The Light in the Clearing Part 32

That settled it for me. Not that I would have failed to enjoy kissing Sally, but we were out, as they used to say, and it would have embarra.s.sed both of us to meet at a party.

Sat.u.r.day came and, when the ch.o.r.es were done, I went alone to the grain barn in the back lot of the Senator's farm with flail and measure and broom and fork and shovel and sacks and my luncheon, in a push cart, with all of which Mrs. Wright had provided me.

It was a lonely place with woods on three sides of the field and a road on the other. I kept laying down beds of wheat on the barn-floor and beating them out with the flail until the sun was well over the roof when I sat down to eat my luncheon. Then I swept up the grain and winnowed out the chaff and filled one of my sacks. That done, I covered the floor again and the thump of the flail eased my loneliness until in the middle of the afternoon two of my schoolmates came and asked me to go swimming, with them. The river was not forty rods away and a good trail led to the swimming hole. It was a warm bright day and I was hot and thirsty. The thought of cool waters and friendly companionship was too much for me. I went with them.

More ancient than the human form is that joy of the young in the feel of air and water on the naked skin, in the frog-like leap and splash and the monkey-chatter of the swimming hole. There were a number of the "swamp boys" in the water. They lived in cabins on the edges of the near swamp. I stayed with them longer than I intended. I remember saying as I dressed that I should have to work late and go without my supper in order to finish my stent.

It was almost dark when I was putting the last sack of wheat into my cart, in the gloomy barn, and getting ready to go.

A rustling in the straw near where I stood stopped me suddenly. My skin p.r.i.c.kled and began to stir on my head and my feet and hands felt numb with a new fear. I heard stealthy footsteps in the darkness. I stood my ground and demanded:

"Who's there?"

I saw a form approaching in the gloom with feet as noiseless as a cat's.

I took a step backward and, seeing that it was a woman, stopped.

"It's Kate," the answer came in a hoa.r.s.e whisper as I recognized her form and staff.

"Run, boy--they have just come out o' the woods. I saw them. They will take you away. Run."

She had picked up the flail and now she put it in my hands and gave me a push toward the door. I ran, and none too quickly, for I had not gone fifty feet from the barn in the stubble when I heard them coming after me, whoever they were. I saw that they were gaining and turned quickly.

I had time to raise my flail and bring it down upon the head of the leader, who fell as I had seen a beef fall under the ax. Another man stopped beyond the reach of my flail and, after a second's hesitation, turned and ran away in the darkness.

I could hear or see no other motion in the field. I turned and ran on down the slope toward the village. In a moment I saw some one coming out of the maple grove at the field's end, just ahead, with a lantern.

Then I heard the voice of the schoolmaster saying:

"Is it you, my lad?"

"Yes," I answered, as I came up to him and Mary, in a condition of breathless excitement.

I told them of the curious adventure I had had.

"Come quick," said the schoolmaster. "Let's go back and find the man in the stubble."

I remembered that I had struck the path in my flight just before stopping to swing the flail. The man must have fallen very near it. Soon we found where he had been lying and drops of fresh blood on the stubble.

"Hush," said the schoolmaster.

We listened and heard a wagon rattling at a wild pace down the road toward the river.

"There he goes," said Mr. Hacket. "His companions have carried him away.

Ye'd be riding in that wagon now, yerself, my brave lad, if ye hadn't 'a' made a lucky hit with the flail--G.o.d bless ye!"

"What would they 'a' done with me?" I asked.

"Oh, I reckon they'd 'a' took ye off, lad, and kep' ye for a year or so until Amos was out o' danger," said Mr. Hacket. "Maybe they'd drowned ye in the river down there an' left yer clothes on the bank to make it look like an honest drowning. The devil knows what they'd 'a' done with ye, laddie buck. We'll have to keep an eye on ye now, every day until the trial is over--sure we will. Come, we'll go up to the barn and see if Kate is there."

Just then we heard the receding wagon go roaring over the bridge on Little River. Mary shuddered with fright. The schoolmaster rea.s.sured us by saying:

"Don't be afraid. I brought my gun in case we'd meet a painter. But the danger is past."

He drew a long pistol from his coat pocket and held it in the light of the lantern.

The loaded cart stood in the middle of the barn floor, where I had left it, but old Kate had gone. We closed the barn, drawing the cart along with us. When we came into the edge of the village I began to reflect upon the strange peril out of which I had so luckily escaped. It gave me a heavy sense of responsibility and of the wickedness of men.

