CHAPTER XIV
The next morning after her encounter with Ben Letts, Tess sat up in bed, wondering what had happened. Then she remembered. One slant ray of sun breaking through the dirty curtain showed that the day was far advanced. She jumped out of bed, opened the door and allowed Pete to scamper away.
After kindling a fire and frying a fish, she sat down to eat.
Suddenly a knock on the door startled her. Ben might return even after his lesson of the night before. Without unclasping the lock, she called out:
"Who air it?"
"It air me, Tessibel. Open the door.—It air Myry!"
Tess flung open the door with a smile. She drew back, seeing Myra's seamed face, white and drawn.
"Ye be sick, Myry?"
"Nope!"
"Air it the brat, then?"
"Nope, it air Ben Letts. He were hurt by the Brindle Bull at Kennedy's Farm. Ezy and 'Satisfied' found him near dead on the tracks and took him home."
Tess stood waiting, wide-eyed, without a word.
"He wouldn't say nothin' about it," complained Myry; "just says that he air goin' to get even with some one."
"Have ye seen him?" stammered Tess.
"Yep, this mornin' in his shanty. He were cut bad. They got the horse doctor to sew him up. He air sick, Ben air!"
"And the brat," demanded Tess, changing the subject purposely.
"Sick the hours through," replied Myra bitterly. "He hes got the pitifullest cry that breaks my heart all the time. But he ain't so sick as his pappy."
"Ben Letts ain't a-goin' to die, air he?"
Tessibel's woful expression caused Myra to shake her head emphatically, her thin lips twitching, then tightening under the nervous strain.
"Nope, he ain't, but he air goin' to be sick a long time. He air the brat's pa, and I want to do somethin' for him."
"What?"
"He air wantin' to see ye, Tessibel. Will ye go to him?"
"Nope," Tess burst forth spontaneously.
Myra looked at her curiously.
"He ain't amountin' to much," she ventured, "but he air a pappy—that air somethin', ain't it?"
"Yep," mused Tessibel. "A daddy air more than a mammy."
So had Tessibel and Myra been brought up to believe. The squatter women fawned at the feet of their brutal husbands, as a beaten dog cringes to its master. That Ben Letts had broken Myra's arm on the ragged rocks, and yet the girl wanted to aid him, showed Tess the superiority of the male sex, and Myra loved the squint-eyed fisherman, she evidenced it in every action.
The lips of the younger squatter were sealed about the trail which she herself had laid in the midnight tragedy. But through the tender young heart flashed the hope that the experience with the dog would cause Ben Letts to turn his face toward the wretched, shrunken creature, who had suffered so much through him. She contemplated Myra an instant.
"Do ye want me to see him?" she asked, rising.
"Yep," replied Myra, the dull eyes filled with a momentary sparkle. "He hes somethin' to say to ye, and I did say as how ye would come."
"Air he alone?" questioned Tess.
"Nope, his mammy air with him—we'll go now—eh?"
Slipping on Daddy's boots was Tessibel's assent, and they started through the underbrush in silence.
"The brat ain't goin' to die, air he?" asked Tess presently.
It had been several days since she had seen Myra's little son. The troubles of Daddy Skinner had taken up every moment of her time.
"Mebbe," grunted Myra unemotionally; "he howls like a sick pup from mornin' till night."
"I air a goin' home with ye, Myry," assured Tessibel; "he won't yap when I sings to him."
The lake had risen over the strip of beach, its waters freezing against the rocks. This forced the girls to take the path through the wood to the hill beyond. Until they came in sight of Ben Letts' cabin, they said no more.
At their knock Ben's mother softly opened the door. Her shaggy gray hair had not been combed and her fierce old eyes glowed with agony unsoftened by tears.
"Ben air too sick to get up," she explained awkwardly, presenting each girl a chair, "I said as how ye couldn't come, Tessibel, but Ben said Myry were to bring ye."
From the back room came the sound of belabored breathing and a hoarse voice called for Tessibel. The squatter girl rose to her feet, her color changing from red to white. The thought of the fisherman with his dog-bitten face was repulsive to her.
"Ye be goin' in with me to see him, ain't ye, Myry?" The brown eyes entreated that she should not be sent to Ben Letts alone.
Myra Longman shook her head. She knew that the brat's pa did not want to see her, and again she shook her head as Tessibel waited.
"He air been askin' all the mornin' for ye, Tess," urged Mrs. Letts, "Ben ain't no likin' for Myry, Ben ain't!"
A dull red flush crimsoned Myra Longman's face. She watched Tess enviously as the girl tiptoed through the doorway and disappeared.
Ben Letts was stretched out on the rope cot, his massive head and thick neck swathed in bandages. Two huge hands, with patches of plaster here and there lay outside the red Indian blanket. The swollen upper lid was tightly pressed over his blind eye, the squint one slowly opening at Tessibel's entrance.
She looked down upon the bandaged face but for a moment; neither of them spoke.
