The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (small books to read .TXT) 📕

“Stay with me!” she cried. “Where you going?”

“There’s no one here,” he answered, beside himself, wanting to comfort her. “Come and see for yourself!” Trembling and crying she came out with him to the barn. That morning there was no great cement-floored barn to search through, in whose loft a hundred men might lie, nor long feeding sheds for steers, nor any towerlike silos. There were no scattered groups of lighted hog houses, nor garages nor heated drinking tanks. There were no machine sheds, nor ventilated corncribs, nor power plants nor icehouses, as now there are. Only that one little unconcealing barn, those small slight plantings, that innocent wheat, that shaved patch of the prairie which was the hayfield.

“He’s run out there!” Chirstie moaned, pointing to the distances. Somewhere out there he had lain in wait, perhaps, seeing Wully depart, maybe watching their just caresses. Somewhere out there he must be pausing now, watching them hunt for him. Wully was shaking with incredulous fury. It simply wasn’t possible that Peter Keith should so have underestimated him! But no wonder, after he had been such a fool as to let him go unpunished once! Oh, all Wully needed was one more chance at him.⁠ ⁠…

They ate no dinner. Chirstie lay down wearily. Wully with his gun in hand, stood watching, promising her he wouldn’t go far, or leave her alone more than a minute. She moaned as he came to her during the afternoon, to give her the baby;

“Oh, what’ll we ever do now, Wully!”

“Leave that to me!” he said, in such a voice that she could say no more just then.

“You won’t hurt him, Wully!” she begged again, thinking only of her husband’s safety.

“Will I not!” he answered grimly. She wept.

“There’s Aunt Libby!” she moaned.

“Is there!” he cried. There was no auntie in his intentions. He was thinking only of his wife⁠—who trembled and wept, temporarily.

“Wully, you’ll get into trouble! If he won’t bother us, let him come back!”

“He does bother me!” She dared not answer that tone. Wully choked, and turned away, to look out over the prairies again. A rattlesnake, that man was, hiding in the grass, a damned poison snake, and like a snake he should be treated. If it had been a windless day, one might have traced him through the grasses. But now one second of the wind swept away any trace of him. A good dog might have trailed him. But there was no dog at hand. In many places before Wully’s very eyes, a man⁠—a snake⁠—might walk upright and unperceived. Inside, Chirstie lay moaning in fever. Outside, Wully patrolled his premises, frustrated, raging.

In his excitement details came rushing back to his mind to which he had long and obstinately refused entrance. He remembered all the bits of confession that Chirstie had made to him the first night that, knowing her trouble, he had gone to claim her. Peter had loved her, he had wanted her for his, she had told him. But she wouldn’t listen to him, because she thought of Wully. She thought of herself as his. That was when she was living at her aunt’s, after her mother had died. Then once Aunt Libby had gone to stay with her sister who was having a baby. Wully could curse that woman’s name for having so blindly, so fondly, trusted her knavish son. Why couldn’t she have at least left Dod with his sister! But Chirstie hadn’t been afraid. Wasn’t Peter her cousin? She hadn’t been at all afraid. And that night, when there was no help within a mile, she had run out of the house, undressed, barefooted, across the snow⁠—till Peter caught her, and brought her back. Wully hadn’t often thought of that, because he couldn’t think of it and live. But it had no mercy on him now. That story cried aloud to him, shrieking through his mind. He would kill that man, and go to the sheriff and give himself up. He would stand up and tell any twelve men in the county that story, and come home acquitted. If only he could find the man! He went beating through the grasses nearer him, maddened by the feeling that it was in vain. To the west the treacherous grasses jeered at him wavingly, and to the east. North and south they mocked him.

The afternoon passed. Neither of them could eat at suppertime. Chirstie wouldn’t stay alone in the house while he went to milk. She insisted on crawling out to the barn, to be near him. She could scarcely sit up, so worn and weak she was. The baby howled bitterly, being neglected. Wully put him to sleep, laying him on the bed beside his mother. He shut the door to the east. It had no lock. It had never needed one. He put a chair against it, and sat down on the step of the other door, fingering his gun as the stars came out, watching, thinking sorely.

There was no jury that would not set him free when he told the story. What sort of men would those be who would say he had not done right to kill a poison snake? He would just tell them⁠—ah, but to tell that story, now, when it was being so well forgotten! To bring it all back to sneering ears, as it had been brought back to him so painfully fresh today! If only he could find the man, and kill him quietly, and bury him somewhere in the tall grasses, without anyone knowing! If only he might find him crouching there somewhere! So desirable did that consummation seem that he turned abruptly and went to the barn, to see if his spade, which his father had borrowed, had been returned to its place. Yes, there it was. He could laugh as he dug that grave in the farthest, most remote slough! By God, only two years ago the government of the United States had