Part 2

Evered and his son drove home together through the clotting dusk in a silence that was habitual with them. The buggy was a light vehicle, the horse was swift and powerful, and they made good time. Evered, driving, used the whip now and then; and at each red-hot touch of the light lash the horse leaped like a stricken thing; and at each whiplash John Evered’s lips pressed firmly each against the other, as though to hold back the word he would have said. No good in speaking, he knew. It would only rouse the lightly slumbering anger in his father, only lead to more hurts for the horse, and a black scowl or an oath to himself. There were times when John Evered longed to put his strength against his father’s; when he was hungry for the feel of flesh beneath his smashing fists. But these moments were few. He understood the older man; there was a blood sympathy between them. He knew his father’s heart as no other did or could; and in the last analysis he loved his father loyally. Thus had he learned long patience and restraint. It is very easy to damn and hate a man like Evered, hot and fierce and ruthlessly overbearing. But John Evered, his son, who had suffered more from Evered than any other man, neither damned nor hated him.

They drove home together in silence. Evered sat still in his seat, but there was no relaxation in his attitude. He was still as a tiger is still before the charge and the leap. John at his side could feel the other’s shoulder muscles tensing. His father was always so, always a boiling vessel of emotions. You might call him a powerful man, a masterful man. John Evered knew him for a slave, for the slave of his own hot and angry pulse beats. And he loved and pitied him.

Out of Fraternity they took the Liberty road, and came presently to a turning which led them to the right, and so to the way to Evered’s farm, a narrow road, leading nowhere except into the farmyard, and traveled by few men who had no business there.

When they came into the farmyard it was almost dark. Yet there was still light enough to see, beyond the shadow of the barn, the sloping hillside that led down to Whitcher Swamp; and the swamp itself, brooding beneath its gray mists in the thickening night. The farm buildings were set on a jutting shoulder of the hill, looking out across the valley where the swamp lay, to Fraternity, and off toward Moody Mountain beyond the town. By day there was a glory in this valley that was spread below them; by night it was a place of dark and mystery. Sounds used to come up the hill from the swamp; the sounds of thrashing brush where the moose fed, or perhaps the clash of ponderous antlers in the fall, or the wicked scream of a marauding cat, or the harsh cries of night-hawks, or the tremolo hoot of an owl.

Built against the barn on the side away from the house there was a stout roofed stall; and opening from this stall a pen with board walls higher than a man’s head and cedar posts as thick as a man’s leg, set every four feet to support the planking of the walls. As the horse stopped in the farmyard and Evered and his son alighted, a sound came from this stall--a low, inhuman, monstrous sound, like the rumbling of a storm, like the complaint of a hungry beast, like the promise of evil things too dreadful for describing; the muffled roaring of Evered’s great red bull, disturbed by the sound of the horse. John Evered stood still for an instant, listening. It was impossible for most men to hear that sound without an appalling tremor of the heart. But Evered himself gave no heed to it. He spoke to the horse. He said “Hush, now. Still.”

The horse was as still as stone, yet it trembled as it had trembled at Will’s store. Evered gathered parcels from beneath the seat; and John filled his arms with what remained. They turned toward the house together, the son a little behind the father.

There was a light in the kitchen of the farmhouse; and a woman had come to the open door and was looking out toward them. She was silhouetted blackly by the light behind her. It revealed her figure as slim and pleasantly graven. The lamp’s rays turned her hair into an iridescent halo about her head. She rested one hand against the frame of the door; and her lifted arm guided her body into graceful lines.

She called to them in a low voice, “Do you need light?”

Evered answered. “If you were out of the door there’d be light enough,” he said.

The woman lifted her hand to her lips in a hurt little gesture; and she stepped aside with no further word. She still stood thus, at one side of the door, when they came in. The lamplight fell full upon her, full upon her countenance.