I thought, of old Kate and her broken silence. For once I had heard her speak. I could feel my flesh tingle when I thought of her quick words and her hoa.r.s.e pa.s.sionate whisper. She must have come into the barn while I was swimming and hidden behind the straw heap in the rear end of it and watched the edge of the woods through the many cracks in the boarding.

I knew, or thought I knew, why she took such care of me. She was in league with the gallows and could not bear to see it cheated of its prey. For some reason she hated the Grimshaws. I had seen the hate in her eyes the day she dogged along behind the old money-lender through the streets of the village when her pointing finger had seemed to say to me: "There, there is the man who has brought me to this. He has put these rags upon my back, this fire in my heart, this wild look in my eyes. Wait and you shall see what I will put upon him."

I knew that old Kate was not the irresponsible, witless creature that people thought her to be. I had begun to think of her with a kind of awe as one gifted above all others. One by one the things she had said of the future seemed to be coming true.

When we had pulled the cart into the stable I tried to shift one of the bags of grain and observed that my hands trembled and that it seemed very heavy.

As we were going into the house the schoolmaster said:

"Now, Mary, you take this lantern and go across the street to the house o' Deacon Binks, the constable. You'll find him asleep by the kitchen stove. Arrest his slumbers, but not rudely, and, when he has come to, tell him that I have news o' the devil."

"This shows the power o' knowledge. Bart," he said to me when we entered the house.

I wondered what he meant and he went on:

"You have knowledge of the shooting that no other man has. You could sell it for any money ye would ask. Only ye can't sell it, now, because it's about an evil thing. But suppose ye knew more than any other man about the law o' contracts, or the science o' bridge building, or the history o' nations or the habits o' bugs or whatever. Then ye become the princ.i.p.al witness in a different kind o' case. Then it's proper to sell yer knowledge for the good o' the world and they'll be as eager to get it as they are what ye know about the shooting. And n.o.body'll want to kill ye. Every man o' them'll want to keep ye alive. But mind, ye must be the _princ.i.p.al witness_."

Deacon Binks arrived, a fat man with a big round body and a very wise and serious countenance between side whiskers bending from his temple to his neck and suggesting parentheses of hair, as if his head and its accessories were in the nature of a side issue. He and the schoolmaster went out-of-doors and must have talked together while I was eating a bowl of bread and milk which Mrs. Hacket had brought to me.

When I went to bed, by and by, I heard somebody snoring on the little porch under my window. The first sound that reached my ear at the break of dawn was the snoring of the same sleeper. I dressed and went below and found the constable in his c.o.o.n-skin overcoat asleep on the porch with a long-barreled gun at his side. While I stood there the schoolmaster came around the corner of the house from the garden. He smiled as he saw the deacon.

"Talk about the placid rest of Egyptian G.o.ds!" he exclaimed. "Look at the watchful eye o' Justice. How well she sleeps in this peaceful valley! Sometimes ye can hardly wake her up at all, at all."

He put his hand on the deacon's shoulder and gave him a little shake.

"Awake, ye limb o' the law," he demanded. "Prayer is better than sleep."

The deacon arose and stretched himself and cleared his throat and a.s.sumed an air of alertness and said it was a fine morning, which it was not, the sky being overcast and the air dank and chilly. He removed his greatcoat and threw it on the stoop saying:

"Deacon, you lay there. From now on I'm constable and ready for any act that may be necessary to maintain the law. I can be as severe as Napoleon Bonaparte and as cunning as Satan, if I have to be."

I remember that through the morning's work the sleepy deacon and the alert constable contended over the possession of his stout frame.

The constable shouldered the gun and followed me into the pasture where I went to get the cow. I saw now that his intention was to guard me from further attacks. While I was milking, the deacon sat on a bucket in the doorway of the stable and snored until I had finished. He awoke when I loosed the cow and the constable went back to the pasture with me, yawning with his hand over his mouth much of the way. The deacon leaned his elbow on the top of the pen and snored again, lightly, while I mixed the feed for the pigs.

Mr. Hacket met us at the kitchen door, where Deacon Binks said to him:

"If you'll look after the boy to-day, I'll go home and get a little rest."

"G.o.d bless yer soul, ye had a busy night," said the schoolmaster with a smile.