A Romany of the Snows Part 39

he said, "have a drink, and don't be a dam' fool. She's our sister,--old Throng stole her, and she's goin' to marry our partner. Here, Caleb, fish out the brandy-wine," he added to his younger brother, who went to a cupboard and brought the bottle.

Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly to the girl: "You wish to go back to your father, to Jimmy Throng?" He then gave her Throng's message, and added: "He sits there rocking in the big chair and coughing--coughing! And then there's the picture on the wall upstairs and the little ivory brush--"

She put out her hands towards him. "I hate them all here," she said. "I never knew them. They forced me away. I have no father but Jimmy Throng.

I will not stay," she flashed out in sudden anger to the others; "I'll kill myself and all of you before I marry that Borotte."

Pierre could hear a man tramping about upstairs. Caleb knocked on the stove-pipe, and called to him to come down. Pierre guessed it was Borotte. This would add one more factor to the game. He must move at once. He suddenly slipped a pistol into the girl's hand, and with a quick word to her, stepped towards the door. The elder brother sprang between--which was what he looked for. By this time every man had a weapon showing, s.n.a.t.c.hed from wall and shelf.

Pierre was cool. He said: "Remember, I am for the law. I am not one man.

You are thieves now; if you fight and kill, you will get the rope, every one. Move from the door, or I'll fire. The girl comes with me." He had heard a door open behind him, now there was an oath and a report, and a bullet grazed his cheek and lodged in the wall beyond. He dared not turn round, for the other men were facing him. He did not move, but the girl did. "Coward!" she said, and raised her pistol at Borotte, standing with her back against Pierre's.

There was a pause, in which no one stirred, and then the girl, slowly walking up to Borotte, her pistol levelled, said: "You low coward--to shoot a man from behind; and you want to be a decent girl's husband!

These men that say they're my brothers are brutes, but you're a sneak.

If you stir a step I'll fire."

The cowardice of Borotte was almost ridiculous. He dared not harm the girl, and her brothers could not prevent her harming him. Here there came a knocking at the front door. The other brothers had come, and found it locked. Pierre saw the crisis, and acted instantly. "The girl and I--we will fight you to the end," he said, "and then what's left of you the law will fight to the end. Come," he added, "the old man can't live a week. When he's gone then you can try again. She will have what he owns. Quick, or I arrest you all, and then--"

"Let her go," said Borotte; "it ain't no use." Presently the elder brother broke out laughing. "d.a.m.ned if I thought the girl had the pluck, an' d.a.m.ned if I thought Borotte was a crawler. Put an eye out of him, Liddy, an' come to your brother's arms. Here," he added to the others, "up with your popguns; this s.h.i.+ndy's off; and the girl goes back till the old man tucks up. Have a drink," he added to Pierre, as he stood his rifle in a corner and came to the table.

In half an hour Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived at Throng's late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the eaves down the long icicles.

When Lydia entered, the old man was dozing in his chair. The sound of an axe out behind the house told where Duc was. The whisky-and-herbs was beside the sick man's chair, and his feet were wrapped about with bearskins. The girl made a little gesture of pain, and then stepped softly over and, kneeling, looked into Throng's face. The lips were moving.

"Dad," she said, "are you asleep?"

"I be a durn fool, I be," he said in a whisper, and then he began to cough. She took his' hands. They were cold, and she rubbed them softly.

"I feel so a'mighty holler," he said, gasping, "an' that bread's sour agin." He shook his head pitifully.

His eyes at last settled on her, and he recognised her. He broke into a giggling laugh; the surprise was almost too much for his feeble mind and body. His hands reached and clutched hers. "Liddy! Liddy!" he whispered, then added peevishly, "the bread's sour, an' the boneset and camomile's no good.... Ain't tomorrow bakin'-day?" he added.

"Yes, dad," she said, smoothing his hands.

"What d.a.m.ned--liars--they be--Liddy! You're my gel, ain't ye?"

"Yes, dad. I'll make some boneset liquor now."

"Yes, yes," he said, with childish eagerness and a weak, wild smile.

"That's it--that's it."

She was about to rise, but he caught her shoulder. "I bin a good dad to ye, hain't I, Liddy?" he whispered.

