unbroken silence, the younger boys plainly hesitating to speak to either Judith or their father. Save for elliptical requests for food, the only conversation was when Wade offered the opinion that it looked like it might rain before morning, and his father replied that he did not think it would. Leaving the table without further word, Jephthah returned to his own quarters; the boys drifted away one by one giving no destination.

The light that used to wink out in friendly fashion from the smaller cabin across the slope was darkened. Jim Cal had crawled out of bed after a somewhat prolonged conversation with Wade. A little later he had sullenly harnessed up a mule of Blatch's and, with Iley and the children, started for old Jesse Spiller's, out at Big Buck Gap, the sister maintaining to the last that Huldah must certainly have gone out to pap's, and would be found waiting for them at the old home.

There was n.o.body left on the place but Judith and her uncle. The girl went automatically about her Sat.u.r.day evening duties, working doggedly, trying to tire herself out so that she might sleep when the time came that there was nothing to do but go to bed. As she pa.s.sed from her storeroom, which she had got Wade to build in the back end of the threshing-floor porch, to the great open fireplace where a kettle hung with white beans boiling that would be served with dumplings for the Sunday dinner, as she took down and sorted over towels and cloths that were not needed, but which made a pretext for activity, her mind ground steadily upon the happenings of the past days. She could see Creed's face before her as he had looked the night of the play-party. What coa.r.s.e, crude animals the other men were beside him! She could hear his voice as it spoke to her in the dark yard at the Bonbright place, and her breath caught in her throat.

She must be up and away; she must go to him and warn him, protect him against these her fierce kindred.

Then suddenly came the vision of Creed's laughing mouth as he bent to claim the forfeited kiss when Huldah Spiller had openly pushed herself across the line "and mighty nigh into his arms." Huldah had run hot-foot to warn him. Arley Kittridge brought word of having seen her dodge into the Card orchard on her way to the house on the evening before, and n.o.body had had sight of her since.

Judith's was a nature swayed by impulse, more capable than she herself was aware of n.o.ble action, but capable also of sudden, irrational cruelty. Just now her soul was at war with itself, embittered by rage, by what she had done, by what she had left undone, by her helplessness, by what she desired to do. Finally, despairing of any weariness bringing sleep--she had tried that the night before and failed--she put by her work and went up to her room, undressed and lay down in the dark.

For a long time she interrogated the blackness about her with wide open eyes. The house was strangely still. She could hear the movement and squawk of a chicken in one of the trees in the side yard when some fellow lodger disturbed it, or a sudden breeze shook the limb upon which it roosted. She wondered if the boys had come back yet and slipped in quietly. Had she slept at all? About eleven o'clock there arose an unquiet, gusty, yet persistent wind, that moved the cedar tree against the edge of the porch roof and set it complaining. For a time it moaned and protested like a man under the knife. Then its deep baritone voice began to cry out as though it were calling upon her. The tree had long ceased to mean anything other than Creed to Judith, and now its outcry aroused her to an absolute terror. Again and again as the wind the tree, so those tones shook her heart with their pain and love and anguish of entreaty.

Finally she arose in a kind of torture, slipped on her clothes and went through all the rooms. They were silent and empty. Not a bed had been disturbed. She breathed loud and short in irrepressible excitement.

"They're all over at the still," she whispered, clutching at the breast of her dress, and shivering. But the old man never went near the still, she knew that. For a while she struggled with herself, and then she said, "I'll just go and listen outside of Uncle Jep's door. That won't do any harm. Ef so be he's thar, then the boys is sh.o.r.e at the still. Ef he ain't----"

She left her mentally formed sentence unfinished and, on feet that fear winged, stole through the side yard, across the long, lush, uncut gra.s.s to her uncle's door.

The old man must have been a light sleeper, or perhaps he was awake before she approached, for he called out while she yet stood irresolute, her hand stretched toward the big wooden latch.

"Who's thar?"

Startled, abashed, she replied in a choked, hesitating tone.

"It's only me--Jude. I reckon I'm a fool, Uncle Jep. I know in reason there ain't nothin' the matter. But I jest couldn't sleep, and I got up and looked through the house, and the boys is all gone, and I got sorter scared."

He was with her almost instantly.

"I reckon they're all over 'crost the gulch," he said in his usual unexcited fashion, though she noted that he did not go back into his room, but joined her where she lingered in the dark outside.

"Of course they air," she rea.s.sured herself and him. "Whar else could they be?"

