Dogs rushed out barking blatantly as the woman slid from her saddle, but at the sound of her voice they stilled their clamour—for dogs are not informed when old friendships turn to enmity.
The front door opened upon her somewhat timid knock, but it opened only to a slit and the face that peered out was that of a woman who, when she recognized the outer voice, seemed half minded to slam it again in refusal of welcome. Curiosity won a minor victory, though, over hostility, and the mistress of the house slipped out, holding the door inhospitably closed at her back.
"Fer ther land's sakes, what brings ye hyar, Sally Turk?" she challenged in the rasp of hard unreceptiveness, and the visitor replied in a note of pleading, "I come ter see Will ... I've jest got ter see Will."
The other woman still held the door as she retorted harshly: "All thet you an' Will hev got ter do kin be done in co'te termorrer, I reckon."
But Sally Turk clutched the arm of Will Turk's wife in fingers that were tight with the obduracy of despair.
"I've got ter see Will," she pleaded. "Fer God's sake, don't deny me. Hit's ther only thing I asks of ye now—an' hit's a matter of master int'rest ter Will es well es me. I'll go down on my knees ef hit'll pleasure him—but I've got ter see him."
There was something in the colourless monotony of that reiteration which Lindy Turk, whose teeth were chattering in the icy wind, could not deny. With a graceless concession she opened the door.
"Come inside, then," she ordered, brusquely. "I'll find out will he see ye—but I misdoubts hit."
Inside the room the woman who had ridden across the hills sank into a low, hickory-withed chair by the simmering hearth and hunched there, faint and wordless. Now that she had arrived, the ordeal before her loomed big with threat and fright, and Lindy, instead of calling her husband, stood stolidly with arms akimbo and a merciless glitter of animosity in her eyes.
"Hit's a right qu'ar an' insolent thing fer ye ter do," she finally observed, "comin' over hyar thisaway, on ther very eve of Ken Thornton's trial."