CHAPTER XV
"YOU go on with the corn," Wully said to John at breakfast. "I'm taking Chirstie over to mother's." John made no comment. Chirstie looked as if she had had fever unusually severe the day before, and naturally she would be better cared for at the McLaughlins'. John suspected nothing. He wasn't especially observant. Talking still of the celebration, he didn't see Wully watching his wife, covertly watching the way her eyes turned hauntedly toward any slight sound out of doors. Wully went through with the prayers as usual. "Prosper us in our duties this day!" he implored, with unaccustomed fervency. John went away to his work. Chirstie and the baby got into the wagon, where Wully had slyly hidden his gun—he had to conceal his sterner purpose from her. He said to her simply that he had made Peter get out once, and he could do it again. He saw no use in saying how much more thoroughly he intended doing it this time.
They scarcely spoke, riding away together, man and wife. Sitting there, so close to him, she seemed so dear . . . so dear . . . and life so precious. . . . Why should he have to endanger it now just when he was beginning to appreciate it, for the sake of that man's villainy! The poignant silence struggled and surged about them, his rage, her fear, their love fighting together with no relief in expression, her beseeching, warning eyes searching the face he tried to keep averted.
No one at his mother's had heard of Peter's return. That was proved by the fact that no one began talking about it. Chirstie had had fever the day before, Wully announced to them shortly. He was worried about her. He had to go over to the store, and he thought she had better be left where she could have some care. He said he and John could "bach it" a few days. She spoke up sharply and demanded that he come for her by evening at least. He had to promise that much, to keep her from exciting suspicion. It was plain she meant to take no denial. Her eyes implored him to be careful.
Lightened of his encumbrances, he drove away. He was praying that circumstances might be made to serve him, so that he could get his task over secretly. If not, then Peter would find that no woman could help him now! He drove straight along towards his aunt's, grimly, not having to nurse his wrath, having only to restrain it. He wasn't made for anger, as he knew. It had even as a little boy always made him ill. It had exhausted him now. He felt limp. And he must be strong and calm for what was coming. He let his horses take their own gait. The heat of the sun, after the rain of the night, was making the country one great steam bath. He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
He came to the McTaggerts' corner. John had seen that man so far home the night before. If John had known then all that story, what a chance he would have had. Thank God he hadn't known! But when he did know, to-day, now, in a few hours, he would stand by Wully with what a sincere strength! Of course John couldn’t be expected to stay and look after the farm while Wully was taken—where? Maybe Andy would do that. And Chirstie would have to stay at his mother’s until—what? His happiness was scarcely more now than a sickening faint memory. He could do what he had to do. The McLaughlins could always do that. And do it well!
He could see the little Keith house now. He drove on towards it There was no one working in the hayfield. There was no one hoeing corn. No sign of life but a tethered colt in the path. He drove up, and got out of the wagon. He tied his steaming horses to the barn. He hadn't taken his gun into his hands yet, when the door opened, and his aunt came out.
She was ready for some work in the garden apparently. She wore a kind of sunbonnet made by sewing a ruffle of old calico part way round a man's old cap, to protect her neck from the sun. She saw Wully, and her face lightened with a greeting.
"Is it you, Wully!" she exclaimed. "And how's Chirstie the day? We missed you yesterday. She had too much fever, I doubt———"
"She's better. She’s at mother's. Where’s everybody?"
"Your uncle’s at the McNairs'."
Trying to hide that skunk, was she!
"I want to see Peter!"
"What Peter?" she asked with a start.
"Your Peter!"
"My Peter!"
"Yes!" She needn't think she could work that!
"Did you think he was here, Wully?" she asked, hurt.
"John saw him last night," he cried accusingly.
"What John?"
"Our John! He saw him last night!"
"Saw who?"
"Saw your Peter!" Could it be———
"Saw my Peter!"
"He came home with him last night as far as the McTaggerts'!"
"Last night!"
"Yes!"
“With my Peter!"
"Yes!" stammered Wully.
Peter had never got home. There was no doubt about that.
Libby Keith was standing transfixed there. Her gray face began working.
Suddenly she put her hand up to her head, and gave a moan.
"He's destroyed! He never got to me!"
She started and ran past Wully in the path, and had climbed into his wagon before he could stop her. She gave his hitched horses such a slap with the lines that they plunged strongly. He sprang to get them before they broke away. He jumped to his place and seized the lines.
"You can't go with me!" he shouted at her. He couldn't throw her out of the wagon, and the horses were all he could manage, thanks to her excitement. As if in obedience to the thoughts of the humans behind them, they were racing down the path towards the McCreaths', over whch Wully had just come.
"You can't come with me!" he cried again.
She never heeded him.
"He'll have stopped at the McCreaths'!" she said, moaning. Moaning . . . and making little sounds of speed to his team, which couldn't possibly have been tearing ahead more madly. She sat rocking back and forth, and making sounds which unmanned him, overwrought as he was by his own excitement and hatred. Through the steaming slough they plunged and splashed. He didn’t care now how quickly they came to their destination. He gave up trying to control the horses. Anything to get away from that noise she was making, that anguished crooning. Never was a man with murder in his heart so undone by the grief he intended augmenting.
