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

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 saying 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.⁠ ⁠…

XVI

The neighborhood gathered at the alarm. By noon Wully’s father and mother were at the Keiths’, and the heads of families for miles around. Up and down the road the boys and younger men were halloing and beating about, and in the kitchen the wise old heads were holding a consultation. Young John McLaughlin had been sent for⁠—that is, Wully’s brother John, not the Squire’s John⁠—and all the men who according to Gib McTaggert’s story must have seen Peter the night before. As the elders waited their coming, they debated solemnly. What could have happened to a man between the McTaggerts’ corner and his home? A drunken man. A man said always to be weak. A man known to be lazy. With a storm coming on. And sharp lightning. A dark road, with deep waters not far from it. Blinded by the lightning could he have turned from the path and been drowned? Could he have fallen and broken a leg? Men