Ladybird (3 page)

The dog came and whined around her, nosing her face and licking her hands, but she did not feel him. Her heart seemed crushed within her. All that had passed between herself and her mother during that long, terrible, beautiful parting had faded for the time, and she was throbbing with one fearful thought. She was gone, gone, gone beyond recall! For the moment, there was no future, nothing to do but to lie broken and cry out her terrible pain. It seemed as though the pent-up torrent obliterated everything else.

Then, suddenly, a low, menacing growl beside her startled her back to the present. She lifted her face and turned quick frightened eyes toward the neglected watch she had been keeping, and her heart stood still. There in the door, silhouetted dark against the bloodred light of the setting sun, stood Brand Carter, her mother’s enemy and hers!

I
t was incredible that a girl could have grown to Fraley’s years in this wilderness, this mountain fastness of wickedness, so fine and sweet and unsoiled as this girl was. Nobody but God would ever know at what expense to herself the mother had been able to guard her all her years, especially the last few months since her father died.

Like the matchless beauty of the little white flower that grows in the darkness of a coal pit and, protected by some miraculous quality with which its petals are endowed that will not retain the soil, lifts its starry whiteness amid the smut, so the child had grown into loveliness, unstained.

And now the frail hand that had shut her from the gaze of unholy eyes more times than she would ever know, the strong soul that in a weak body had protected her from dangers unspeakable, was gone; cold, silent, still, it could no more protect her. The time that her mother had warned her against had come and caught her unawares! She had been merely weeping! She sprang to her feet in a terror she had never felt before. There had been times in the past when she had been deathly frightened but never like this. Her very heart stood still and would not beat. Her breath hurt her in her lungs; her eyes seemed bursting as she gazed; her mind would not function. He had come. It was too late! It was useless to flee!

Then, with sudden realization, she glanced toward the silent form on the cot beside her with an instinct to protect her who could no longer protect herself. But the majesty in that dead face brought the realization that the dead need no protection. She caught her breath in one quick gasp and tried to think.

But even that glance had been enough to break the spell that rested on the room. The man’s eyes went to the dead face, too, and with an oath, he made a move to come forward.

The old dog gave a low growl and sprang with fangs exposed, but a cruel boot caught him midway and sent him sprawling outside the door, where for a second, he lay stunned by the well-aimed blow.

“Ugh! Croaked at last!” said the man, coming close to the cot, peering down at the dead face, lifting a waxen eyelid roughly, and glaring into the dead eye. “Well, she took long enough about it.”

Then he turned to the trembling girl, who, with enraged eyes, watched him.

“Now, young’un, you git out and milk the cow and git us a good supper. The men are coming, and we’re hungry. See? Now,
git!”

He seized her in a rough grip and flung her through the door, almost into the arms of another man who had just sprung from his horse and was coming toward the cabin. He was a young man with an evil face and lustful eyes. Pierce, they called him, Pierce Boyden, lately come to the wilderness. Fraley hated him and feared him.

“Here, you Pierce, come in here! We gotta get rid of this old woman. Give us a hand.”

Then, turning to the other three men who drove up, he gave his orders.

“Pete, you stand there with your gun and watch that girl while she milks that cow and gits us some grub. Whist, you and Babe get your shovels and be quick about it.”

Fraley darted around the house to where the cow stood waiting to be milked. Every word that was spoken stung its terrible meaning into her frightened soul. Scarcely knowing what she did, she went at the task, a task from which her mother had saved her as long as she could. The angry voice of Brand rang from the house where he was moving around—roughly shoving a chair across the floor, flinging the old tin cup against the wall in his anger. She shuddered as she thought of what the men were doing. Her precious mother!

The tears that had been flowing seemed to sting backward in her eyes. Her cheeks scorched dry, her heart came choking to her throat. Her hands were numb and could scarcely hold the pail in place. The milk was going everywhere.

The voice of Brand, drunker than usual, sailed out into the twilight from the open doorway. “You, Pete! Stay there till I come back. If she starts to run, shoot her in the feet, then she can’t go fur!” He laughed a terrible haw, haw, and then she could hear the awful procession going down to the mountain.

