When she got so far, came the pressing question of how to send word to Creed. She must see and warn him before the men put their plan into practice. But she was well aware that she herself was under fairly close espionage, and that her first move in the direction of Nancy Card’s cabin would bring the vague suspicions of her household to a certainty. Where to find a messenger? How to so word a message that Creed would answer it? These were the questions that drove sleep from her pillow till almost morning.
She rose and faced the dawn with haggard eyes. Unless she could do something this was the last day of Creed’s life. In a tremor of apprehension she got through her morning duties, cooking and serving a breakfast to the three boys, who made no comment on their father’s absence, and whose curious looks she was aware of upon her averted face, her down-dropped eyelids. She felt alone indeed, with her uncle gone, and the boys who had been as brothers to her almost since babyhood suddenly become strangers, their interests and hers hostile, destructive to each other.
Woman will go to woman in a pinch like this, and in spite of her repugnance at the thought of Huldah, Judith late in the afternoon made her way over to the Jim Cal cabin and asked concerning its mistress’ toothache.
“Hit’s better,” said Iley briefly. Her head was tied up in a medley of cloths and smelled loud of turpentine, camphor, and a lingering bouquet of assafœtida. She was not a hopeful individual to enlist in a chivalrous enterprise.
“Huldy git back yet?” Judith asked finally.
“No, an’ she needn’t never git back,” snapped Iley. “Her and Creed Bonbright kin make out best they may. I don’t know as I mind her bein’ broke off with Wade. One Turrentine in the fambly’s enough fer me.”
“Air her and Creed Bonbright goin’ to be wedded?” inquired Judith scarcely above her breath.
“Air they?” echoed Xantippe, settling her hands on her hips and surveying Judith with an angry stare, the dignity of which was sadly impaired by a yellow flannel cloth-end which persisted in dabbling in her eye. “Well, I should hope so! I don’t know what gals is comin’ to in this day an’ time—follerin’ ’round after the young men like you do. Ef I’d a’ done so when I was a gal my mammy’d have took a hickory to me. That’s what she would. Here’s Jim Cal be’n rarin’ around here like a chicken with its head off ’caze Huldy run away with Creed Bonbright, and here you air askin’ me do I think Creed and Huldy is apt to marry. What kind of women do ye ’low the Spiller gals is, anyhow?”
Judith turned away from so unpromising an ally. She was accused of running after Creed Bonbright. When he got her message it would be with Huldah Spiller beside him to help him read it. The thought was bitter. It gave that passionate heart of hers a deadly qualm; but she put it down and rose above it. Huldah or no Huldah, she could not let him die and make no effort.
Leaving Jim Cal’s cabin she walked out into the woods, and only as she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back to find Iley furtively peering after her from the corner of the house did she realise that the woman’s words had been dictated because she had been taken into the confidence of the men and set to keep an eye on Judith.