THEY had breakfasted together before daylight, and he had gone to load the lumber he was taking home for his father, so that they might have a very early start. In the noisy, untidy hotel office she sat watching in surprise the confusion and the stir. There were crowds of women waiting near her, women like herself waiting for wagons to take them on towards the west, women with bundles and babies, and quarreling, crying young children. Chirstie’s face showed how exciting the scene was to her. She looked from group to group. She considered a foreign woman with a handkerchief tied on her head, whose tiny baby coughed and wheezed distressingly. She longed to say something sympathetic to the stolid mother. But she was too shy. Between caring for her own vigorous son, and watching other women’s children, the hour hurried by. Presently she saw her husband drive up, and get out to tie his horses. But before he had started for the hotel door, a stranger accosted him, and with the stranger Wully turned and went down the street. So she waited on. Two sets of youngsters quarreling drew their mothers into the fray, and Chirstie shrank away from their roughness, thoroughly shocked. [251]Then, before she had expected him, Wully was standing over her, reaching down for the baby. She scarcely knew him. His face was white. His eyes were shining strangely.
“What ails you?” she cried. “You’re sick, Wully! What’s the matter?”
“I’m all right!” he said sharply. His voice quivered with feeling. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. His mouth was set in a hard line.
She rose and followed him, frightened. She got into the wagon, and he handed her the baby. He climbed up beside her, and they were off. She saw he couldn’t tell her what had happened just there. She could wait—a little.
They were almost out of town now.
“Wully, what’s the matter? Are you sick?”
“I’m all right!”
She was more anxious than ever. She waited till the baby was asleep in her arms, and then she laid him carefully down in the little box in which Isobel McLaughlin had taken her babies back and forth to town. Then she turned towards her husband with determination. And hesitated. He looked too stern—too fierce. She sat undecided, wretched, glancing quickly at him and then away. After a few perplexed moments, her face darkened with terror.
“Oh, I know! You’re—you’ve seen him! You were like that on the Fourth!”
He turned toward her, trying to speak.
“Yes!” he broke forth. “I saw him dying.”
[252]“Oh, dying!” She tried to realize it. “Oh, if he’s dying, then we’ll be happy again!”
He said nothing. His lips worked.
“I won’t have to be afraid now!” She spoke like one overcome by a great fortune. He had never imagined she had been as unhappy as that cry of hers indicated by its relief.
“Dying!” she repeated, tasting the sweetness of the word. Then, suddenly:
“How do you know? Where did you see him?”
She saw his face harden with hatred.
“Wully, are you sure he’s dying? He isn’t dead yet?”
“He’s dying all right!”
After a moment she exclaimed:
“But how did you find him?”
“Somebody told me just as I was ready to start home.”
“Oh, that man! I saw that man speaking to you. How did he know to tell you?”
“They were looking for someone to take him out home.”
“Oh, they were!” That seemed to have changed the situation for her.
“You mean they asked you to bring him out?”
He didn’t relish her questions.
“Yes.”
“And you wouldn’t do it, would you!” She approved. She clasped his arm with both hands. She rejoiced in her assurance.
His anger flamed again.
[253]“Likely I’d bring him out with you!”
“Oh, we’ll be happy now, Wully!”
But after a minute she stirred uncomfortably. He felt her face grow grave.
“Where was it you saw him, Wully?”
“In a livery stable.”
“In a livery stable!” she repeated. “Dying in such a place!” Dying seemed not so sweet a word now.
“But why didn’t he send word home before? Think of Aunt Libby, Wully!”
“He came in on the train last night.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, enlightened. “He wanted to get home alive!”
“What’s the matter of him?” she asked again.
“Hemorrhage,” said Wully, as shortly as it was possible to speak. He wouldn’t tell her how he had seen that snake lying bloody, dirty, sunken helpless on a bed of straw. He urged his horses on.
She looked at him. He turned away from her troubled eyes.
After a while;
“Look here, Wully!” she faltered.
He gave her no encouragement.
“After all, he was Aunt Libby’s baby!” she sighed.
“After all!” he sneered. He meant to silence her. She spoke again.
“Aunt Libby was always kind to me, Wully!”
He wouldn’t answer her. He knew what was coming.
[254]She said timidly;
“I doubt we ought to go back and get him. If he’s dying, Wully! And Auntie waiting there for him!”
He said never a word.
“He may be dead before she sees him, if we don’t.”
“We won’t!” he almost shouted. That should have settled matters.
“But what’ll you tell her? She’ll ask. She’ll find out you wouldn’t. You won’t can say you saw him dying, and didn’t bring him home!”
That was true. He had begun to think of that. Libby Keith would leave no detail of that death undiscovered.
“Will you say you went away and left him there to die?”
What else could he say? He certainly wouldn’t tell that for one long rejoicing moment he had stood looking into the eyes that so terribly besought him—those eyes that were dying prayers, ultimate beseechings—and had turned victoriously away. He wouldn’t say that he had told the men who we............