She knew what they were doing. She could hear the ring of a shovel against a rock. It seemed that every clod they turned fell across her quivering heart.

Pete, with his gun, stood guard at the corner of the house. Pete, the silent one with the terrible leering eyes of hate. Pete who never smiled, not even when he was drunk. And now he was drunk! Oh, why had she lost her senses? Why had she not gone before they came, as her mother had meant her to do?

The old dog hobbled to her and began to lick the tears from her face, and she felt comforted and less afraid. She whispered to him to lie down, and he obeyed her, sneaking into a shadow behind the cow.

Pete stalked nearer and gruffly bade her to hurry. She managed to finish her milking, though her hands still felt more dead than alive, and stumbled into the house. The old dog slunk after her and hid in the bushes near the door. The shadows were growing long and deep on the grass and on the mountains across the dark valley where they had taken—No! It was not her mother! Merely the worn-out dress with which she was done! Hadn’t mother tried to make her understand that?

She tried to take a deep breath and hold her shoulders up as she marched around the room, tried not to see the empty space where the cot had stood. Tried not to think, tried just to get the supper and get the men to eating. They were hungry now, and they would not bother her until they were fed, if she fed them quickly.

She started the coffee boiling and put some salt meat on to cook. She fried a large skillet of potatoes and mixed up the crude corn bread. The familiar duties seemed to take her hours, and all the while her heart was listening in terror for the sound of returning feet. Pete had come into the house and was sitting in the corner with his gun aimed toward her. She shuddered when she looked at him, not so much because of the gun as because of the cunning look in his eyes, and once as she glanced up because she could not keep her eyes away from his shadowy corner he laughed, a horrid cackle, almost demonical. Pete, who never even smiled! It was as if he had her in his power. As if he was gloating over it. She would rather Brand had left almost any of the men than Pete. There was something about him that did not seem quite human.

Feverishly she worked, her head throbbing with her haste, setting out the old table with the tin plates, the cracked cups. She could hear the men’s voices. They were coming back up the mountain now. They were singing one of those terrible songs about hanging somebody by the roadside, the one that had always made her mother turn pale.

Fraley sprang to the stove and broke eggs into the hot fat beside the meat. She would give them such a supper as would make them forget her for the moment.

The corn bread was ready, smoking hot on the table as the men came noisily in. Brand watched her as he towered above the rest, his evil eyes gloating, she thought, with the same look that had been in Pete’s eyes. She brought the coffee pot and set the frying pan with its sizzling meat and eggs in the middle of the table, and the men, with drunken satisfaction, sat down and drew up their chairs. They were joking among themselves about their task just completed, in words that froze her heart with sorrow and horror. But she was glad to have their attention for the moment taken from herself.

They were all busy with the first mouthfuls now like hungry wolves, too busy to spring.

She turned stealthily, and her foot touched something. It was the old tin cup that Brand had kicked away in his anger. With quick instinct, she stooped and picked it up. She might need it. Some bits of dry bread that were on the shelf as she passed she swept into it, and hiding the cup in the scant gathers of her cotton dress, she made a stealthy movement toward the door of the room that had been her refuge from the terrors of the world ever since she could remember.

The men did not notice her. They were eating.

Silently, as unobtrusively as she could move, she glided to the door and slipped within. They had not seemed to notice she was gone. She pushed the bolt quickly. It was a large bolt, and her mother had kept it well oiled so that it would move quickly and silently if need be. There was a bar, too, that slipped across the bottom of the door. That, too, her mother had cunningly, crudely arranged. Probably it would not endure long in a united attack, but it was a brief hindrance, at least. It she only dared draw the old trunk across the door! But that would make a noise.

