The Leatherwood God Part 3

Gillespie pulled the leatherwood latch-string which lifted the catch of his door, and pushed it open. "Go in, Jane," he said to his daughter, and the girl vanished slimly through, with a glance over her shoulder at Dylks where he stood aloof a few steps from her father.

Gillespie turned to his guest. "Did you see her?" he asked.

"Yes, I walked over to her house this morning."

"Did any one see _you_?"

"No. Her man was away."

Gillespie turned with an effect of helplessness, and looked down at the wood-pile where he stood. "I don't know," he said, "what keeps me from spliting your head open with that ax."

"I do," Dylks said.

"Man!" the old man threatened, "Don't go too far."

"It wasn't the fear of G.o.d which you pretend is in your heart, but the fear of man." Dylks added with a vulgar drop from the solemn words, "You would hang for it. I haven't put myself in your power without counting all the costs to both of us."

Gillespie waved his answer off with an impatient hand.

"Did she know you?"

"Why not? It hasn't been so long. I haven't changed so much. I wear my hair differently, and I dress better since I've been in Philadelphia. She knew me in a minute as well as I knew her. I didn't ask for her present husband; I thought one at a time was enough."

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing--first. I might have told her she had been in a hurry. But if she don't bother me, I won't her. We got as far as that. And I reckon she won't, but I thought we'd better have a clear understanding, and she knows now it's bigamy in her case, and bigamy's a penitentiary offense. I made that clear. And now see here, David: I'm going to stay here in this settlement, and I don't want any trouble from you, no matter what you think of my doings, past, present, or future. I don't want you to say anything, or _look_ anything. Don't you let on, even to that girl of yours, that you ever saw me before in your life. If you do, you'll wish you _had_ split my head open with that ax. But I'm not afraid; I've got you safe, and I've got your sister safe."

Gillespie groaned. Then he said desperately, "Listen here, Joseph Dylks!

I know what you're after, here, because you always was: other people's money. I've got three hundred dollars saved up since I paid off the mortgage. If you'll take it and go--"

"Three hundred dollars! No, no! Keep your money, old man. I don't rob the poor." Dylks lifted himself, and said with that air of mysterious mastery which afterwards won so many to his obedience, "I work my work. Let no man gainsay me or hinder me." He walked to and fro in the starlight, swelling, with his head up and his mane of black hair cloudily flying over his shoulders as he turned. "I come from G.o.d."

Gillespie looked at him as he paced back and forth. "If I didn't know you for a common scoundrel that married my sister against my will, and lived on her money till it was gone, and then left her and let her believe he was dead, I might believe you _did_ come from G.o.d--or the Devil, you--you turkey c.o.c.k, you stallion! But you can't prance _me_ down, or snort me down. I don't agree to anything. I don't say I won't tell who you are when it suits me. I won't promise to keep it from this one or that one or any one. I'll let you go just so far, and then--"

"All right, David, I'll trust you, as I trust your sister. Between you I'm safe. And now, you lay low! That's my advice." He dropped from his mystery and his mastery to a level of colloquial teasing. "I'm going to rest under your humble roof to-night, and to-morrow I'm going to the mansion of Peter Hingston. His gates will be set wide for me, and all the double log-cabin palaces and frame houses of this royal city of Leatherwood will hunger for my presence. You could always hold your tongue, David, and you can easily leave all the whys and wherefores to me.

I won't go from your hospitality with an ungrateful tongue; I will proclaim before the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes in your temple that I left you secure in the faith, and that I turned to others because they needed me more. I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; they will understand that. So good night, David, and good morning. I shall be gone before even you are up."

Gillespie made no answer as he followed his guest indoors. Long before he slept he heard the man's powerful breathing like that of some strong animal in its sleep; an ox lying in the field, or a horse standing in its stall. At times it broke chokingly and then he snorted it smooth and regular again. At daybreak Gillespie thought of rising, but he drowsed, and he was asleep when his daughter came to the foot of the ladder which climbed to his chamber in the cabin loft, and called to him that his breakfast was ready.

IV

The figure of a woman who held her hooded shawl under her chin, stole with steps often checked through the limp, dew-laden gra.s.s of the woods-pasture and slipped on the rotting logs. But she caught herself from tumbling, and safely gained the border of Gillespie's corn field. There she sat down trembling on the stone doorstep of the spring-house, and waited rather than rested in the shelter of the chestnut boughs that overhung the roof. She was aware of the spring gurgling under the stone on its way into the suns.h.i.+ne, from the crocks of cream-covered milk and of b.u.t.ter in the cool dark of the hut; she sensed the thick August heat of the sun already smiting its honeyed odors from the corn; she heard the scamper of the squirrels preying upon the ripening ears, and whisking in and out of the woods or dropping into the field from the tips of the boughs overhanging the nearer rows; but it all came blurred to her consciousness.

She was recognizably Gillespie's sister, but her eyes and hair were black. She was wondering how she could get to speak with him when Jane was not by. He would send the girl away at a sign from her, but she could not have that; the thing must be kept from the girl but not seem to be kept.

She let her arms rest on her knees; her helpless hands hung heavy from them; her head was bowed, and her whole body drooped under the burden of her heart, as if it physically dragged her down. Jane would be coming soon with the morning's milk to pour into the crocks; she heard a step; the girl was coming; but she must rest a moment.

"What are you doing here, Nancy?" her brother's voice asked.

"Oh, is it you, David? Oh, blessed be the name of the Lord! Maybe He's going to be good to me, after all. David, is he gone?"

"He's gone, Nancy."

"In anger?"

"He's gone; I don't care whether he's gone in anger or not."

"Did he tell you he saw me?"

"Yes."

"And did you promise him not to tell on him? To Jane? To any one?"

"No." Gillespie stood holding a bucket of milk in his hand; she sat gathering her shawl under her chin as if she were still coming through the suncleft shadows of the woods pasture.

"Oh, David!"

"What do you want me to do, Nancy?"

"I don't know, I don't know. I haven't slept all night."

"You mustn't give way like this. Don't you see any duty for you in this matter?"

"Duty? Oh, David!" Her heart forboded the impossible demand upon it.

Gillespie set his bucket of milk down beside the spring. "Nancy," he said, "a woman cannot have two husbands. It's a crime against the State.

It's a sin against G.o.d."

"But I haven't _got_ two husbands! What do you mean, David? Didn't I believe he was dead? Didn't you? Oh, David, what--Do you think I've done wrong? You let me do it!"

"I don't think you've done wrong; but look out you don't do it. You _are_ doing it, now. I can't let you do it. I can't let you live in sin!"

"In sin? Me?"

"You. Every minute you live now with Laban you live in sin. Your first husband, that was dead, is alive. He can't claim you unless you allow it; but neither can your second husband, now. If you live on with Laban a day longer--an hour--a minute--you live in deadly sin. I thought of it all night but I had not thought it out till this minute when I first saw you sitting there and I knew how miserable you were, and my heart seemed to bleed at the sight of you."

"You may well say that, David," the woman answered with a certain pride in the vastness of her calamity. "If it was another woman I couldn't bear to think of it. _Why_ does He do it? _Why_ does He set such traps for us?"

"Nancy!" her brother called sternly.

"Oh, yes, it's easy enough for you! But if Rachel was here, she'd see it different."

"Woman!" her brother said, "don't try to hide behind the dead in your sin."

"It's _no_ sin! I was as innocent as the babe unborn when I married Laban--as innocent as he was, poor boy, when he would _have_ me; and we all thought _he_ was dead. Oh, _why_ couldn't he have been dead?"