Old Crow Part 39

Raven, his eyes on the man's face, saw it change slightly: something tremulous had come into it, though it might have been only surprise. The hand on the axe helve shook perceptibly. Now it looked to Raven as if it might be his turn.

"I came up here this morning," he said, "to see her." Curiously, at the moment of saying "your wife," he balked at it. He would not, even by the sanction of the word, seem to give her over to him.

"Yes," said Tenney. The lividness of anger tautened his face. "You see me off to my work. You knew you'd find her here."

"Yes," said Raven. "I knew I should find her. I had to see her alone, because I wanted to ask her to leave you, go away from here, and be safe."

Tenney stared at him. The brusque fact was too much for him. Why should Raven have told it?

"You are known," Raven continued steadily, "to abuse your wife."

Tenney's lips again curled back.

"I ain't laid a finger on her," he snarled. "Anybody but a liar 'd tell you so."

"She has told me so," continued Raven. "I came to warn her I should complain of you and have you bound over to keep the peace. She said if I did that she would refuse to testify against you. She said she would rather"--here a slight bitterness came into his voice and, for an instant, he had a foolish satisfaction in reminding Tira of her unfriendliness in blocking him--"she would rather have me considered out of my mind than let you get your just deserts."

"Ah!" snarled Tenney. "I wa'n't born yesterday."

This interchange had had on Tira all the effect Raven could have wished.

She started forward a step, with a murmured sound. But Tenney was unmoved.

"Now you know," said Raven, "you're not going to tell me I'm a liar. I draw the line at that. You'll have to drop your axe--that's a cowardly streak in you, Tenney, a mighty mean streak, that axe business--and I'll give you your punishment without waiting for judge or jury."

Tenney looked down at the axe frowningly, and the hand holding it sank to his side.

"Besides saying she wouldn't testify against you," Raven continued, "she refused to leave you. She is a foolish woman, but she's like most of them. They hang on to the beast that abuses 'em, G.o.d knows why. But the rest of us won't let you off so easy. Don't think it, for a minute. The next time she's seen wandering round the woods with her baby and you after her, yelling like a catamount, you're going to be hauled up and, even if she won't testify, there's enough against you to make it go hard with you."

Tenney ceased staring at the axe and looked up at Raven. Was it hatred in the eyes? The gleam in them flickered, in a curious way, cross currents of strange light. He tried to speak, gulped, and moistened his dry lips. Then he managed it:

"What business is it o' yourn?"

"It's every man's business," said Raven. "When you began running over the woods, yelling like a catamount"--he returned to this of set purpose, because it evidently bit--"I thought it was queer, that's all.

Thought you were out of your head. But it got to be too much of a good thing. And it's one thing to make yourself a laughing-stock. It's another to be indicted for murder."

"I don't," said Tenney, "stan' any man's interferin' with me. I give ye fair warnin' not to meddle nor make."

"Then," said Raven, "we've both got our warning. I've had yours and you've had mine. You're a mighty mean man, Tenney. A mean cuss, that's what you are."

Tenney, in the surprise and mortification of this, barked out at him:

"Don't ye call me a cuss. I'm a professin' Christian."

"Stuff!" said Raven. "That's all talk. I wonder a man of your sense shouldn't see how ridiculous it is. You're not a Christian. When you stand up in meeting and testify, you're simply a hypocrite. No, I don't call you a Christian. I call you a scamp, on the way to being locked up."

Tenney's mind leaped back a s.p.a.ce.

"You're tryin' to throw me off the track," he announced. "Ye can't do it. When I come up the road you an' Eugene Martin was out there an' you knocked him down. I see ye. You horsewhipped him. Now if it's anybody's business to horsewhip Eugene Martin, it's mine. What business is it o'

yourn horsewhippin' a man that's hangin' round another man's wife unless----"

"Hold on there," said Raven. "I gave him his medicine because he was too fresh." Here he allowed himself a salutary instant of swagger. Tenney might as well think him a devil of a fellow, quick to act and hard to hold. "It happens to be my way. I don't propose taking back talk from anybody of his sort--or yours. He's a mean cuss, too, Tenney, ready to think every man's as bad as he is--a foul-mouthed fool. And"--he hesitated here and spoke with an emphasis that did strike upon Tenney's hostile attention--"he is the kind of cheap fellow that would like nothing better than to insult a woman. That was what he sat down by your wife for, last night. That was why I made an excuse to get him away from her. I wouldn't allow him within ten feet of a woman of my own family.

