“He kept that red, killing brute about,” she protested. “Oh, he killed her, he killed Mary, he killed my sister, John.”
“That is not fair,” he told her.
Before she could answer they both hushed to the sound of the approaching wagon; and Evered came toward them, leading the horse, and he turned it and backed the wagon in below the spring.
They did not speak to him, nor he to them. But when he was ready he went toward the dead woman to lift her into the wagon bed; and Ruth pushed between them and cried: “You shan’t touch her! You shan’t touch her, ever!”
Evered looked at her steadily; and after a moment he said, “Stand to one side.”
The girl wished to oppose him; but it was a tribute to his strength that even in this moment the sheer will of the man overpowered her. She moved aside; and Evered lifted his wife’s body with infinite gentleness and disposed it upon the fragrant hay in the wagon bed. He put the folded coat again beneath his wife’s head as a pillow, as though she were only sleeping.
Still with no word to them he took the horse’s rein and started to lead it toward the road and up the hill. And Ruth and John, after a moment, followed a little behind.
When they came up into the open, out of the scattering trees, a homing crow flying overhead toward its roost saw them. It may have been that the wagon roused some memory in the bird, offered it some promise. At any rate, the black thing circled on silent wing, and lighted in the road along which they had come, and hopped and flopped behind them as they went slowly up the hill toward the farm.
Ruth saw the bird and shuddered; and John went back and drove it into flight; but it took earth again, farther behind them.
It followed them insistently up the hill; and it was still there, a dozen rods away, as they brought Mary Evered home.