Sally of Missouri Part 16

The two men looked into each other's eyes, Steering bearing up the old man, who clutched him feverishly. When the Frenchman began to talk again his teeth were chattering. "Why not? Hein? Because he t'ief. But G.o.d above! We got those proof! Dead for mont's. And Madeira know it! The Teegmores are yours for mont's, Mistaire Steering! And Madeira know it!

We put that fine man where he belong. We jail him! He t'ief! We r-r-uin him, as he would r-r-uin you!"

"Ruin him!" Bruce said the words over measuredly. "We can do it easily.

Everything he has has gone into the company that is getting its chief encouragement out of the Tigmores. It will be easy to ruin him."

"Yes, G.o.d above, it will be easy! We r-r-ruin him. We do that thing quick and glad." Bernique slid his lean hands up Steering's arms and held to him.

"Wait! Wait!" The Frenchman's convulsive anger received a sudden check by the sound of Steering's voice. He clung more tightly to Steering's arms as he looked into Steering's face, then shrank back helplessly.

"My G.o.d!" said the old man, "I forgot!"

"Yes," answered Steering, no hesitation in his voice. "Yes, you forgot _her_. We must not do that, you know."

After a while they sat down and talked it over at length from beginning to end, and then back again, from end to beginning. Up in the Tigmores Crit Madeira's drills beat and bore at the heart of the earth, deeper, deeper; by the Redbud shack, the two men, on the ground, bore into Madeira's trickery, deeper, deeper. By the light of that torch from the Rockies, they followed the twisting trail all the way from inception to finish. The tortuous, underhand curve of it now and then looked like the self-deceptive work of lunatic cunning. As they talked about it, they talked too earnestly for the little whisking movements in the growth up the bluff to reach their ears.

"At least," cried old Bernique at last, "at least the Teegmores are yours! At last! At last!"

At last! At last! Steering's eyes were travelling the long tumbling Tigmore line. "If they are," he said in that musing way he had developed within the last quarter of an hour, "if I take the Tigmores now, Uncle Bernique, I'll pull Madeira's house about him. That company of his is not so secure that it could stand a blow at its head. If I take the Tigmores,--Uncle Bernique, listen a minute," he was pleading, "she has been used to much all her life. I can't take her father's fortune away from him. Don't you see that? I can't do anything. You understand?" he was commanding. Bernique jumped to his feet.

"G.o.d above, you mean----" The thought snapped in the old man's brain, the words stuck in his throat.

"I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father.

That's all I mean!"

Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him d.a.m.n' before he shall keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's arm in a grip that hurt. When Bernique spoke again it was to say breathlessly, "You take the Teegmores, Mistaire Steering, and protect Madeira's fortune. You can do that easy."

"I know. It looks easy. But think back a little. Madeira is sure to fight. Grierson's death occurred months ago under an a.s.sumed name. To prove that he died we must prove when he died, where he died and who he was. To prove all that is to let the light in upon dark places. I hardly see how the light can be let in, Uncle Bernique, without cutting Madeira out sharp and keen as a rascal. Madeira would never allow,--at this juncture, he couldn't allow us to establish my claim to the Tigmores on my word and yours. He has done unwise, crazy things already. He would fight us. I know it, you know it. We could win. But where would our victory leave him, Uncle Bernique? Ah, you see?"

The old man was shaking from head to foot. He clung close to Steering.

"Oh, my G.o.d!" he moaned, "I will not let this thing be."

"Yes, you will let it be! It is my affair even more than it is yours.

You will do as I say about it, Uncle Bernique. Here and now, you shall swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us G.o.d, shall one or the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!"

The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks. He loosed his clinging hold and tried to shake Bruce off.

"Swear," Bruce decreed again, his powerful grip on the old man, his eyes half shut, "I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother! Swear!" He held up his own right hand, and Bernique said brokenly:

"G.o.d above, I swear!" The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that peered through the bushes.

"Why now, everything is all right," cried Bruce. "Are you going on into Canaan to-night, or shall you sleep here with me? I think that I shall take the skiff now and go up toward Madeira Place, then drift back down-stream, a sort of good-bye journey. What will you do meantime?"

Old Bernique hardly knew. He was sore, bewildered. He thought he might spend the night on the hills, then again he might come back to the shack for the night. He wanted to go into Choke Gulch first thing.

Bruce pushed away in the skiff through the swollen Di. Bernique got his horse and started off, climbing the yellow road up the bluff slowly, heading toward Choke Gulch. As he neared the top, he lifted his head and saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique.

