The Roof Tree Part 16

"Ye said ye wasn't mad with me ... thet night ... under ther tree ...

but yit ye said, too ... hit war all a sort of dream ... like es ef ye warn't plum sh.o.r.e."

"Yes, Cal?"

"Since then ye've jest kinderly pitied me, I reckon ... an' been plum charitable.... I've got ter know.... War ye mad at me when ye pondered hit in ther daylight ... stid of ther moons.h.i.+ne?"

The girl's pale face flushed to a laurel-blossom pink and her voice was a ghost whisper.

"I hain't nuver been mad with ye, Cal."

"Could ye--" he halted and spoke in a tense undernote of hope that hardly dared voice itself--"could ye bend down ter me an' kiss me ...

ergin?"

She could and did.

Then with her young arms under his head and her own head bowed until her lips pressed his, the dry-eyed, heart-cramping suspense of these anxious days broke in a freshet of unrestrained tears.

She had not been able to cry before, but now the tears came flooding and they brought such a balm as comes with rain to a parched and thirsting garden.

For a s.p.a.ce the silence held save for the tempest of sobs that were not unhappy and that gradually subsided, but after a little the rapt happiness on the man's face became clouded under a thought that carried a heavy burden of anxiety and he seemed groping for words that were needed for some dreaded confession.

"When a man fust falls in love," he said, "he hain't got time ter think of nuthin' else ... then all ther balance of matters comes back ... an'

needs ter be fronted. Thar's things I've got ter tell ye, Dorothy."

"What matters air them, Cal? I hain't thought of nuthin' else yit."

"Ye didn't know nuthin' erbout me when I come hyar ... ye jest tuck me on faith, I reckon...."

He halted abruptly there, and his face became drawn into deep lines.

Then he continued dully: "When I crossed over ther Virginny line ... a posse was atter me--they sought ter hang me over thar ... fer murder."

He felt her fingers tighten over his in spasmodic incredulity and saw the stunned look in her eyes, but she only said steadily, "Go on ... I knows ye _hed_ ter do hit. Tell me ther facts."

He sketched for her the grim narrative of that brief drama in the log cabin beyond the river and of the guilt he had a.s.sumed. He told it with many needful pauses for breath, but refused to stop until the story had reached its conclusion, and as she listened, the girl's face mirrored many emotions, but the first unguarded shock of horror melted entirely away and did not return.

"Ef ye'd acted any other fas.h.i.+on," came her prompt and spirited declaration when the recital reached its end, "I couldn't nuther love ye ner esteem ye. Ye tuck blame on yoreself ter save a woman."

For a time she sat there gazing out through the window, her thoughts busy with the grim game in which this man whom she loved had been so desperately involved. She knew that he had spoken the whole truth ...

but she knew, too, that over them both must hang the unending shadow of a threat, and after a little she acknowledged that realization as she said with a new note of determination in her voice:

"Thar hain't no p'int in our waitin' over-long ter be wedded. Folks thet faces perils like we does air right wise ter git what they kin outen life--whilst they kin."

"We kain't be wedded none too soon fer me," he declared with fervour.

"Albeit yore grandpap's got ter be won over fust. He's right steadfast to Bas Rowlett, I reckon."

As anxiously as Dorothy followed the rise and fall in the tide of her lover's strength it is doubtful if her anxiety was keener than that of Bas Rowlett, who began to feel that he had been cheated.

Unless something unforeseen altered the trend of his improvement, Cal Maggard would recover. He would not keep his oath to avenge his way-laying before the next full moon because it would require other weeks to restore his whole strength and give back to him the use of his gun hand, but the essential fact remained that he would not die.

Bas had entered into a compact based upon his belief that the other _would_ die--a compact which as the days pa.s.sed became a thing concrete enough and actual enough to take reckoning of.

Of course Bas meant to kill his enemy. As matters now stood he must kill him--but he would only enhance his own peril by seeking to forestall the day when his agreement left him free to act.

So Bas still came to inquire with the solicitude of seeming friends.h.i.+p, but outside that house he was busy breathing life into a scheme of broad and parlous scope, and in all but a literal sense that scheme was a violation of his oath-bound compact.

It was when Cal sat propped against pillows in a rocking chair, with his right arm in a splint, and old Caleb smoked his pipe on the other side of the window, that Dorothy suddenly went over and standing by Maggard, laid her arm across his shoulders.

