Tess of the Storm Country Part 28

Her voice was low and vibrant with untried emotions. Something uplifting in the criminal action of the girl so touched Frederick that the nearness of tears called a throb to his throat. Without expostulating he wrapped the brilliant covering about his head, the embroidered ends hanging to his waist. Frederick Graves appreciated for the first time in his short, s.h.i.+elded life the awful temptations that make these squatter people in their cold and misery take what did not belong to them. He followed Tessibel, with no spoken word; on and on, up past the lighted huts, to the gaping gorge under the trestle. Tessibel knew that the student could not traverse it without her help, and she also knew that to touch his hand would be the sweetest of happiness to her. At any other time her soul would have recoiled from such temerity, but the life and welfare of Daddy's deliverer were at stake. She halted abruptly. The night was so dark she could scarcely outline the student as he stood near her.

"Take hold of my hand," she ordered. "It air the trestle. It air a long one and the steps be far apart."

Without a demurring word, Frederick grasped the strong fingers she held out to him. A smile, obscured by the darkness, played about the girl's sensitive mouth. The young body was pulsing with life--with intense grat.i.tude, for was not she, Tessibel Skinner, helping her friend? With halting steps the boy and girl commenced the most perilous part of their journey, Tessibel leading the way. The student stopped in the middle of the long trestle.

"Are we nearly over?" he asked in a low voice. The awful magnificence of the dark night, the rus.h.i.+ng water tumbling and roaring over the rocks beneath them, awed him into what was almost timidity.

"Nope; come on, don't stop here," urged Tess. "'Taint a good place."

At the end of the gap Tess tried to draw her hand away, but it was a feeble motion and she ceased as she noted that Frederick was still clinging to it.

"Let me walk with your hand in mine," he said simply with no extra pressure of the fingers within his. "It is dark for us both."

During the rest of the journey a silence fell upon them. Kennedy's brindle bull, scenting a friend, capered madly for a word from Tess, but the squatter paid no heed to her dog chum.

She took her hand from Frederick's to unfasten the door and light the candle. While they were walking the tracks, the woman in her had tried to remember in what condition she had left the hut. She looked about hastily. Before lighting another candle she smuggled the frying pan from the floor and picked up the loaf of bread that had fallen behind the stove from the table. While Tessibel lighted the fire, Frederick sat huddled in the wooden rocking-chair, still wrapped in the crimson altar-cloth, and watched the girl, who, as she moved clumsily to and fro, uttered no sound save now and then a characteristic grunt. Instinct told the squatter that she would choke the sensitive throat of the student if she raised the dust by sweeping and she refrained from using a broom, but Frederick wished vaguely that she would gather up the fish bones and crumbs of bread from her path that they might not crunch so audibly under her heavy boots. An open Bible placed on Daddy Skinner's stool attracted his attention in his survey of the room. Through the flickering light he could see the pa.s.sages Tessibel had marked. He must say something or his brain would burst.

"You have a Bible, I see?"

His words sounded strained and his voice foreign to his own.

"Yep."

"Can you read it?"

"I spells at it," Tess replied in tones a little surly.

"Where did you get it?" asked Frederick presently.

She waited a moment before answering, straightening up from the oven where she had placed the cold bacon left from her breakfast to heat.

"Where did I get what?" she demanded.

"The Bible," replied Frederick.

He had asked about the book in the first place for something to talk of, for the roaring of the wind through the hut's rafters distracted him. He desired to hear the squatter say something--it all seemed so much like a dream that he feared to awaken only to find himself in the empty house with the soph.o.m.ore's revolver staring at him.

"I cribbed it from the mission," answered the girl, p.r.o.nouncing her words plainly. She leaned toward him and finished abruptly. "I took it from the place that comed from."

