It was Jim Saladine’s steady voice which put an end to that. “Don’t put your foul mouth on her, Judd,” he said quietly. “Not if you want to walk home.”
Judd started to speak, caught Saladine’s quiet eye and was abruptly still.
III
EVERED and his son drove home together through the clotting dusk in a silence that was habitual with them. The buggy was a light vehicle, the horse was swift and powerful, and they made good time. Evered, driving, used the whip now and then; and at each red-hot touch of the light lash the horse leaped like a stricken thing; and at each whiplash John Evered’s lips pressed firmly each against the other, as though to hold back the word he would have said. No good in speaking, he knew. It would only rouse the lightly slumbering anger in his father, only lead to more hurts for the horse, and a black scowl or an oath to himself. There were times when John Evered longed to put his strength against his father’s; when he was hungry for the feel of flesh beneath his smashing fists. But these moments were few. He understood the older man; there was a blood sympathy between them. He knew his father’s heart as no other did or could; and in the last analysis he loved his father loyally. Thus had he learned long patience and restraint. It is very easy to damn and hate a man like Evered, hot and fierce and ruthlessly overbearing. But John Evered, his son, who had suffered more from Evered than any other man, neither damned nor hated him.
They drove home together in silence. Evered sat still in his seat, but there was no relaxation in his attitude. He was still as a tiger is still before the charge and the leap. John at his side could feel the other’s shoulder muscles tensing. His father was always so, always a boiling vessel of emotions. You might call him a powerful man, a masterful man. John Evered knew him for a slave, for the slave of his own hot and angry pulse beats. And he loved and pitied him.
Out of Fraternity they took the Liberty road, and came presently to a turning which led them to the right, and so to the way to Evered’s farm, a narrow road, leading nowhere except into the farmyard, and traveled by few men who had no business there.
When they came into the farmyard it was almost dark. Yet there was still light enough to see, beyond the shadow of the barn, the sloping hillside that led down to Whitcher Swamp; and the swamp itself, brooding beneath its gray mists in the thickening night. The farm buildings were set on a jutting shoulder of the hill, looking out across the valley where the swamp lay, to Fraternity, and off toward Moody Mountain beyond the town. By day there was a glory in this valley that was spread below them; by night it was a place of dark and mystery. Sounds used to come up the hill from the swamp; the sounds of thrashing brush where the moose fed, or perhaps the clash of ponderous antlers in the fall, or the wicked scream of a marauding cat, or the harsh cries of night-hawks, or the tremolo hoot of an owl.
Built against the barn on the side away from the house there was a stout roofed stall; and opening from this stall a pen with board walls higher than a man’s head and cedar posts as thick as a man’s leg, set every four feet to support the planking of the walls. As the horse stopped in the farmyard and Evered and his son alighted, a sound came from this stall—a low, inhuman, monstrous sound, like the rumbling of a storm, like the complaint of a hungry beast, like the promise of evil things too dreadful for describing; the muffled roaring of Evered’s great red bull, disturbed by the sound of the horse. John Evered stood still for an instant, listening. It was impossible for most men to hear that sound without an appalling tremor of the heart. But Evered himself gave no heed to it. He spoke to the horse. He said “Hush, now. Still.”
The horse was as still as stone, yet it trembled as it had trembled at Will’s store. Evered gathered parcels from beneath the seat; and John filled his arms with what remained. They turned toward the house together, the son a little behind the father.
There was a light in the kitchen of the farmhouse; and a woman had come to the open door and was looking out toward them. She was silhouetted blackly by the light behind her. It revealed her figure as slim and pleasantly graven. The lamp’s rays turned her hair into an iridescent halo about her head. She rested one hand against the frame of the door; and her lifted arm guided her body into graceful lines.