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

by one in the darkness the men had at length to ride home to their waiting families, with no news. Strange things they had to think on, places in the swamps where they had not been able to touch bottom, places where the rushes grew rank and thick with scarcely space enough for nest of the crying waterbirds⁠—stretches with no sign of a lost man, and no hope for one losing himself.⁠ ⁠…

At the Keiths’ Isobel McLaughlin in Peter’s bed in the kitchen was lying praying. Except his mother, no one prayed as fervently for Peter’s safe return as Isobel. All that she asked of the Almighty was that Peter might be found alive and well enough to take the shame away from her good innocent Wully. If Peter was brought home dead⁠—how then ever, in the face of Libby’s grief, could she say that the beloved was a scoundrel! How could she ever endure not saying it? That would be too bitter a dose for her. Let God not give her that cup to drink! If fervency could have brought an answer to prayer, how quickly would Peter have appeared!

Her passionate hope had been some consolation to Libby, who so little understood the reason for it. Libby was lying down in her room, not because Isobel had besought her to, but because she was no longer able to stand up. Isobel wanted to get some rest, but she couldn’t leave off her praying to God, the good Father. She hoped Libby might sleep till morning.

But the moon rose after midnight, and with the first flicker of its light, Libby came out of the bedroom, tying a skirt about her. Isobel sat up in bed.

“There’s moonlight now,” said Libby. Even from the doorway, where she stood in the darkness, Isobel could hear her breathing.

“Lie down, Libby!” she implored.

“I mind wee Jennie Price,” said Libby.

“Ah, Libby!” protested Isobel, shrinking from the mention of such poignancy. Jennie Price was the six-year-old who had been lost in the grasses, wandering from her home some twenty miles down the creek, a year or two ago. What but that had all the women been thinking of all the day and shrinking from mentioning.

Libby was groping about for her shoes which she had left in the kitchen.

“Just near home, Isobel! Forty yards from her mother’s door.”

“You can’t go out by night, Libby. You can’t stand up!”

“Crawling towards home, it may be.”

“Libby! Libby!” cried Isobel, getting up. Forty yards from home they had found the girlish skeleton the next spring, in a place a hundred men would swear in court they had sought through dozens of times. The mother herself had come upon it. Had the child been stolen away for some evil purpose, and flung back later to die? No one would ever know.

“The wee bones were all white, Isobel!”

“Spare us, Libby! Peter’s a man grown!”

The women went out calling down the road together. At dawn, when John McCreath came out to milk, while yet the stars were shining, he heard Libby calling hoarsely, “Lammie! Lammie! Your mother’s coming!”

XVII

By that time men were beginning to gather again⁠—middle-aged men on horseback, stiff from years of toil, bearded great young men with dogs at their heels, large-boned, ruddy, gaunt, rugged of face like Lincoln, overgrown boys, and boys of the very smallest size which fearful mothers could be persuaded to let go into possible danger⁠—they came walking or riding towards the Keiths’ for thirty miles away. The younger ones were sent on horseback to spread the news along all the roads towards town, even along obscure untraveled paths that led to the cross-state coach road to the north. In the morning council Wully had again ventured to suggest that Peter had of his own accord gone back to the place from which he had so mysteriously come. Again they all refused to consider his suggestion. Was it likely a man should return without a glimpse of those he had come so far to see? The whole thing was baffling. It seemed beyond belief that no one had seen him come. That could have happened only on such a day as the Fourth, when all the settlers were away from home. Wully wondered to himself, grimly, however, why, if Peter had managed to come once, unperceived, he would not be able to come again as slyly. He didn’t see that to tell what he knew would ease the situation. And he had no intention of telling it if he had proof that it would have ended the search. He would tell that tale only to justify his making Chirstie safe from violence. He felt strangely distant from those whose eagerness to help increased with each glimpse they got of Libby Keith. At his father’s bidding he went again with a party to search the creek underbrush.

From morning till noon they went on fighting their way through the impenetrable briary wall of green, stopping only for breath at the water’s edge, scratched, mosquito-bitten, baffled, exhausted. Once John and Wully happened to get to the bank at the same moment, and John, stooping down to wash his face, said to his brother, carefully lowering his voice;

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you are right, Wully. It would be just like Peter to have to leave some place suddenly, in some scrape. I think it probable, after all, that he had started on short notice for the west, and passing O’Brien’s, was unable to resist the smell. He wouldn’t even have had the decency to go to see his mother if he had been within half a mile of the house!”

Wully said nothing to this, but it comforted him to know how low John’s opinion of Peter was. He could work with new energy after that. At noon the ten of them stopped at the nearest house for dinner.

There was not a woman in the neighborhood who would not have been glad to set dinner before