“I don’t know as its worth while talkin’ to Wade about that thar gal,” put in Jephthah meditatively. “She sorter sidled off last night and left the place, and I think he feels kinder pestered and mad like. My boys is all mighty peaceful in their dispositions, but it ain’t the best to talk to any man when he’s had that which riles him.”
“Whar is Huldy Spiller?” demanded Judith standing straight and tall before the visitor, disdaining the indirection of her uncle’s methods. “Is she over at you-all’s?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to Wade about,” returned Creed evasively. “Huldah’s a good girl, and I’m sorry if he thinks—I’d hate to be the one that——”
For a moment Judith stared at him with incredulous anger, then she wheeled sharply, went into the house and shut the door. Creed turned appealingly to the older man. He had great faith in Jephthah Turrentine’s good sense and cool judgment. But the young justice showed in many ways less comprehension of these, his own people, than an outsider born and bred. Jephthah Turrentine was no longer to be reckoned with as a man—he was the head of a tribe, and that tribe was at war.
“I don’t know as that thar gal is worth namin’ at this time,” he vouchsafed, almost plaintively. “Ef she had taken Jim Cal’s Iley ’long with her, I could fergive the both of ’em and wish ye joy. As it is, she’s neither here nor thar. Ef you had nothin’ better to name to my son Wade, mebbe we’d as well talk of the craps, and about Steve Massengale settin’ out to run for the Legislature.”
Creed stood up, and in so doing let the little packet of papers he held in his hand drop unnoted to the grass. He scorned to make an appeal for himself, yet it seemed worth while to let his adversaries know that he was aware what they would be at.
“Who found Blatch Turrentine’s body and removed it?” he asked abruptly.
Blatch’s body,—unknown to his uncle and Judith—at that moment reposing comfortably upon a bed in the loft room adjoining the porch, heaved with noiseless chuckles.
Old Jephthah’s eyes narrowed. “We ’low that ye might answer that question for yo’self,” he said coolly. “Word goes that you’ve done hid the body, so murder couldn’t be proved.”
The visitor sighed. He was disappointed. He had hoped the old man might have admitted—to him—that Blatch had not been killed.