The Fighting Shepherdess Part 22

She was thankful now that she had not told him of Kate and her promise and aroused hopes that would only have meant further disappointment, in view of developments. She knew, of course, the current gossip to the effect that the Security State Bank was about to foreclose and "set Kate afoot," as the phrase was.

Mrs. Toomey was truly sorry. Her liking for Kate was more genuine than any feeling of the kind she had had for another woman in a longer time than she could remember. Because, perhaps, the girl was so strikingly her opposite in every particular, she admired Kate exceedingly. The freshness of her candid friendly face, her general wholesomeness attracted her. She felt also the latent strength of character beneath the ingenuous surface, and the girl's courage and self-reliance drew her in her own trembling uncertainty at this period, like a magnet.

Mrs. Toomey's impulses were more often kind than otherwise, and she would have liked nothing better than to have gone to Kate in this crisis, for she believed thoroughly in Kate's innocence and guessed how much she needed a woman's friendship. Mrs. Toomey had a rather active conscience and it troubled her.

Naturally, she had not forgotten the "handshake agreement" which was to cement their friendship, but she argued that as Kate had not been able to fulfill her share of it she could not be expected to live up to her end, since it would mean opposition from j.a.p and no benefit to offset it. But in her heart Mrs. Toomey knew that it was not j.a.p she feared so much as the disapproval of Mrs. Abram Pantin.

Toomey was brooding as usual, when footsteps were heard on the wooden sidewalk and a sharp rap followed.

Mrs. Toomey was kneading bread on the kitchen table. Toomey had sold a pair of silver sugar tongs to a cowpuncher who opined that they were the very thing he had been looking for with which to eat oysters. The slipperiness of a raw oyster annoyed and embarra.s.sed him, so he purchased the tongs gladly, and the sack of flour which resulted gave Mrs. Toomey a feeling of comparative security while it lasted.

She called through the doorway:

"You go, j.a.p. I'm busy."

He arose mechanically, opened the door, started back, then stepped out and closed it after him. At the kitchen table Mrs. Toomey saw the pantomime and was curious.

The sound of voices raised in altercation followed. She recognized that of Teeters.

"I tell you it is, Toomey! I'll swear to it! I'd know it anywhere because of that peculiarity!"

She could not catch the words of a second speaker, but the tone was equally aggressive and unfriendly.

"Then prove it!" Toomey's voice was shrill with excitement and defiant.

They all lowered their voices abruptly as though they had been admonished, but the tones reached her, alternately threatening, argumentative, even pleading.

What in the world was it all about, she wondered as she kneaded.

For twenty minutes or more it lasted, and then Teeters' voice came clearly, vibrating with contempt as well as purpose:

"You got a yellow streak a yard wide and if it takes the rest of our natural life Lingle and me between us are goin' to prove it!"

Toomey's answer was a jeering laugh of defiance, but when he came in and slammed the door behind him, she saw that his face was a sickly yellow and his shaking hand spilled the tobacco which he tried to pour upon a cigarette paper.

She waited a moment for an explanation but, since it was not forthcoming, asked anxiously:

"What's the matter, j.a.p?"

He did not hear her.

She persisted:

"Who was it?"

"Teeters and Lingle."

"The deputy sheriff?"

He nodded.

She came a little further into the room with her flour-covered hands.

"What did they want, j.a.p, that's so upset you?"

"I'm not upset!" He glared at her. His trembling hand could not touch the match to the cigarette paper.

"It's only right that you should tell me," she said firmly.

His eyes wavered.

"It's about the cook stove; Teeters wants to foreclose the mortgage."

She regarded him fixedly, turned, and started for the kitchen. She knew that he was lying.

CHAPTER XI

KATE KEEPS HER PROMISE

One of the things which Mrs. Abram Pantin's worst enemy would have had to admit in her favor was that, strictly speaking, she was not a gossip, though this virtue was due as much to policy as to principle. It was her custom, however, to retain in her memory such morsels of common knowledge news as she acc.u.mulated during the day with which to entertain Mr. Pantin at evening dinner, for she observed that if his thoughts could be diverted from business it aided his digestion and he slept better, so she strove always to have some bright topic to introduce at the table.

Having said a silent grace, Mr. Pantin inquired mechanically:

"Will you have a chop, Prissy?" Since there were only two he did not use the plural.

Mrs. Pantin looked across the fern centerpiece and made a mouth as she regarded the chop doubtfully.

"I'm afraid I am eating too much meat lately."

Impaled on a tine of the fork, the chop was of a thinness to have enabled one to read through it without much difficulty.

Mr. Pantin placed the chop on his own plate with some little alacrity.

As his wife took one of the two dainty rolls concealed in a fringed napkin on the handsome silver bread tray, she endeavored to recall what it was in particular that she had saved to tell him. Oh, yes!

"What do you think I heard to-day, Abram?"

Abram was figuring interest and murmured absently:

"I have no idea."

"They say," in her sprightliest manner, "that that girl who killed her lover was refused credit at every store in Prouty. No one would trust her for even five dollars' worth of groceries. Rather pathetic, isn't it?"

Mr. Pantin looked up quickly.