The Bondboy Read online

  Ollie stood there, her hands clenched at her sides, no stirring of pity in her heart for her husband with the stain of blood upon his harsh, gray beard. In that moment she was supremely selfish. The possibility of accusation or suspicion in connection with his death did not occur to her. She was too shallow to look ahead to that unpleasant contingency. The bright lure of liberty was in her eyes; it was dancing in her brain. As she looked at Joe’s back the moment he stood with hand on the door, her one thought was:

  “Will he tell?”

  Joe came back and stood beside the lifeless form of Isom, looking down at him for a moment, pity and sorrow in his face. Then he tiptoed far around the body and took up his hat from the floor where it had fallen in Isom’s scramble for the sack of gold.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Ollie, suddenly afraid.

  “I’ll go after the doctor, but he can’t help him any,” said Joe. “I’ll wake up the Greenings as I go by and send some of them over to stay with you.”

  “Don’t leave me here with it–don’t leave me!” begged Ollie. “I can’t stay here in the house with it alone!”

  She shrank away from her husband’s body, unlovely in death as he had been unloved in life, and clung to Joe’s arm.

  But a little while had passed since Isom fell–perhaps not yet five minutes–but someone had heard the shot, someone was coming, running, along the hard path between gate and kitchen door. Ollie started.

  “Listen!” she said. “They’re coming! What will you say?”

  “Go upstairs,” he commanded, pushing her toward the door, harshness in his manner and words. “It’ll not do for you to be found here all dressed up that way.”

  “What will you tell them–what will you say?” she insisted, whispering.

  “Go upstairs; let me do the talking,” he answered, waving her away.

  A heavy foot struck the porch, a heavy hand beat a summons on the door. Ollie’s white dress gleamed a moment in the dark passage leading to the stairs, the flying end of her veil glimmered.

  “Come in,” called Joe.

  Sol Greening, their neighbor, whose gate was almost opposite Isom’s, whose barn was not eighty rods from the kitchen door, stood panting in the lamplight, his heavy beard lifting and falling on his chest.

  “What–what’s happened–who was that shootin’–Isom! God A’mighty, is he hurt?”

  “Dead,” said Joe dully, standing hat in hand. He looked dazedly at the excited man in the door, whose mouth was open as he stared fearfully at the corpse.

  “How? Who done it?” asked Greening, coming in on tiptoe, his voice lowered to a whisper, in the cautious fashion of people who move in the vicinity of the sound-sleeping dead. The tread of living man never more would disturb old Isom Chase, but Sol Greening moved as silently as a blowing leaf.

  “Who done it?” he repeated.

  “He did,” answered Joe.

  “He done it!” repeated Greening, looking from the rifle, still clutched in Isom’s hand, to the gold in the crook of his arm, and from that to Joe’s blanched face. “He done it!”

  “Jerking down the gun,” explained Joe, pointing to the broken rack.

  “Jerkin’ down the gun! What’d he want–look–look at all that money! The sack’s busted–it’s spillin’ all over him!”

  “He’s dead,” said Joe weakly, “and I was going after the doctor.”

  “Stone dead,” said Greening, bending over the body; “they ain’t a puff of breath left in him. The doctor couldn’t do him no good, Joe, but I reckon––”

  Greening straightened up and faced Joe, sternly.

  “Where’s Missis Chase?” he asked.

  “Upstairs,” said Joe, pointing.

  “Does she know? Who was here when it happened?”

  “Isom and I,” said Joe.

  “God A’mighty!” said Greening, looking at Joe fearfully, “just you and him?”

  “We were alone,” said Joe, meeting Greening’s eyes unfalteringly. “We had some words, and Isom lost his temper. He jumped for the gun and I tried to stop him, but he jerked it by the barrel and the hammer caught.”

  “Broke his neck,” said Greening, mouth and eyes wide open; “broke it clean! Where’d that money come from?”

  “I don’t know,” said Joe; “I didn’t see it till he fell.”

  “Words!” said Greening, catching at it suddenly, as if what Joe had said had only then penetrated his understanding. “You and him had some words!”

