“Everything comes out at last,” he murmured. “Oh, Lord, I’m glad Doc Carey got hold of me when he did.”
Slowly he ran his eyes down the lines as he read in a half whisper:
I was walking down the National pike road toward Cloverdale with little Leigh in the twilight. Where the railroad crosses Clover Creek on the high fill we saw Tank Shirley and the young cashier, Terrence Smalley, who had disappeared after the bank failure. It seems Tank had promised to pay Smalley to stay away and to find Jim and get his property away from him. Evidently Tank had not kept his word, for they were quarreling and came to blows until the cashier’s face was cut and bleeding above the eye. There was a struggle, and one pushed the other over the bank into the deep water there. Little as Leigh was, she knew one of the men was her father, and we thought he had pushed Smalley into the creek. He had a sort of paralyzed arm and could not swim. I tried to make her forget all about it. I promised her my home and farm some day if she would never tell what she had seen. She shut her lips, but if she forgot, I cannot tell.
That night I went alone to the fill and found Terrence Smalley with a cut face and a twisted shoulder lying above the place where Tank went down. I helped him to my home and dressed his wounds. I may have done wrong not to deliver him to the authorities, but he had a bad story to tell of Tank’s bank record that would have disgraced the Shirley family in Ohio, so we made an agreement. He would never make himself known to Leigh, nor in any way disturb her life nor reveal anything of her father’s life to disgrace her name, if I let him go. And I agreed not to report what I had seen, nor to tell what I knew to his hurt. He promised me also never to show his face in Cloverdale 357 again. He was a selfish, dishonest man, who used Tank Shirley’s hatred of his brother and his other sins to hide his own wrongdoing. But I tried to do my duty by the innocent ones who must suffer, when I turned him loose with his conscience. I do not know what has become of him, but, so far as I do know, he has kept the secret of Tank Shirley’s crooked dealing with the Cloverdale bank, and he has never annoyed Leigh, nor brought any disgrace to her name. This statement duly witnessed, etc.
Slowly Darley Champers read. Then, laying down the pages, he said as slowly: “‘Unknown’ in the Grass River graveyard. ’Unknown’ to Jim Shirley and Asher Aydelot, whose eyes he’d never let see him. I understand now, why. Known to me as Thomas Smith, an escaped defaultin’ bank cashier who didn’t commit suicide. Known to the late Miss Aydelot as Tank Shirley’s murderer. If the devil knows where to git on the track of that scoundrel an’ locate him properly in hell, he’ll do it without my help. By the Lord Almighty, I’ll never tell what I know. An’ this paper goes to ashes here. Oh, Caesar! If I could only burn up the recollection that I was ever low-down an’ money-grubbin’ enough to collute with such as him for business. I’m danged glad I had that quarter kep’ in Leigh’s name ’stead of Jim’s. That’s why Thomas Smith threatened and didn’t act. He didn’t dare to go against Leigh as long as Jane Aydelot was livin’.”
He stuck a blazing match to the letter and watched it crumple to ashes on the rusty stove-hearth. Then he carefully swept the ashes on a newspaper, and, opening his doors again, he scattered them in the dusty main street of Wykerton.
That afternoon Champers went again to the Cloverdale Ranch. Leigh was alone, busy with her brushes and paint-board in the seat on the lawn where Thaine Aydelot had 358 found her on the summer day painting sunflowers. The first little sunflower was blooming now by the meadow fence.
“Don’t git up, Miss Shirley. Keep your seat, mom. I dropped in on a little business. I’m glad to set out here.”
Champers took off his hat and fanned his red face as he sat on the ground and looked out at the winding river bordered by alfalfa fields.
“Nice stand you got out there.” He pointed with his hat toward the fields. “Where’s Jim?”