Part 34 (1/2)

Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of caution: ”Don't say nothin', Sally.... Walk back inter ther woods ...

outen sight of the house ... it's me ... it's yore brother, Ken.”

For an instant she stood as tremulous as though she had seen or heard a ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she said: ”I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy.”

”No,” commanded the man, ”bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit yit.”

Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist of violet. ”Sugar trees” blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet of burgundy.

Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.

Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness of death and the miracle of resurrection.

Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with a contagion of unhealth.

Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the desolation of winter.

Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden announcement.

”Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I wonder now who _is_ he?”

With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one who had been suddenly stricken.

Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who calmly accepts the inevitable.

By that time the horseman had halted and nodded. He dismounted and threw his rein over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton: ”Ken, I reckon ye knows me,” he said, ”an' I reckon ye knows what brought me.”

Parish went forward, but before he reached the stile he turned and in a level voice said, ”Dorothy, this hyar man's Jake Beaver. He's ther high-sheriff--from over in Virginny ... I reckon he seeks ter take me back.”

Dorothy stood with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace, the sheriff s.h.i.+fted his weight from foot to foot, and fanned himself with his hat.

The exact wording of the warrant was after all of no particular consequence. The announcement of its purport had carried all its necessary significance. Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton, also known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard--these names being included in the doc.u.ment as aliases--read it from preamble to signature and seal at the end.

Then he inquired: ”How come ye ter diskiver wh'ar I was at, Jake?”

The officer shook his head. ”Thet's a question I hain't got ther power ter answer ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin's somehow and drapped a hint ter ther Commonwealth's Attorney.”

With a nod of comprehension the man who was wanted accepted that explanation. He had not expected a fuller one.

Then, turning, he complied with the demands of courtesy. ”Dorothy,” he asked, ”hain't ye goin' ter invite Jake ter come in an' eat him some dinner?”

The woman had not spoken. For her, stoic-bred though she was, it was impossible to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger from the abstract and menacing thing for which he stood. Now she gulped down a hot and inhospitable impulse of refusal and said briefly to her husband, ”_You_ kin invite him ef ye've a mind ter, Cal. _I_ won't.”

The officer flushed in embarra.s.sment. Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are frequently endowed with gentle natures, and this mission was not of Beaver's own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with nothing of the sportsman's zest.

”I reckon I mout es well git over an' done with all ther onpleasant jobs I've got on hand,” he announced, awkwardly, ”air ye willin' ter waive extradition, Ken, or does ye aim ter fight goin' back? Hit's jest a matter of time either way--but ye've got the privilege of choosin'.”

The man he had come after was carefully folding the warrant of arrest along its folded lines as though it were important to preserve the exact creasing of the paper.

”Does I keep this hyar thing, Jake,” he asked, ”or give hit back to ye?”