The woman’s face, the face of this woman whose body still bore youthful lines, was shocking. There were weary contours in it; there were shadows of pain beneath the eyes; there was anguish in the mobile lips. The hair which had seemed like a halo showed now like a white garland; snow white, though it still lay heavy and glossy as a girl’s. She was like a statue of sorrow; the figure of a sad and tortured life.

The woman was Evered’s second wife; Evered’s wife, Mary Evered. His wife, whom he had won in a courtship that was like red flowers in spring; whom he had made to suffer interminably, day by day, till suffering became routine and death would have been happiness; and whom--believe it or no--Evered had always and would forever love with a love that was like torment. There is set perversely in man and woman alike an impulse to tease and hurt and distress those whom we love. It is, of this stuff that lovers’ quarrels are made; it is from this that the heartbreaks of the honeymoon are born. The men and women of the fairy tales, who marry and live happily ever after, are fairy tales themselves; or else they never loved. For loving, which is sacrifice and service and kindness and devotion, is also misunderstanding and distortion and perversity and unhappiness most profound. It is a part of love to quarrel; the making-up is often so sweet it justifies the anguish of the conflict. Mary Evered knew this. But Evered had a stiff pride in him which would not let him yield; be he ever so deeply wrong he held his ground; and Mary was sick with much yielding.

Annie Paisley, who lived at the next farm on the North Fraternity road, had given Mary Evered something to think about when Paisley died, the year before.

For over Paisley’s very coffin Annie had said in a thoughtful, reminiscent way: “Yes, Mary; Jim ’uz a good husband to me for nigh on thirty year. A good pervider, and a kind man, and a good father. He never drunk, nor ever wasted what little money we got; and we always had plenty to do with; and the children liked him. Kind to me, he was. Gentle.” Her eyes had narrowed thoughtfully. “But Mary,” she said, “you know I never liked him.”

Mary Evered had been a girl of spirit and strength; and if she had not loved Evered she would never have stayed with him a year. Loving him she had stayed; and the bitter years rolled over her; stayed because she loved him, and because she--like her son--understood the heart of the man, and knew that through all his ruthless strength and hard purpose, with all his might he loved her.

She said now in the kitchen: “You got the salt pork?”

“Of course I got the salt pork,” Evered told her in a level tone that was like a whip across her shoulders. He dumped his parcels on the table, pointed to one; and she took it up in a hurried furtive way and turned to the stove. John laid down his bundles, and Evered said to him: “Put the horse away.” The young man nodded, and went out into the farmyard.

The horse still stood where Evered had bade it stand. John went to the creature’s head and laid his hand lightly on the velvety nose, and spoke softly; and after a moment the horse mouthed his hand with its lips. He took the bridle and led it toward the stable. There was a lantern hanging by the door, but he did not light it. The young man loved the still darkness of the night; there was some quality in the damp cool air which was like wine to him. And he needed no light for what he had to do; he knew every wooden peg in the barn’s stout frame, blindfolded; for the barn and the farm had been his world for more than twenty years.

Outside the stable door he stopped the horse and loosed the traces and led it out of the thills, which he lowered carefully to the ground. The horse turned, as of habit, to a tub full of water which stood beside the barn door; and while the creature drank John backed the buggy into the carriage shed and propped up the thills with a plank. When he came to the stable door again the horse was waiting for him; and he heard its breath whir in a soundless whinny of greeting. He stripped away the harness expertly, hanging it on pegs against the wall, and adjusted the halter. Once, while he worked, the red bull in its closed stall on the farther side of the barn bellowed softly; and the young man called to the beast in a tone that was at once strong and kindly.

He put the horse in its stall, tied the halter rope, and stepped out into the open floor of the barn to pull down hay for the beast. It was when he did so that he became conscious that someone was near. He could not have told how he knew; but there was, of a sudden, a warmth and a friendliness in the very air about him, so that his breath came a little more quickly. He stood very still for a moment; and then he looked toward the stable door. His eyes, accustomed to the dark, discovered her. She had come inside the barn and was standing against the wall, watching him. He could see the dim white blur of her face in the darkness; he could almost see the glow that lay always in her eyes for him.

