A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties Part 30

Billy determined to be in hiding near the field of battle, and was secreted in the forest adjoining the cleared eighty an hour before noon next day. Late in the morning Dic took his rifle and walked down to the Bays's house. I shall not try to describe his sensations.

Williams was waiting, and Dic found him carefully examining his gun. The gun contained a bullet which, Dic thought, with small satisfaction, might within a short time end his worldly troubles, and the troubles seemed more endurable than ever before. Sleep had cooled his brain since his conversation with Billy, and he could not work himself into a murderous state of mind. He possessed Rita, and love made him magnanimous. He did not want to fight, though fear was no part of his reluctance. The manner of his antagonist soon left no doubt in Dic's mind that the battle was sure to come off. Something in Williams--perhaps it was his failure to meet his enemy's eyes--alarmed Dic's suspicions, and for a moment he feared treachery at the hands of his morose foe; but he dismissed the thought as unworthy, and opening the gate started up the river path, taking the lead. He was ashamed to show his distrust of Williams, though he could not entirely throw it off, and the temptation to turn his head now and then to watch his following enemy was irresistible. They had been walking but a few minutes when Dic, prompted by distrust, suddenly turned his head and looked into the barrel of a gun held firmly to the shoulder of our gentleman from Boston. With the nimbleness of a cat, Dic sprang to one side, and a bullet whistled past his face. One second later in turning his head and the hunting accident would have occurred.

After the shot Williams in great agitation said:--

"I saw a squirrel and have missed it."

"You may walk ahead," answered Dic, with not a nerve ruffled. "You might see another squirrel."

Williams began to reload his gun, but Dic interrupted the proceeding.

"Don't load now. We will soon reach the clearing."

Williams continued reloading, and was driving the patch down upon the powder. Dic c.o.c.ked his rifle, and raising it halfway to his shoulder, said:--

"Don't put the bullet in unless you wish me to see a squirrel. I'll not miss. Throw me your bullet pouch."

Williams, whose face looked like a mask of death, threw the bullet pouch to Dic, and, in obedience to a gesture, walked forward on the path.

After taking a few steps he looked backward to observe the man he had tried to murder.

"You need not watch me," Dic said; "I'm not hunting squirrels."

Soon they reached the open field. Dic had cleared every foot of the ground, and loved it because he had won it single-handed in a battle royal with nature; but nature was a royal foe that, when conquered, gave royal spoils of victory. The rich bottom soil had year by year repaid Dic many-fold for his labor. He loved the land, and if fate should prove unkind to him, he would choose that spot of all others upon which to fall.

"Is this the place?" asked Williams.

"Yes," answered Dic, tossing the bullet pouch. "Now you may load."

When Williams had finished loading, Dic said: "I will drop my hat here.

We will walk from each other, you going west, I going east. The sun is in the south. When we have each taken one hundred steps, we will call 'Ready,' turn, and fire when we choose."

Accordingly, Dic dropped his hat, and the two men started, one toward the east, one toward the west, while the sun was s.h.i.+ning in the south.

Williams quickly ran his hundred steps.

Dic had counted forty steps when he heard the cry "Dic" coming from the forest ten yards to the south, and simultaneously the sharp crack of a rifle behind him. At the same instant his left leg gave way under him and he fell to the ground, supposing he had stepped into a muskrat hole.

After he had fallen he turned quickly toward Williams and saw that gentleman hastily reloading his gun. Then he fully realized that his antagonist had shot him, though he was unable to account for the voice he had heard from the forest. That mystery, too, was quickly explained when he heard Billy's dearly loved voice calling to Williams:--

"Drop that gun, or you die within a second."

Turning to the left Dic saw his friend holding the rifle which had fallen from his own hands when he went down, and the little fellow looked the picture of determined ferocity. Williams dropped his gun. Dic was sitting upright where he had fallen, and Billy, handing him the weapon, said:--

"Kill him, Dic; kill him as you would a wolf. I'm afraid if I shoot I'll miss him, and then he will reload and kill you."

Williams was a hundred and forty yards away, but Dic could easily have pierced his heart. He took the gun and lifted it to his shoulder.

Williams stood motionless as a tree upon a calm day. Dic lowered his gun, but after a pause lifted it again and covered Williams's heart. He held the gun to his shoulder for a second or two, then he threw it to the ground, saying:--

"I can't kill him. Tell him to go, Billy Little. Tell him to go before I kill him."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'KILL HIM, DIC; KILL HIM AS YOU WOULD A WOLF.'"]

Williams took up his gun from the ground and started to leave, when Dic said to Billy Little:--

"Tell him to leave his bullets."

Williams dropped the bullet pouch without a command from Billy, and again started to leave. Dic tried to rise to his feet, but failed.