  “Yes, we had some words,” said Joe.

  “Where’s Missis Chase?” demanded Greening again, turning his eyes suspiciously around the room.

  “Upstairs, I told you Sol,” replied Joe. “She went to bed early.”

  “Hush!” cautioned Greening, holding up his hand, listening intently. “I hear her movin’ around. Let me talk to her.”

  He tiptoed to the door at the foot of the stairs, and listened again; tiptoed back to the outer portal, which he had left swinging behind him, and closed it gently. There was no sound from above now to indicate that Ollie was awake. Sol stood near Isom’s body, straining and listening, his hand to his ear.

  “She must ’a’ been turnin’ over in bed,” said he. “Well, I guess I’ll have to call her. I hate to do it, but she’s got to be told.”

  “Yes, she must be told,” said Joe.

  Sol stood as if reflecting on it a little while. Joe was on the other side of Isom’s body, near the table. Both of them looked down into his bloodless face.

  “You had words!” said Greening, looking sternly at Joe. “What about?”

  “It was a matter between him and me, Sol, it don’t concern anybody else,” said Joe in a manner of dignity and reserve that was blunter than his words. Sol was not impressed by this implied rebuke, and hint to mind his own business.

  “That ain’t no answer,” said he.

  “Well, it will have to do for you, Sol,” said Joe.

  “I don’t know about that,” declared Sol. “If you can’t give me the straight of it, in plain words, I’ll have to take you up.”

  Joe stood thoughtfully silent a little while. Then he raised his head and looked at Sol steadily.

  “If there’s any arresting to be done–” he began, but checked himself abruptly there, as if he had reconsidered what he started to say. “Hadn’t we better pick Isom up off the floor?” he suggested.

  “No, no; don’t touch him,” Greening interposed hurriedly. “Leave him lay for the coroner; that’s the law.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll have to tell Missis Chase before we go,” said Sol.

  “Yes, you must tell her,” Joe agreed.

  Sol rapped on the woodwork of the wall at the bottom of the stairs with his big knuckles. The sound rose sudden and echoing in the house. Ollie was heard opening her door.

  “Missis Chase–oh, Missis Chase!” called Greening.

  “Who’s that, who’s that?” came Ollie’s voice, tremulous and frightened, little above a whisper, from above.

  “It’s Sol Greening. Don’t come down here, don’t come down!”

  “What was that noise? It sounded like a gun,” said Ollie, a bit nearer the head of the stairs, her words broken and disjointed.

  “Something’s happened, something mighty bad,” said Sol. “You stay right where you are till I send the old woman over to you–do you hear me?–stay right there!”

  “Oh, what is it, what is it?” moaned Ollie. “Joe–where’s Joe? Call him, Mr. Greening, call Joe!”

  “He’s here,” Sol assured her, his voice full of portent “he’s goin’ away with me for a little while. I tell you it’s terrible, you must stay right up there.”

  “Oh, I’m so afraid–I’m so afraid!” said Ollie, coming nearer.

  “Go back! Go back!” commanded Greening.

  “If you’ll only stick to it that way,” thought Joe as Ollie’s moans sounded in his ears.

  “Was it robbers–is somebody hurt?”
she asked.

  “Yes, somebody’s hurt, and hurt bad,” said Greening, “but you can’t do no good by comin’ down here. You stay right there till the old woman comes over; it’ll only be a minute.”

  “Let me go with you. Oh, Mr. Greening, don’t leave me here alone!” she implored.

  “There’s nothing to hurt you, Ollie,” said Joe. “You do as Sol tells you and stay here. Go to your room and shut the door, and wait till Mrs. Greening comes.”

  Sol leaned into the staircase and listened until he heard her door close. Then he turned and shut the kitchen window and the door leading into the body of the house, leaving the burning lamp on the table to keep watch over Isom and his money.

  “We’ll go out the front way,” said Sol to Joe. “Nothing must be touched in that room till the coroner orders it. Now, don’t you try to dodge me, Joe.”

  “I’ve got no reason to want to dodge any man,” said Joe.