Stealthily, she moved in the dark little room that was scarcely larger than a closet. With fingers weak with fear, she lifted the loose board beneath the cot and pulled out the woolen bag. Suppressing the quick sob at the thought of her mother, she opened the flap of the bag and stowed away the tin cup and bread, then standing on tiptoe, she lifted the bag to the little high window over the bed and pushed it softly over the sill. As it fell she listened breathlessly. What if the men should hear it drop, or Larcha the old dog should begin to bark, and the men should go out to look around!

Softly, she took down the old coat that had hung on a peg in the wall ever since her father died and put it on. The men were talking loudly now. Two of them seemed to be fighting over something that a third had said. It would perhaps come to blows. It often did. She welcomed the noise. It would cover her going. But as she stepped upon her little bed, her heart suddenly froze in her breast! What was the terrible thing they were saying? It was about herself they were fighting. They were saying unspeakably awful things. For an instant, she seemed paralyzed and could not move. Then fear set her free, and she was stung into action. It was not an easy matter to climb from the creaky little cot to the high narrow windowsill above without making a particle of noise, and she was trembling in every nerve.

The window was barely large enough to let her slenderness through, and it required skill to swing outside, cling to the windowsill, and then drop with catlike softness to the ground, but it was not the first time she had accomplished it. There had been other times of stress in the little cabin when her mother had sent her away in a hurry to a refuge she had, out in the open, and that experience helped her now. But there was no time to pause and be cautious, for at any moment the men might discover her absence and call for her. Then they would rush outside to hunt her down, and death itself would be better than life!

With the awful words of the men ringing in her ears, she dropped from the window, praying that she might not make a false landing. Her head seemed dizzy, and there was a beating in her throat. For an instant her body felt too heavy to rise up, and she lay quite still where she had dropped, holding her breath and listening.

The old dog came softly, whining and licking her face as if he understood she was in trouble, and new panic seized her. She hushed him into quiet, picked up her bag, and slung it over her shoulder by its strap, then, her hand upon the dog’s head, she moved like a small shadow across the ground, her bare feet making no sound, her heart beating so wildly that it seemed as if it could be heard a mile away.

It was not toward the trail she directed her steps, and she did not look back to the awful pass where the precipice was, nor down the valley where they had carried her precious mother’s form. Into the wilderness where there was no trail, into the darkness, she went.

Like a voice, there silently stole into her heart a phrase from the words she had learned for her mother, sitting morning after morning in the cabin door in the sunshine, learning her lesson out of the old Book, the only book she had, or huddled in a blanket when the weather was cold and the fire was low, learning, learning, always learning beautiful words to repeat to her mother. It was the only school she had ever known, and she loved to study and to repeat the words she had learned, pleased to be able to say them perfectly, often asking what they meant but only half comprehending what her mother tried to tell her. Now suddenly it seemed that these words had taken on new, wide meaning.

“He knoweth the way that I take. He knoweth the way. He knoweth.”

As she stole along cautiously—her accustomed feet finding the pathway in the dark, her heart fearful, her eyes looking back in dread—the words began to come like an accompaniment to her silent going, and their meaning beat itself into her soul.

Suddenly, back through the clear stillness of the starlit night, came a sharp cracking sound, a snap and a sound of rending wood, then a kind of roar of evil bursting from the door of the cabin. Casting a frightened look back, she could see the light from the cabin door that was flung wide now, could hear the men’s voices calling her angrily, shouting, swearing a tumult of angry menace. It put new terror into her going, new tremblings into her limbs. She hastened her uncertain steps blindly on toward an old tree that had been her refuge before in times of alarm, her hands outstretched to feel for obstructions in her path as she fled down the side of the mountain.

She could hear the clatter of hoofs now, ringing out on the crisp night air, as the horses crossed the slab of rock that cropped out a little way from the house. Yes, some of them, at least, were coming this way. She had hoped they would search the trail first, but it seemed they were taking no chances. They would be upon her very soon, and her limbs were trembling until she felt they would crumple under her. Her feet were so uncertain as they stepped. Her heart was beating so that it seemed as if it would choke her. Weakly she snatched at a young sapling and swung herself up to a cleft place in a great rock she knew so well. If she could only make it now and reach the foot of the old tree!