"Now I'm up, I reckon I mought go over yon myself," the old man said finally. "My foot hurts me this evening; I believe I'll ride Pete. I took notice the boys had all the critters up for an early start in the mornin'."

Both knew that this was a device for investigating the stables, and together they hurried to the huddle of low log buildings which served to house forage and animals on the Turrentine place. Not a hoof of anything to ride had been left. The boys would not have taken mules or horse to go to the still--so much was certain. In the light of the lantern which Jephthah lit the two stood and looked at each other with a sort of consternation. Then the old man fetched a long breath.

"Go back to the house, Jude," he said not unkindly, putting the lantern into her hand; and without another word he set off down the road running hard.

Chapter XIV

The Raid

Earlier that same Sat.u.r.day evening, while Judith Barrier was fighting out her battle, and trying to tire down the restless spirit that wrung and punished her, Nancy Card, mindful of earlier experiences in feud times, was getting her cabin in a state of defence.

"You know in reason them thar Turrentines ain't a-goin' to hold off long," she told Creed. "They're pizen fighters, and they allus aim to hit fust. No, you don't stay out in that thar office," as Creed made this proffer, stating that it would leave her and her family safer. "I say stay in the office! Why, them Turrentines would ask no better than one feller for the lot of 'em to jump on--they could make their brags about it the longest day they live of how they done him up."

So it came to pa.s.s that Creed was sitting in the big kitchen of the Nancy Card cabin while Judith wrought at her fruitless labours in her own home.

Despite the time of year, Nancy insisted on shutting the doors and closing the battened shutters at the windows.

"A body gets a lot of good air by the chimney drawin' up when ye have a bit of fire smokin'," she said. "I'd ruther be smothered as to be shot, anyhow."

Little Buck and Beezy, infected by the excitement of their elders, refused peremptorily to go to bed. "Let me take the baby," said Creed holding out his arms. "She's always good with me. She can go to sleep in my lap."

"Beezy won't go to sleep in _n.o.body's_ lap," that young lady announced with great finality. "Beezy never go to sleep _no_ time--_nowhere_."

"All right," agreed the young fellow easily, cutting short a futile argument upon the grandmother's part. "You needn't go to sleep if you can stay awake, honey. You sit right here in Creed's lap and stay awake till morning and keep him good company, won't you?"

The red head nodded till its flying frazzles quivered like tongues of flame. Then it snuggled down on the broad breast, that moved rhythmically under it, and very soon the long lashes drooped to the flushed cheeks and Beezy was asleep.

Aunt Nancy had picked up Little Buck, but that young man had the limitations of his virtues. Being silent by nature he had not so much to keep him awake as the loquacious Beezy, and by the time his father on the other side of the hearth had dropped asleep and nearly fallen into the fire a couple of times, been sternly admonished by the grandmother, and gone to fling himself face down upon a bed in the corner, Little Buck was sounder asleep than his sister.

The old woman got up and carried her grandson to the bed, laid him down upon it and, taking basin and towel, proceeded to wipe the dusty small feet before she took off his minimum of clothing and pushed him in between the sheets.

"Minds me of a foot-washin' at Little Shiloh," she ruminated. "Here's me jest like the preacher and here's Little Buck gettin' all the sins of the day washed off at once."

She completed her task, and was taking Beezy from Creed's arms to lay her beside her brother on the bed, when a tap--tap--tapping, apparently upon the window shutter, brought them both to their feet, staring at each other with pale faces.

"What's that?" breathed Nancy. "Hush--hit'll come again. Don't you answer for your life, Creed. Ef anybody speaks, let it be me."

Again the measured rap--rap--rap!

"You let my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea for admission as he stepped.

Something in the incident brought the situation of affairs home to Creed Bonbright as it had not been before.

"Aunt Nancy," he said resolutely, "I'm going to leave right now and walk down to the settlement. I've got no business to be here putting you and the children in danger. It's a case of fool pride. They told me down at Hepzibah that I'd be run out of the Turkey Tracks inside of three months if I tried to set up a justice's office here. I felt sort of ashamed to go back and face them and own up that they were right--that I had been run out. I ought to have been too much of a man to feel that way. It makes no difference what they say--the only thing that counts is that I have failed."

"You let me catch you openin' that do' or steppin' yo' foot on the road to-night!" snorted Nancy belligerently. "Why, you fool boy, don't you know all the roads has been guarded by the Turrentines ever since they fell out with ye? They 'lowed ye would run of course, and they aimed to layway ye as ye went. I could have told 'em ye wasn't the runnin' kind; but thar, what do they know about----"