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

“You think he’s alive, don’t you, Wully?” she was asking him, between sobs and sniffles. “You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” He marveled to see how utterly she shared his aunt’s grief. She could scarcely have wanted more Peter’s return, if he had been her own son. He answered staunchly;

“No! Of course he’s not dead, mother! A man don’t die from sleeping outdoors a couple of nights in July!”

“You don’t think⁠—he’s fallen into some slough⁠—and drowned, do you?”

“No, mother! Of course not! He’s around some place, drunk, likely! Don’t cry, mother!”

“How could he be alive⁠—some place⁠—and let us all go on hunting him?”

Suddenly she added, with a greater sob, lifting her head;

“Wully, if Peter’s alive, and just letting his mother think he’s lost, we ought to whip him when he’s found! Every man that’s spent a day hunting him ought to give him a⁠—beating! Wully, he’d never do that! I think he’s⁠—he’s dead!”

“Mother, mother! Don’t you cry so! It’ll be all right. They’ll find him soon!”

“If you don’t find him soon, Auntie will go mad!”

Wully could have cried aloud the conviction that came flooding over him that minute: “If we do find him alive, and I get my hands on him, you will go mad!” He began, like a child begging;

“Mother, don’t you stay here! You come home with me! It’s enough to kill you, staying here with Auntie! Let someone else stay a while. Why can’t Aunt Flora stay with her today? You come on home with me!”

“I can stay. She wants me. I can stand anything, if only he’s found. Wully!” she cried, raising a face toward him distorted with tears, “don’t you know where he is?”

If Chirstie had been there to see that face, she would have thought that now, at last, Isobel McLaughlin was betraying her secret, so visibly did forbidden questions tremble on her tongue. Wully only said, soothingly, indulgently;

“If I knew where he was, don’t you think I would go there and find him? Mother, you need a rest. You haven’t had enough sleep!”

His mother sat bending towards him, beseeching him with all her soul to tell her the truth. But not one of her passionate unspoken entreaties reached him. It never occurred to him that she might know. He sat looking at her sympathetically, troubled that she spoke words of such unusual foolishness, being overwrought by all that had befallen her.

“Won’t you come home with me?” he said again.

“No, I won’t!” she said, with some asperity, and put her head down on her arms on the table, and went on crying.

He rode away to his place in the hunt, and underneath all his greetings, his short and dry comments on the day’s possibilities, there stayed with him a troubled sense of pity for his mother. She was getting old. And he had treated her badly. Sometimes he even thought that he had treated her very badly in that affair, even though it was over now. All those hours, those murderous hours of the last days, he had never given her a thought. He hadn’t stopped in his hating long enough to imagine how deeply, how terribly, he was about to wound her. If he came upon Peter, and killed him⁠—as he must⁠—what would his mother do? How brokenly even now she grieved for Aunt Libby! What would her grief be like then? The thought sickened him. He said to himself bitterly that he was so tired, so confused, that if he came upon that damned snake alone, he’d likely shake hands with him and let him go! He scarcely knew what he was doing.

All the parties had changed places that day. It seemed impossible for men to hunt repeatedly through the same place with any heart. It was a fifteen-hour nightmare. Added to the growing sense of futility, of frustration, of physical exhaustion, and the burden of the heat, Wully had that uneasiness about his mother to harrow him. He had gone with the men who were searching through his own lands, that day, through the low land where he had so prayerfully hoped to bury his enemy. And he seldom was allowed even to hunt about alone. Someone or other was always near him, so that if he came upon that⁠—that⁠—he would have no chance to work his quick will upon him safely.

The fourth day they gathered again, going over routes that seemed hopeless. Peter, alive or dead, was simply in no place within miles. Not a little pebble, even, remained unturned now. The older men were sustaining themselves on strong drink more or less soberly, and the younger ones considerably less soberly. The first day of the alarm had been something of a picnic to thoughtless youngsters used to solitary hoeing, something of a diversion to men accustomed to plowing alone from dawn to darkness. But the excitement was dying away. Paths were beaten roads, and roads great wide highways. Miles of untrodden sloughs had become familiar ground, and acres of cryptic underbrush had become overworked monotony. What the slough had swallowed up, it would keep. If the tall grasses had treasures hidden, only the winter could bring low the tall grasses. The crowd dwindled.

First those from the farther and less concerned settlements went back to their work, protesting they would all be watching, that they would keep a wide and long lookout always, for any signs of news. They regretted that their harvests were urgent. They departed. Then day by day members of the clan returned to neglected fields. John McLaughlin kept his children hunting, and as for the Squire he vowed he would never stop. His sporting blood was up. For nine days more Wully and his father went again and again from impossible clue to foolish conjecture. Wully’s belief grew constantly stronger that Peter had simply gone back to wherever he had come from. But how he had done it on a road where one passerby made a day memorable, he couldn’t imagine.