He said quietly, “Hello, Ruth.”

And she answered him, “Hello, John.”

“I’ve got to pull down a little hay,” he said. It was as though he apologized for not coming at once to her side.

“Yes,” she told him, and stood there while he finished tending the horse.

When he had done he went toward her slowly and stood before her, and she moved a little nearer to him, so that he put his arms awkwardly round her shoulders and kissed her. He felt her lips move against his; felt her womanly and strong. There was no passion in their caress; only an awkward tenderness on his part, a deep affection on hers.

“I’m glad you came out,” he said; and she nodded against his shoulder.

They went into the barnyard, and his arm was about her waist.

“It’s warm to-night,” she told him. “Summer’s about here.”

He nodded. “We’ll have green peas by the Fourth if we don’t git a frost.”

Neither of them wanted to get at once to the house. There was youth in them; the house was no place for youth. She was Ruth MacLure, Mary Evered’s sister. Not, by that token, John Evered’s aunt; for John Evered’s mother was dead many years gone, before Evered took Mary MacLure for wife. A year ago old Bill MacLure had died and Ruth had come to live with her sister. John had never known her till then; since then he found it impossible to understand how he had ever lived without knowing her. She was years younger than her sister, three years younger than John Evered himself; and he loved her.

They crossed the barnyard to the fence and looked down into the shadowy pit of blackness where the swamp lay, half a mile below them. They rested their elbows on the top bar of the fence. Once or twice the bull muttered in his stall a few rods away. They could hear the champ of the horse’s teeth as the beast fed before sleeping; they could hear Evered’s cows stirring in their tie-up. The night was very still and warm, as though heaven brooded like a mother over the earth.

The girl said at last, “Semler was here while you were gone.”

The young man asked slowly, “What fetched him here?”

“He was on his way home from fishing, down in the swamp stream.”

“Did he do anything down there?”

“Had seventeen. One of them was thirteen inches long. He wanted to leave some, but Mary wouldn’t let him.”

They were silent for a moment, then John Evered said, “Best not tell my father.”

The girl cried under her breath, with an impatient gesture of her hand, “I’m not going to. But I hate it. It isn’t fair. Mary wants him to keep away. He bothers her.”

“I can keep him away.”

“You did tell him not to come.”

“I can make him not come,” said John Evered; and the girl fell silent, and said at last, “He’s writing to her. Oh, John, what can she do? More than she has done?”

“I’ll see to’t he stays away,” the young man promised; and the girl’s hand fell on his arm.

“Please do,” she said. “He’s so unfair to Mary.”

A little later, when they turned at last toward the house, John said half to himself, “If my father ever heard, he’d bust that man.”

“I wish he would,” the girl said hotly. “But--I’m afraid he’d find some way to blame Mary. He mustn’t know.”

“I’ll see Dane Semler,” John promised.

On the doorstep they kissed again. Then they went into the house together. Evered sitting by the lamp with his paper looked up at them bleakly, but said no word. Mary Evered smiled at her sister, smiled at John. She loved her husband’s son, had loved him like a mother since she came to the house and found him, a boy not four years old, helping with the chores as a grown man might have done. She had found something pitiful in the strength and the reserve of the little fellow; and she had mothered out of him some moments of softness and affection that would have surprised his father.

There was a certain measure of reassurance in his eyes as he returned her smile. But when he had sat down across the table from his father, where she could not see his face, he became sober and very thoughtful. He was considering the matter of Dane Semler.

IV

First word of the tragedy came to Will Bissell’s store at seven o’clock in the evening of the next day but one; and the manner of the coming was this:

The day had been lowering and sultry; such a day as Fraternity was accustomed to expect in mid-August, when the sun was heavy on the land and the air was murky with sea fogs blown in from the bay. A day when there seemed to be a malignant spirit in the very earth itself; a day when to work was torment, and merely to move about was sore discomfort. A day when dogs snarled at their masters, and masters cursed at their dogs; when sullen passions boiled easily to the surface, and tempers were frayed to the last splitting strand.