"I guess I'm wounded," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "My G.o.d, Billy Little, look at the blood I've lost! I--I feel weak--and--and dizzy. I believe I'm going to faint," and he accordingly did so. Billy cut away the trousers from Dic's wounded leg, disclosing a small round hole in the thigh. The blood was issuing in ugly spurts, and at once Billy knew an artery had been wounded. He tore the trousers leg into shreds and made a tourniquet which he tied firmly above the wound and soon the haemorrhage was greatly reduced. By the time the tourniquet was adjusted, Williams was well down towards the river, and Billy called to him:--

"Go up the river to the first house and tell Mrs. Bright to send the man down with the wagon. Perhaps if you a.s.sist us, the theory of the accident will be more plausible."

Williams did as directed. Dic was taken home. Within an hour Kennedy, summoned by an unwilling messenger, was by the wounded man's side. Billy Little was watching with Dic's mother, anxious to hear the doctor's verdict. There was still another anxious watcher, our pink and white little nymph, Sukey, though the pink had, for the time, given way to the white. She made no effort to conceal her grief, and was willing that all who looked might see her love for the man who was lying on the bed unconscious.

Williams remained with Bays's tenant till next day, and then returned to Indianapolis, carrying the news of the "accident."

THE LOVE POWDER

CHAPTER XII

THE LOVE POWDER

Rita was with her mother when she received the terrible news. Of course the accident was the theme of conversation, and Rita was in deep trouble. Even Mrs. Bays was moved by the calamity that had befallen the man whose face, since his early boyhood, had been familiar in her own house. At first Rita made no effort to express her grief.

"It is too bad, too bad," was the extent of Mrs. Bays's comment. Taking courage from even so meagre an expression of sympathy, Rita begged that she might go home--she still called the banks of Blue her home--and help Mrs. Bright nurse Dic. Mrs. Bays gazing sternly at the malefactor, uttered the one word "No," and Rita's small spark of hope was extinguished almost before it had been kindled.

Within a few days Billy Little went to see Rita, and relieved her of anxiety concerning Dic. Before he left he told her that Sukey was staying with Mrs. Bright and a.s.sisting in the nursing and the work.

"I have been staying there at night," said Billy, "and Sukey hangs about the bed at all hours."

Billy did not wish to cause jealousy in Rita's breast, but hoped to induce her to expostulate gently with Dic about the attentions he permitted himself to receive from the dimpler. For a minute or two his words caused a feeling of troubled jealousy in Rita's heart, but she soon dismissed it as unworthy of her, and unjust to Dic and Sukey. To that young lady she wrote: "I am not permitted to nurse him, and I thank you for taking my place. I shall remember your goodness so long as I live."

The letter should have aroused in Sukey's breast high impulses and pure motives; but it brought from her red lips, amid their nest of dimples, the contemptuous expletive "Fool," and I am not sure that she was entirely wrong. A due respect for the attractiveness and willingness of her sisters is wise in a woman. Rita's lack of wisdom may be excused because of the fact that her trust in Sukey was really a part of her faith in Dic.

Thus it came to pa.s.s that Dic did not go to New York, but was confined to his home for several months with a fractured thigh bone. During that period Rita was in constant prayer and Sukey in daily attendance. The dimpler's never ceasing helpfulness to Dic and his mother won his grat.i.tude, while the dangerous twinkling of the dimples and the pretty sheen of her skin became familiar to him as household G.o.ds. He had never respected the girl, nor was his respect materially augmented by her kindness, which at times overleaped itself; but his grat.i.tude increased his affection, and his sentiment changed from one of almost repugnance to a kindly feeling of admiration for her seductive beauty, regard for her kindly heart, and pleasure in her never failing good temper.

Sukey still clung to her dominion over several hearts, receiving them upon their allotted evenings; and although she had grown pa.s.sionately fond of Dic, she gave a moiety of kindness to her subjects, each in his turn. She easily convinced each that he was the favored one, and that the others were friends and were simply tolerated. She tried no such coquetry with Dic, but gladly fed upon such crumbs as he might throw her. If he unduly withheld the crumbs, she, unable to resist her yearning for the unattainable, at times lost all maidenly reserve, and by eloquent little signs and pleadings sought them at the hand of her Dives. The heart of a coquette is to be won only by running away from it, and Dic's victory over Sukey was achieved in retreat.

During Dic's illness Tom's heart, quickened doubtless by jealousy, had grown more and more to yearn for Sukey's manifold charms, physical and temperamental. Billy Little, who did not like Sukey, said her charms were "dimple-mental"; but Billy's heart was filled with many curious prejudices, and Tom's judgment was much more to be relied upon in this case.

One morning when Sukey entered Dic's room she said: "Tom was to see me last night. He said he would come up to see you to-day."

"He meant that he will come up to see you," replied Dic, teasing her.

"One of these times I'll lose another friend to Indianapolis, and when I go up there with my country ways you won't know me."

"I'll never go to Indianapolis," Sukey responded, with a demure glance.

"Dear old Blue is good enough for me. The nearer I can live to it, the better I shall be satisfied." Dic's lands were on the river banks, while those of Sukey's father were a mile to the east.