“Oh, she's been dead quite a spell now,” stated Shem. “I would have s'posed you'd 'a' heered that, too, somewhars. She had a kind of a risin' in the breast.”
“But my young uns—little Anderson and—and Elviry?”
The sick man was clear up on his knees now, his long arms hanging and his eyes, behind their matted lids, fixed on Shem's impassive face. Could the warden have seen him now, and marked his attitude and his words, he would have known what it was that had brought this dying man back to his own mountain valley with the breath of life still in him. A dumb, unuttered love for the two shock-headed babies he had left behind in the split-board cabin was the one big thing in Anse Dugmore's whole being—bigger even than his sense of allegiance to the feud.
“My young uns, Shem?”
“Wyatt Trantham took 'em and he kep' 'em—he's got 'em both now.”
“Does he—does he use 'em kindly?”
“I ain't never heered,” said Shem simply. “He never had no young uns of his own, and it mout be he uses 'em well. He's the high sheriff now.”
“I was countin' on gittin' to see 'em agin—an buyin 'em some little Chrismus fixin's,” the father wheezed. Hopelessness was coming into his rasping whisper. “I reckon it ain't no use to—to be thinkin'—of that there now?”
“No 'arthly use at all,” said Shem, with brutal directness. “Ef you had the strength to git thar, the Tranthams would shoot you down like a fice dog.”
Anse nodded weakly. He sank down again on the floor, face to the boards, coughing hard. It was the droning voice of his cousin that brought him back from the borders of the coma he had been fighting off for hours.