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

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, today, 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 partway 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 which 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