He faced about slowly and left her, going toward his sawmill.
"I'm lowdown!" she whispered to herself when he had disappeared in the bush. "I made fun o' his name, and how could he help his people if he used any other name? Oh, I'm lowdown—He's such a fine man, and I—I have to watch myself, or I can't even talk proper!"
She turned her face to the body of the old willow that had been a witness to so much in her life, and sobbed because she hated herself for having taken her revenge.
XV
Thirty days in jail had not made the Wolfe clan into better men. Contrary to the expectations of Sheriff Starnes, not one whit of the pepper had been taken out of them. They were as grim, as silent, and as bitter on the thirtieth day of their imprisonment as they had been on the first. They had stolidly refused to help in the building of good roads for the county until a diet of plain bread and water forced them to it; and then they had worked slowly and sullenly, shirking at each and every opportunity. Not a man of them but watched by day and night for some avenue of escape. For escape, to the twenty mountaineers, was the one and only alternative of rotting in jail.
Several times Sheriff Starnes had called Old Buck to him and said in the kindliest possible fashion. "If you'll give me your word that you won't allow your son or the lumber business out there to be harmed, I'll sure raise a peace-bond for you and the others, and let you go home. Promise?"
The stubborn old hillman had not once stooped to give the officer a verbal answer to the question. He had not even shaken his shaggy head. He had said once that he would never make such a promise, and once was enough to say anything.
The jail gang had come in from work on the evening of the day that had seen the starting-up of the big sawmill out in Wolfe's Basin. Much to his surprise, Old Buck found himself alone and unguarded in the little room that served as a lavatory. He peered down the long, narrow corridor that led to the jail's main entrance. There was no person in sight. He had but to make a determined dash for liberty, and liberty would be his. The dusk was thick outside now.