Boyd lowered his shaggy head. There was a piteous flicker of despair in the lashes of the eyes Ann had once loved so well.
"It's mortgaged to the hilt, Ann," he gulped, "and next Wednesday if I can't pay down five hundred to Carson in Darley, it will go under the hammer. That will bust Nettie's love business all to flinders. Old Lawson's got Sam under his thumb, and he'll call it off. Nettie knows all about it. She's no fool for a girl of her age; she found out about the debt; she hardly sleeps a wink, but mopes about with red eyes all day long. I thought I had trouble away back when me 'n' you—away back there, you know—but I was younger then, and this sorter seems to be my fault."
Ann fell to quivering with excitement as she reached for a chair and leaned upon it, her stout knee in the seat, her strong, bare arms resting on the back.
"Right here I want to ask you one question, Joe Boyd, before we go a step further. Did Mary Waycroft make a proposal to Nettie—did Mary Waycroft hint to Nettie that maybe I'd be willing to help her along in some substantial way?"
The farmer raised a pair of shifting eyes to the piercing orbs above him, and then looked down.
"I believe she did something of the sort, Ann," he said, reluctantly, "but, you see—"
"I see nothing but this," Ann threw into the gap left by his sheer inability to proceed—"I see nothing but the fact that my proposition scared her nearly to death. She was afraid it would get out that she was having something to do with me, and now, if I do rescue this land from public sale, I must keep in the background, not even let her know where the money is coming from."
"I didn't say that," Boyd said, heavily stricken by the combined force of her tone and words. "The—the whole thing's for you to decide on. I've tussled with it till I'm sick and tired. I wouldn't have come over if I hadn't thought it was my bounden duty to lay it before you. The situation has growed up unforeseen out of my trouble and yours. If you want the girl's land to go under hammer and bust up her marriage, that's all right. I won't cry about it, for I'm at the end of my rope. You see, law or no law, she's yore natural flesh and blood, jest as she is mine, an' she wasn't—the girl wasn't responsible fer what you an' me tuck a notion to do away back there. The report is out generally that everything you touch somehow turns to gold—that you are rolling in money. That's the reason I thought it was my duty—by God, Ann Lincoln"—his eyes were flashing with something like the fire which had blazed in them when he had gone away in his health and prime—"I wouldn't ask you for a red cent, for myself, not if I was dying for a mouthful of something to eat. I'm doing this because it seems right according to my poor lights. The child's happiness is at stake; you can look at it as you want to and act as you see fit."
Ann bit her lip; a shudder passed over her strong frame from head to foot. She lowered her big head to her hands. "Sometimes," she groaned, "I wish I could actually curse God for the unfairness of my lot. The hardest things that ever fell to the fate of any human being have been mine. In agony, Jesus Christ prayed, they say, to let His cup pass if possible. His cup! What was His cup? Just death—that's all; but this is a million times worse than death—this here crucifixion of pride—this here forcing me to help and protect people who deny me, who shiver at a hint of my approach, yelling 'Unclean, unclean!' like the lepers outside the city gates—beyond the walls that encompass accepted humanity. Joe Boyd"—she raised her face and stared at him—"you don't no more know me than you know the stars above your head. I am no more the silly girl that you married than I am some one else. I learned the lesson of life away back there when you left in that wagon with the child of my breast. I have fought a long battle, and I'm still fighting. To me, with all my experience, you—you poor little thing—are a baby of a man. You had a wife who, if she does say it, had the brain of a dozen such men as you are, and yet you listened to the talk of a weak, jealous, disappointed woman and came and dared to wipe your feet on me, spit in my face, and drag my name into the mire of public court. I made no defence then—I don't make any now. I'll never make any. My life shall be my defence before God, and Him only. I wish it could be a lesson to all young women who are led into misfortune such as mine. To every unfortunate girl I'd say, 'Never marry a man too weak to understand and appreciate you.' I loved you, Joe Boyd, as much as a woman ever loved a man, but it was like the love of a strong man for a weak, dependent woman. Somehow I gloried in your big, hulking helplessness. What I have since done in the management of affairs I wanted to do for you."
"Oh, I know all that, Ann, but this is no time or place to—"