"Gran'pap," she said with a steadiness that hid its underlying trepidation, "Cal an' me aims ter wed ... an' we seeks yore blessin'."

The old mountaineer sat up as though an explosion had shaken him out of his drowsy complacency. The pipe that he held in his thin old fingers dropped to the floor and spilled its ashes unnoted.

He gazed at them with the amazement of one who has been sitting blindly by while unseen forces have had birth and growth at his elbow.

"Wed?" he exclaimed at last in an injured voice. "Why, I hedn't nuver suspicioned hit was nuthin' but jest plain charity fer a stranger thet hed suffered a sore hurt."

"Hit's been more then thet sence ther fust time we seed one another,"

declared the girl, and the old man s.h.i.+fted his gaze, altered its temper, too, from bewilderment to indignation, and sat with eyes demanding explanation of the man who had been sheltered and tended under his roof.

"Does ye aim ter let ther gal do all ther talkin'?" he demanded. "Hain't ye got qualities enough ter so much as say 'by yore leave' fer yoreself?"

Cal Maggard met his accusation steadily as he answered:

"Dorothy 'lowed she wanted ter tell ye fust-off her ownself. Thet's why I hain't spoke afore now."

The wrath of surprise died as quickly as it had flared and the old man sat for a time with a far-away look on his face, then he rose and stood before them.

He seemed very old, and his kindly features held the venerable gravity and inherent dignity of those faces that look out from the frieze of the prophets. He paused long to weigh his words in exact justice before he began to speak, and when the words at last came they were sober and patient.

"I hain't hed n.o.body ter spend my love on but jest thet leetle gal fer a lengthy time ... an' I reckon she hain't a-goin' ter go on hevin' me fer no great spell longer.... I'm gittin' old."

Caleb looked infirm and lonely as he spoke. He had struggled through his lifetime for a realization of standards that he vaguely felt to be a bequest of honour from G.o.d-fearing and self-respecting ancestors--and in that struggle there had been a certain penalty of aloofness in an environment where few standards held. The children born to his granddaughter and the man she chose as her mate must either carry on his fight for principle or let it fall like an unsupported standard into the mouldy level of decay.

These things were easy to feel, hard to explain, and as he stood inarticulate the girl rose from her knees and went over to him, and his arm slipped about her waist.

"I hain't nuver sought ter fo'ce no woman's will," he said at last and his words fell with slow stress of earnestness. "But I'd always sort of seed in my own mind a fam'ly hyar--with another man ter tek my place at hits head when I war dead an' gone. I'd always thought of Bas Rowlett in that guise. He's a man thet's done been, in a manner of speakin', like a son ter me."

"Bas Rowlett----" began Dorothy but the old man lifted a hand in command for silence. "Let me git through fust," he interrupted her. "Then ye kin hev yore say. Thar's two reasons why I'd favoured Bas. One of them was because he's a sober young man thet's got things hung up." There he paused, and the quaint phrase he had employed to express prosperity and thrift summed up his one argument for materialistic considerations.

"Thet's jest one reason," went on Caleb Harper, soberly, "an' save fer statin' hit es I goes along I hain't got nuthin' more ter say erbout hit--albeit hit seems ter me a right pithy matter fer young folks ter study erbout. I don't jedgmatically know nothin' erbout _yore_ affairs,"

he nodded his head toward Maggard. "So fur's I've got any means ter tell, ye mout be independent rich or ye mout not hev nothin' only ther s.h.i.+rt an' pants ye sots thar in ... but thet kin go by, too. Ef my gal kain't be content withouten ye, she kin sheer with ye ... an' I aims ter leave her a good farm without no debt on hit."

The girl had been standing silent and attentive while he talked, but the clear and delicate modelling of her face had changed under the resolute quality of her expression until now it typified a will as unbreakable as his own.

Her chin was high and her eyes full of lightnings, held back yet ready to break, if need be, into battle fires.

Now her voice came in that low restraint in which ultimatums are spoken.

"Whatever ye leaves me in land an' money hain't nuthin' ter me--ef I kain't love ther man I weds with. An' whilst I seeks ter be dutiful--thar hain't no power under heaven kin fo'ce me ter wed with no other!"