The Roof Tree Part 31

"When did ye aim ter start--over yon?"

"Hit ought ter be right soon now, while travellin's good. Come snowfall hit'll git ter be right slavish journeyin'--but I don't 'low ter tarry there long. I kain't noways be content away from ye."

The thoughts that were occupying Dorothy were for the most part silent ones but at length she inquired:

"Why don't ye bring her back with ye, ter dwell hyar with us--her an'

ther baby?"

Thornton shook his head, but his heart warmed because she had asked.

"Hit wouldn't do--jest yit. Folks mout seek ter trace me by follerin'

her. I kin slip in thar an' see her, though, an' mebby comfort her some small degree--an' then slip back home ergin without no man's knowin'

I've ever been thar."

Instinctively the wife shuddered.

"Ef they _did_ find out!" she exclaimed in a low voice, and the man nodded in frank comprehension.

"Ef they did," he answered, candidly, "I reckon hit would be hangin' or ther penitenshery fer me--but they hain't agoin' ter."

"I don't seek ter hinder ye none," she told him in a faltering voice, "despite hit's goin' ter nigh kill me ter see ye go. Somehow hit seems like I wouldn't be so skeered ef ye war guilty yoreself ... but ter hev ye risk ther gallers fer somethin' ye didn't nuver do----"

The words choked her and she stopped short.

"I'm goin' ter hev a mouty strong reason fer seekin' ter come home safe," he said, softly. "But even ef hit did cost me my life, I don't see as I could fail a woman thet's my sister, an' thet's been facin' her time amongst enemies, with a secret like thet hauntin' her day an'

night. I've got ter take ther chanst, honey."

A sound came to them through their preoccupation, and they looked up to see Bas Rowlett crossing the stile.

His case-hardened hypocrisy stood valiantly by him, and his face revealed nothing of the humiliation he must feel in playing out his farcical role of friends.h.i.+p before the eyes of the man to whom it was so transparent.

"I war jest pa.s.sin' by," he announced, "an I 'lowed I'd light down an'

make my manners. I'd love ter hev a drink of water, too."

Without a word Parish turned and went toward the well and the visitor's eyes lit again to their avid hunger as he gazed at the girl.

Abruptly he declared: "Don't never fergit what I told ye, Dorothy. I'd do most anything, fer _you_."

The girl made no answer, but she flushed under the intensity of his gaze, and to herself she said, as she had said once before: "I wonder would he do sich a thing fer me as Cal's doin' fer his sister?"

The scope and peril of that sacrifice seemed to stand between her and all other thoughts.

Then Parish came back with a gourd dipper, and forced himself for a few moments into casual conversation. Though to have intimated his purpose and destination would have been a fatal thing, it would have been almost as foolish to wrap in mystery the fact that he meant to make a short journey from home, so as Bas mounted Parish said:

"I've got a leetle business acrost in Virginny, Bas, an' afore long I'm goin' over thar fer a few days."

When Elviry Prooner had consented to come as temporary companion for Dorothy, it seemed merely an advent.i.tious happening that Sim, too, felt the call of the road.

"I don't know es I've named hit to ye afore, Parish," he volunteered the next day as the three sat around the dinner table, "but I've got a cousin thet used ter be more like a brother ter me--an' he got inter some leetle trouble."

"Is thet so, Sim?" inquired Parish with a ready interest. "War hit a sore trouble?"

"Hit couldn't skeercely be holped--but he's been sulterin' in ther penitenshery down thar at Frankfort fer nigh on ter two y'ars now.

Erbout once in a c.o.o.n's age I fares me down thar ter fotch him tidin's of his folks. Hit pleasures him."

Thornton began to understand--or thought he did, and again he inclined his head.

"I reckon, Sim," he said, "ye wants ter make one of them trips now, don't ye?"

"Thet's a right shrewd guess, Parish. Hit's a handy time ter go. I kin git back afore corn-shuckin', an' thar hain't no other wuck a-hurtin'

ter be done right now."

"All right, Sim"--the permission came readily--"light out whenever ye gits ready--but come back fer corn-shuckin'."

When Sim related to Bas Rowlett how free of complication had been the arrangement, Bas smiled in contentment. "Start out--an' slip back--an'

don't let him git outen yore sight till ye finds out whar he goes an'

what he's doin'," came the crisp order. "He's up ter suthin' thet he hain't givin' out ter each an' every, an' I'd love ter know what hit is."

Along the ridges trailed that misty, smoky glamour with which Autumn dreams of the gorgeous pictures she means to paint, with the woods for a canvas and the frost for a brush.

Bas Rowlett had shaved the bristle from his jowl and chin and thrown his overalls behind his cabin door. He had dressed him in high-laced boots and donned a suit of store clothes, for in his mind were thoughts livened and made keen with the heady intoxication of an atmosphere like wine.

He knocked on the door of the house which he knew to be manless, and waited until it was opened by Elviry Prooner.

His swarthy face with its high cheekbones bequeathed from the shameful mixing of his blood in Indian veins wore a challenging smile of daredeviltry, and the buxom young woman stood regarding him out of her provocative eyes. Perhaps she owned to a revival of hope in her own breast, which had known the rancour of unacknowledged jealousy because this man had pa.s.sed her by to wors.h.i.+p at Dorothy Harper's shrine.

Perhaps Bas Rowlett who "had things hung up" had at last come to his senses and meant, belatedly, to lay his heart at her feet. If he did, she would lead him a merry dance of doing penance--but she would nowise permit him to escape.

But Bas saw in Elviry only an unwelcome presence interfering with another tete-a-tete, and the hostile hardening of his eyes angered her so that the girl tossed her head, and wheeling haughtily she swept into the house. A minute later he saw her still flushed and wrathful stalking indignantly along the road toward Jake Crabbott's store at Lake Erie.

So Bas set his basket down and removed his hat and let his powerful shoulders relax themselves restfully against the door frame. He was waiting for Dorothy, and he was glad that the obnoxious Elviry had gone.

After a little Dorothy appeared. Her lips were innocent of the flippant sneer that the other girl's had held and her beauty was not so full-blown or material.

Bas Rowlett did not rise from his seat and the young woman did not expect it. Casually he inquired: "Is Parish hyar?"

The last question came so innocently that it accomplished its purpose.

Bas seemed to hope for an affirmative reply, and his manner robbed his presence of any apparent intent of visiting a husbandless wife. Since no one but himself knew that his jackal Sam Squires was at that moment trailing after Parish Thornton as the beagle courses after the hare, he could logically enough make such an inquiry.

"No. Didn't ye know? He started out soon this mornin'. I reckon he's fur over to'rds Virginny by now."

"Oh!" Bas Rowlett seemed surprised, but he made prompt explanation. "I knowed he hed hit in head ter go--but I didn't know he'd started yit."

For more than an hour their talk went on in friendly channels of reminiscence and commonplace, then the man lifted the basket he had brought. "I fotched some 'simmons offen thet tree by my house. Ye used ter love 'em right good, Dorothy."

"I does still, Bas," she smiled with that sweet serenity that men found irresistible as she reached for the basket, but the man sat with eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g melancholy and fixed on the violet haze of the skyline until she noticed his abstraction and inquired: "What ails ye, Bas? Ye're in a brown study erbout somethin'."