Part 9 (2/2)
”'Pears like ter me,” she a.s.serted, suddenly, ”hit's nigh suffocatin'
hot in hyar.”
”I war jest a-studyin' erbout thet myself,” affirmed Maggard whose quickness of uptake was more eager than truthful. ”Ther moon's a-s.h.i.+nin'
outdoors. Let's go out thar an' breathe free.”
As though breathing free were the most immediate of her needs, the girl rose and stood for a moment with the firelight catching the pink of her cheeks and bronzing her heavy hair, then she turned and led the way out to the porch where, in the moisture of the fresh-washed air, the honeysuckle vines were heavy with fragrance.
The walnut tree, no longer lashed into storm incantations, stood now in quiet majesty, solitary though, at a respectful distance, surrounded.
The frogs and whippoorwills were voiceful, and from the silvery foreground, shadow-blotted with cobalt, to the indigo-deep walls of the ranges, the earth spilled over influences of sentient youth.
Maggard gazed down at the girl and the girl, with a hand resting on a porch post, stood looking off out of eyes that caught and gave back the soft light from the moon. To Maggard she seemed unconditionally lovely, but the fetters of shyness still held them both.
”I don't know many folks hyarabouts yit,” he said with impetuous suddenness. ”I'd plumb love ter hev ye befriend me.”
Dorothy turned toward him and her lips relaxed their shyness into a friendly smile--then impulsively she demanded: ”Did yore foreparents dwell hyarabouts a long time back?”
Thornton's face, with the moonlight upon it, stiffened into a mask-like reticence at this touching upon the sensitive topic which threatened his identification as a hunted man.
”I've done heered thet they lived somewhars in Kaintuck ginerations afore my time,” he made evasive answer. ”What made ye ask me that question?”
Then it was she who became hesitant but after a little she suggested, ”Come on down hyar under thet old walnuck tree. Seems like I kin talk freer thar.”
Together they went to the place where the shadows lay deep, like an island in a lake of moons.h.i.+ne, and the girl talked on in the hurried, shy fas.h.i.+on of one with a new secret and the need of a confidant.
”Ther mornin' ye fust come by ... an' stopped thar in ther high road ...
I'd jest been readin' somethin' thet ... was writ by one of my foreparents ... way back, upwards of a hundred y'ars ago, I reckon.” She paused but he nodded his interest so sympathetically that she went on, rea.s.sured; ”She told how come she planted this hyar tree ... in them days when ther Injins still scalped folks ... an' she writ down jest what her husband looked like.”
”What _did_ he look like?” inquired the man, gravely, and the girl found herself no longer bashful with him but at ease, as with an old friend.
”Hit war right then I looked out an' seed ye,” she said, simply, ”an'
'peared like ye'd plum bodily walked outen them pages of handwrite.
Thet's why I asked whether yore folks didn't dwell hyar onc't. Mebby we mout be kin.”
Cal Maggard shook his head.
”My folks moved away to Virginny so fur back,” he informed her, ”thet hit's apt ter be right distant kins.h.i.+p.”
”This was all fur back,” she reminded him, and in order that the sound of her voice might continue, he begged:
”Tell me somethin' else erbout this tree ... an' what ye read in ther book.”
She was standing close to him, and as she talked it seemed to him that the combined fragrances of the freshly washed night all came from her.
He was conscious of the whippoorwill calls and the soft crooning of the river, but only as far-away voices of accompaniment, and she, answering to dreamy influences, too, went on with her recitals from the journal of the woman who had been a lady in Virginia and who probably lay buried under the spot on which they stood.
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