The long and short of it was the French-Canadian was sparking the school teacher. And everybody talked about it, of course; they said it was a shame; they said if she didn’t have sense enough to see what kind of a man he was, someone should tell her.
I have often wondered since what would have happened if anybody had gone to that woman with stories of Black Jean. I know I’d never dared to, because, without knowing why, I was afraid of her. I guess maybe that is why the others didn’t, either.
There was no mistaking she was encouraging to Black Jean. She didn’t seem to object in the slightest to his attentions, and I can see them yet: her, little and pretty and in a white dress, and Black Jean lingering there with his bears, dirty, and towering head and shoulders above her.
BLACK JEAN kept coming and people went on talking, and finally somebody said she had been to Split Hill.
And one day I began to understand it, too. It was the time she was punishing some pupils. Three of them were lined up before her, and she started along whacking the outstretched hands with a stout ruler. Right in front of where I was sitting stood Ben Anger. He was the smallest of the lot and was trembling like a leaf.
Her first clip at him must have raised a welt on his hands, because he whimpered. She hit him again, and he closed his fingers. At that she caught up the jackknife he’d been whittling at his desk with and pried at his fingers until the blood came.
Sitting where I was, I saw her face while she was at it. It had the expression of a female devil. I didn’t say anything to my folks about that; but I wasn’t surprised when word came next week that we were to have a new teacher—the little one had gone to live with Black Jean.
Well, there was more talk—talk of rail-riding the pair of them out of the district. But nothing was done, and one evening, a month later, there was a rap at our door and the French-Canadian staggered in. He was carrying the school teacher in his arms.
“What has happened?” my father demanded.