Part 43 (2/2)
Her suspense stretched until her knees grew weak, and the wind, momentarily subsiding, left her in a stillness that was like bated breath. Then she felt a touch on her elbow, and a voice barely audible commanded, ”Come back along the edge.”
Under the reflex of that relief-wave her tight-keyed nerves threatened to collapse, but for a little longer she commanded them, and when the two stood again in her own yard, she wilted and lay limp in her lover's arms.
”Thank G.o.d, you are safe,” she whispered. ”What was it?”
He pressed her close and spoke rea.s.suringly:
”It may have been that I was mistaken for another man,” he said. ”The most serious thing is that I'll have to walk home. My colt has been killed.”
”And be a.s.sa.s.sinated on the way! No, you'll stay here!”
Boone thought of the veteran sitting by the hearth waiting for his return. He laughed.
”If I go through the woods all the way, I'll be safe enough. In the laurel it would take bloodhounds to find me, and Mr. McCalloway,” he added somewhat lamely, ”wasn't very well when I left.”
Finally he succeeded in rea.s.suring her. He was not apt, twice in one night, to get another fellow's medicine, and he would avoid the highway, but while he was fluent and persuasive for her comforting he could not deceive himself. He could not take false solace in the thought that his anonymous enemy's resolve, once registered, would die abornin' because of its initial thwarting. The night had confirmed his ugly suspicion that he was marked for death, and though he had escaped the first attack it was not likely to be the end of the story.
CHAPTER x.x.xV
It was almost a relief to Anne when she stood on the platform of the dingy little station and waved her farewell to Boone, leaving for the state capitol and his new duties. Of course, as she turned back to the squalid vistas of the coal-mining town, a sinking loneliness a.s.sailed her heart, but for Boone's safety she felt a blessed and compensating security.
Her father's recovery was slow and his convalescence tedious, and Anne's diversion came in tramping the frost-sparkling hills and planning the future that seemed as far away and dream-vague as the smoky mists on the horizon rim.
One morning as she walked briskly beyond the town she encountered an old man who, after the simple and kindly custom of the hills, ”stopped and made his manners.”
”Howdy, ma'am,” he began. ”Hit's a tol'able keen an' nippy mornin', hain't hit?”
”Keen but fine,” she smilingly replied, as her eyes lit with interest for so p.r.o.nounced a type. Had she seen him on the stage as representing his people, she would have called the make-up a gross exaggeration. He was tall and loose-jointed, and his long hair and beard fell in barbaric raggedness about a face seamed with deep lines. But his eyes were shrewd and bold, and he carried himself with a sort of innate dignity despite the threadbare poorness of patched trousers and hickory s.h.i.+rt, and he tramped the snowy hills coatless with ankles innocent of socks. The long hickory with which he tapped the ground as he walked might have been the staff of a biblical pilgrim, and they chatted affably until he reached the question inevitable in all wayside meetings among hillmen.
”My name's Cyrus Spradling, ma'am. What mout your'n be?”
”Anne Masters,” she told him. ”My father is the superintendent of the coal mine here.”
She was unprepared for the sudden and baleful transformation of face and manner that swept over him with the announcement. A moment before he had been affable, and her own eyes had sparkled delightedly at the mother-wit of his observations and the quaint idiom and metaphor of his speech. Now, in an instant, he stiffened into affronted rigidity, and made no effort to conceal the black, almost malignant, wave of hostility that usurped the recent mildness of his eyes.
”Ye're ther same one that used ter be Boone Wellver's gal,” he declared scornfully; and the girl, accustomed to local idiosyncrasies, flushed less at the direct personality of the statement than at the accusing note of its delivery.
”Used to be?” The question was the only response that for the instant of surprise came to her mind.
Cyrus Spradling spat on the ground as his staff beat a tattoo.
”Wa'al, thet war y'ars back, an' ye hain't nuver wedded with him yit.”
The old man stood there actually trembling with a rage induced by something at which she had no means of guessing.
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