  “Well, for your own sake, as well as your old mother’s, I hope to God you ain’t!” said Sol. “But this here thing looks mighty bad for somebody, Joe. I’m goin’ to take you over to Bill Frost’s and turn you over to the law.”

  Joe made no comment, but led the way around the house. At the kitchen window Greening laid a restraining hand on Joe’s shoulder and stopped him, while he looked in at the corpse of Isom Chase.

  “Him and me, we served on the same jury this afternoon,” said Sol, nodding toward the window as he turned away. “I rode to overtake him on the way home, but he had the start of me; and I was just goin’ in the gate when I heard that shot. I poled right over here. On the same jury, and now he’s dead!”

  As they approached the gate Joe looked back, the events of the past few minutes and the shock of the tragedy, which had fallen as swift as a lightning stroke, stunning him out of his usual cool reasoning.

  There lay the house, its roof white in the moonlight, a little stream of yellow coming through the kitchen window, striking the lilac-bushes and falling brokenly on the grass beyond. There was reality in that; but in this whirl of events which crowded his mind there was no tangible thing to lay hold upon.

  That Isom was dead on the kitchen floor seemed impossible and unreal, like an event in a dream which one struggles against the terror of, consoling himself, yet not convincingly, as he fights its sad illusions, with the argument that it is nothing but a vision, and that with waking it will pass away.

  What was this awful thing with which Sol Greening had charged him, over which the whole neighborhood soon must talk and conjecture?

  Murder!

  There was no kinder word. Yet the full terror of its meaning was not over him, for his senses still swirled and felt numb in the suddenness of the blow. He had not meant that this accusation should fasten upon him when he sent Ollie from the room; he had not thought that far ahead. His one concern was that she should not be found there, dressed and ready to go, and the story of her weakness and folly given heartlessly to the world.

  And Curtis Morgan–where was he, the man to blame for all this thing? Not far away, thought Joe, driving that white road in security, perhaps, even that very hour, while he, who had stood between him and his unholy desires, was being led away by Sol Greening like a calf in a rope. They were going to charge him with the murder of Isom Chase and take him away to jail.

  How far would Morgan permit them to go? Would he come forward to bear his share of it, or would he skulk away like a coward and leave him, the bondman, to defend the name of his dead master’s wife at the cost of his own honor and liberty, perhaps his life?

  All that had gone before Isom threw his life away in that moment of blind anger, must be laid bare if he was to free himself of the shadow of suspicion. It was not the part of an honorable man to seek his own comfort and safety at the cost of a woman’s name, no matter how unworthy he knew her to be, while that name and fame still stood flawless before the world. In the absence of some other avenue to vindication, a gentleman must suffer in silence, even to death. It would be cruel, unjust, and hard to bear, but that was the only way. He wondered if Ollie understood.

  But there were certain humiliations and indignities which a gentleman could not bend his neck to; and being led away by an inferior man like Sol Greening to be delivered up, just as if he thought that he might have run away if given an opening, was one of them. Sol had passed on through the open gate, which he had not stopped to close when he ran in, before he noticed that Joe was not following. He looked back. Joe was standing inside the fence, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Come on here!” ordered Sol.

  “No, I’m not going any farther with you, Sol,” said Joe quietly. “If there’s any arresting to be done, I guess I can do it myself.”

  Greening was a self-important man in his small-bore way, who saw in this night’s tragedy fine material for increasing his consequence, at least temporarily, in that community. The first man on the bloody scene, the man to shut up the room for the coroner, the man to make the arrest and deliver the murderer to the constable–all within half an hour. It was a distinction which Greening did not feel like yielding.

  “Come on here, I tell you!” he commanded again.

  “If you want to get on your horse and go after Bill, I’ll wait right here till he comes,” said Joe; “but I’ll not go any farther with you. I didn’t shoot Isom, Sol, and you know it. If you don’t want to go after Bill, then I’ll go on over there alone and tell him what’s happened. If he wants to arrest me then, he can do it.”

  Seeing that by this arrangement much of his glory would get away from him, Greening stepped forward and reached out his hand, as if to compel submission. Joe lifted his own hand to intercept it with warning gesture.

