Tess of the Storm Country Part 17

A dull red flush crimsoned Myra Longman's face. She watched Tess enviously as the girl tiptoed through the doorway and disappeared.

Ben Letts was stretched out on the rope cot, his ma.s.sive head and thick neck swathed in bandages. Two huge hands, with patches of plaster here and there lay outside the red Indian blanket. The swollen upper lid was tightly pressed over his blind eye, the squint one slowly opening at Tessibel's entrance.

She looked down upon the bandaged face but for a moment; neither of them spoke.

"I see ye comes," Ben broke in at last.

"Yep, I's here ... What do ye want?"

A drop of salt water oozed from the weak eye; Ben moved his head as if in pain.

"Sop up the tear with the rag, will ye, Tess?" he grunted. "It air burnin' like h.e.l.l fire."

Tessibel took the soiled cloth in her fingers, and not too lightly did as Ben bade her.

"Ye didn't tell Myry how I comed sick, did ye?" asked Ben, settling his head back upon the pillow.

Tess gave a negative gesture.

"Er no one else?"

"Nope!"

"Ye be a pert girl, Tessibel, and I were a cuss for trying to scare ye--but the brindle bull has got to die."

"Nope, he ain't got to die," frowned Tess.

"When I gets up he eats what I gives him," a.s.sured Ben. "He has to die, I says, I does.... But ye be a pert gal, Tess."

Ben moved his head to bring the girl within the vision of his one eye.

"What be ye wantin' with me?" Tess muttered. "I wants to go home."

She saw another tear roll down the plastered cheek, and repeated her operation with the rag.

"What do ye want?" she demanded again.

"To tell ye thet I air a goin' to make an hones' woman of ye. I's a goin' to marry ye. I knows I's a pappy, but the brat'll die, and he'll be forgot like yer daddy will!"

Tess instantly froze into a white, tense little form. She did not follow the fisherman's glance as he motioned her to take up the cloth.

"I's a tellin' yer mammy to wipe yer old eye," she said pettishly. "I ain't got no notion of bein' an hones' woman ... I hates yer like I hates Ezry Longman."

She wheeled to go out, but the man stayed her with a grunt.

"I's to be sick for a long time," exclaimed he, "and mammy will step to the grave most any day ... I wants pert fingers to put the plasters on my cuts."

Here he groaned and fought for the cloth, the salt tears scorching the rents in the skin as they rolled hot from the red eye and soaked into the plasters. The squatter girl mechanically wiped away the tears, turning again.

"Myry air pert," she said, halting in the door. "She air more than that--her fingers air lovin' ones. These," and she held up her two brown hands, "would be hurtin' ye, cause I hates ye so."

Tessibel and Myra walked away from Ben's hut in silence, up the ragged rocks to the Longman shanty.

"Ben were askin' to marry yer, Tess, weren't he?" demanded Myra as they approached the door.

Tess nodded.

"Were he sayin' as how ye could take care of him?"

"Yep."

"Be ye goin' to?" The intense longing and misery in her voice made Tess gasp:

"Nope, he air too mean a cuss to live. If he air the brat's pa, let the brat's ma take care of him. The brat air a good little devil."

Mrs. Longman was moving about in the loft overhead when the two girls entered the shanty.

Tess went to the wooden box and looked down upon the small, pinched face of the sleeping infant. The babe had worn out his little lungs, screeching in his pain, the small faded eyes rolling backward as he slept.

The young mother came quietly to the side of her Squatter friend.

"If the brat dies," she began in a low, tense tone, "be ye goin' to marry Ben Letts?"

"Nope, I ain't never goin' to marry n.o.body!"

"Yep, ye will, when ye gets done bein' a baby!"

Tess drew her eyes from the dozing infant and glanced at Myra.

"I wants a Bible," said she deliberately.

"What for?"

"To read out of!"

"Can ye read?"

"Nope, not much, but I can spell out words, and write a bit. And the Bible says as how, if ye seeks, ye'll find what ye seeks."

The shining eyes were sending a truthful message into the heart of the young mother.

"That ain't nothin' to do with Ben Letts," muttered Myra.

"Yep, it air," insisted Tess. "It says what ye seeks ye find. Ain't ye seekin' Ben Letts?"

"I knows where he air already," sullenly replied Myra.