The Prodigal Judge Part 52

"I'll walk," said the girl quickly, shrinking from the contact.

"Keep close at my heels. Bunker, you tuck along after her with the boy."

"What about this n.i.g.g.e.r?" asked the fourth man.

"Fetch him along with us," said Slosson. They turned from the road while he was speaking and entered a narrow path that led off through the woods, apparently in the direction of the river. A moment later Betty heard the carriage drive away. They went onward in silence for a little time, then Slosson spoke over his shoulder.

"Yes, ma'am, I've riz ten children but none of 'em was like him--I trained 'em up to the minute!" Mr. Slosson seemed to have pa.s.sed completely under the spell of his domestic recollections, for he continued with just a touch of reminiscent sadness in his tone. "There was all told four Mrs. Slossons: two of 'em was South Carolinians, one was from Georgia, and the last was a widow lady out of east Tennessee.

She'd buried three husbands and I figured we could start perfectly even."

The intrinsic fairness of this start made its strong appeal. Mr. Slosson dwelt upon it with satisfaction. "She had three to her credit, I had three to mine; neither could crow none over the other."

As they stumbled forward through the thick obscurity he continued his personal revelations, the present enterprise having roused whatever there was of sentiment slumbering in his soul. At last they came out on a wide bayou; a white mist hung above it, and on the low sh.o.r.e leaf and branch were dripping with the night dews. Keeping close to the water's edge Slosson led the way to a point where a skiff was drawn up on the bank.

"Step in, ma'am," he said, when he had launched it.

"I will go no farther!" said Betty in desperation. She felt an overmastering fear, the full horror of the unknown lay hold of her, and she gave a piercing cry for help. Slosson swung about on his heel and seized her. For a moment she struggled to escape, but the man's big hands pinioned her.

"No more of that!" he warned, then he recovered himself and laughed.

"You could yell till you was black in the face, ma'am, and there'd be no one to hear you."

"Where are you taking me?" and Betty's voice faltered between the sudden sobs that choked her.

"Just across to George Hicks's."

"For what purpose?"

"You'll know in plenty of time." And Slosson leered at her through the darkness.

"Hannibal is to go with me?" asked Betty tremulously.

"Sure!" agreed Slosson affably. "Your n.i.g.g.e.r, too--quite a party."

Betty stepped into the skiff. She felt her hopes quicken--she was thinking of Bess; whatever the girl's motives, she had wished her to escape. She would wish it now more than ever since the very thing she had striven to prevent had happened. Slosson seated himself and took up the oars, Bunker followed with Hannibal and they pushed off. No word was spoken until they disembarked on the opposite sh.o.r.e, when Slosson addressed Bunker. "I reckon I can manage that young rip-staver, you go back after Sherrod and the n.i.g.g.e.r," he said.

He conducted his captives up the bank and they entered a clearing.

Looking across this Betty saw where a cabin window framed a single square of light. They advanced toward this and presently the dark outline of the cabin itself became distinguishable. A moment later Slosson paused, a door yielded to his hand, and Betty and the boy were thrust into the room where Murrell had held his conference with Fentress and Ware. The two women were now its only occupants and the mother, gross and shapeless, turned an expressionless face on the intruders; but the daughter shrank into the shadow, her burning glance fixed on Betty.

"Here's yo' guests, old lady!" said Mr. Slosson. Mrs. Hicks rose from the three-legged stool on which she was sitting.

"Hand me the candle, Bess," she ordered.

At one side of the room was a steep flight of stairs which gave access to the loft overhead. Mrs. Hicks, by a gesture, signified that Betty and Hannibal were to ascend these stairs; they did so and found themselves on a narrow landing inclosed by a part.i.tion of rough planks, this part.i.tion was pierced by a low door. Mrs. Hicks, who had followed close at their heels, handed the candle to Betty.

"In yonder!" she said briefly, nodding toward the door.

"Wait!" cried Betty in a whisper.

"No," said the woman with an almost masculine surliness of tone. "I got nothing to say." She pushed them into the attic, and, closing the door, fastened it with a stout wooden bar.

Beyond that door, which seemed to have closed on every hope, Betty held the tallow dip aloft, and by its uncertain and flickering light surveyed her prison. The briefest glance sufficed. The room contained two shakedown beds and a stool, there was a window in the gable, but a piece of heavy plank was spiked before it.

"Miss Betty, don't you be scared," whispered Hannibal. "When the judge hears we're gone, him and Mr. Mahaffy will try to find us. They'll go right off to Belle Plain--the judge is always wanting to do that, only Mr. Mahaffy never lets him but now he won't be able to stop him."

"Oh, Hannibal, Hannibal, what can he do there--what can any one do there?" And a dead pallor overspread the girl's face. To speak of the blind groping of her friends but served to fix the horror of their situation in her mind.

"I don't know, Miss Betty, but the judge is always thinking of things to do; seems like they was mostly things no one else would ever think of."

Betty had placed the candle on the stool and seated herself on one of the beds. There was the murmur of voices in the room below; she wondered if her fate was under consideration and what that fate was to be.

Hannibal, who had been examining the window, returned to her side.