"Always."

"Never had no ma but Manette, did ye?"

"Never, dad."

"What danged liars they be!" he said, chuckling. She kissed him, and moved away to the fire to pour hot water and whisky on the herbs.

His eyes followed her proudly, s.h.i.+ning like wet gla.s.s in the sun. He laughed--such a wheezing, soundless laugh!

"He! he! he! I ain't no--durn--fool--bless--the Lord!" he said.

Then the s.h.i.+ning look in his eyes became a grey film, and the girl turned round suddenly, for the long, wheezy breathing had stopped. She ran to him, and, lifting up his head, saw the look that makes even the fool seem wise in his cold stillness. Then she sat down on the floor, laid her head against the arm of his chair, and wept.

It was very quiet inside. From without there came the tw.a.n.g of an axe, and a man's voice talking to his horse. When the man came in, he lifted the girl up, and, to comfort her, bade her go look at a picture hanging in her little room. After she was gone he lifted the body, put it on a couch, and cared for it.

THE PLUNDERER

It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had eyes for only one man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and thought, at first, that hers was a pa.s.sing fancy. He soon saw differently. There was that look in her eyes which burns conviction as deep as the furnace from which it comes: the hot, shy, hungering look of desire; most childlike, painfully infinite. He would rather have faced the cold mouth of a pistol; for he felt how it would end. He might be beyond wish to play the lover, but he knew that every man can endure being loved. He also knew that some are possessed--a dream, a spell, what you will--for their life long. Kitty Cline was one of these.

He thought he must go away, but he did not. From the hour he decided to stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post, had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that he could, as he said himself, "roast the c.o.c.k o' the roost"--meaning Pierre. He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming the I O U, representing two years' salary, went down to the house where Kitty Cline lived, and shot himself on the door-step.

He had had the misfortune to prefer Kitty to the other girls at Guidon Hill--though Nellie Sanger would have been as much to him, if Kitty had been easier to win. The two things together told hard against Pierre.

Before, he might have gone; in the face of difficulty he certainly would not go. Willie Haslam's funeral was a public function: he was young, innocent-looking, handsome, and the people did not know what Pierre would not tell now--that he had cheated grossly at cards. Pierre was sure, before Liddall, the surveyor, told him, that a movement was apace to give him trouble--possibly fatal.

"You had better go," said Liddall. "There's no use tempting Providence."

"They are tempting the devil," was the cool reply; "and that is not all joy, as you shall see."

He stayed. For a time there was no demonstration on either side. He came and went through the streets, and was found at his usual haunts, to observers as cool and nonchalant as ever. He was a changed man, however.

He never got away from the look in Kitty Cline's eyes. He felt the thing wearing on him, and he hesitated to speculate on the result; but he knew vaguely that it would end in disaster. There is a kind of corrosion which eats the granite out of the blood, and leaves fever.

"What is the worst thing that can happen a man, eh?" he said to Liddall one day, after having spent a few minutes with Kitty Cline.

Liddall was an honest man. He knew the world tolerably well. In writing once to his partner in Montreal he had spoken of Pierre as "an admirable, interesting scoundrel." Once when Pierre called him "mon ami," and asked him to come and spend an evening in his cottage, he said:

"Yes, I will go. But--pardon me--not as your friend. Let us be plain with each other. I never met a man of your stamp before--"

"A professional gambler--yes? Bien?"

"You interest me; I like you; you have great cleverness--"

"A priest once told me I had a great brain-there is a difference. Well?"

"You are like no man I ever met before. Yours is a life like none I ever knew. I would rather talk with you than with any other man in the country, and yet--"

"And yet you would not take me to your home? That is all right. I expect nothing. I accept the terms. I know what I am and what you are. I like men who are square. You would go out of your way to do me a good turn."

It was on his tongue to speak of Katy Cline, but he hesitated: it was not fair to the girl, he thought, though what he had intended was for her good. He felt he had no right to a.s.sume that Liddall knew how things were. The occasion slipped by.

But the same matter had been in his mind when, later, he asked, "What is the worst thing that can happen to a man?"

Liddall looked at him long, and then said: "To stand between two fires."