Mrs. Churchill’s eyes flashed. “In my man’s place! That critter!”
“If,” said Carmel, “I can’t find an honest man—one like your husband—and get there first.”
“Uh huh....” said Mrs. Churchill, ruminatively. “He wa’n’t much give’ to talkin’, but more’n once he says to me, says he, ‘The’ hain’t many in this place I’d trust as fur’s I could throw ’em by the horns,’ he says. But I call to mind that whenever he got kind of out of his depth like, and had to talk things over with somebody, he allus went to spend the evenin’ with Jared Whitefield. Him and Jared was close. I don’t calc’late you’d make no mistake goin’ to Jared and statin’ your case.”
“Thank you,” said Carmel. “There’s not a moment to be wasted. Good-by.”
She did not return to the office, but walked out the main street, past the village cemetery, to the rambling, winged house from which Jared Whitefield ruled his thousand-acre stock farm—a farm he had carved himself out of the forest, cleared, stumped, and planted. She knew the man by sight, but had never held conversation with him. He was not an individual to her, but a name. She opened the gate with trepidation, not because she feared the reception of herself, but because she was apprehensive. Mr. Whitefield, when studied at close range, would not measure up to the stature of the man she felt was needed.
A dog barked. A voice silenced the dog. Carmel noted how suddenly the dog quieted when the voice spoke. Then a man appeared around the corner of the house, an ax in his hand, and stood regarding her. He did not bow, nor did he speak. He merely stood, immobile, as if some cataclysm of nature had caused him to burst through the soil at that spot, and as if there still remained embedded roots of him which anchored him forever to the spot. He was big, straight, bearded. At first glance she thought him grim, but instantly decided it was not grimness, but granite immobility. She approached and greeted him.
“Good morning, Mr. Whitefield,” she said.
He inclined his head and waited.
“I am Miss Lee, proprietor of the Free Press,” she said.
“I know ye,” he said.