No breath of air was stirring as the evening came down. The sun had scarce shown itself all day; the coming of night was indicated only by a growing obscurity, by a thickening of the murky shadows in the valleys and the gray clouds that hid the hills. Men slighted their evening chores, did them hurriedly or not at all, and made haste to get into the open air. From the houses of the village they moved toward Will’s store; and some of them stopped on the bridge above the brook, as though the sound of running water below them had some cooling power; and some climbed the little slope and sat on the high steps of the store. They talked little or none, spoke in monosyllables when they spoke at all. They were too hot and weary and uncomfortable for talking.

No one seemed to be in any hurry. The men moved slowly; the occasional wagon or buggy that drove into town came at a walk; even the automobiles seemed to move with a sullen reluctance. So it was not surprising that the sound of a horse’s running feet coming along the Liberty road should quickly attract their ears.

They heard it first when the horse topped the rise above the mill, almost a mile away. The horse was galloping. The sounds were hushed while the creature dipped into a hollow, and rang more loudly when it climbed a nearer knoll and came on across the level meadow road toward the town. The beat of its hoofs was plainly audible; and men asked each other whose horse it was, and what the hurry might be; and one or two, more energetic than the rest, stood up to get a glimpse of the road by which the beast was coming.

Just before it came into their sight they heard it stop galloping and come on at a trot; and a moment later horse and rider came in sight, and every man saw who it was.

Jean Bubier exclaimed, “It is M’sieu’ Semler.”

And Judd echoed, “Dane Semler. In a hell of a hurry, too.”

Then the man pulled his horse to a stand at the foot of the store steps and swung off. He had been riding bareback; and he was in the garments which he was accustomed to wear when he went fishing along the brooks. They all knew him; for though he was a man of the cities he had been accustomed to come to Fraternity in June for a good many years. They knew him, but did not particularly like him. There was always something of patronage in his attitude, and they knew this and resented it.

Nevertheless, one or two of them answered his greeting. For the rest, they studied him with an acute and painful curiosity. There was some warrant for their curiosity. Semler, usually an immaculate man, was hot and dusty and disordered; his face was white; his eyes were red and shifting, and there was an agonized haste in his bearing which he was unable to hide.

He asked, almost as his foot touched ground, “Anyone here got a car?”

Two or three of the men had come in automobiles; and one, George Tower, answered, “Sure.”

Tower was a middle-aged man of the sort that remains perpetually young; and he had recently acquired a swift and powerful roadster of which he was mightily proud. It was pride in this car, more than a desire to help Dane Semler, that prompted his answer.

Semler took a step toward him and lowered his voice a little. “I’ve had bad news,” he said. “How long will it take you to get me to town?”

That was a drive of ten or a dozen miles, over roads none too good.

Tower answered promptly: “Land you there in twenty minutes.”

“I’ll give you a dollar for every minute you do it under half an hour,” said Semler swiftly; and Tower got to his feet.

“Where’s your grip?” he asked.

Semler shook his head. “I’m having that sent on. Can’t wait. I’m ready to start now.” He looked toward the men on the steps. “Some of you take care of the horse,” he said quickly. “Garvey will send for it.”

Garvey was the farmer at whose house Semler had been staying. Will Bissell took the horse’s bridle and promised to stable the beast till Garvey should come. Tower was already in his car; Semler jumped in beside him. They were down the hill and across the bridge in a diminuendo roar of noise as the roadster, muffler cut out, rocketed away toward town. Two or three of the men got to their feet to watch them go, sat down again when they were out of sight.

There was a moment’s thoughtful silence before someone said, “What do you make o’ that? Semler in some hurry, I’d say.”

Jean Bubier laughed a little. “One dam’ hurry,” he agreed.

“Like something was after him--or he was after someone.”