"I see ye comes," Ben broke in at last.
"Yep, I's here ... What do ye want?"
A drop of salt water oozed from the weak eye; Ben moved his head as if in pain.
"Sop up the tear with the rag, will ye, Tess?" he grunted. "It air burnin' like hell fire."
Tessibel took the soiled cloth in her fingers, and not too lightly did as Ben bade her.
"Ye didn't tell Myry how I comed sick, did ye?" asked Ben, settling his head back upon the pillow.
Tess gave a negative gesture.
"Er no one else?"
"Nope!"
"Ye be a pert girl, Tessibel, and I were a cuss for trying to scare ye—but the brindle bull has got to die."
"Nope, he ain't got to die," frowned Tess.
"When I gets up he eats what I gives him," assured Ben. "He has to die, I says, I does.... But ye be a pert gal, Tess."
Ben moved his head to bring the girl within the vision of his one eye.
"What be ye wantin' with me?" Tess muttered. "I wants to go home."
She saw another tear roll down the plastered cheek, and repeated her operation with the rag.
"What do ye want?" she demanded again.
"To tell ye thet I air a goin' to make an hones' woman of ye. I's a goin' to marry ye. I knows I's a pappy, but the brat'll die, and he'll be forgot like yer daddy will!"
Tess instantly froze into a white, tense little form. She did not follow the fisherman's glance as he motioned her to take up the cloth.
"I's a tellin' yer mammy to wipe yer old eye," she said pettishly. "I ain't got no notion of bein' an hones' woman ... I hates yer like I hates Ezry Longman."
She wheeled to go out, but the man stayed her with a grunt.
"I's to be sick for a long time," exclaimed he, "and mammy will step to the grave most any day ... I wants pert fingers to put the plasters on my cuts."
Here he groaned and fought for the cloth, the salt tears scorching the rents in the skin as they rolled hot from the red eye and soaked into the plasters. The squatter girl mechanically wiped away the tears, turning again.
"Myry air pert," she said, halting in the door. "She air more than that—her fingers air lovin' ones. These," and she held up her two brown hands, "would be hurtin' ye, cause I hates ye so."
Tessibel and Myra walked away from Ben's hut in silence, up the ragged rocks to the Longman shanty.
"Ben were askin' to marry yer, Tess, weren't he?" demanded Myra as they approached the door.
Tess nodded.
"Were he sayin' as how ye could take care of him?"
"Yep."
"Be ye goin' to?" The intense longing and misery in her voice made Tess gasp:
"Nope, he air too mean a cuss to live. If he air the brat's pa, let the brat's ma take care of him. The brat air a good little devil."
Mrs. Longman was moving about in the loft overhead when the two girls entered the shanty.
Tess went to the wooden box and looked down upon the small, pinched face of the sleeping infant. The babe had worn out his little lungs, screeching in his pain, the small faded eyes rolling backward as he slept.
The young mother came quietly to the side of her Squatter friend.
"If the brat dies," she began in a low, tense tone, "be ye goin' to marry Ben Letts?"
"Nope, I ain't never goin' to marry nobody!"
"Yep, ye will, when ye gets done bein' a baby!"
Tess drew her eyes from the dozing infant and glanced at Myra.
"I wants a Bible," said she deliberately.
"What for?"
"To read out of!"
"Can ye read?"
"Nope, not much, but I can spell out words, and write a bit. And the Bible says as how, if ye seeks, ye'll find what ye seeks."
The shining eyes were sending a truthful message into the heart of the young mother.
"That ain't nothin' to do with Ben Letts," muttered Myra.
"Yep, it air," insisted Tess. "It says what ye seeks ye find. Ain't ye seekin' Ben Letts?"
"I knows where he air already," sullenly replied Myra.
"But ye can seek his lovin's, can't ye?... I's a seekin' Daddy—and somethin' else."
"What?"
"To be readin' and writin' like—like the minister's gal does. I air a-seekin' it every day!"
"How?"
Tess flushed. She could not tell Myra of the long bearded God in the pine tree, nor of the stumbling prayers she had repeated night after night. Myra understood that she could sing, so Tess said laconically:
"I sings for it sometimes, and that air a seekin'."
Myra grunted.
"I can't sing," and she frowned.
The babe whined in the cradle and Tessibel took him up. The glorious voice hushed the child to sleep, Myra Longman bitterly scanning the beautiful face. There were only two years between her and Tessibel, and her own poor, ghastly wrinkled face looked years older. If she were only pretty, Ben might love her. Tess had the splendid vigor of healthy youth—Myra, the worn-out complexion of a bad digestion. Beans and bacon had made the one beautiful—and destroyed the other.
Suddenly Myra leaned over with a new expression in her eyes.
"Tessibel, I tries to seek Ben Letts and his lovin's for me and the brat."
Tessibel placed the small boy in the box, then she and Myra obeyed Mrs. Longman's fretful demand that they draw up and eat.