“He hain’t altered a smidgin’,” Lucinda commented. “It may be kase he has on the identical same clothes; he’s been a-wearin’ striped ones down thar, you know, an’ they laid away his old ones. To save me I can’t realize that he’s been off even a week.” The old maid snickered softly. “He’s the only one that could ever manage you, Marty. Now Jeff Goardley would let you have yore own way, but Dick’s a caution! It’s always been a question with me as to whether a woman would ruther lead a man ur be led.”
There was a white stare in Mrs Wakeman’s eyes which indicated that she was pondering the man’s chief aggression rather than heeding her sister’s nagging remarks. The sudden appearance of the convict’s head and shoulders above a near-at-hand window-sill rendered a reply unnecessary. His face was flushed.
“Can you-uns tell me whar under the sun the halter is?” he broke forth, in a turbulent tone. “I tuk the trouble to put a iron hook up in the shed-room jest fer that halter, an’ now somebody has tore down the hook an’ I can’t find hair nur hide o’ the halter.”
Mrs. Wakeman tried to sneer again as she turned aside, and the gaunt intermediary, spurred on to her duty, approached the window.
“The blacksmith tuk that hook to mend the harrow with,” she said, with a warning glance at Marty. “You ’ll find the halter on the joist above the hoss-trough. Ef I was you, on this fust day, I’d try to—” But Wakeman had dropped out of sight, and muttering unintelligible sounds indicative of discomfiture, was striding toward the stable.
All the rest of that afternoon the convict toiled in the smoke-house, hanging the meat on hooks along the joists over a slow, partly smothered fire of chips and pieces of bark. When the work was finished his eyes were red from smoke and brine. He stabled the horse and fed him, and then, realizing that he had nothing more to do, he felt hungry. He wanted to go into the sitting-room and sit down in his old place in the chimney-corner, but a growing appreciation of the extreme delicacy of the situation had taken hold of him. He wandered about the stable-yard in a desultory way, going to the pig-pen, now empty and blood-stained, and to the well-filled corn-crib, but these objects had little claim on his interest. The evening shadows had begun to stalk like dank amphibious monsters over the carpet of turf along the creek-banks, and pencils of light were streaming out of the windows of the family-room. Suddenly his eyes took in the woodpile; he went to it, and picking up the ax, began to cut wood. He was tired, but he felt that he would rather be seen occupied than remaining outside without a visible excuse for so doing. In a few minutes he was joined by Lucinda.
“Dick,” she intoned, “you’ve worked enough, the Lord Almighty knows. Come in the house an’ rest ‘fore supper; it’s mighty nigh ready.”
He avoided her glance, and shamefacedly touched a big log he had just cut into the proper length for the fireplace.
“Cato, the triflin’ scamp, hain’t cut you-uns a single backlog,” he said, in a tone that she had never heard from him.
“We hain’t had a decent one sence you went off, Brother Richard,” she returned. “An’ a fire’s no fire without a backlog.”