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

He turned and looked after his deserting wife. He could see her hurrying away from him. He had an idea of shouting to her to come back⁠—of commanding her to come back. But he knew she wouldn’t heed him. He ought never to have said so hateful a thing to her. As if she could want to go back to that⁠—He remembered how she had sat sobbing on the doorstep when he first went to her. He was glad to think of Peter Keith dying there, lonely, shrunken, filthy. He looked again after his wife. She went steadily eastward, running towards the town. But he had the baby. She would be coming back after a while!

He drove on, raging against her, trying to justify himself. He went so far that he could scarcely see her now. He might have gone on home, if there had not appeared on the horizon a team, coming towards him. Its approach was intolerable. Somebody who might know them was coming nearer. Somebody would see Wully McLaughlin riding westward, and presently overtake his wife running east! He turned around abruptly.

Facing east, he could just see her. He would quickly overtake her, and order her to get in and come home with him at once. He would never let her go to that livery stable full of drunks alone. He was getting near her.

Then a strange thing happened. He saw her stop and suddenly turn around, and come half running towards him as fast as she had run away. He kept his face hard, unrelenting. He saw when she came near that she was crying softly. She climbed quickly up when he stopped.

“I doubt he’s not dying,” she wept. “I can’t do it! He’s too strong, Wully! He’s tricky!”

She cuddled against him.

“Don’t cry!” he had to say.

“I won’t look at him!” she sobbed. “You know I don’t want to go back to him! You oughtn’t to have said that! You know I don’t like him! If you want to know how much I hate him, I’ll tell you! It was me that shot him that time. It wasn’t his foot I was aiming at, either!” She wept unrestrainedly.

“You shot him!” Wully gasped.

“He would come back! What could I do! There was no place to hide. I shot at him!”

She had shot him! She had been as desperate as that. He was horrified anew. She bent down to feel the baby’s hands, to cover him more securely. She wanted to say something else, but she couldn’t speak plainly because of her sobs. Yet she managed to urge the horses eastward.

“I’ll never look at him!” she cried passionately. “You needn’t think I like him! You oughtn’t to have said that!”

“I know it, Chirstie! I oughtn’t to have said such a thing. But you oughtn’t to have jumped out and run away that way.”

“Yes, I ought!” she retorted, swallowing, choking. “I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my place to do it. But my husband wouldn’t do his part! Wully, if you hurry now, hurry enough, they’ll just think you’ve been unloading. You won’t need to explain! I won’t have you doing such a mean thing. I’ve got enough bad things to tell without that! Hurry!”

They had passed the bridge on their burdened way home. They had come to the place at which Chirstie had so astonishingly defied him. They had ridden together in a silence broken only by the refreshed wee Johnnie’s cooing, as he bounced back and forth in his mother’s lap. Wully looked covertly at his wife from time to time, in awe. She wasn’t thinking now what a nice baby Peter Keith had been. Never once had she turned her face towards what was in the wagon box, to see if it was indeed dying. Returning to town, she had instructed him, womanlike, to be sure that Peter had no weapons concealed, no way of hurting a benefactor. And Wully had unloaded his lumber raging. Caught, he was, trapped. Having to do this unspeakable thing to satisfy the sentimentality of a woman, and to save his secret from desecration. Grimly he had made sure from the doctor that there was no chance of Peter living to reveal what Wully had so well kept hidden. Coldly he had ordered the men at the stable to wash the blood from that face, from that matted beard, as if Peter was their cousin, and not his. Grudgingly he had helped them deposit the bony thing in the wagon. Covered to his head, still as a bag of meal, Peter lay there when Wully McLaughlin drove to the hotel to get his wife. And she had never once turned her head towards him.

And now, when Wully looked at her from the corner of his eyes, his own anger, his bitter hatred seemed a small thing before hers. Her face was as white as marble, and as hard, one might have thought. Her mouth was screwed tight in loathing. She sat perfectly still, looking straight ahead, tragically. She wasn’t thinking of Aunt Libby now. Wully was almost afraid of her⁠ ⁠… afraid certainly to offer her comfort.

They rode west. The sun was high now, and shone dazzlingly over the brown stretches. The horses felt the stimulus of the frosty morning. Wee Johnnie jumped about, chuckling out his absurd little meaningless words. Three miles they went; four miles. From time to time Wully turned to assure himself that his enemy lay still. He would let him die there, without lifting a finger to lengthen his life by a second. The sight of that shape under the old brown blanket inflamed his hatred. He looked, and turned quickly away, remembering always that second time Peter had dared to lay violent hands on his wife. It was that second time he could never forgive, that second time.

The baby grew restless. He complained fretfully of his mother’s lack of attention. Wully gave him,