CHAPTER XXI
It was the day after Thanksgiving. Bill was twirling the chambers of his revolver around. His face was grim. Jap halted in the door of their bedroom.
"Going gunning for Jones?" he asked lightly.
Bill turned, and the black look on his face startled Jap.
"I am," he said deliberately, "and I will come back to jail or in my coffin."
Jap caught the revolver from his hand.
"Bill," he said sharply, "wake up!"
Bill threw a letter to him, and continued his hasty toilet. Jap read:
"Dear Will,—
"Come to me. I am almost crazy. Wilfred accused me of giving you information against his father that beat him in the election, and he struck me in the mouth. He said he only married me to spite you, and he hates me. I will meet you at the section house, where the train slows up for the switch, at six o'clock. I want you to take me away, I don't care where. I don't love anybody but you, and I can't live with Wilfred another night. I don't care whether anybody ever speaks to me again, if you will take me and love me.
"Your distracted ROSALIE."
Jap stared at the note as if it had been a snake-tressed Medusa that turned him to stone. He stood rigid and paralyzed as Bill said, deadly calm:
"I am going to Barton, and I am going to shoot that dog."
"And after that?" Jap's voice was toneless.
"After that!" Bill broke out fiercely. "After that, what more?"
Jap drew Bill around to face him. Rivers of fire seemed suddenly to course through his body, and an unprecedented rage burned up within him.
"You are not going to Barton, and you are not going to meet that foolish light-o'-love at the section house," he said sternly.
"Who will stop me? Not you, Jap, for even if an angel from heaven tried to bar my way, I would brush it aside. I wanted to kill him when he stole her away and——"
Jap shook him angrily.
"No one stole her, Bill. Have you forgotten the insolent, flippant letter she wrote you?"
Bill shook Jap's hand from his shoulder.
"It's no use, Jap. I am going to kill him!"
Jap set his teeth and his gray eyes blazed as he gripped Bill's arms and shoved him into a chair.
"I will have you locked up, you foolish hot-head," he exclaimed, "and give Wilfred Jones a few hours to consider his attitude toward his wife. She is his wife, Bill, and all your heroics won't gloss that fact from sight. Do you want to hang, because you were a damned fool? I can consider a romantic close to your career, but not as an intruder in another man's home—no matter how great your feeling of injustice. Rosy was not a child when she married Wilfred Jones."
"But he struck her," gulped Bill.
"I have known times," declared Jap vehemently, "when, if I had been of the fibre of Wilfred Jones, I would have felt satisfaction in thrashing Rosy Raymond. Not having been Jones, I had to content myself with kicking the furniture around. I don't want to rile you, Bill, but I rather think there are two sides to this story, and I want to hear both sides. If it is proven that Jones has mistreated Rosy brutally, I will hold him while you give him the licking he deserves. More than that, I will help Rosy to get a divorce. Isn't that fair enough, Bill? What is revenge upon a dead body, especially if you expiate that revenge on the gallows? Tell me, who profits? For the woman, disgrace. For you—— Humph! the only one who comes out of it honorably is the dead man, Jones."
Bill glowered at him.
"You had no mother, Bill, because she died when she gave you to the world. I had no mother, because Providence gave me where I was a burden. But God gave both of us a mother. Bill, before you go any farther with this adventure—misadventure—I want you to kneel with me before Flossy's picture and ask for her approval and her blessing. Because, Bill, brother, she knows. And what do you suppose will be her counsel? What would Flossy want you to do?"
He took the photograph from the table and held it out to Bill. The brown eyes remained downcast. The hands opened and closed spasmodically. Jap lowered the picture so that Bill's eyes could not choose but meet the loved face. A great, gulping sob shook him, and he dashed into the other room and slammed the door. Jap's tense features relaxed into a smile. He knew that Flossy had won.
"Will you let me go to Barton instead of you?" he asked through the closed door. There was no reply, and he turned the knob. Bill was staring stolidly from the window. "I won't carry healing oil if the case doesn't call for it," he insisted. "You will believe me, boy?"
