Chapter XI
The Warning
Five o’clock Friday morning found Creed, pale, hollow-eyed, a strip of Nancy’s home-made sticking plaster over the cut on brow and cheek, but otherwise composed and as usual, at the pine table in his little shack, working over the references which applied to the case he was to try that morning. But an hour later brought old Keziah Provine to the door to borrow the threading of a needle with white thread.
“I hearn they had an interruption,” she began, pushing in past Nancy and the two children, “but thar—you kin hear anything these days and times. They most gen’ally does find trouble at these here play-parties, that’s why I’m sot agin ’em.”
Poor old soul, it was not on account of her rheumatic legs, her toothless jaws, nor her half-blind eyes that she objected to play-parties, of course.
“I got no use for ’em,” she pursued truthfully, “specially when they’re started up too close to a blockade still. They named it to me that Creed had done killed one of the Turrentine boys—is that so?”
“No,” returned Nancy stoutly. “By the best of what I kin git out o’ Creed, him and Blatch was walkin’ along, an’ Blatch missed his footin’ and fell off o’ Foeman’s Bluff. Creed tried to he’p him, an’ fell an’ got scratched some. I reckon the Turrentines’ll tell it different, but that’s what I make out from what Creed says.”
“Lord, how folks will lie!” admired Keziah, piously. “Now they tell that Blatch was not only killed up, but that some one—Creed, or some o’ them that follers him—tuck the body away befo’ they could git to it. They say they was blood all over the bushes, an’ a great drug place whar Blatch had been toted off. One feller named a half-dug hole sorter like a grave; but thar! I never went over to see for myse’f, an’ ye cain’t believe the half o’ what ye hear.”
“Well, I’d say not,” snapped Nancy. “Not ef hit was sech a pack o’ lies as that.”