Part 45 (2/2)

He was a marked man, and should not have been so incautious, but in these days death held no threat for Hump Doane. It was life that brought him torture.

So he ignored those precepts of wariness which had been taught him by years of experience, and when he stood unarmed in the doorway, against a background of pale lamplight, he felt the thrust of a rifle muzzle against his ribs, and heard a disguised voice ordering, ”Come with us.”

Hump did not flinch or give back. Neither did he obey. Instead, he laughed with a hollow callousness and replied, ”Shoot ef ye've a mind ter. I hain't goin' ter stir a step ter foller ye.”

But masked men closed in and caught his misshapen elbows, and the voice that had first accosted him went on in the level tones of its disguise:

”We don't aim ter harm ye, Hump; leastways not yit--but we aims ter show ye somethin' we've brought ye fer a gift.”

They led him, too dull and apathetic of spirit to resist, too indifferent of any consequence to protest, out and across his own fog-wrapped yard and down to the sledge-trail road.

There in the bleak obscurity of blackness his eyes could make out a squad of silent figures, but nothing more.

”Ye kain't rightly see hit yit, Hump,” announced the spokesman, ”but thar's a fodder-sledge standin' thar at ther aidge of ther road--an' on hit thar's somethin' thet b'longs ter ye. Hyar's a pine f.a.ggot thet's soaked with kerosene--an' hyar's matches ter light hit with--but--on pain of death--wait twell we've done gone away.”

Into the heavy indifference of the old man's mood flashed a sickening shaft of dread. He took the torch and the matches, and then with a cowardice that was alien to his character he stood trembling like a frightened child, while the dark figures disappeared as though they had melted.

Hump Doane was afraid to kindle his torch, not afraid because of any threat to himself, but terrified for what he might see.

Then he braced himself, and with his back turned, struck the match and saw the guttering flames leap greedily upon the oiled pine splinter.

Slowly he wheeled, and his eyes fell on the illuminated sledge--his own sledge stolen from his barn--and there stretched lifeless, and shamefully marked with the defacement of the hangman's rope, lay what was left of his son.

Old Hump Doane, who had never stepped aside from any danger, who had never known tears since babyhood, stood for a moment gulping, then the light dropped from his hand and the agony of his shriek went quavering across the silent hills and reechoed in the woods.

The pine splinter burned out in the wet gra.s.s and old Hump lay beside it insensible, but after a while he awakened out of that merciful sleep and crawled on his hands and knees over to where the sledge stood, and he knelt there with his face buried on the lifeless breast.

”G.o.d fergive me,” he murmured with a strangled voice. ”He didn't nuver hev no mammy ter raise him up aright. I reckon I failed him when he needed me most--but Bas Rowlett's accountable ter _me_!”

When the neighbour woman came the next morning to prepare breakfast she fled screaming away from the gruesome sight that met her eyes: the sight of a dead man lying on a sledge, and a hunchback, who seemed dead, too, stretched unconscious across the body. It was so that men found them later, and carried them in, and it would have been more merciful had Hump Doane been as lifeless as he seemed instead of coming back to the ordeal he must face.

Through a community stunned and appalled into breathlessness the news ran like quicksilver, and the easy-pacing mule from Parish Thornton's barn was lathered with sweat as the young man called upon it to annihilate time and s.p.a.ce over the broken ways between his house and that of his stricken friend.

At Hump Doane's stile Thornton flung himself out of his saddle and paused for no word with those neighbours who stood gathered about the dooryard. He heard the whine of a saw and the pounding of a hammer off somewhere to the rear, and knew that volunteer and amateur undertakers were fas.h.i.+oning a coffin--but he hurled himself like a human hurricane across the threshold and demanded briefly: ”War's Hump at?”

The room was dim and murky at its corners, but through the two doors poured a flood of morning light, and into its shaft projected an unhinged shutter supported on two saw-horses, with a sheeted burden upon it. As his eyes became more accustomed to the gloom beyond the room's centre, Parish could make out the hunched figure that sat at the head of the body, still mercifully wrapped in something like lethargy and too numbed for full acuteness of feeling.

Other figures to the number of two or three moved as silently as dark wraiths about the place, but when Parish entered they drifted out, leaving him alone with his friend, and one of the doors closed upon their going.

Then the lightnings of outraged wrath that seemed to crackle in the young clansman's eyes stilled themselves and altered into something like tenderness as he moved with catlike softness of footfall to where the elder man sat, and let a hand fall on his malformed shoulder.

”Hump,” he said, briefly, ”my heart's plum sufferin' fer ye. I jest heared of hit.”

Hump Doane stirred and looked stupidly at him for a s.p.a.ce, then with laboured slowness he came to his feet, and his only answer was the eloquent gesture with which one hand swept toward the dead body.

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