“I’ve forgotten,” said Darrin. He smiled cheerfully. “That is to say, I mean to forget. It’s not my affair. Let’s not talk about it.”
Over Evered swept then one of those impulses to speech, akin to the impulses of confession. He exclaimed with a tragic and miserable note in his voice. “By God, if I don’t talk about it sometime it’ll kill me.”
Darrin looked up at him, gently offered; “I’ll listen, then. It may ease you to—tell the story over. Go ahead, Mr. Evered. Sit down.”
Evered did not sit down. But the story burst from him. Something, Darrin’s sympathy or the anger Darrin’s reference to Semler had roused, touched hidden springs within the man. He spoke swiftly, eagerly, as though with a pathetic desire to justify himself. He moved to and fro, pointing, illustrating.
He told how Zeke Pitkin had brought word that the red bull was loose in the woodlot. “I stopped at the house,” he said. “There was no one there; and that scared me. When I came down this way I thought of this spring. My wife used to like to come here. And I was scared, Darrin. I loved Mary Evered, Darrin.”
He caught himself, as though his words sounded strangely even in his own ears. When he went on his voice was harsh and hard.
“I came to the knoll up there”—he pointed to the spot—“and saw Mary and Semler here, sitting together, talking together. Damn him! Like sweethearts!” The red floods swept across the man’s face as the tide of that old rage overwhelmed him. “Damn Semler!” he cried. “Let him come hereabouts again!”
He went on after a moment: “I was too late to do anything but shout to them. The bull was coming at them from over there, head down. When I shouted they heard me, and forgot each other; and then they saw the red bull. Semler could have stopped him or turned him if he’d been a man. If I had been nearer I could have killed the beast with my hands, in time. But I was too far away; and Semler ran. I tell you, Darrin, he ran! He turned tail, and squawked, and ran along the hillside there. But Mary did not run. She could not; or she wouldn’t. And the red bull hit her here; and tossed her there. One blow and toss. He has no horns, you’ll mind. Semler running, all the time. Tell him, when you go back—tell him he lied.”
He was abruptly silent, his old habit of reticence upon him. And he was instantly sorry that he had spoken at all. To speak had been relief, had somehow eased him. Yet who was Darrin? Why should he tell this man?
Darrin said gently, “The bull did not trample her?”