She was pointing toward the warm red altar-cloth bound about Frederick's head. Alas, Tess had needed a Bible and had stolen it; he had needed warm covering and had accepted it. There was no difference between the minister's son and the squatter's daughter. Vicissitude had forced each into a like position, and somehow Frederick lost his sense of right and wrong, for he could not sit in judgment upon either action. Never before in all of his short young life had he really needed anything for personal comfort--but the altar-cloth. Tess saw the struggle going on in his mind; she bent toward him, reasoning:

"I needed the Bible, didn't I? Didn't ye say that to save Daddy Skinner's life I had to have it? Ye needed that red rag what ye got round yer head. There air only one way in this world--" She was moving toward him inch by inch, the soles of the fisherman's boots dragging the bread crumbs and fish bones beneath them. "Ye takes what ye need to save yer life, or the life of yer Daddy. Folks mostly never steals what they ain't needin'."

The message went straight home to Frederick. He could not combat such reasoning. He knew well that he would have frozen but for the timely stealing of the altar-cloth--also, he knew that the Bible was as necessary to Tess as the altar-cloth was to him. He mentally lashed himself into a state of unrest. Why had he not thought of a Bible and given Tess one? It would have been so easy for him to have supplied her small needs!

He was watching the girl through the gloomy haze of the bacon smoke, but spoke no more until Tessibel ordered him to draw up to the table and eat.

"Have a piece of bacon," said she.

Frederick held up his plate, and Tess shoved a generous portion into it.

She gave him a tempting brown fish, cut a slice of bread, placing it upon the side of his tin plate, and commenced to eat rapidly from her own.

Neither boy nor girl mentioned sleeping until the hands of the small nickel clock on the shelf in the corner pointed out the hour of eleven.

Then Tessibel opened the subject without hesitation or embarra.s.sment.

"It air time fer ye to turn in," said she, banking the embers in the stove for the night.

"I shall sit up," replied Frederick stiffly.

"There air two beds," commented Tess in simple ignorance of all law save necessity. "Mine air under Daddy's--see?"

She dragged the rope cot from under the larger bed--a cloud of dust rising white to the shanty's rafters and settling like a soft mist upon the student.

"I air goin' to sleep here," explained Tess with no mention of the lately exposed dirt. "I only slep' in Daddy's bed cause he wasn't here.... Ye go to bed while I gets the sticks fer the mornin'."

Frederick placed his hand on her arm almost timidly. She was so different from any girl he had ever known!

"Please allow me to get the wood for you."

Two rows of white teeth bared themselves in a frank smile.

"I's a squatter," she said, "and squatter women allers gets the wood.

Scoot to bed."

When Tessibel came in from the mud cellar, Frederick lay with his face toward the wall, Orn Skinner's soiled blankets wrapped closely about his shoulders. Tessibel placed the leather strap over the staple in the door, and barred up for the night.

CHAPTER XXIII

For almost an hour Tessibel lay thinking deeply, her brain alive with the past rapid happening of events. That the student would ever sleep under her roof was more than she had dreamed. She could hear him breathing evenly; he was asleep with "Daddy's" blankets wrapped tightly about his finely shaped head. Through the dim light Tessibel could follow the outline of the great form stretched out on the roped bed. A feeling of thanksgiving swept over her--she was his protector. She had not thought of asking about his crime. Of course he was fleeing from the law, but he could have done nothing that would lessen her desire to aid him. If he had murdered, then it was necessary that he should; if he had stolen, it was the common lot of all men in need. The one thing to do was to keep him from the clutches of the law. She felt herself getting drowsy, and soon the even breathing of the squatter and the student told that both slept.

Tess would never know what time it happened. Suddenly her eyes flew open and through the light of a lantern she saw Ben Letts leering into her face. The frosty air was blowing in gusts through the window which the squatter Ben had forced open. The horror of the situation came slowly over her. For the instant she forgot the student sleeping in her father's bed, and Ben Letts had not noticed him.

Ben began to speak in low tones:

"If ye wants to live, don't holler ... Get up!"

Tess crawled out of bed, fully dressed. Frederick slept on, hearing no sound, for the cold room had compelled him nearly to cover his head.

Suddenly the presence of the student came into the girl's mind; but she only threw a furtive glance at the sleeping youth.

"What do ye want?" she demanded vaguely.

"First ye air to come with me to the Brindle Bull at Kennedy's--I air got somethin' for him.... He air dead in the mornin' by the hand of the girl what loves him."

There was unlimitable sarcasm in the vile, low face as Ben hissed this out.