The woman half rose and then sat down again, rocking the child in her arms.
"You"re lyin" to me, Tom-Jeff Gordon. Hit"s on"y a lie to make me tell!"
she panted.
"No, it"s the truth. I was sorry for you and helped you because--well, because of the old times. But everybody has misunderstood, even Miss Dabney."
Silence again; the silence of the high mountain plateau and the whispering pines. Then she asked softly:
"Was you aimin" to marry her, Tom-Jeff?"
His voice was somber. "I"ve never had the beginning of a chance; and besides, she is promised to another man."
The woman was breathing hard again. "I heerd about that, too--jest the other day. I don"t believe hit!"
"It is true, just the same. But I didn"t come out here to talk about Miss Dabney. I want to know a name--the name of a man."
She shook her head again and relapsed into unresponsiveness.
"I cayn"t tell; he"d sh.o.r.e kill me. He"s always allowed he"d do hit if I let on."
"Tell me his name, and I"ll kill him before he ever gets a chance at you," was the savage rejoinder.
"D"ye reckon you"d do that, Tom-Jeff--for me?"
The light of the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she said it, but there was no answering thrill of pa.s.sion in his blood. For one moment, indeed, the b.e.s.t.i.a.l demon whispered that here was vengeance of a sort, freely proffered; but the fiercer devil thrust this one aside, and Tom found himself looking consciously and deliberately into the abyss of crime. Once he might have said such a thing in the mere exuberance of anger, meaning nothing more deadly than the retaliatory buffet of pa.s.sion. But now--
It was as if the curtain of the civilizing, the humanizing, ages had been withdrawn a hand"s-breadth to give him a clear outlook on primordial chaos. Once across the mystic threshold, untrammeled by the hamperings of tradition, unterrified by the threat of the mythical future, the human atom becomes its own law, the arbiter of its own momentary destiny. What it wills to do, it may do--if iron-shod chance, blind and stumbling blindly, does not happen to trample on and efface it. Who first took it on him to say, _Thou shalt not kill_? What were any or all of the prohibitions but the frantic shrillings of some of the atoms to the others?
In the clear outlook Thomas Gordon saw himself as one whose foot was already across the threshold. True, he had thus far broken with the world of time-honored traditions only in part. But why should he scruple to be wholly free? If the man whose deed of brutality or pa.s.sion was disturbing the chanceful equilibrium for two other human dust-grains should be identified, why should he not be effaced?
The child at Nan"s breast stirred in its sleep and threw up its tiny hands in the convulsive movement which is the human embryo"s first unconscious protest against the helplessness of which it is born inheritor. Tom stood up, beating the air softly with the hunting-crop.
"The man has spoiled your life, Nan; and, incidentally, he has muddied the spring for me--robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out--like that." A b.u.mblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized ma.s.s of black and yellow down and broken wing-filaments.
The glow in the dark eyes of the woman had died down again, and her voice was hard and lifeless when she said:
"But not for me, Tom-Jeff; you ain"t wantin" to kill him like my brother would, if I had one."
"No; not at all for you, Nan," he said half-absently. And then he tramped away to the gate, and put a leg over Saladin, and rode down the straggling street of the little settlement, again in the face and eyes of all who cared to see.
The bay had measured less than a mile of the homeward way when there came a clatter of hoof-beats in the rear. Tom awoke out of the absent fit, spoke to Saladin and rode the faster. Nevertheless, the pursuing horseman overtook him, and a drawling voice said:
"Hit"s right smart wicked to shove the bay thataway down-hill, son."
Tom pulled his horse down to a walk. He was in no mood for companionship, but he knew Pettigra.s.s would refuse to be shaken off.
"Where have you been?" he asked sourly.
"Me? I been over to McLemore"s Valley, lookin" at some brood-mares that old man Mac is tryin" to sell the Major."
"Did you come through Pine k.n.o.b?"
"Sh.o.r.e, I did. I was a-settin" on Brother Bill Layne"s porch whilst you was talkin" to Nan Bryerson. Seems sort o" pitiful you cayn"t let that pore gal alone, Tom-Jeff."
"That"s enough," said Tom hotly. "I"ve heard all I"m going to about that thing, from friends or enemies."
"I ain"t no way sh.o.r.e about that," said the horse-trader easily. "I was "lottin" to say a few things, m"self."
Tom pulled the bay up short in the cart track.
"There"s the road," he said, pointing. "You can have the front half or the back half--whichever you like."
j.a.pheth"s answer was a good-natured laugh and a tacit refusal to take either.
"You cayn"t rile me thataway, boy," he said. "I"ve knowed you a heap too long. Git in the fu"ther rut and take your medicine like a man."
Since there appeared to be no help for it, Tom set his horse in motion again, and j.a.pheth gave him a mile of silence in which to cool down.
"Now you listen at me, son," the horse-trader began again, when he judged the cooling process was sufficiently advanced. "I ain"t goin" to tell no tales out o" school this here one time. But you got to let Nan alone, d"ye hear?"
"Oh, shut up!" was the irritable rejoinder. "I"ll go where I please, and do what I please. You seem to forget that I"m not a boy any longer!"
"Ya-as, I do; that"s the toler"ble straight fact," drawled the other.
"But I ain"t so much to blame; times you ack like a boy yit, Tom-Jeff."
Tom was silent again, turning a thing over in his mind. It was a time to bend all means to the one end, the trivial as well as the potent.
"Tell me something, j.a.phe," he said, changing front in the twinkling of an eye. "Is Nan coming back to the dog-keeper"s cabin when the family leaves the hotel?"
""Tain"t goin" to make any difference to you if she does," said Pettigra.s.s, wondering where he was to be hit next.
"It may, if you"ll do me a favor. You"ll be where you can see and hear.
I want to know who visits her--besides Miss Ardea."
Brother j.a.pheth"s smile was more severe than the sharpest reproach.
"Still a-harpin" on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been erbout the best friend you"ve had, barrin" your daddy, for a right smart spell o" years. Don"t you keep on tryin" to th"ow dust in my eyes."
"Call it what you please; I don"t care what you think or say. But when you find a man hanging around Nan--"
"They"s one right now," said the horse-trader casually.
Tom reined up as if he would ride back to Pine k.n.o.b forthwith.
"Who is it?" he demanded.
"Young fellow named Kincaid--jest back f"om out West, somewheres.
Brother Bill Layne let on to me like maybe he"d overlook what cayn"t be he"ped, and marry Nan anyhow. And that"s another reason you got to keep away."