The Leatherwood God Part 4

"This is murder you have in your heart now, Nancy," the old man said, with who knows what awful pleasure in his casuistry, so pitilessly unerring. "If the life of that wicked man could buy you safety in your sin you could wish it taken."

"Oh, oh, oh! What shall I do, what shall I do." She wailed out the words with her head fallen forward on her knees, and her loose hair dripping over them.

"Do? Go home, and bring your little one, and come to me. I will deal with Laban when he gets back tonight."

She started erect. "And let him think I've left him? And the neighbors, let them think we've quarreled, and I couldn't live with him?"

"It won't matter what the world thinks," Gillespie said, and he spoke of the small backwoods settlement as if it were some great center of opinion such as in great communities dispenses fame and infamy, and makes its judgments supremely dreaded. "Besides," he faltered, "no one is knowing but ourselves to his coming back. It can seem as if _he_ left _you_."

"And I live such a lie as that? Is this _you_, David?"

It was she who rose highest now, as literally she did, in standing on the stone where she had crouched, above the level of his footing.

"I--I say it to spare you, Nancy. I don't wish it. But I wish to make it easy--or a little bit easier--something you can bear better."

"Oh, I know, David, I know! You would save me if you could. But maybe--maybe it ain't what we think it is. Maybe he was outlawed by staying away so long?"

Neither of them named Dylks, but each knew whom the other meant, throughout their talk.

"A lawyer might let you think so till he got all your money."

"Matthew Braile wouldn't."

"That infidel?"

She drooped again. "Oh, well, I must do it. I must do it. I'll go and get ready and I'll come to you. What will Jane think?"

"I'll take care of what Jane thinks. When do you expect Laban back?"

"Not before sundown. I'll not come till I see him."

"We'll be ready for you." He moved now to open the spring-house door; she turned and was lost to him in the lights and shadows of the woods-pasture.

On its further border her cabin stood, and from it came the sound of a pitiful wail; at the back door a little child stood, staying itself by the slats let into grooves in the jambs. She had left it in its low cradle asleep, and it must have waked and clambered out and crept to the barrier and been crying for her there; its small face was soaked with tears.

She ran forward with long leaps out of the cornfield and caught it to her neck and mumbled its wet cheeks with hungry kisses. "Oh, my honey, my honey! Did it think its mother had left--"

She stopped at the word with a pang, and began to go about the rude place that was the simple home where after years of h.e.l.l she had found an earthly heaven. Often she stopped, and wondered at herself. It seemed impossible she could be thinking it, be doing it, but she was thinking and doing it, and at sundown, when she knew by the eager shadow of a man in the doorway, pausing to listen if the baby were awake, all had been thought and done.

V

The emotional frenzies, recurring through the day, were past, and she could speak steadily to the man, in the absence of greeting which often emphasizes the self-forgetfulness of love as well as marks the formlessness of common life: "Your supper's waitin' for you, Laban; I've had mine; you must be hungry. It's out in the shed; it's cooler there. Go round; baby's asleep."

The man obeyed, and she heard him drop the bucket into the well, and lift it by the groaning sweep, and pour the water into the basin, and then splash himself, with murmurs of comfort, presently m.u.f.fled in the towel.

Her hearing followed him through his supper, and she knew he was obediently eating it, and patiently waiting for her to account for whatever was unwonted in her greeting. She loved him most of all for his boylike submission to her will and every caprice of it, but now she hardly knew how to deny his tacit question as he ventured in from the shed.

"Don't come near me, Laban," she said with a stony quiet. "Don't touch me. I ain't your wife, any more."

He could not speak at first; then it was like him to ask, "Why--why--What have I done, Nancy?"

"_You_, you poor soul?" she answered. "Nothing but good, all your days! He's come back."

He knew whom she meant, but he had to ask, "Joseph Dylks? Why I thought he was--"

"Don't say it! It's murder! I don't want you to have his blood on you _too_. Oh, if he was _only_ dead! Yes, yes! I have a right to wish it! Oh, G.o.d be merciful to me, a sinner!"

"When--when--how did you know it, Nancy?"

"Yesterday morning or day before--just after you left. I reckon he was waitin' for you to go. I'm glad you went first." The man looked up at the rifle resting on the pegs above the fireplace. "Laban, don't!" she cried.

"_I_ looked at it when he was walkin' away, and I know what you're thinkin'."

"What is he goin' to do?" the man asked from his daze.

"Nothing. He said he wouldn't do nothing if I didn't. If he hadn't said it I might believe it!"

Laban shifted his weight where he stood from one foot to the other.

"He pa.s.sed the night at David's. He's pa.s.sed two nights there."

"Was it the snorting man?"

"I reckon."

"I heard about him at the Cross Roads. Why didn't David tell us yesterday?"

"Maybe he hadn't thought it out. David thinks slow. He likes to be sure before he speaks. He was sure enough this morning!" the woman ended bitterly.

"What did he say?"

"He said it was living in sin for us to keep together if he was alive."

Laban pondered it. "I reckon if we come together without knowing he was alive, it ain't no sin."

"Yes, it is!" she shrieked.

"We was married just like anybody; we didn't make no secret of it; we've lived together four years. Are you goin' to unlive them years by stoppin'

now?"

"Don't you s'pose I been over all that a million times? My mind's sore workin' with it; there ain't a thought in me that don't ache from it. But David's right. We've got to part. I put your things in this poke here,"

she said, and she gave him a bag made from an old pillow tick, with a few clothes lumping it half full. "I'll carry the baby, Laban." She pulled back from him with the child in her arms. "Or no, you can carry her; you'll have to leave her, too, and you've got a right to all the good you can get of her now. Don't touch anything. I'll stay at David's, tonight, but I'll come back in the morning, and then I'll see what I'll do--stay, or go and live with David. Come!"

"And what about Joey?" Laban asked, half turning with the child when they were outside.

"I declare I forgot about Joey! I'll see, to-morrow. It seems as if my very soul was tired now.