"It's your job," Bill said, in smothered, tear-drenched tones.
"I can just make the 5:20," said Jap, as he caught up his hat and overcoat from the foot of the bed where he had flung them. Then he hurried to the station, with Rosy's foolish letter in his pocket.
Without looking to right or left he boarded the train that would have carried Bill to his love tryst. Already the evening shadows were beginning to settle, and it was almost dark when the local train ran into the siding to permit the east-bound special to pass. He stood on the steps of the rear coach as the wheels crunched with the stopping of the train. Then he dropped quietly to the ground. The special, that was wont to throw dust in the eyes of both Bloomtown and Barton, came thundering by, and the friendly local took up its westward journey.
Jap hurried over to the cloaked figure that crouched in the shadow of the little section house. Rosy crept out quickly, but retreated with a cry of alarm when she saw that Jap, and not Bill, was coming to meet her. He caught her by the arm and drew her into the light of an electric bulb that glowed above the section boss's door. Scanning her silly face for a moment, he said sharply:
"So you lied to Bill! There is no mark of a blow on your face."
"He—he did push me," she sobbed. "And I don't love him, anyway. It was your fault that I ran away with Wilfred."
"My fault?" echoed Jap.
"Yes," she said, and her tone rasped with cruel spite. "What girl wants to have her sweetheart only half hers? Jap Herron only had to twist his thumb, and Bill would run like a foolish girl. I wanted a whole man or none."
"Seems that you got one," commented Jap, "and don't appreciate him. Now, Rosy, if you think you are going to ruin three lives by starting this kind of a play, I am going to undeceive you. I am going to take you home and look into this affair."
"I won't go!" she screamed. "He would kill me."
"What did you do?" demanded Jap, holding her tightly.
"I wrote him a note that I had run away with Bill," she confessed sullenly.
For the first time Jap became conscious of the suitcase at her feet. His grip on her arm tightened until she cried with pain.
"You idiotic little fool," he ground between his teeth. "Where is your husband?"
"He went to the city this morning. He said he'd come home on the local if he got through his business in time. Otherwise he wouldn't come till the midnight train. I thought Bill could get a rig and drive to Faber. I thought he could take me away somehow before Wilfred got the news."
"News? Great God!" cried Jap. "And such as you could win the golden heart of Bill Bowers! Come with me. If your husband takes the late train, there is still time to destroy that note. If he is already at home——"
"He'd go to the office first, anyway," Rosy cried. "But I don't want to go home."
"You're going home, no matter what the consequences," Jap told her. "And if you ever attempt to communicate with Bill again, I will have you put in an asylum. You are not capable of going through life sensibly."
He walked her rapidly up the railroad track and through the streets that lay between the business part of Barton and her own pretty home. On the corner opposite the house he stopped, while she ran across the street in terror and rushed up the steps. She had told him that if all was yet well, she would appear at the window. As he stood there, his eyes glued on the great square of glass, some one touched him on the arm. He turned. It was Wilfred Jones.
"Well, Daddy-long-legs," he said brusquely. "You think you turned a pretty trick. Well, it was a fair fight, and I'm all over it."
Jap shook his hand mechanically, his eyes seeking the window from which Rosy was peering.
"Tell Bill that bygones must be bygones," Jones continued, "for we want to get the two papers together on the main issue. The old man will come in on the senatorship on the strength of his race for governor. And I want to tell you a secret that makes me very happy—and will make Bill feel different. The doctor has just told me that these queer spells and moods that Rosalie has been having lately mean—Jap, do you understand? I will be a father before summer!"
Jap wrung Jones's hand, a whirl of fancies going through his head. As he sought for suitable words of congratulation, a boy ran up.
"I been chasin' all over town ahuntin' for you, Mr. Herron," he said breathlessly. "I got a telegram for you."
Trembling with dread, Jap tore it open and read:
"Come home at once. Your sister Agnosia is here.—BILL."