Ann Boyd: A Novel

by Will N. Harben

"I'll stay out here at the gate," the man said. "You'll have to do all the talking. As Willard said, she will do more for Luke King's mother than she would for anybody else, and you remember how she backed the boy up in his objections to me as a step-daddy."

"Well, I'll do what I can," the woman said, plaintively. "You stay here behind the bushes. I don't blame you for not wanting to ask a favor of her, after all she said when we were married. She may spit in my face—they say she's so cantankerous."

Seating himself on a flat stone, the man cut the corner off of his tobacco-plug and began to chew it, while his wife, a woman about sixty-five years of age, and somewhat enfeebled, opened the gate and went in. Mrs. Boyd answered the gentle rap and appeared at the door.

"Howdy do, Mrs. Boyd," the caller began. "I reckon old age hasn't changed me so you won't know me, although it's been ten years since me 'n' you met. I'm Mrs. Mark Bruce, that used to be Mrs. King. I'm Luke's mother, Mrs. Boyd."

"I knew you when you and Mark Bruce turned the bend in the road a quarter of a mile away," said Ann, sharply, "but, the Lord knows, I didn't think you'd have the cheek to open my front gate and stalk right into my yard after all you've said and done against me."

The eyes of the visitor fell to her worn shoe, through which her bare toes were protruding. "I had no idea I'd ever do such a thing myself until about two hours ago," she said, firmly; "but folks will do a lots, in a pinch, that they won't ordinarily. You may think I've come to beg you to tell me if you know where Luke is, but I hain't. Of course, I'd like to know—any mother would—but he said he'd never darken a door that his step-father went through, and I told 'im, I did, that he could go, and I'd never ask about 'im. Some say you get letters from him. I don't know—that, I reckon, is your business."

"You didn't come to inquire about your boy, then?" Ann said, curiously, "and yet here you are."

"It's about your law-suit with Gus Willard that I've come, Ann. He told you, it seems, that he was going to fight it to the bitter end, and he did call in a lawyer, but the lawyer told him thar was no two ways about it. If his mill-pond backed water on your land to the extent of covering five acres, why, you could make him shet the mill up, even if he lost all his custom. Gus sees different now, like most of us when our substance is about to take wings and fly off. He sees now that you've been powerful indulgent all them years in letting him back water on your property to its heavy damagement, and he says, moreover, that, to save his neck from the halter, he cayn't blame you fer the action. He says he did uphold Brother Bazemore in what he said about burning the bench that was consecrated till you besmirched it, and he admits he talked it here an' yan considerably. He said, an' Gus was mighty nigh shedding tears, in the sad plight he's in, that you had the whip in hand now, and that his back was bare, an' ef you chose to lay on the lash, why, he was powerless, for, said he, he struck the fust lick at you, but he was doin' it, he thought, for the benefit of the community."

"But," and the eyes of Ann Boyd flashed ominously, "what have you come for? Not, surely, to stand in my door and preach to me."

"Oh no, Ann, that hain't it," said the caller, calmly. "You see, Gus is at the end of his tether; he's in an awful fix with his wife and gals in tears, and he's plumb desperate. He says you hain't the kind of woman to be bent one way or another by begging—that is, when you are a-dealing with folks that have been out open agin you; but now, as it stands, this thing is agoing to damage me and Mark awfully, fer Mark gets five dollars a month for helping about the mill on grinding days, and when the mill shets down he'll be plumb out of a job."