The Roof Tree Part 40

"Thar hain't no way on y'arth I wouldn't fight ter save him--even ef I hed ter fight a Judas in Judas fashion. So I aimed ter keep ye hyar--an'

I kep' ye."

"Ye've kep' me thus fur," he corrected her with his swarthy face as malevolent as had ever been that of his red-skinned ancestors. "But ye told ther truth awhile ago--an' ye told hit a mite too previous. Ther matter hain't ended yit."

"Yes, hit's es good es ended," she a.s.sured him with the death-like quiet of a final resolve. "I made up my mind sometime back thet ye hed ter die, Bas."

Slowly the right hand came out of her loosened blouse and the firelight flashed on the blade of the dirk so tightly held that the woman's knuckles stood out white.

"I'm goin' ter kill ye now, Bas," she said.

For a few long moments they stood without other words, the woman holding the dirk close to her side, and neither of them noted that for the past ten minutes the sound of the axe had been silent off there in the woods.

Then abruptly the door from the kitchen opened and Sim Squires stood awkwardly on the threshold, with a face of wooden and vapid stupidity.

Apparently he had noted nothing unusual, yet he had looked through the window before entering the house, and back of his un.o.bservant seeming lay the purpose of averting bloodshed.

"I war jest lookin' fer ye, Bas," he said with the artlessness of perfect art. "I hollered but ye didn't answer. I wisht ye'd come out an holp me manpower a chunk up on ther choppin' block. I kain't heft hit by myself."

Bas scowled at the man whom he was supposed to dislike, but he followed him readily enough out of the room, and when he had lifted the log, he left the place without returning to the house.

A half-hour later old Jase Burrell drew rein by the stile and handed Dorothy a letter.

"I reckon thet's ther one ye've been waitin' fer," he said, "so I fetched hit over from ther post-office. What's ther matter, gal? Ye looks like ye'd been seein' hants."

"I hain't seed nothin' else fer days past," she declared, almost hysterically. "I've done sickened with waitin', Uncle Jase, an' I aimed ter start out soon termorrer mornin', letter or no letter."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Across in Virginia, Sally Turk, the wife of the dead man and the sister of the accused, had rocked her anaemic baby to sleep after a long period of twilight fretfulness and stood looking down into its crib awhile with a distrait and numbed face of distress. She was leaving it to the care of another and did not know when she would come back.

"I'm right glad leetle Ken's done tuck ter ther bottle," she said with forced cheerfulness to the hag-like Mirandy Sloane. "Mebby when I gits back thar'll be a mite more flesh on them puny leetle bones of his'n."

Her words caught sob-like in her throat as she wheeled resolutely and caught up her shawl and bonnet.

Out at the tumble-down stable she saddled and mounted a mule that plodded with a limp through a blackness like a sea of freezing ink, and she shivered as she sat in the old carpet-cushioned side-saddle and flapped a long switch monotonously upon the flanks of her "ridin'-critter."

The journey she was undertaking lay toward the town where her brother was "hampered" in jail, but she turned at a cross-road two miles short of that objective and kept to the right until she came to a two-storied house set in an orchard: a place of substantial and commodious size. Its windows were shuttered now and it loomed only as a squarish block of denser shadow against the formless background of night. All shapes were neutralized under a clouded and gusty sky.

Dogs rushed out barking blatantly as the woman slid from her saddle, but at the sound of her voice they stilled their clamour--for dogs are not informed when old friendships turn to enmity.

The front door opened upon her somewhat timid knock, but it opened only to a slit and the face that peered out was that of a woman who, when she recognized the outer voice, seemed half minded to slam it again in refusal of welcome. Curiosity won a minor victory, though, over hostility, and the mistress of the house slipped out, holding the door inhospitably closed at her back.

"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest _got_ ter see Will."

The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."

But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were tight with the obduracy of despair.

"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer G.o.d's sake, don't deny me.

Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now--an' hit's a matter of master int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll pleasure him--but I've _got_ ter see him."

There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny.

With a graceless concession she opened the door.

"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see ye--but I mis...o...b..s. .h.i.t."

Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there, faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of animosity in her eyes.

"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's trial."

"I've got ter see Will," echoed the strained voice by the hearth, as though those words were the only ones she knew. "I've got ter see Will."

"When John war murdered over thar--afore yore baby was borned," went on Lindy as though she were reading from a memorized indictment, "Will stud ready ter succour an' holp ye every fashion he could. Then hit come ter light thet 'stid of defendin' ther fame of yore dead husband ye aimed ter stand by ther man thet slew him. Ye even named yore brat atter his coldblooded murderer."

The huddled supplicant in the chair straightened painfully out of her dejection of att.i.tude and her words seemed to come from far away.

"He war my brother," she said, simply.

"Yes, an' John Turk wasn't nothin' but yore husband," flashed back the scathing retort. "Ye give hit out ter each an' every thet all yore sympathy war with ther man thet kilt him--an' from thet day on Will an'

me war done with ye. Now we aims ter see thet brother of yourn hanged--and hit's too tardy ter come a beggin' an' pleadin'."

Kenneth Thornton's sister rose and stood swaying on her feet, holding herself upright by the back of the chair. Her eyes were piteous in their suffering.

"Fer G.o.d's sake, Lindy," she begged, "don't go on denyin' me no more. We used ter love one another ... when I was married ye stud up with me ...

when yore fust baby war born I set by yore bedside ... now I'm nigh heart-broke!"

Her voice, hysterically uncontrolled, shrilled almost to a scream, and the door of the other room opened to show Will Turk, shirt-sleeved and sombre of visage, standing on its threshold.

"What's all this ter-do in hyar?" he demanded gruffly, then seeing the wife of his dead brother he stiffened and his chin thrust itself outward into bulldog obduracy.

"I kain't no fashion git shet of her," explained the wife as though she felt called upon to explain her ineffectiveness as a sentinel.

Will Turk's voice came in the crispness of clipped syllables. "Lindy, I don't need ye no more, right now. I reckon I kin contrive ter git rid of this woman by myself."

Then as the door closed upon the wife, the sister-in-law moved slowly forward and she and the man stood gazing at each other, while between them lay six feet of floor and mountains of ama.s.sed animosities.

"Ef ye've come hyar ter plead fer Ken," he warned her at last, "ye comes too late. Ef John's bein' yore husband didn't mean nuthin' ter ye, his bein' my brother does mean a master lot ter _me_--an' ther man thet kilt him's goin' ter die."

"Will," she began, brokenly, "ye was always like a real brother ter me in ther old days ... hain't ye got no pity left in yore heart fer me...?

Don't ye remember nothin' but ther day thet John died...?"

The drooping moustaches seemed to droop lower and the black brows contracted more closely.

"I hain't fergot nothin'.... I wanted ter befriend ye so long es I could ... outside my own fam'ly I didn't love no person better, but thet only made me hate ye wusser when ye turned traitor ter our blood."

She stepped unsteadily forward and caught at his hand, but the man jerked it away as from an infection.