“Oh, John!” she expostulated finally, when she saw her husband come home crestfallen one day, with a ham which Sammy had detected him smuggling into the cabin and ordered back,—“John honey, ef you was to stop toting things to the cabin and let it all alone—not pester with it another—”
“Cornely, Cornely!” cried Pap John, “you know Sammy cain't no mo' keep a wife and chillen than a peckerwood kin. W'y, they'd starve! Huldy and the chaps would jest p'intedly starve.”
“No, they won't, John. Ef you could master yo' own soft heart—ef you could stay away (like he's tole ye a minny a time to do, knowin' 'at you was safe not to mind him)—Sammy would stop this here foolishness. He'd come to his senses and be thankful for what the Lord sent, like other people. W'y, John—”
“Cornely honey—don't. Don't ye say another word. I tell ye, this last year there's a feelin' in my throat and in my breast—hyer,”—he laid his hand pathetically over his heart,—“a cur'us, gone, flutterin' feelin'. And when Sammy r'ars up and threatens he'll take Huldy and the chaps—you know,”—he finished with a gesture of the hand and a glance of unspeakable pain,—“when he does that 'ar way, or something comes at me sudden like that—that we may lose 'em, hit seems like—right hyer,”—and his hand went again to his heart,—“that I can't bear it—that hit 'll take my life.”
This was the last time Cornelia ever remonstrated with Pap John. She had a little talk with the new doctor from Hepzibah who bad succeeded old Dr. Pastergood; and after that John was added to the list of her anxieties. He might carry the milk to the cabin on The Bench; he might slip in, when he deemed Sammy away—or asleep—and plough the corn; she saw the tragic folly of it, but must be silent. And so on that particular June morning, when Pap had put up the mule, clambered down the short-cut footway from The Bench to the old house, stopping several times to shake his head again and murmur to himself—“Whut you gwine do? There's them chaps; there's Huldy. Mustn't plough his co'n; mustn't take over air cow. Whut you gwine do?”—Aunt Cornelia's seeing eye noted his perturbation the moment he came in at the door. With tender guile she built up a considerable argument in the matter of a quarterly meeting which was approaching—the grove quarterly, in which Pap John was unfailingly interested, and during which there were always from two to half a dozen preachers, old and young, staying with them. So she led him away—ever so little away—from his ever-present grief.
It was the next day that he said to her, “Cornely, I p'intedly ain't gwine to suffer this hyer filchin' o' co'n them Fusons is a-keepin' up on me.”
“Is the Fusons a-stealin' yo' co'n, John?” she responded, in surprise. “W'y, they got a-plenty, ain't they?”
“Well, no, not adzactly, that is to say, Buck Fuson ain't got a-plenty. He too lazy and shif'less to make co'n of his own; and he like too well to filch co'n from them he puts his spite on. Buck Fuson he tuck a spite at me, last time the raiders was up atter that Fuson hideout; jes set up an' swore 'at I'd gin the word to 'em. You see, honey, he makes him up a spite that-a-way—jes out o' nothin'—'cause hit's sech a handy thing to have around when he comes to want co'n. Thar's some one already purvided to steal from—some one 'at's done him a injury.”
“Pappy! W'y, Johnny honey, sakes alive! What air ye ever a-gwine to do 'long o' that there thing?” For the old man had laboriously fetched out a rusty wolf-trap, and was now earnestly inspecting and overhauling it.
“Whut am I a-gwine to do 'long o' this hyer, Cornely? W'y, I am jes p'intedly a-gwine to set it in my grain-room. Buck Fuson air a bad man, honey. There's two men's blood to his count. They cain't nothin' be done to him for nair a one of 'em—you know, same's I do—'ca'se hit cain't be proved in a co't o' law. But I kin ketch him in this meanness with this hyer little jigger, and I'm a-gwine to do hit, jest ez sure ez my name's John Overholt!”