The Able McLaughlins · Chapter 14 (2/2)

He had started for his gun. Rage came over him like a fever mounting. The sight of that torn sleeve made him suddenly blind with anger. He couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible that man had dared to come back and lay violent hands on his wife. It simply couldn’t be. She was calling to him to wait for her. She wouldn’t be left alone.

He helped her along blindly. He had never known such murderous anger. He wanted her to hurry. He lusted for that gun. He felt her trembling against him. By God, his wife wouldn’t have to tremble much longer!

It seemed to him long before they came to their house⁠—very long. “Don’t you let him hurt you!” she moaned as they came up to it. He strode into the kitchen. There the baby slept in his cradle, and flies walked leisurely over the piecrust scattered over the floor. He seized his gun. He went to the east door, and looked out. He went to the west door. He stood looking. Before his eyes hens scratched for their broods in peace. He searched the house. He turned to go to the barn. She cried after him, “Oh, don’t let him hurt you!” He went without caution, madly. But in the barn there was no enemy. No sign of a man behind the barn, where the grass billows chased one another. No one hiding about the haystack. He strode about seeking. There was no enemy in any place. But beyond the little tree bed, and the garden, beyond the wheat fields⁠—what might be there, to the east to the west, to the north and the south, in those wild man-high grasses! There a thousand men might hide and laugh at pursuers. Looking at those baffling stretches, Wully choked. He was helpless.

He went back to his wife. She was trying vainly to compose herself. “I never thought he would come! I never imagined it! You said he wouldn’t, Wully!” Didn’t she see how that reproach must madden him! “I was just standing there, making the pie. He came to that door. I thought it was you. And when I looked up, he was looking at me, Wully!” She wailed out that last. “He was looking at me. I didn’t know what to do. He just grabbed me!” She buried her face in her arms, and sobbed.

God! If only he could get hold of that snake who hid in the grasses! He turned abruptly again to the search.

“Stay with me!” she cried. “Where you going?”

“There’s no one here,” he answered, beside himself, wanting to comfort her. “Come and see for yourself!” Trembling and crying she came out with him to the barn. That morning there was no great cement-floored barn to search through, in whose loft a hundred men might lie, nor long feeding sheds for steers, nor any towerlike silos. There were no scattered groups of lighted hog houses, nor garages nor heated drinking tanks. There were no machine sheds, nor ventilated corncribs, nor power plants nor icehouses, as now there are. Only that one little unconcealing barn, those small slight plantings, that innocent wheat, that shaved patch of the prairie which was the hayfield.

“He’s run out there!” Chirstie moaned, pointing to the distances. Somewhere out there he had lain in wait, perhaps, seeing Wully depart, maybe watching their just caresses. Somewhere out there he must be pausing now, watching them hunt for him. Wully was shaking with incredulous fury. It simply wasn’t possible that Peter Keith should so have underestimated him! But no wonder, after he had been such a fool as to let him go unpunished once! Oh, all Wully needed was one more chance at him.⁠ ⁠…

They ate no dinner. Chirstie lay down wearily. Wully with his gun in hand, stood watching, promising her he wouldn’t go far, or leave her alone more than a minute. She moaned as he came to her during the afternoon, to give her the baby;

“Oh, what’ll we ever do now, Wully!”

“Leave that to me!” he said, in such a voice that she could say no more just then.

“You won’t hurt him, Wully!” she begged again, thinking only of her husband’s safety.

“Will I not!” he answered grimly. She wept.

“There’s Aunt Libby!” she moaned.

“Is there!” he cried. There was no auntie in his intentions. He was thinking only of his wife⁠—who trembled and wept, temporarily.

“Wully, you’ll get into trouble! If he won’t bother us, let him come back!”

“He does bother me!” She dared not answer that tone. Wully choked, and turned away, to look out over the prairies again. A rattlesnake, that man was, hiding in the grass, a damned poison snake, and like a snake he should be treated. If it had been a windless day, one might have traced him through the grasses. But now one second of the wind swept away any trace of him. A good dog might have trailed him. But there was no dog at hand. In many places before Wully’s very eyes, a man⁠—a snake⁠—might walk upright and unperceived. Inside, Chirstie lay moaning in fever. Outside, Wully patrolled his premises, frustrated, raging.