The sandy-haired bewhiskered McCreath had stopped still in his dooryard to watch the runaway team coming up. When he saw who it was, he dropped the hoe in his hand, and came on out down the path to meet the evident crisis. Wully pulled up the panting horses, and before they had stopped, Libby Keith cried to the man approaching,
"Where is he? Where's my Peter?"
At first he could not understand so impossible a question. She scrambled perilously down, and started on a run for the house, with him following.
"Where is he?" she cried again, turning on him. Then McCreath understood. She was mad, the poor body. He said gently;
"He isn’t here, you know, Libby. Peter isn’t here."
"He is!" she cried. "He's come! They seen him!"
Wully had followed them. McCreath turned to him, and got a nod in confirmation. They were at the door, now, and Mrs. McCreath had come that far to see what the disturbance was. McCreath cried heartily to his wife;
"Peter's home, Aggie!"
Tears sprang quickly to Aggie's eyes.
"Where is he!" Libby cried at the same moment.
"He's not here, you know," McCreath repeated kindly.
"Not here!" Libby repeated.
"John saw him last night," Wully cried angrily.
"Where?" they all demanded.
John had seen him at O'Brien's, and as far on the way home as the McTaggerts' corner. And they had supposed he must have turned in at the McCreaths' when the storm came up.
"He’s at the McTaggerts', then!" McCreath seemed sure of it. But Libby Keith couldn't wait till the words were out of his mouth. She was down the path again, and climbing up into the wagon, and the McCreaths were following her, breathing out their congratulations. They didn't know when any news had pleased them as much as that. They were that glad for her. They were shouting after the galloping team in vain.
And again he had to sit by her, as she went on again, crooning and whimpering, making noises like a shot rabbit. He would drive his horses till they fell in their tracks to get away from that torture.
On the corner, where the little path from the Keiths' joined the wider road, the McTaggerts were building a house. Three men were working on the roof of it, and from the vantage of the height they watched the team flying towards them. They speculated about it. They came down.
"Where's my Peter?" she shouted to them before they could hear her. She kept shouting it as she climbed down.
They stared at her.
They hadn’t seen anything of her Peter.
They had to go all over that again. John McLaughlin had seen him at this corner last night. Where was he now?
Wully wouldn't be balked. Libby Keith wouldn't be cheated. The McTaggerts stood looking at the two blankly.
Where was Jimmy McTaggert, who had been drinking with Peter last night? He ought to know.
Jimmy McTaggert was wakened from the sleep that followed his holiday spree, and dragged to the light of the morning, half clothed.
He remembered nothing. Wully turned from him wrathfully. Where was his older brother? Let Gib be brought. Gib wouldn't have been too drunk to remember. Gib was in a far field. A boy went for him horseback. They made Libby sit down. They stood around dazed. Wully went on explaining what he knew again and again. It seemed hours before Gib appeared.
There stood Gib before them, telling the truth, and making it believed. They had come with John from O'Brien's to be sure, and at the corner John had ridden on home, and Peter had turned and gone walking down the path towards home. That was all that Gib knew about it Peter had Walked right along, not staggering, or seeming drunk.
The men stood looking blankly at one another, fumbling among possibilities, in quietness—for one second.
Then Libby cried out.
"He's fallen! He's destroyed!" She started down the path, towards the road calling him, making a more terrible sound than ever—a stronger sound.
"Lammie!" she cried. "Where are you? Mother's coming!" Some place between that corner and her home she thought him lying helpless, dying maybe. Lying drunk, the men thought, and nodded significantly to each other. It flashed through Wully's bewildered mind that he had probably started back towards Chirstie. Or maybe back to O'Brien's, someone suggested. Mrs. McTaggert was running after Libby Keith. The men started to help her search. In decency they could do no less. They tried to soothe her. He would be sleeping somewhere. Had she looked in her own barn? Could it be, they wondered vaguely, thinking of her other children, that had happened . . . anything tragic?
Wully had to join them. After all, she was mad, stark mad and shrieking over the prairies, and she wasn't a McTaggert that they should have to care for her. She was his father's sister, and he must see what became of her. Down the road she ran, calling out to her son, and commanding them. They were to go for her husband. They were to get her brothers, her neighbors, to send men on horses to look for him. Some of them turned back to obey her. Wully ran along with her.
Beating along both sides of the road they went, tramping down the grasses, calling him—calling till Wully felt tears running down his face. Not that he pitied her. He cursed her. He was sayinging to himself, "God damn you, stop that noise!" And to her, habit-bound as he was, and shrinking from the pain of her voice, “Let me do the shouting, Auntie! Let me call for you!" He didn't know his voice when he lifted it. So how could Peter know who was begging him for an answer! Oh, if only he might come across him there, fallen, and make an end of this horror! Sometimes he stayed a distance from her in this wild hope. Sometimes he had to support her to keep her from falling. Down through the slough they went, splashing and bedraggled. Mrs. McTaggert, with a baby in her arms, followed as best she might. The slough was shallow where the path crossed it, but how deep the waters might be on either side, no one knew. Libby Keith stretched out her arms dramatically towards them.
"Lammie! Mother's coming!" she implored.
Mrs. McTaggert sobbed. But she sobbed only like a woman. Not like a . . .