V
“Doris,” Trumbull said, “I know you must be tired, but we’ve got to get this finished. I wish you’d make me a pie out of the best apples you’ve got in the cellar. A kind of extra-special pie, with lots of cinnamon and sugar and juice and a flaky crust with just a touch of light brown here and there. A pie that’ll make a man’s mouth water as far as he can see and smell it.”
“Oh!” She stared at him, and then she laughed. “All right! I’ll bake a pie that would take first prize at the county fair.”
Doris Wilkins kept her promise. The pie that she set on the table an hour later was a masterpiece of pie making. Fresh from the oven, it gave off sweet and spicy odors which floated upon the air of the kitchen and fairly thickened it with temptation. Through holes in the top one could see hints of the interior lusciousness. Doris touched the crust with a fork, and it broke in little flakes that would melt in a man’s mouth.
Orla Wilkins could get to that pie and still keep his man covered, but he could not feed himself without putting the shotgun down. He seemed to realize that Johnny Trumbull was a very swift-moving man and that relaxation for an instant would mean that Trumbull would have his grip upon the gun.
Wilkins leaned forward, trying to look at the pie and Trumbull at the same time. A little moisture appeared at one corner of his mouth; his fat chin trembled. His face was ravaged by hate and hunger. Twice he started to get up, only to think better of it; once he lifted the shotgun slightly and his finger curled more firmly around the trigger.
That was a bad moment for Johnny Trumbull. He knew it might easily be that he had pressed Wilkins to the brink of murder; he knew that the man was made savage by a sleepless night of hunger, fearful of the loss of his lifelong comfort, and fairly venomous against the stranger who had come crashing in to take the heart of Doris.
For just that moment the situation hung on the edge of tragedy; with Doris standing breathless and white and Trumbull staring, dry-mouthed, into the eyes of Wilkins. Then, suddenly, Orla Wilkins let forth an incoherent cry of suffering and defeat and flung himself in the direction of the pie. The shotgun slid harmlessly to the floor. Trumbull seized it and threw it out of doors into the snow. Then he whirled to face Wilkins.
Wilkins had broken the pie into two pieces, and at that instant he stood with his face half buried in one of them. Trumbull swung the table out of the way and stripped off his coat.
“Now!” he cried. “Stand up and fight like a man!”
The jaws of Orla Wilkins ceased to work. His eyes met Trumbull’s over a piece of pie crust; they shifted and flickered, and he swallowed hastily.
“I don’t know as you and me need to have any trouble!” he mumbled. “Not if you’ll let her cook for me once in a while. I dunno but maybe you could both live here, if you wanted to.”
The arms of Johnny Trumbull dropped to his sides. Was this the two-hundred-pound terror who had thrashed two husky men single-handed and thrown them out only the year before?
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Trumbull, turning to Doris.
“It’s you—Johnny!” whispered Doris, with pink and lovely cheeks. “You’ve got more nerve than he has! And, anyway, he can’t fight on an empty stomach. I knew that.”
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the March 15, 1926 issue of the Top-Notch Magazine.