“Tha’s good. I’m a steady man an’ don’t go devilin’ ’round none. ’F I ma’ied again,”—he was talking pointedly at Mellie—“I druther have a woman that c’d work an’ keep her mouth shet than anything else. Kin you-all tell me where I c’n git one that-a-way, Miz Chunn?”
Mellie waited on him with a padlocked tongue. When he had gorged himself she slipped away and fled to the hickory lead at the edge of the bayou. In the heavy shade of the forest she buried herself, trying to hide from the shame and the horror of it all. What could she do? How could she escape the net which enmeshed her? To whom could she turn for help? Her throat ached with the intensity of the passion of despair that swept her.
Jed would have known what to do. Jed would have saved her. But he was a thousand miles away on some unknown ranch. His mother’s domineering temper had driven him away from home in anger. They had heard of him just once in the four years. That was when the editor of their country paper, stopping at Mrs. Chunn’s over night, had mentioned that her son was still one of the subscribers to the Beebee Bee.
“Texas is a mighty big place, an’ a mighty fine country I’ve heard, but I reckon, Madam”—with a courtly bow to Mrs. Chunn—“be it nevah so humble the’s no place like home!”
“I ’low that’s why he makes out without evah seeing it,” Jed’s mother had returned dryly to the burst of editorial oratory. Her boy was the one weak spot in her inflexible armor of autocracy. To have had him home again she would willingly have made him an exception to her own rule, though she never admitted it even to herself.
It was to Jed’s strength that the girl’s weakness went fluttering out in her hour of need. He would have understood, as nobody else could. The indolent, masterful force of him would have won her battle for her. But without him—fear rose in her throat and choked her. She could not hold out—she knew she could not hold out against the quiet, steadfast, terrible pressure her stepmother would bring to bear.
Texas was a big country and far away. The paper man from Beebee had said that. But he had said, too, that he sent his paper to Jed. If so, he must know where he was living. In the midst of the desert of her despair there began to rise a tiny wellspring of hope. She would write to Jed.
As it happened, Buck Drumley was going to Beebee next day. Buck rented on shares the west bottom from Mrs. Chunn and worked it in cotton. No faintest accent of intelligence disturbed the blur of his vacant features, and he got along very comfortably without a chin. But Mellie could depend upon the loyalty of this lank, tow-headed product of the bayous even if she could not upon his wisdom. Her letter to the editor made verbal explanations unnecessary.
Buck was delighted to oblige her, and he swore himself to secrecy with an air of conspiracy so patent that the contorted winks he attempted just before setting out threatened to disclose everything to Mrs. Chunn.
“What in time’s ailin’ with yo’, Buck Drumley?” demanded the widow.