You ought to be mighty glad I looked out for yours."

Tenney was in a coil of doubt. Suddenly he glanced round at Tira, standing there in the path, her eyes upon one and the other as they spoke. Raven would not willingly have looked at her. He felt her presence in his inmost heart; he knew how cold she must be in the wintry air with nothing about her shoulders and the breeze strong enough to stir those rings of hair about her forehead. But she must suffer it while he raked Tenney by the only language Tenney knew.

"But here be you," cried Tenney, as if his mind, unsatisfied, went back to one flaw after another in Raven's argument. "You see me go by to my work, an' you come up here to talk over my folks behind my back an' tole 'em off to run away with you."

"I have explained all that once," said Raven. "You'll have to take it or leave it."

At that instant Tira stepped forward. She gave a little cry.

"You've hurt your foot!"

Raven's glance followed hers to the ground and he saw a red stain creeping from Tenney's boot into the snow. Tenney also glanced at it indifferently. It was true that, although the cold was growing anguish to a numbing wound, he was hardly aware of it as a pain that could be remedied. This was only one misery the more.

"Course I've hurt my foot," he said savagely. "What d'ye s'pose I come home for, this time o' day?"

"Why," said Tira, in an innocent good faith, "I s'posed you come back to spy on me."

That did take hold of him. He looked at her in an almost childish reproach. Now he put the foot to the ground--he had been, though unconsciously, easing it--but at the first step winced and his face whitened.

"G.o.d A'mighty!" Raven heard him mutter, and was glad. He seemed more of a man invoking G.o.d in his pain than in waving deity like a portent before unbelievers.

Tira had gone to him.

"You put your hand on my shoulder," she said, something so sweetly thrilling in her voice that Raven wondered how Tenney could hear it and not feel his heart dissolve into water. For himself, he was relieved at the warming tone, but it mysteriously hurt him, it seemed so horrible that all the tenderness of which it was witness had to be dammed in her with no outlet save over the child who was "not right." Tenney paid no attention to her, and Raven took him by the arm. The snow was reddening thinly and Raven could see the cut in the boot.

"Open the door," he said to Tira. "I'll help him in."

Curiously, though Tenney had forgotten the hurt except as a part of his mental pain, now that his mind was directed toward it he winced, and made much of getting to the door. Yet it seemed to be in no sense to challenge sympathy. He was simply sorry for himself, bewildered at his misfortune, and so intently was his mind set on it now that he did not seem annoyed by Raven's supporting him. Tira hurried on in advance, and when they entered she was putting wood into the stove and opening drafts, to start up the neglected fire. Raven led him to the chair by the hearth, knelt, without paying any attention to his muttered remonstrance, and, with much difficulty of frequent eas.e.m.e.nts, got off the boot and the soaked stocking. It was an ugly cut. Tenney, glancing down at it, groaned and looked away, and Tira brought a pillow and tucked it behind his head. Raven, glancing up at him, saw he was white and sick and Tira said:

"He never can stan' the sight o' blood."

Evidently the irony of it did not strike her at all, but Raven wrinkled his brows over it. He sent her here and there, for water to wash the wound and for clean cloth. He rolled a bandage and put it on deftly while Tenney stared.

"Now," said he, coming to his feet, "you'd better telephone the doctor.

This is all I know."

Tira went to the telephone in the next room and Raven cleared away the confusion he had made and again Tenney watched him. At intervals he looked down at his bandaged foot as if he pitied it. Tira, having given her message, came back and reported that the doctor would be there shortly.

"Then," said Raven, "I'll be off. Telephone if you need anything.

Perhaps I'd better come over anyway. He'll have to be got to bed. I'll call you up."

He felt a sudden eas.e.m.e.nt of the strain between himself and Tira. Tenney himself, through his hurt, had cleared the way. Their intercourse, void of secrecy, was suddenly commonplace; at the moment there was nothing in it to light a flash of feeling. Tenney did not look at him. Then Raven, in a sudden mounting of desire to show Tira how sorry he was for her, said to her impetuously:

"I hate to leave you alone."

And again she surprised him as she had the night before in implicit acceptance of her new faith, something as tangible as divine. She spoke in a perfect simplicity.