“I know you are not goin' to act the fool, if you are just a hot-headed boy,” Amanda said. “You are all wrought up now ag'in' your ma an' everybody; but that will wear off. I know when my own father died I—”
But the boy refused to hear. He turned into a stall and began to put a bridle on a horse, which he led out into the yard with only a blanket on its back. There was uncurbed fury in the very spring he made from the ground to his seat. His face was fire-red, and he thrust his heels against the horse's flanks with such force that the animal gave a loud grunt as he lurched toward the open gate.
“Wait, Paul, wait!” Amanda cried after him. “You've forgot some'n. I wouldn't stop you, but you can't do without it.”
He drew rein and glared down on her.
“You haven't got the measure of—of the body. I never thought of it just now when Brother Langston was here, an' he's gone to hurry up Tobines an' Warner. I'd go an' do it myself, but it ain't exactly a woman's place. I'll hold yo' hoss.”
He stared at her for a moment, the color dying down in his face. Then, with obvious reluctance, he slid off the horse and went into the room where the corpse lay covered with a sheet. He was looking about for a piece of string with which to take the required measurement, when he recalled that he and his father were exactly the same height, and, with a sense of relief, he was turning from the room when an uncontrollable impulse came over him to look upon the face beneath the covering. He hesitated for a moment, then, going to the bed, he drew the sheet down and gazed at the white, set countenance. A storm of pity and grief broke over him. He had a mother's yearning to kiss the cold, pale brow, to fondle the wasted form, to speak to the closed eyes, and compel the rigid lips to utter some word of recognition. Glancing furtively toward the door, then toward the window, and with his face close to the dead one, he said:
“Don't you bother about Jeff Warren, father. I'll attend to him. I'll do it—I'll do it. He sha'n't gloat over you, an' you like this. He sha'n't—he sha'n't!”
His voice clogged up, and he tenderly drew the sheet back over the still, white face. Across the corridor he heard his mother moving about in her room; but the door was closed, and he could not see her. Going out, he took the bridle from Amanda's hands, threw it back on the neck of his horse, clutched a collar-worn tuft of the animal's mane, and sprang astride of its back.
“I won't have to bother about a new dress for yore ma,” Amanda remarked, her slow eyes studying the boy's grief-pinched face. “We ain't got time to get one ready, an' she kin put on my black alpaca an' borrow Mrs. Penham's veil that she's about through with. I know she didn't wear it two Sundays ago, an' I reckon her mournin's over. It's in purty good condition.”
Paul rode toward the village. In the first cotton-field on the left-hand side of the way the two Harris brothers were cutting out weeds with hoes that tinkled on the buried stones and flashed in the slanting rays of the sun. They both paused, looked at him steadily and half defiantly, and then, as if reminded of the gruesome thing which had come upon him in the night, they looked down and resumed their work.