CHAPTER VII

Mary, now a different creature from what she was the day before, accompanied Charles to the cotton-field after breakfast. "You have done an enormous amount for half a day," she said. "You must not drive yourself like that. I know why you are doing it, but you must not. It would be wrong for us to permit it. From your accent I take you to be a Northerner, but you are acting like a cavalier of the old South. I appreciate it—I appreciate it, but I can't let you do so much."

"What, that?" he began. "As if that were anything! Why, Miss Rowland—" His emotions swept his power of utterance away from him, and he stood, hoe in hand, helpless under the spell of her storm-swept beauty and appealing womanhood. He wanted to aid her more materially. He wanted to offer his services in behalf of her brothers. He would have given his life—in his eyes it was a futile thing at best—for her cause; and yet he knew himself to be helpless. A woman's intuition is a marvelous thing, and when it permits itself to fathom a man's love it is as sure as the law of gravitation. She understood. Her dawning comprehension beamed faintly in her stricken face. He saw her breast rise tremulously and fall.

"I think I know what you started to say," she faltered. "And it is very, very sweet of you when you have known us such a short time. Isn't it strange that it should be like this? I know I can trust you—something makes me feel sure of it—and you have impressed my father the same way, and even critical Aunt Zilla."

He leaned on his hoe-handle. He now felt more sure of his utterance. "I want to help you," he cried. "I know how terribly you must feel over this matter. You are too young and gentle and frail for this dastardly thing to rest on you. I must do something to beat it off. I—"

"There really is nothing," she half sobbed. "As much as I love my brothers I'd rather see them dead than on trial for murder. Why, Mr. Brown, the sheriff wants to put them in that dirty jail at Carlin! I saw it once. The cells are iron cages in the center of big rooms walled about with brick. Oh, oh, oh!"

He longed to comfort her, but there was nothing that he could say. The keenest pain of his entire life seemed to be wrenching his heart from his body. The still fields, the slanting sunlight on the long rows of cotton-plants, the cloud-draped mountains, grimly mocked him in their placid inactivity when it seemed to him that the very universe ought to be striving in her behalf.

"Oh, it will be only a question of time," she moaned. "They can't hide in the mountains long, and if Tobe Keith dies—oh, oh! if he dies—"

She had suddenly noticed a horseman dismounting at the gate. He was fat, rather gross-looking, of medium height, and middle-aged. His hair and eyes were dark, and he had a heavy brown mustache twisted to points, which was after the manner of the mountaineers.

"It is Albert Frazier, the sheriff's brother," Mary explained.

"The sheriff's brother!" Charles started.

"We needn't be afraid of him," Mary said, somewhat confused. "In fact, I think he has come to try to help me. He—he is a—a friend of mine. He has been paying attention to me for almost a year. He sees me. He is coming here. Wait. Don't go to work yet. I want you to meet him."

"Paying attention to you!" Charles's subconsciousness spoke the words rather than his inert lips. It may have been the sheer blight in his face and eyes that caused the girl to offer a blushing explanation of her words.

"I don't mean that we are engaged—actually engaged," she said. "It is only a sort of—of understanding. He says he loves me. He has done us a great many favors. You see he has influence in various ways. But I have never really encouraged him to—to—You know what I mean. But he is very persistent and very hot-tempered, domineering, too. But, oh, what does that matter—what does anything matter? Right now he may be coming to tell us that—that Tobe Keith is dead."

Charles said nothing, for Frazier was near at hand. His keen brown eyes rested on Charles, half inquiringly, half suspiciously. He carried a riding-whip with which he lashed the horse-hairs from his trousers with a quick, irritated stroke.

"Good morning," he said, as he tipped his broad-brimmed felt hat. "Out here giving instructions, eh? I heard you'd hired help."

She made a failure of the smile she tried to force. It was a pale, piteous pretense. "Mr. Frazier—Mr. Brown," she introduced them.

Frazier did not offer his hand, and so Charles did not remove his own from his hoe-handle. He simply nodded. It would have been hard to do more, for instinctively he disliked the man. The feeling must have been returned, for Frazier all but sneered contemptuously.

"I heard of Mr. Brown at the hotel in town," he said. "Circus man, eh. You fellows are always dropping in on us mountain folks. Well, well, we need your help now in the fields. Niggers are no good."

"Have you heard about my brothers?" Mary here broke in.

"Yes. That's what I rode out for, Mary. I knew you'd be crazy. You are funny that way—as if you can keep boys like these two down."

"But how is Keith?" Mary reached forward and caught the lapel of his coat entreatingly. She appeared quite unconscious of what she was doing, and as he answered Frazier took her frail fingers into his burly clasp, and for a moment held them caressingly, a glint of passion in his eyes. Had she been his wife the sight could not have been more painful to Charles. It did not excite his anger; somehow it only heaped fresh despair upon the depression which had almost unmanned him.

