Part 46 (1/2)
A stupefaction of grief had held him since they had brought him in this morning from the road where they had found him, and thought had moved so haltingly that it had scarcely been thought at all.
But now the vitalizing light of sympathy and outrage in those other eyes seemed to rouse him out of his long coma with an awakening like that which comes after ether.
As gray dawn quickens gradually out of darkness, a numbed indignation in his pupils began to liven into unquenchable wrath.
”I hain't been able ter talk ... ter these hyar kindly neighbours of mine....” he faltered, ”but somehow, I believes I kin with _you_.”
”I'm hyar ter s'arve ye, howsoever I kin, Hump,” Parish a.s.sured him. ”Ef ye was my own father I couldn't love ye better.”
Hump Doane held out a crumpled paper that had been crushed in his taut hand, and Thornton stepping to the light smoothed it and read, pencilled in roughly printed characters, ”A warning to all traitors.”
”Hit war pinned on him....” explained the father. ”Ther riders done hit ... _he'd_ done jined 'em ... an' he quit.”
Parish Thornton stood with the light full on his face and the paper grasped in his hand. The angle of his clean-cut jaw seemed to harden from the plastic texture of flesh to the hardness of granite, and in his narrowed eyes spurted jets of those blue-and-white fires that hold intensest heat.
”I always aimed ter raise him up in G.o.dly ways,” went on the father with self-accusing misery, ”but I war a hard man, an' I never gentled him none. I reckon I driv him ter others ... thet debauched an' ruint him.”
He had been, to that point, the man conscious only of his hurt, but now his face became contorted and livid with a sudden hurricane of rage.
”But them thet hanged him,” he cried out in abrupt violence, ”vile es they war ... they warn't nothin' ter ther man thet made a dupe out of him ... ther man thet egged them on.... Bas Rowlett's accountable ter me--an' afore ther sun sets I aims ter stand over his dead body!”
Parish Thornton flinched at the name. He had turned his face toward the sheeted figure, but now he wheeled back, crouching and straightening with the spasmodic quickness of a boxer who sidesteps a blow.
”Bas Rowlett!” he echoed in a low but deadly tensity of voice. ”Steady yoreself, man, an' construe what ye means!”
Hump Doane had shaken off his torpor now and stood trembling under all the furies of repressed years. His words came in a torrent of vehemence that could not be stemmed, and they mounted like gathering winds.
”I've preached peace day in an' day out.... I've striven ter keep hit ... an' I knows I did aright ... but this day I'm goin' ter stultify myself an' kill a man ... an' when I finishes him, I'm going ter keep right on till I'm either kilt myself or gits all them thet's accountable fer _this_!” He paused, breathing in gasps, then rushed on again: ”I trusted Bas Rowlett ... I believed in him ... some weeks back I l'arned some things erbout him thet shocked me sore, but still I held my hand ... waitin' ter counsel with _you_ atter yore baby hed been borned.”
”What war hit ye l'arned, Hump?” The younger man's voice was almost inaudibly low, and the answer came like volley-firing with words.
”Hit war Bas thet hired ye laywayed.... Hit war Bas thet egged Sam Opd.y.k.e on ter kill ye.... Hit war Bas thet sent word over inter Virginny ter betray ye ter ther law.... Hit war Bas thet shot through old Jim's hat ter make a false appearance an' foment strife.... Hit war Bas thet stirred men up ter organizin' ther riders ... an' used my boy fer a catspaw!”
”Listen, man!” Parish Thornton was breathing his words through lips that scarcely moved as he bent forward with the tautness of a coiled spring.
”I knowed Bas Rowlett hired me shot ... but we'd done pledged ourselves ter settle thet betwixt us.... I held my hand because of ther oath I give ye when we made ther truce ... but these other things, I hain't nuver even dremp' of ther like afore. Does ye know aught more of him?”
”I knows thet whilst ye war away in Virginny he went over an' sought ter make love ter yore wife ... an' she come nigh killin' him fer hit ...
but she feared fer bloodshed ef she bore thet tale ter _you_.”
The old man paused, and Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters.
”I kain't prove none of them things in law,” went on Hump, and his eyes travelled back to the hideous fascination of the sheeted body, ”yit I knows, in my heart, every one of 'em's true--an' thet's enough fer me.
Now I'm goin' ter be my own law!”
The cripple turned and walked unsteadily to the corner of the room, and from its place behind a calico curtain he took out a repeating rifle.
”Thar's my co'te of jestice,” he declared, and his voice trembled as with hunger and thirst.
But Parish Thornton had thrown back his head and unaccountably he laughed as he laid on the other's arm fingers that closed slowly into a grip of steel and rawhide.