"No," said Nan, and now she wondered if she could keep her voice from getting away from her. "Stop where the cross cut comes out! Old Moosewood's stepping stones. She was going to cross by them, where old Moosewood——" There she stopped, to get a hand on herself, knowing she was going to tell him, who knew it before she was born, the story of Moosewood, the Indian, found there dead.
If the stab of her disclosures drew blood from Raven she could not have told. The road was narrower still, and rougher. Nan had forgotten where the stepping stones came out. He was slackening now. She knew the curve and the point where the cliff broke on the left, for the little path that continued the cross cut on the other side of the road. He got out without a glance at her, stepped to the water side of the roadway, and she followed him. And it was exactly what her fear had wakened her to say. There was no sign of Tira, but, grotesquely, her hat was lying on one of the stepping stones, as if she had reckoned upon its telling them. Raven ran down the path and into the shallow water near the bank, and again Nan followed him, and, at the edge of the water, stopped and waited. When the water was above his waist, he stooped, put down his arms and brought up something that, against the unwilling river, took all his strength. And this was Tira. He came in shore, carrying her, and walking with difficulty, and Nan ran up the bank before him. He laid Tira's body on the ground, and stood for an instant getting his breath, not looking at her, not looking at Nan.
"It's over," he said then quietly. "It's been over for hours." That was the instant of reaction, and he shook himself free of it. "Where do they live?" he asked Nan brusquely. "Yes, I know. We'll take her there. I'll hold her. You drive."
He lifted Tira again, put her into the car as if a touch might hurt her, and sat there holding her, waiting for Nan. And Nan got in and drove on to the Donnyhills'.
All that forenoon was a madness of haste and strangeness. It is as well to look at it through the eyes of Nan, for Raven, though he seemed like himself and was a model of crisp action, had no thoughts at all. To Nan it was a long interval from the moment of stopping before the little gray Donnyhill house (and rousing more squalid Donnyhills than you would have imagined in an underground burrow of wintering animals), through indignities they had to show Tira's body, the hopeless effort of rousing it again to its abjured relations with an unfriendly world. And while they worked on the tenant-less body, the Donnyhill boy, a giant with a gentle face, said he could drive, and was sent with Raven's car to the farmer who had a telephone, and the doctor came and Nan heard herself explaining to him that she woke up worried over Tira, because Tira had spoken of the stepping stones. The doctor shook his head over it all. The woman had been almost beside herself after the child's death. Perfectly quiet about it, too. But that was the kind. Nan didn't think she had any intention—any design?—and Nan hastened to say Tira had told why she was going, told it quite simply. She had forgotten to give the child any flowers. Of course, that did show how wrought up she was. And there were the stepping stones. They were always tricky. Here the doctor brought up old Moosewood, and said there were queer things. When you came to think of it, New England's a queer place. Suicide? No! Inquest? No! He guessed he knew. Then he went away and promised to send the other man who would be the last to meddle with the body of Tira.
The Donnyhill house was still, for all the children, with consolatory chunks of bread in hand, had been sent off into the spacious playing places about them. Mrs. Donnyhill, who looked like a weather-worn gypsy, went about muttering to herself passionately sorrowful lamentations: "God help us! poor creatur'! poor soul!" and she and Nan bathed Tira's body—somehow they were glad to wash off the river water—and put on it a set of clothes Nan suspected of being Mrs. Donnyhill's only decent wear. For the folded garments were all by themselves in the bedroom bureau, and it was true that the women in this region had forethought for a set to be buried in. When this was over and before the coming of the other man who was to have rights over Tira's body, Mrs. Donnyhill remembered Raven and Nan might not have breakfasted, and gave them bread and strong tea—brewed over night, it seemed to have been. They ate and drank, and she moved about tucking children's tyers and sweaters into holes of concealment and making her house fitting for Tira's majesty, all the time muttering her pleas to God.
About noon, when Tira was lying in the front room, in her solitude, no more to be touched until she was put into her coffin, Raven came in from his steady walk up and down before the house and went to Nan, where she sat by the window in the other front room. The strength had gone out of her. She sat up straight and strong, but her lips were ashen. As they confronted each other, each saw chiefly great weariness. Raven's face, Nan thought, was like a mask. It was grave, it was intent, but it did not really show that he felt anything beyond the general seriousness of the moment.
"Get your things," he said to her. "We'll go back. Tenney's got to be told, and I suppose Charlotte or somebody will have to do something to his house."
They both knew the strange commotion attendant here on funerals. Sometimes houses were upturned from top to bottom and cleaned, even to the paint. Nan put out a hand and touched his arm.
"Don't do that, Rookie," she said, "don't take her back there. She mustn't go into that house again. She wouldn't want it."