  “No, don’t you touch me, Sol!” he cautioned.

  Greening let his hand fall. He stepped back a pace, Joe’s subdued, calm warning penetrating his senses like the sound of a blow on an anvil. Last week this gangling strip of a youngster was nothing but a boy, fetching and carrying in Isom Chase’s barn-yard. Tonight, big and bony and broad-shouldered, he was a man, with the same outward gentleness over the iron inside of him as old Peter Newbolt before him; the same soft word in his mouth as his Kentucky father, who had, without oath or malediction, shot dead a Kansas Redleg, in the old days of border strife, for spitting on his boot.

  “Will you go, or shall I?” asked Joe.

  Greening made a show of considering it a minute.

  “Well, Joe, you go on over and tell him yourself,” said he, putting on the front of generosity and confidence, “I know you won’t run off.”

  “If I had anything to run off for, I’d go as quick as anybody, I guess,” said Joe.

  “I’ll go and fetch the old lady over to keep company with Mrs. Chase,” said Sol, hurriedly striking across the road.

  Joe remained standing there a little while. The growing wind, which marked the high tide of night, lifted his hat-brim and let the moonlight fall upon his troubled face. Around him was the peace of the sleeping earth, with its ripe harvest in its hand; the scents of ripe leaves and fruit came out of the orchard; the breath of curing clover from the fields.

  Joe brought a horse from the barn and leaped on its bare back. He turned into the highroad, lashing the animal with the halter, and galloped away to summon Constable Bill Frost.

  Past hedges he rode, where cricket drummers beat the long roll for the muster of winter days; past gates letting into fields, clamped and chained to their posts as if jealous of the plenty which they guarded; past farmsteads set in dark forests of orchard trees and tall windbreaks of tapering poplar, where never a light gleamed from a pane, where sons and daughters, worn husbandmen and weary wives, lay soothed in honest slumber; past barn-yards, where cattle sighed as they lay in the moonshine champing upon their cuds; down into swales, where the air was damp and cold, like a wet hand on the face; up to hill-crests, over which the perfumes of autumn were blowing–the spices of goldenrod and ragweed, the elusive scent of hed
ge orange, the sweet of curing fodder in the shock; past peace and contentment, and the ripe reward of men’s summer toil.

  Isom Chase was dead; stark, white, with blood upon his beard.

  There a dog barked, far away, raising a ripple on the placid night; there a cock crowed, and there another caught his cry; it passed on, on, fading away eastward, traveling like an alarm, like a spreading wave, until it spent itself against the margin of breaking day.

  Isom Chase was dead, with an armful of gold upon his breast.

  Aye, Isom Chase was dead. Back there in the still house his limbs were stiffening upon his kitchen floor. Isom Chase was dead on the eve of the most bountiful harvest his lands had yielded him in all his toil-freighted years. Dead, with his fields around him; dead, with the maize dangling heavy ears in the white moonlight; dead, with the gold of pumpkin lurking like unminted treasure in the margin of his field. Dead, with fat cattle in his pastures, fat swine in his confines, sleek horses in his barn-stalls, fat cockerels on his perch; dead, with a young wife shrinking among the shadows above his cold forehead, her eyes unclouded by a tear, her panting breast undisturbed by a sigh of pity or of pain.

  * * *

  CHAPTER VIII

  WILL HE TELL?

  Constable Bill Frost was not a man of such acute suspicion as Sol Greening. He was a thin, slow man with a high, sharp nose and a sprangling, yellow mustache which extended broadly, like the horns of a steer. It did not enter his mind to connect Joe with the tragedy in a criminal way as they rode together back to the farm.

  When they arrived, they found Sol Greening and his married son Dan sitting on the front steps. Mrs. Greening was upstairs, comforting the young widow, who was “racked like a fiddle,” according to Sol.

  Sol took the constable around to the window and pointed out the body of Isom stretched beside the table.

  “You’re a officer of the law,” said Sol, “and these here primisis is now in your hands and charge, but I don’t think you orto go in that room. I think you orto leave him lay, just the way he dropped, for the coroner. That’s the law.”