FullReads

“No,” she said at last, and it was as if she stood apart and listened to another woman, very calm and collected, speaking on her behalf. “I will never tell him, Beelzebub. You will be quite safe with me. So tell me what you mean! Don’t be afraid! Speak plainly! When did Boss kill a white man?”

There must have been something of compulsion in her manner, for, albeit quaveringly and with obvious terror, the negro answered her.

“Down by Bowker Creek, missis, ‘fore you come. Boss and the white man fight–a dam’ big fight. Beelzebub run away. Afterwards, Boss, come on alone. So Beelzebub know that Boss kill’ the white man.”

“Oh, then you didn’t see him killed! You don’t know?”

Was it her own lips uttering the words? They felt quite stiff and powerless.

“Beelzebub run away,” she heard him repeating rather vacantly.

“What did they fight with?” she said.

“They fight with their hands,” he told her. “White man from Bowker Creek try to shoot Boss, and make Boss very angry.”

“But perhaps he wasn’t killed,” she insisted to herself. “Of course–of course, he wasn’t. You shouldn’t say such things, Beelzebub. You weren’t there to see.”

Beelzebub shuffled in the straw and whined depreciatingly.

“Tell me,” she heard the other woman say peremptorily, “what was the white man’s name?”

But Beelzebub only moaned, and she was forced to conclude that he did not know.

“Where is Bowker Creek?” she asked next.

He could not tell her. His intelligence seemed to have utterly deserted him.

She stood silent, considering, while he coiled about revoltingly in the straw at her feet.

Suddenly through the afternoon silence there came the sound of a horse’s hoofs. She started, and listened.

Beelzebub frantically clutched at her shoes.

“Missis won’t tell Boss!” he implored again. “Missis won’t—-“

She stepped desperately out of his reach.

“Hush!” she said. “Hush! He will hear you. I must go. I must go at once.”

Emergency gave her strength. She moved to the trap-door, and, she knew not how, found the ladder with her feet.

Grey-faced, dazed, and cold as marble, she descended. Yet she did not stumble. Her limbs moved mechanically, unfalteringly.

When she reached the bottom she turned with absolute steadiness and found Brett Mercer standing in the doorway watching her.

XI

He stood looking at her in silence as she came forward. She did not stop to ascertain if he were angry or not. Somehow it did not seem to matter. She only dealt with the urgent necessity for averting his suspicion.

“I just ran across with some soup for Beelzebub,” she said, her pale face raised unflinchingly. “I am glad to say he has taken it. Please don’t go up! I want him to get to sleep.”

She spoke, with a wholly unconscious authority. The supreme effort she was making seemed to place her upon a different footing. She laid a quiet hand upon his arm and drew him out of the stable.

He went with her as one surprised into submission. One of the farm men who had taken his horse stared after them in amazement.

As they crossed the yard together Mercer found his voice.

“I told Curtis you weren’t to go near Beelzebub.”

“I know,” she answered. “Mr. Curtis told me.”

He cracked his whip savagely.

“Where is Curtis?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “But, Brett, if you are angry because I went you must deal with me, not with Mr. Curtis. He had nothing whatever to do with it.”

Mercer was silent, and she divined with no sense of elation that he would not turn his anger against her.

They entered the house together, and he strode through the passage, calling for Curtis. But when the latter appeared in answer to the summons, to her surprise Mercer began to speak upon a totally different subject.

“I have just seen Stevens from Wallarroo. They are all in a mortal funk there. He was on his way over here to ask you to go and look at a man who is very bad with something that looks like smallpox. You can please yourself about going; though, if you take my advice, you’ll stay away.”