In his excitement details came rushing back to his mind to which he had long and obstinately refused entrance. He remembered all the bits of confession that Chirstie had made to him the first night that, knowing her trouble, he had gone to claim her. Peter had loved her, he had wanted her for his, she had told him. But she wouldn’t listen to him, because she thought of Wully. She thought of herself as his. That was when she was living at her aunt’s, after her mother had died. Then once Aunt Libby had gone to stay with her sister who was having a baby. Wully could curse that woman’s name for having so blindly, so fondly, trusted her knavish son. Why couldn’t she have at least left Dod with his sister! But Chirstie hadn’t been afraid. Wasn’t Peter her cousin? She hadn’t been at all afraid. And that night, when there was no help within a mile, she had run out of the house, undressed, barefooted, across the snow⁠—till Peter caught her, and brought her back. Wully hadn’t often thought of that, because he couldn’t think of it and live. But it had no mercy on him now. That story cried aloud to him, shrieking through his mind. He would kill that man, and go to the sheriff and give himself up. He would stand up and tell any twelve men in the county that story, and come home acquitted. If only he could find the man! He went beating through the grasses nearer him, maddened by the feeling that it was in vain. To the west the treacherous grasses jeered at him wavingly, and to the east. North and south they mocked him.

The afternoon passed. Neither of them could eat at suppertime. Chirstie wouldn’t stay alone in the house while he went to milk. She insisted on crawling out to the barn, to be near him. She could scarcely sit up, so worn and weak she was. The baby howled bitterly, being neglected. Wully put him to sleep, laying him on the bed beside his mother. He shut the door to the east. It had no lock. It had never needed one. He put a chair against it, and sat down on the step of the other door, fingering his gun as the stars came out, watching, thinking sorely.

There was no jury that would not set him free when he told the story. What sort of men would those be who would say he had not done right to kill a poison snake? He would just tell them⁠—ah, but to tell that story, now, when it was being so well forgotten! To bring it all back to sneering ears, as it had been brought back to him so painfully fresh today! If only he could find the man, and kill him quietly, and bury him somewhere in the tall grasses, without anyone knowing! If only he might find him crouching there somewhere! So desirable did that consummation seem that he turned abruptly and went to the barn, to see if his spade, which his father had borrowed, had been returned to its place. Yes, there it was. He could laugh as he dug that grave in the farthest, most remote slough! By God, only two years ago the government of the United States had been paying him for digging graves, graves for honest men, who made no women tremble. Oh, if he might find that man, and get it over quietly! That wish became a drunken cursing prayer in his mind. If only in the morning he might only say to her, “You needn’t be afraid he will ever come back again!”

Terrible things rushed through his mind. Once when the baby had been a few days old, he had asked her a question curiously, casually. She had seemed so surprised in those days that she hadn’t had twins. He had asked her why she had supposed she would, and when she had not answered, he had asked her again. She said simply that after all that had happened that night, she thought she couldn’t have less. He had really so successfully pretended to make light of her situation that she didn’t know how that must rankle in his mind. He had turned and gone abruptly out into the darkness, when she had answered him so, and she never realized what she had done. He had wondered then why he had ever let that man go. He had wondered often at the time of the child’s birth. Well, once he got a chance now, he would be done with that regret forever.⁠ ⁠…

He remained on guard, not realizing how the hours were passing, till he heard John riding hurriedly in home. He went to look at the clock then. It was midnight. The storm was almost upon them. The thunder was growling about its coming.

John sat down on the step, and Wully sat down near him, intending not to let John know what had happened. The speaker, John began, had been traveling through the South, and strange things he had seen. He said Johnson ought to be impeached. Wully had a vague idea what his brother was saying. He didn’t want to excite his suspicion in the least. He rallied, and asked if Stowe had been there. John had seen Stowe, and Stowe had asked why Wully wasn’t there. Lots of friends had asked about Wully. John talked on. The thunder grew louder. Rain began falling, in big drops. They both rose to go in. Rising, John said;

“Yes! And as I was coming home, guess whom I met, Wully! Our esteemed kinsman, Peter Keith! I stopped in at O’Brien’s, and there he was, drinking away as usual. Wasn’t that interesting, now, for us? And Aunt Libby was going about all day as usual, asking if anyone had seen her poor, sick blessed laddie. I brought him as far home as the McTaggerts’ corner. Maybe auntie will lapse into sanity now, comparative sanity, at least!”

Wully had risen with John, to follow him into the house, but at the sound of that name he had paused outside the door, to hide his face from his brother. John’s story made him heartsick. There seemed no chance now of getting it over secretly. Peter had gone home! It didn’t seem possible. He intended to defy Wully! He intended to hide behind his mother. Well, he would speedily find that no woman’s skirts could save him now from his deserts. He feigned a natural interest, and tarried outside till he heard John going up the stairs. Then he came in from the rain, and sat down. That room, that home of theirs, all spoiled, all defiled. Their table, their chairs, their clock, all the things that they had bought and enjoyed together, seemed alien and sinister. He gave a look around all the little room wonderingly, and then it all faded from his thought. He laid his arms on the table, and buried his face in them, as if he was weeping. But he was not weeping. Until almost morning he sat that way, scarcely moving, not heeding the sharp breaking of the thunder. He was planning ghastly things. Chirstie called to him sometimes, and he answered. She called to him at length wearily to come to bed.

To take his place beside her! Oh, God!

She was his wife, and he hadn’t been able to defend her! But morning was coming. The new day’s light would make things right.