"Oh, Keith? Yes, I knew that would be the first question," Frazier said. "And I made special inquiry before I left on that point, for everything depends on it, of course. Well, little girl, nobody can possibly tell yet. Our doctors in town are not expert surgeons, and they can't decide just yet, it seems. The ball is lodged in the stomach somewhere, and they seem to be afraid to probe for it. It was a good-sized piece of cold lead and the fellow may kick the bucket any minute. You see—"

"Stop! She is fainting!" Charles cried.

He sprang forward, but Frazier had put his rough arm about her and began to fan the ghastly face which now rested on his breast.

"By God! so she is!" Frazier said. "Get some water, man. Quick! I can hold her, all right!"

"No, no, don't go!" said Mary, as she opened her eyes, drew herself erect, and stood away from Frazier. "I felt faint, but it is all gone now. Nothing is the matter with me. Go on! Tell me about my brothers."

Frazier glanced at Charles, half smiled, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh, you know as much about them as I do, I reckon," he said. "They came this way. I know where they are by this time. I know, but my brother doesn't," and Frazier laughed significantly. "You see it is like this, little girl; my brother happens not to be on to these trips of mine out here to see you. I have my reasons, and good ones at that, for not letting him know. There is a part of my father's estate that is to be divided when either me or John marries, and if he thought that I was thinking of such a thing it might upset him a little. At any rate, he is in the dark about us, so when he started out this morning after your brothers I made it my business to throw him clean off the track. I told him that they had gone exactly the opposite way and that I was sure they would take a train for the West at Tifton, and show him a clean pair of heels."

"Then—then he won't look for them here in the mountains?" Mary panted.

"Not for a while, anyway," Frazier returned. "And that is what I came to tell you, little woman. I'm no fool and I am going to do everything in my reach to keep the boys out of John's clutch till we can tell how Keith gets on. John and I have worked together in tracking men down, and he doesn't dream that I am against him in this. Thanks to me, he and his deputies are working on a false scent altogether, and I'll keep them at it if I turn the world over. You can depend on me, little girl. I'll keep you posted. The boys will be safe where they are for a while, if you will keep them fed."

"But do you think Keith will live?" Mary demanded, tremulously.

"The Lord only knows," Frazier said. "He is awfully low, it seems to me. I reckon there is no use fooling you as to that. You may get bad news any minute. But even if he dies we'll manage somehow to slip the boys away. I know a feller now in the West. I get letters from him. Fifteen years ago he shot a man in—"

"Don't, don't tell me about it!" Mary pleaded, her agonized eyes turning to Charles, as if for protection that was not available from any other source.

"No, what is the use of all that?" Charles blurted out.

"Don't chip in here!" Frazier thundered. "What do you mean by breaking into my talk? Get back to your work! Are you paid to stand here idle?"

There was nothing he could say, and Charles dropped his head for a moment. Mary was staring at him blankly. So vast was the tragedy hovering over her that she quite failed to sense the tension between the two men.

"Come on, let's go to the house," went on Frazier, continuing to scowl at Charles even while he was putting his arm about the girl. "I have to see your father about some money he wants to borrow at the bank. He wants me to indorse a note for him."

"You know what to do, Mr. Brown," Mary said. "It will take you several days to finish the cotton. After that we'll decide what next to do."

Charles doffed his hat and bowed as she turned away, Frazier's arm still about her waist. He went to the unfinished row of cotton-plants and began to work. His back was turned to the receding pair. How different his outlook was from that of the day before! Then a veritable new existence seemed to have opened out before him, an existence that was a divinely bestowed transition from sordid misery to far-reaching happiness. All the ills of life seemed to have taken wing, leaving him free to grow and expand as the plants he was nurturing; but now there was nothing to face but the grim fact that he was a drudging outcast from conventional civilization. As he toiled on his breast ached under a pain that was superphysical. Had he brought it on himself? he wondered. Was all this the inevitable punishment for the reckless folly of his youth? It might be so, he told himself, and the sacrifice he had made for William and Celeste and Ruth was not sufficient. He had caused his dying mother great mental distress; he had led young men astray; he had been ostracized by his club and college fraternity; he had been sentenced by a judge in a police court; he had disgraced his family. He ceased working and looked toward the house. Mary and Frazier were still in sight. The heavy arm was still about the slender waist. The fellow bore himself with the air of a man confident of the prize he was winning, and yet unconscious of its inestimable value. Charles stood staring till they disappeared in the house, then he resumed his work, but without any part of the interest of the day before. A wonderful thing had happened to him. He had scoffed all his life at the idea of a man's supreme devotion to any particular woman, and yet within only a few hours he had found himself bound hand and foot, mind and soul, to a young girl he had never seen before. What had brought it about? Ah, she was suffering and he was suffering! It was the kinship of his soul to hers. But what could come of it? he asked, gloomily. Nothing, not even if she were to withhold her love from her present suitor, for Charles could never prove himself worthy of her. She belonged to a proud old family, and he was virtually a nameless man. For William's sake he had promised to obliterate himself, and he must keep his promise. He toiled on. The sun was hot and the perspiration oozed from him and dampened his clothing. He worked with the despair of a shackled convict bent on forgetting all that lay beyond his prison walls.