"Can't help it, old man," said Dick. The eagerness of his voice made it very moving. "Really, you know, I can't have you trotting round, this time of night, all by your lonesome. If you want to hang round here, you let me come, too. We'll light the fire and smoke a pipe and finish the night, if you say so. Come, old man. Come on."
"No," said Raven quietly, "we won't light fires and smoke pipes. We'll go down now, to bed. Dick, you're a fool. I've had to tell you so more than once. But you're a dear fool, and sometime I may be able to remember that and nothing else. Just now I can't seem to want to do anything but pitch you, neck and crop, into the snow."
They went down together, Dick still doggedly conscious of doing the only thing possible, and when they were near the foot of the hill, Raven yelled at him, the old Moosewood whoop, and sprang. It was the signal between them when one or the other had a mind to "wrastle," and they stood there in the road and assailed each other scientifically and with vigor, to the great benefit of each. It was a beneficent outburst, and Charlotte, roused by the cry, ran to a chamber window and stood there in her nightgown, watching.
"How they do carry on!" she commented to Jerry, when they had separated and come in, chaffing volubly. "For all the world like two toms."
Things were easier between them, now they had mauled each other, and they ran upstairs together, "best friends" as they used to be when Dick learned the game. He was wonderfully encouraged. This was the Uncle Jack he used to tag about the place. He went to bed with a hopeful presentiment that, if things kept on like this, he might take Raven back to town presently, reasonable enough to place himself voluntarily in the right hands.
To Tira, the week dragged on with a malicious implication of never meaning to end until it ended her. Strange things could be done in a week, it reminded her, conclusive, sinister things. The old fears were on in full force, and though it had not looked as if they could be much augmented, now they piled up mountain high. And she presently found out they were not the old fears at all. There was a fresh menace, ingeniously new. She had studied the weather of Tenney's mind and knew the signs of it. She could even anticipate them. But this new menace she could never have foreseen. It was simply his crutch. An evil magic seemed to have fallen upon it, and it was no longer a crutch but a weapon. Tenney would not abandon it. His foot was improving fast, and the doctor had suggested his dropping the crutch for a cane; but he kept on with it, kept on obstinately without a spoken pretext. To Tira, there was something sinister in that. She saw him not relying on it to any extent, but sedulously keeping it by him. Sometimes he gesticulated with it. He had, with great difficulty, brought in the cradle again, as if to emphasize his callousness to the gash in it, and once he tapped it with the crutch, while the baby lay there asleep, and set it rocking. Tira, cooking at the table, felt her heart stand still. An actual weapon she could flee from, but was this a weapon? The uncertainty was in itself terrifying.
It was the day he set the cradle rocking that she awoke in the night, her fear full upon her. He was at her side, sleeping heavily. The baby was on her other arm. Yet it seemed to her that the menace from Tenney had pierced her to reach the child and, on its passage, stabbed through her racing heart. Then her temptation came upon her, so simple a thing she seemed stupid never to have thought of it before. She rose to a sitting posture, put her feet out of bed, took the child, and carried him with her into the sitting-room. She laid him on the couch and covered him, and then stole back into the bedroom. The crutch was there, in its habitual place at night, leaning against the foot of the bed. She could put her hand on it in the dark. Tenney, too, she had begun to reflect, could put his hand on it. What deeds might he not do with it in those hours when the sanities of life also sleep? She took it gently and went out again through the sitting-room and kitchen into the shed. Her purpose had been to hide it behind the wood. But if he came on it there, it would not be a crutch he found. It would be a weapon. She put her hand on an upright beam, as she stood painfully thinking it out, and touched the handle of a saw, hanging there on a nail; immediately she knew. She went back into the kitchen, lighted the lantern and carried it into the shed. There stood the crutch leaning against the beam below the saw, a weapon beyond doubt. She set down her lantern, laid the crutch on the block Tenney used to split kindlings, set her foot upon it and methodically sawed it into stove wood lengths. When it was done she gathered up the pieces, carried them into the sitting-room, to the stove where Tenney always, in winter weather, left a log to smoulder, dropped them in and opened the draught. Then she went back to the shed, swept up her scattering of sawdust, hung the saw in its place, gave a glance about her to see that everything was in its usual order, and returned into the kitchen. She put out the lantern, hung it on its nail, went into the sitting-room and partially shut the draft on the noisy blaze. She did not dare quite shut it, lest a bit of the weapon should be left to cry out from the ashes and tell. When she was back in bed again, the child on her arm, Tenney, disturbed by her coming, woke and turned. He lifted his head from the pillow, to listen, and she wondered if he could hear the beating of her heart.
"You there?" he asked. "What's that stove started out roarin' for? The chimbly ain't afire?"
"No," said Tira. "Mebbe somethin's ketched." She got out of bed, ran into the sitting-room, noiselessly shut the crack of draught, and came back. "Them knots are kinder gummy," she said calmly, and was heartened by the evenness of her voice. "I guess 'twon't roar long."
They listened together until the sound diminished, and Tira knew when he relaxed and dropped off again. It did not seem to her that she dropped off at all, she was so relieved to think of her enemy smouldering and done for.