“She belongs to me, and I have protected her honor! The dog whose ambition it was to disgrace me through her weakness is dead!”
He was a giant in physical stature, and every muscle quivered with excitement. I thought that had he been called upon to rescue his wife from a dozen men in his present state, he would have undertaken and accomplished it, and I shuddered to think what had befallen the one man against him. I had never noticed it there before, but the tolling of the great bell at Fairview could be distinctly heard.
When I stood up and looked at Mateel, I drew back in horror at the change in her appearance. Her form was wasted and thin, and her face so pale that I feared she was dead. Instead of wearing a bridal dress, her apparel was of black material, which made her look more ghastly.
“Oh! Jo,” I said, “what have you done?”
“This,” he answered, looking first at Mateel’s motionless form on the bed, and then coming toward me. “This: I picked up Clinton Bragg from his seat beside Mateel as they came through the woods by the ford, and strangled him as I would strangle a dog. I held him out at arm’s length until he was limp and dead, and threw his carcass into the brush. Then, taking Mateel in my arms, I lashed the devilish horse until he ran away through the timber, when I waded the creek, and came here!”
It was a short but terrible story, and his tragic telling of it so impressed me that I almost cheered him, knowing the wrong he had suffered.
Mateel still lay quietly on the bed, occasionally moaning, and Jo went to her again, and lovingly caressed her, as he might have done had she been his lawful wife in temporary distress, and I thought his manner was softened by contemplating her misery, for when he spoke again it was half in apology.
“I have always feared this, and although I have done an awful thing, I could not do less.” He walked toward me and stood by my side. “Bragg pursued me with relentless hate, and he is as much to blame as I am. They might have known I would not submit to this cruelty; it was more than I could bear, and I could not help doing what I did.”
I had been oppressed for a long time with a vague fear, though I was never clear as to what it was, that something dreadful would come of the separation, and as I sat there, looking from the helpless woman lying on the bed to the wretched man walking the floor, I almost concluded that the murder of Clinton Bragg was the result I had expected.
“There is so much wickedness in my heart to-night that I am proud of what I have done,” Jo said, stopping in his walk, as though he had been thinking it over and had come to that conclusion. “I cannot regret it; the murder of that man has given me the only relief I have known in three years, and I feel like calling at the houses of honest people, and crying, ‘A man who deserved death is dead!’ Even the wind was crying fiercely for revenge when he was seated beside my wife intent on his unnatural and fiendish purpose, but it is quiet now, and sobbing in pity for me. I never insulted my manhood nor mankind by trying to curb my fierce passion when I heard he intended to pass my house with Mateel. I resolved to murder him, and all honest men will say I could have done nothing less!”