"Miss Betty, if we could just get out of this loft we could steal their skiff and row down to the river; I reckon they got just the one boat; the only way they could get to us would be to swim out, and if they done that we could pound 'em over the head with the oars the least little thing sinks you when you're in the water." But this murderous fancy of his failed to interest Betty.

Presently they heard Sherrod and Bunker come up from the sh.o.r.e with George. Slosson joined them and there was a brief discussion, then an interval of silence, and the sound of voices again as the three white men moved back across the field in the direction of the bayou. There succeeded a period of utter stillness, both in the cabin and in the clearing, a somber hush that plunged Betty yet deeper in despair. Wild thoughts a.s.sailed her, thoughts against which she struggled with all the strength of her will.

In that hour of stress Hannibal was sustained by his faith in the judge.

He saw his patron's powerful and picturesque intelligence applied to solving the mystery of their disappearance from Belle Plain; it was inconceivable that this could prove otherwise than disastrous to Mr.

Slosson and he endeavored to share the confidence he was feeling with Betty, but there was something so forced and unnatural in the girl's voice and manner when she discussed his conjectures that he quickly fell into an awed silence. At last, and it must have been some time after midnight, troubled slumbers claimed him. No moment of forgetfulness came to Betty. She was waiting for what--she did not know! The candle burnt lower and lower and finally went out and she was left in darkness, but again she was conscious of sounds from the room below. At first it was only a word or a sentence, then the guarded speech became a steady monotone that ran deep into the night; eventually this ceased and Betty fancied she heard sobs.

At length points of light began to show through c.h.i.n.ks in the logs.

Hannibal roused and sat up, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his hands.

"Wasn't you able to sleep none?" he inquired. Betty shook her head. He looked at her with an expression of troubled concern. "How soon do you reckon the judge will know?" he asked.

"Very soon now, dear." Hannibal was greatly consoled by this opinion.

"Miss Betty, he will love to find us--"

"Hark! What was that?" for Betty had caught the distant splash of oars. Hannibal found a c.h.i.n.k in the logs through which by dint of much squinting he secured a partial view of the bayou. "They're fetching up a keel boat to the sh.o.r.e, Miss Betty--it's a whooper!" he announced.

Betty's heart sank, she never doubted the purpose for which that boat was brought into the bayou, or that it nearly concerned herself.

Half an hour later Mrs. Hicks appeared with their breakfast. It was in vain that Betty attempted to engage her in conversation, either she cherished some personal feeling of dislike for her prisoner, or else the situation in which she herself was placed had little to recommend it, even to her dull mind, and her dissatisfaction was expressed in her att.i.tude toward the girl.

Betty pa.s.sed the long hours of morning in dreary speculation concerning what was happening at Belle Plain. In the end she realized that the day could go by and her absence occasion no alarm; Steve might reasonably suppose George had driven her into Raleigh or to the Bowens' and that she had kept the carriage. Finally all her hope centered on Judge Price.

He would expect Hannibal during the morning, perhaps when the boy did not arrive he would be tempted to go out to Belle Plain to discover the reason of his nonappearance. She wondered what theories would offer themselves to his ingenious mind, for she sensed something of that indomitable energy which in the face of rebuffs and laughter carried him into the thick of every sensation.

At noon, Mrs. Hicks, as sullen as in the morning, brought them their dinner. She had scarcely quitted the loft when a shrill whistle pierced the silence that hung above the clearing. It was twice repeated, and the two women were heard to go from the cabin. Perhaps half an hour elapsed, then a step became audible on the packed earth of the dooryard; some one entered the room below and began to ascend the narrow stairs, and Betty's fingers closed convulsively about Hannibal's. This was neither Mrs. Hicks nor her daughter, nor Slosson with his clumsy shuffle.

There was a brief pause when the landing was reached, but it was only momentary; a hand lifted the bar, the door was thrown open, and its s.p.a.ce framed the figure of a man. It was John Murrell.

Standing there he regarded Betty in silence, but a deep-seated fire glowed in his sunken eyes. The sense of possession was raging through him, his temples throbbed, a fever stirred his blood. Love, such as it was, he undoubtedly felt for her and even his giant project with all its monstrous ramifications was lost sight of for the moment. She was the inspiration for it all, the goal and reward toward which he struggled.

"Betty!" the single word fell softly from his lips. He stepped into the room, closing the door as he did so.

The girl's eyes were dilating with a mute horror, for by some swift intuitive process of the mind, which asked nothing of the logic of events, but dealt only with conclusions, Murrell stood revealed as Norton's murderer. Perhaps he read her thoughts, but he had lived in his degenerate ambitions until the common judgments or the understanding of them no longer existed for him. That Betty had loved Norton seemed inconsequential even; it was a memory to be swept away by the force of his greater pa.s.sion. So he watched her smilingly, but back of the smile was the menace of unleashed impulse.

"Can't you find some word of welcome for me, Betty?" he asked at length, still softly, still with something of entreaty in his tone.

"Then it was you--not Tom--who had me brought here!" She could have thanked G.o.d had it been Tom, whose hate was not to be feared as she feared this man's love.