From the Valley of the Missing Part 9

Yer kid's a gentleman, Lem Crabbe!"

He sprang after her to the deck; but nothing greeted him save the cry of an owl from the ragged rocks and the glistening green of the cat's eyes as Scraggy hurried away.

CHAPTER SIX

After eating his supper, Lon, sullen and moody, looked out upon the lake, reviewing in his mind the terrible revenge he was soon to complete. He took his pipe slowly from his pocket and filled it with coa.r.s.e tobacco. Soon gray rings lifted themselves to the ceiling and faded into the rafters. As the smoke curled upward, his mind became busy with the past, and so vivid was his imagination that outlined in the smoke rings that floated about him was a girlish face--a face pale and wan, but a loving, sweet one to him. He could see the fair curls which clung close to the head; the eyes, serious but kind, seemed to strike his memory in unforgotten glances. To another than himself the smoke-formed face would have been plain, perhaps ugly, the weakness of her race showing in every feature; but not to him. So intent was he with these thoughts that the present dissolved completely into the past, and beside him stood a small, fond woman. In his imagination she had risen from that grave which he had never been able to find in the Potter's Field. The personality of his dead wife called upon his senses and made itself as necessary to him then as in the moment of his first rapture when she had placed her womanly might upon his soul.

His revenge upon Floyd Vandecar would be finished when the gray-eyed Flea, so like her own father, went away with the one-armed man, to eke out her destiny amid the squalor of the thief's home.

For months he had been enthralled with the satisfaction of the last act in the one terrible drama of his life; for it had played with his rude fancy as a tigress does with her prey, inflaming his hatred and keeping alive his desire for retaliation. Flukey was a good thief, although obeying him at the end of the lash, and Flea would receive her portion of hate's penalty on her fifteenth birthday.

Cronk did not heed the pitter-patter of his mother's feet as she cleared the table, nor did he hear the droning of the twin's voices in the loft above. He was thinking of how the dead woman with her child--his child, the one small atom he would have loved better than himself--would be well avenged when Flea went away with Lem.

Lon had kept track of the doings of the young district attorney. He knew that he had gone to the gubernatorial chair but the year before. The squatter smiled gloomily as he remembered the words of a newspaper friendly to Vandecar, in which he had read that Syracuse was full of painful memories for the new governor, and that Floyd Vandecar had taken his family down the Hudson, to make another home at Tarrytown, where Harold Brimbecomb, a youthful friend, resided. Another expression of dark gratification flitted over Lon's heavy features as he reviewed again the purport of the article. It had plainly said that in the new home there would be fewer visions of a lost boy and girl to haunt the afflicted parents. Lon realized in his savage heart that the change of scene would not lessen the grief of the stricken family. It was his one satisfaction to brood over the bereaved father and mother, delighting in his part of the tragedy and enjoying every evidence of it. Never for a moment did he think gently of the children, but only of the woman sacrificed. On this night she stood so close that, with a groan, he put out his hand. His flesh tingled; for he felt that he could almost touch her, and his heart clamored for the warmth of the tender body he had never forgotten.

"G.o.d!" he moaned between his teeth, "if I could tech her once, jest for once, I'd let Flea stay to hum!"

"Did ye speak, Lon?" asked Granny Cronk.

"Nope; I were only a thinkin'."

"Have ye changed yer mind 'bout Flea?"

"Nope, Mammy, and ye keep yer mouth shet if ye want me to stay to hum!

See?"

Granny Cronk grunted a reply, and pa.s.sed into the back room. Five minutes later the rope cot creaked under her weight.

Wrapped in his somber musings, Lon did not hear Flea approach him until she was at his elbow. With her coming, the sweet phantom, to which he grimly held in his moments of solitude, fled back to its unknown grave.

Never had his loved one been so near, so real; never before had she touched his writhing nature in all its primeval strength. The girl before him was so like the man who had withstood his agony that he clenched his fist and rose from his chair. Flea was looking at him in mute appeal; but before she could speak he had lifted his fist and brought it down upon the lovely, beseeching face. The blow stunned her; but only a smothered moan fell from her lips.

