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

a party of searchers. Not a woman who had not been frightening her little ones more carefully about wandering into the tall grass, such helpless slight persons, with that tall menace always waiting at hand for them. Marget McDowell had all the morning been looking from time to time down the road, hoping to see a horseman coming with good news. But no news came. She served the men. They ate in silence, hungrily. Having finished, they went out and lay down in the shade of the house. Most of them slept. Davie McDowell sat next to Wully, smoking vile homegrown tobacco in a stern old pipe. Beyond him Geordie Sproul went on theorizing in a lullabying voice. Wully was half asleep himself when he heard him saying;

“If we knew the girl to ask, we might learn something.” “Girl” when he pronounced it, rhymed with peril. He was a canny man, Geordie, and Wully was instantly awake.

“Hoots!” replied Davie. “He was never one to run after girils!”

“Was he not!” answered Geordie. His voice was so suggestive, so leering, that Wully sat up.

“It’s one o’clock!” he hastened to announce. “We ought to be going on!” He woke all the lads up. They started by twos and threes back towards the creek.

Wully might easily have asked Geordie privately what he meant by that comment of his. But he didn’t dare. Was it possible that Geordie, that unconsidered man, knew anything about Chirstie? Or about Wully McLaughlin’s private affairs? He must have meant something, and Wully wanted intensely to know what it was. Doubtless Davie McDowell would presently be inquiring, for gossip’s sake. But Wully assured himself that if Geordie really knew anything about the truth of the matter, he would never dare to tell it. Nor would he have dared to hint before Wully that he knew it! Only⁠—would he not dare? Men dared strange things, nowadays, it seemed! Even cowards like Peter Keith! They seemed to think Wully McLaughlin a soft, easygoing man. They would speedily find out their mistake! They would get rid of the idea that he was a man with whom one might safely take unspeakable liberties. If only he might have the fortune, the one chance in a thousand, or ten thousand, to come upon that damned snake, lying somewhere hidden.⁠ ⁠… Exhausted, sore in muscles and mind, he went on through the breathless thicket.

At four he came again to the water’s edge, and saw Chirstie’s brother Dod just coming out from a swim. He threw himself down under a great linden tree for a rest, and under his hand he saw Dod’s hat full of choice blackberries. Dod was undoubtedly preparing to make himself as comfortable as possible. He was weary enough to defy the world, and relinquish his pretenses of being a man. He made his decision known flatly.

“I’m not going back into that!” he announced. “I’m through!” It was plain that his swim hadn’t cooled his temper much.

Wully repressed a smile. Dod was extremely thin. The ridges of his ribs showed under his skin, which gleamed white and wet in places, in vivid contrast to his tanned arms and neck, and he was stepping along gingerly to avoid thorns, lifting his bony legs high. One of his eyelids had been scratched so that his eye was swollen shut.

“You’ve done enough,” said Wully. “You’ve got a bad eye there!”

The boy struggled wet into his shirt and overalls and stretching out near Wully, began dividing the berries. Wully had to notice, how men’s zeal to help Libby Keith vanished as she grew distant. In her presence, in the presence of Motherhood itself, so to speak, they were shamefaced and eager, deploring their helplessness, as men are while their wives labor in childbirth. But away from her agony, they forgot⁠ ⁠… as men do after labor is over⁠ ⁠… and turned again to their own comfort. Dod broke the silence surprisingly.

“Chirstie’d be glad if he was dead!” he said, resentfully.

“Why, Dod!” exclaimed Wully.

“She would that! She hates him!”

“He’s your cousin, lad!”

“He’s as much your cousin as he is mine! She can’t endure the sight of him!”

Wully sat up. He looked at Dod. He had thought of him always as a child. He was a big, tall boy now. Fourteen years old he was, and doubtless able to put two and two together. How much did he know? He must have heard people talking. Wully suddenly wondered why he had not always been afraid of Dod. To be sure, he had always been careful to keep on the good side of his little brother-in-law.

“He never done us any good!” Dod spoke vindictively.

Now what could he mean by that? Wully was getting excited. Why had the boy so great a resentment against Peter, instead of against him, Wully, under the circumstances? Dod’s sudden and apparent preference for Wully at once grew odious to him. Dod had chosen that morning to work with Wully. He was always choosing to work with him. Why? It seemed unaccountable to him that he had never been suspicious of the lad before. Wully dared not say to him;

“Well, he never did you any special harm, did he?” Suppose Dod would blurt out what he knew! He said, confusedly;

“Look here, Dod. You oughtn’t to talk that way! Not at this time, I mean⁠—you can’t speak ill of the dead, you know.”

“I ain’t said half the truth!”

“You know how Aunt Libby feels!” Wully urged stupidly. “And Chirstie wouldn’t like you to say that⁠—not now, you know⁠—”

“Old fool!” commented Dod. Undoubtedly he was meaning his aunt. Wully couldn’t approve of such sentiments in one so young.

“You ought to go home and get something put on your eye!” he began, hastily. “And if you feel like working in the morning, you come back with me again!”

Dod went away, unsolved and uncomforting. Hour by hour the seekers, conquered by fatigue and the growing assurance of futility, stopped more often for breath. They had time to gather more and more berries, from bushes