As it drew toward dusk, Roxy's face began to harden into grim lines, and she went about her preparations for supper with a gleaming eye. Her father, who had walked to a far pasture to salt cattle, came in, and sat with Mary Ann Martha on his knee by the fireplace. Roxy looked in at the door. Mutely, with only a backward jerk of the head, she called them to their meal. As 348 the child was following, her mother detained her and, giving no explanation, went with her into the far room. A moment later she came to the men sitting at the table.
"Well, there's yo' supper," she said resentfully to Sylvane, "sence you 'low that's all I'm fitten to do. Ye can put the things away yo'selves, I reckon. I'm a-goin' on a arrant."
And with the chubby Mary Ann Martha bundled heavily in shawls, silent as a small mummy, and plainly under the hypnotism of impressive instructions from her mother, she turned and went from the room, and they heard the front door close softly after her.
The men looked at each other uneasily, but there seemed nothing to be done.
Outside, Roxy stooped and spoke again to the child. She straightened up and peered long about her, listening intently, then moved obliquely among the yard shrubbery down to the gate. Crossing the road in the deep shade of cedar trees, she struck direct for the Gentry place, going by woods-paths that had so often known Lance's feet. When the short, fat little legs that trotted beside her in silence grew weary, she carried Mary Ann Martha pick-a-back, and always she was whispering to her.
"We're Injuns now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth'. Mammy's a squaw, and you' a little papoose, out a-scoutin' to see can we find Unc' Lance; or 349 head off them that's a-aimin' to do him mischief. Don't it make no noise."
When, in turn, Roxy herself was too tired to carry her daughter longer, she broke a thick willow switch beside a spring branch, and encouraged the little girl to ride a stick horse.
"But remember we' Injuns, honey," she whispered. "Injuns don't make no noise nor let they' nags make none."
In this wise they came to the edge of the timber and surveyed the opening where lay the Gentry farm. Here Roxy left the child, motionless as a little image in her swaddling of thick shawls—stationing her in the grove of young chestnuts from which Lance had emerged the night he came singing to Callista's window—while she scouted with infinite pains the entire circuit of the clearing. She encountered nobody, and heard nothing; yet surely the house where Lance Cleaverage's wife and child were would be subject to espionage. The clear stars hung above the bleak treetops, and by their dim light she could just make out the various buildings, trees and bushes. Once more carrying Mary Ann Martha, she moved down to the corner of a small out-building. Here she gave her last instructions to the child.
"Now, Ma'y-Ann-Marth', you go right up that line of bushes, on the shady side, to yo' Aunt Callisty's house; and don't you speak a word to anybody but her. You say to her that they's 350 somebody—mind, honey, somebody, don't you name who—that wants speech with her, a-waitin' out here by the chicken-house. Tell her to slip down here longside o' them same bushes. Can Mammy's gal say all that and say it right?" And she looked anxiously into Mary Ann Martha's solemn little face.