"I hate ye!" growled Lon. "Get back to the loft afore I kill ye!"

Slowly Flea was regaining her senses, and the squatter's curses struck her ears like a whiplash. Bitter, scalding tears blinded her as, holding her thin skirt to her bleeding nose, she stumbled up the ladder. With anger unappeased, Lon, staggering like one drunken, took his cap from the peg and went out.

When Lon called Flukey, Flea followed her brother into the night, while he arranged the thief's tools in the boat. There was a dull roar and rush of the wind, as it tossed the lake into gigantic whitecaps, which added to the girl's suffering. Her young soul was smarting beneath the scathing injustice. As she watched Lem and Lon pull away, with Flukey at the rudder, Flea squatted on the beach, bent her head, and wept long and wildly.

A gentle, sympathetic touch of a warm tongue made her put out her arms and draw s.n.a.t.c.het into them. It comforted her to feel the faithful heart beating against her own. That Lon disliked to have her and Flukey about him, she knew; but she had not known until today that he hated her. He had never before told her so. Flea caught her breath in a gasp, and turned her eyes to a rift in a rock where the scow lay. Only a dark line distinguished it in the shadows. At the thought that it was to be forced upon her for a home, she cried again, and s.n.a.t.c.het, from his haven of rest, lifted his pointed yellow nose and wailed dismally, striving with all his dog's soul to a.s.suage her unusual grief.

The distant sound of a hoot-owl startled Flea from her tears. It was a familiar sound to her and came as a call from a friend.

Creeping into the low woodshed, Flea took up a bundle of f.a.gots from the corner, and, closing the door on s.n.a.t.c.het that he might not follow her, mounted the hill with the wood under her arm. Once at the top of the lane, she opened her lips and echoed the hoot. She pa.s.sed through a thicket of sumac into a clearing where a number of sheep were huddled together in the cold night air. An answer came back almost instantly from the ragged rocks, and, squatting in a hollow, Flea sat patiently until the branches broke below her. A woman with tangled hair came creeping cautiously forward.

"Who be there?" she whispered.

"It's Flea, Screech Owl. Be the bats a runnin' in yer head?"

"Yep, child," the woman answered mournfully. "The f.a.gots be given out, too, and I'm a huntin' of 'em. The night's cold."

"I was lookin' for ye this afternoon, Screechy," said Flea. "Set down."

The lean, half-starved woman dropped beside the girl. Flea put out her hand and smoothed down the rough hair on Scraggy's black cat. The animal, usually so vicious, purred in delight, rubbing his nose against the girl's hand.

"Air the little Flea wantin' the owl to tell her somethin'?"

"Yep," replied Flea doubtfully.

"And ye brought yer old Screechy a little present?"

"Yep."

"What?"

"Some f.a.gots to keep ye warm, Screechy."

"Where be they?"

"Here by my side."

"Ye be a good Flea," cackled Screechy. "Be ye in trouble?"

"Yep. So be Flukey. Can ye tell me anything 'bout Flukey?"

The woman frowned. "Flukey, Flukey, yer brother," she repeated. "I ain't a likin' boys, 'cause they throw stones at me."

"Flukey never throwed no stones at ye, Screechy, an' he's unhappy now.

He'll bring ye a lot more f.a.gots sometime to heat yer bones by."

"Aye, I'm a needin' heat. My bones be stiff, and my blood's nothin' but water, and my eyes ain't seein' nothin'."

"Don't they see things in the dark," asked the girl, superst.i.tiously, "ghosts and things?"

"Aye, Flea; and the things I see now I'll tell ye if they be good or bad--mind ye, good or bad!"

"Good or bad," repeated Flea.

At length, after a silence, the girl broke forth. "Air Flukey in yer eyes, Screechy?"

"Yep, Flea, and so be you; but there ain't much for ye, savin' that ye go a long journey lookin' for a good land."

Bending her head nearer, Flea coaxed, "What good land, Screechy dear?"

"Yer's and Flukey's, Flea."