Judd the mean cackled to himself. “By Gad,” he cried, “I’ll bet Evered’s got on to him. I’ll bet Evered’s after that man. No wonder he run.”

The other men looked at Judd, and they shifted uncomfortably. Will Bissell had gone round to stable the horse; Lee Motley had not yet come to the store, nor had Jim Saladine. Lacking these three there was no one to silence Judd, and the man might have gone on to uglier speech.

But he was silenced, and silenced by so inconsiderable a person as Zeke Pitkin. Zeke drove up just then, drove hurriedly; and they saw before he stopped his horse that he was shaking with excitement.

He cried out, “Hain’t you heard?”

Judd answered, “Heard what? What ails you, Zeke?”

Pitkin scarce heard him, he was so intent on crying out his dreadful news. It came in a stumbling burst of half a dozen words.

“Evered’s red bull’s killed Mis’ Evered,” he stammered.

V

Evered’s red bull was a notorious and dangerous figure in the countryside. It was like some primordial monster of the forests, and full as fierce of temper. Evered had bought it two years before, and two men on horseback, with ropes about the creature’s neck, brought it from town to his farm. Evered himself, there to receive it, scowled at their precautions. There was a ring in the monstrous beast’s nose; and to this ring Evered snapped a six-foot stick of ash, seasoned and strong. Holding the end of this stick he was able to control the bull; and he set himself to teach it fear. That he succeeded was well enough attested. The bull did fear him, and with reason. Nevertheless, Evered took no chances with the brute, and never entered its stall without first snapping his ash stick fast to the nose ring. Those who watched at such times said that the bull’s red eyes burned red and redder so long as Evered was near; and those who saw were apt to warn the man to take care. But Evered paid no heed to their warnings; or seemed to pay no heed.

The bull had never harmed a human being, because it had never found the opportunity. Men and women and children shunned it, kept well away from its stout-fenced pasture, its high-boarded pen and its stall. The creature was forever roaring and bellowing; and when the air was still its clamor carried far across the countryside and frightened children and women, and made even men pause to listen and to wonder whether Evered’s bull was loose at last. Some boys used to come and take a fearsome joy from watching the brute; and at first they liked to tease the bull, pelting it with sticks and stones. Till one day they came--Jimmy Hills, and Will Motley, and Joe Suter, and two or three besides--with a setter pup of Lee Motley’s at their heels. The pup watched their game, and wished to take a hand, so slipped through the fence to nip at the great bull’s heels; and the beast wheeled and pinned the dog against the fence with its head like a ram, and then trod the pup into a red pudding in the soft earth, while Will Motley shrieked with rage and sorrow and fear.

Evered heard them that day, and came down with a whip and drove them away; and thereafter a boy who teased the bull had trouble on his hands at home. And the tale of what the brute had done to that setter pup was told and retold in every farmhouse in the town.

Evered, even while he mastered the bull and held it slave, took pains to maintain his dominance. The stall which housed it was stout enough to hold an elephant; the board-walled pen outside the stall was doubly braced with cedar posts set five feet underground; and even the half-mile pasture in which, now and then, he allowed the brute to range, had a double fence of barbed-wire inside and stone wall without.

This pasture ran along the road and bent at right angles to work down to the edge of the swamp. It was, as has been said, about a half mile long; but it was narrow, never more than a few rods wide. It formed the southern boundary of Evered’s farm; and no warning signs were needed to keep trespassers from crossing this area. When the bull was loose here it sometimes ranged along the fence that paralleled the road, tossing its great head and snorting and muttering at people who passed by, so that they were apt to hurry their pace and leave the brute behind.

It was timid Zeke Pitkin, on his way to North Fraternity, who saw the bull break its fence on the afternoon that Mary Evered was killed. Zeke did not usually take the road past Evered’s place, because he did not like to pass under the eye of the bull. But on this day he was in some haste; and he thought it likely the bull would be stalled and out of sight, and on that chance took the short hill road to his destination.