Joe, stunned by the sudden tragedy, stood for a moment as he had stopped when he laid his hand on Isom"s shoulder. Ollie, on the other side of the fallen man, leaned over and peered into his face.
In that moment a wild turmoil of hopes and fears leaped in her hot brain. Was it deliverance, freedom? Or was it only another complication of shame and disgrace? Was he dead, slain by his own hand in the baseness of his own heart? Or was he only hurt, to rise up again presently with revilings and accusations, to make the future more terrible than the past. Did this end it; did this come in answer to her prayers for a bolt to fall on him and wither him in his tracks?
Even in that turgid moment, when she turned these speculations, guilty hopes, wild fears, in her mind, Isom"s eyelids quivered, dropped; and the sounding breath in his nostrils ceased.
Isom Chase lay dead upon the floor. In the crook of his elbow rested a little time-fingered canvas bag, one corner of which had broken open in his fall, out of which poured the golden gleanings of his hard and bitter years.
On the planks beneath his shoulder-blades, where his feet had come and gone for forty years, all leached and whitened by the strong lye of countless scrubbings at the hands of the old wife and the new, his blood ran down in a little stream. It gathered in a cupped and hollowed plank, and stood there in a little pool, glistening, black. His wife saw her white face reflected in it as she raised up from peering into his blank, dead eyes.
"Look at his blood!" said she, hoa.r.s.ely whispering. "Look at it--look at it!"
"Isom! Isom!" called Joe softly, a long pause between his words, as if summoning a sleeper. He stooped over, touching Isom"s shoulder.
There was a trickle of blood on Isom"s beard, where the rifle ball had struck him in the throat; back of his head that vital stream was wasting, enlarging the pool in the hollowed plank near Ollie"s foot.
"He"s dead!" she whispered.
Again, in a flash, that quick feeling of lightness, almost joyful liberty, lifted her. Isom was dead, dead! What she had prayed for had fallen. Cruel, hard-palmed Isom, who had gripped her tender throat, was dead there on the floor at her feet! Dead by his own act, in the anger of his loveless heart.
"I"m afraid he is," said Joe, dazed and aghast.
The night wind came in through the open door and vexed the lamp with hara.s.sing breath. Its flame darted like a serpent"s tongue, and Joe, fearful that it might go out and leave them in the dark with that bleeding corpse, crossed over softly and closed the door.
Ollie stood there, her hands clenched at her sides, no stirring of pity in her heart for her husband with the stain of blood upon his harsh, gray beard. In that moment she was supremely selfish. The possibility of accusation or suspicion in connection with his death did not occur to her. She was too shallow to look ahead to that unpleasant contingency.
The bright lure of liberty was in her eyes; it was dancing in her brain.
As she looked at Joe"s back the moment he stood with hand on the door, her one thought was:
"Will he tell?"
Joe came back and stood beside the lifeless form of Isom, looking down at him for a moment, pity and sorrow in his face. Then he tiptoed far around the body and took up his hat from the floor where it had fallen in Isom"s scramble for the sack of gold.
"What are we going to do?" asked Ollie, suddenly afraid.
"I"ll go after the doctor, but he can"t help him any," said Joe. "I"ll wake up the Greenings as I go by and send some of them over to stay with you."
"Don"t leave me here with it--don"t leave me!" begged Ollie. "I can"t stay here in the house with it alone!"
She shrank away from her husband"s body, unlovely in death as he had been unloved in life, and clung to Joe"s arm.
But a little while had pa.s.sed since Isom fell--perhaps not yet five minutes--but someone had heard the shot, someone was coming, running, along the hard path between gate and kitchen door. Ollie started.
"Listen!" she said. "They"re coming! What will you say?"
"Go upstairs," he commanded, pushing her toward the door, harshness in his manner and words. "It"ll not do for you to be found here all dressed up that way."
"What will you tell them--what will you say?" she insisted, whispering.
"Go upstairs; let me do the talking," he answered, waving her away.
A heavy foot struck the porch, a heavy hand beat a summons on the door.
Ollie"s white dress gleamed a moment in the dark pa.s.sage leading to the stairs, the flying end of her veil glimmered.
"Come in," called Joe.
Sol Greening, their neighbor, whose gate was almost opposite Isom"s, whose barn was not eighty rods from the kitchen door, stood panting in the lamplight, his heavy beard lifting and falling on his chest.
"What--what"s happened--who was that shootin"--Isom! G.o.d A"mighty, is he hurt?"
"Dead," said Joe dully, standing hat in hand. He looked dazedly at the excited man in the door, whose mouth was open as he stared fearfully at the corpse.
"How? Who done it?" asked Greening, coming in on tiptoe, his voice lowered to a whisper, in the cautious fashion of people who move in the vicinity of the sound-sleeping dead. The tread of living man never more would disturb old Isom Chase, but Sol Greening moved as silently as a blowing leaf.
"Who done it?" he repeated.
"He did," answered Joe.
"_He_ done it!" repeated Greening, looking from the rifle, still clutched in Isom"s hand, to the gold in the crook of his arm, and from that to Joe"s blanched face. "_He_ done it!"
"Jerking down the gun," explained Joe, pointing to the broken rack.
"Jerkin" down the gun! What"d he want--look--look at all that money! The sack"s busted--it"s spillin" all over him!"
"He"s dead," said Joe weakly, "and I was going after the doctor."
"Stone dead," said Greening, bending over the body; "they ain"t a puff of breath left in him. The doctor couldn"t do him no good, Joe, but I reckon----"
Greening straightened up and faced Joe, sternly.
"Where"s Missis Chase?" he asked.
"Upstairs," said Joe, pointing.
"Does _she_ know? Who was here when it happened?"
"Isom and I," said Joe.
"G.o.d A"mighty!" said Greening, looking at Joe fearfully, "just you and him?"
"We were alone," said Joe, meeting Greening"s eyes unfalteringly. "We had some words, and Isom lost his temper. He jumped for the gun and I tried to stop him, but he jerked it by the barrel and the hammer caught."
"Broke his neck," said Greening, mouth and eyes wide open; "broke it clean! Where"d that money come from?"
"I don"t know," said Joe; "I didn"t see it till he fell."
"Words!" said Greening, catching at it suddenly, as if what Joe had said had only then penetrated his understanding. "You and him had some words!"
"Yes, we had some words," said Joe.