But Eve was no longer the gentle, indulgent woman he had always known. She was fighting for a life perhaps dearer to her than Elia’s. She saw a barely possible chance that through Elia she might yet save Jim. Will’s brutal attack upon a cripple had met with perhaps 377 something more than its deserts, but these men were men, and maybe the extenuation of the provocation might at least save Jim the rope.
Elia quickly gave up the struggle. His bodily hurts had robbed him of what little physical strength he possessed at the best of times; and Eve, for all her slightness, was by no means a weak woman. She literally forced him to go, half dragging him, and never for a moment relaxing her hold upon him.
And so they came to Peter’s hut. She knocked loudly at the door, and called to him, fearing, because she saw no light, that the man had gone out again. But Peter was there, and his astonished voice answered her summons at once.
“Eve?” he cried, in something like consternation, for he was thinking of the news he must now give her. Then he appeared in the doorway.
“Quick, light a lamp,” the woman cried. “Elia has told me all about it. He says Jim is to die at––dawn.” She glanced involuntarily at the eastern horizon, and to her horror beheld the first pale reflection of morning light, hovering, an almost milky lightening, where all else was still jet black.
Peter had no words with which to answer her. He had dreaded seeing her, and now––she knew. He lit the lamp, and Eve dragged the unwilling boy in with her; and as she passed him over to Peter’s bed he fell back on it groaning.
“Peter,” she cried now, speaking with a rush, since dawn was so near. “Can’t something be done? Surely, surely, there is extenuation! He did it all to defend Elia. Will was killing him out there at the bluff. Look 378 at him! Can’t you see his suffering? That’s why Jim killed him. Elia’s just told me so. He even took these things from––from the body after––thinking it might save Jim. He brought them to me just now; and he says he’s been down at the saloon, and never said a word to help Jim. He said he was frightened to go in. Did Jim tell them it was to save Elia? Oh, surely they can be made to understand it was not wilful––wilful murder! They can’t hang him. It’s––it’s––horrible!”
But as the astonished Peter listened to her words, words which told him a side of the story he had never even dreamed of before, his eyes drifted and fixed themselves on the now ghastly face of the boy. He compelled the terror-stricken eyes and held them with his own. And when Eve ceased speaking he answered her without turning. He was reading, reading through the insane mind of the boy, right down into his very soul. In the long days he had had Elia working with him he had studied him closely. And he had learned the twists and warps of his nature as no one else understood them.
“Jim said nothing at all!” Peter said slowly.
“Nothing? What do you mean? He––he must have told them of––of Elia?”