"Hurry! For G.o.d's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless and impa.s.sioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony that danced like a dervish.

The old man nodded, with a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy, then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless.

When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's hand as though he found its warmth and firmness sustaining.

"Let's git into the timber," said Piney, and they rode forward a little way quite silent. "I don' want Mist' Steerin' to look back an' see me here," the boy explained. In the growth where the hills began to roll down toward Choke Gulch, Piney stopped short, with a detaining hand upon Bernique's bridle.

"I hearn," he said. His young face was so grey and solemn that Bernique regarded him questioningly. "I was simlike half asleep up there in the bushes. Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened.

I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you cayn't tell n.o.body! Mist' Steerin', he cayn't tell n.o.body!--but Me!" the boy was breathing harder, his face was growing greyer, "Unc' Bernique, I'm f'm the hills, an' not like them," the blood began suddenly to come back to his lips; he raised in his stirrups and slashed at the branches of a black-jack tree with his riding switch, as though he cut a vow across the air, high up. "But what I can, I will!" he cried, and clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'--an' fer him!" he choked.

Whatever he meant to do, his young pa.s.sion for Salome Madeira and his young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely.

"She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken crescendo.

Old Bernique stared at the boy in exaltation. "G.o.d above!" he shouted, "if that is it, it begins to be hope in my old breast! All may come right yet, and no oaths broken!"

"None broke!" cried Piney. "One more took! I'm a-ridin' saouth, to Madeira Place, Unc' Bernique;" he gathered up the reins from his pony's neck,--"I'm a-goin' to Miss Sally Madeira to tell her abaout Mist'

Steerin';" he was blind with hot, young tears. "She'll do the rat thing whend she knows, Unc' Bernique;" he had put the pony about,--"I'll see you on the hills in the mornin'!" he was gone down the yellow road like a winged Mercury.

On the hills behind him, Old Bernique, comprehending and envying, locked his hands on his saddle-horn in a vehement tension. His lips moved, and what he said seemed to float out after the flying figure of the boy like a benediction.

_Chapter Fifteen_

A MISTAKE SOMEWHERE

The afternoon of that day was golden out at Madeira Place. Through the kitchen windows the sun streamed in, in broad, unfretted bands of light.

Just beyond the window the crab-apple trees and the quince trees and the pear trees and the damson trees were rioting in blossom.

The kitchen itself was a place to take comfort in. By a table sat fat black Chloe, seeding raisins, when she was not asleep. Before another table stood Sally Madeira, her brown, round arms bared to the elbow, flapping cake batter with a wooden paddle. With her sense of eternal fitness the girl was a fine housekeeper as easily as she was a sweet singer and a good horsewoman. She had kept the past beautifully intact in the old brick-floored room. Overhead hung strings of red peppers, streaks of scarlet on the heavy black rafters. Little white sacks of dried things, peas and beans and apples, depended from hooks. Against the walls were quaint old tin safes, their doors gone, their shelves covered with dark blue crockery. The tin and bra.s.s stuff shone brightly.

On a low shelf stood a great piggin of water, a fat yellow drinking gourd sticking out of it. The whole picture was a kitchen pastel, delicately toned, a kitchen of the long ago, Sally Madeira fitting into it exquisitely, re-establishing the stately domesticity of an old regime by her fine adaptability and appreciation.

Chloe brought the raisins over to Miss Madeira at last, and let them drop slowly into the crock, watching carefully for stray bits of stem.

"Simlike nowadays ef he teef go agin a hardness spile he tas' fuh de cake," she said anxiously.

"We do have to humour his poor appet.i.te, don't we, Chloe? Never mind, he'll be better soon, I hope."

"Whut madder wid he, Miss Sally, innyhow, Honey?"

"Just overwork, I think, Chloe. Works all the time; in the office now, bent double over his desk."

The darky shuffled restlessly on her flat feet. "Simlike to me he pester'd. I d'n know. Miss Sally, who else gwine eat dishyer cake tumorreh, Honey?"

"I'm not expecting any company at all, Chloe. Father isn't really well enough to care to talk to people."

"Miss Honey, simlike de house gittin' mighty lonesome nowadays. Taint like it uster be."

"Do you feel it, Chloe? Do you know I've grown to like it better quiet."

The girl's voice was wistful, she let the batter trickle recklessly while she gazed off out of the window. Then she sighed and began to beat the batter very hard.

"Miss Honey-love?"