Bad Man's Gulch Read Free

above: “Pa, oh, Pa!”
    The two old people started apart and looked at each other with suddenly stricken faces.
    â€œKeep Marion away!” he pleaded to his wife.
    â€œI . . . can’t speak!” she said. “John, you must go an’ keep her from comin’ down!”
    â€œOh, Pa!” called the voice in a higher key.
    â€œWe . . . we’ll go together,” said the old man, and he took his wife by the arm and they went together to the door that opened into the hall.
    Lazy Purdue followed them, and with them he looked up the broad and winding stairs that led from the hall into the second floor of the house.
    She stood at the upper bend of the staircase, leaning somewhat to look the better upon them. She had evidently been in bed when the cry of the old Negress disturbed her. She was dressed in a dressing robe of bronze, tinted green, and, above the place where her left hand gathered the robe at her breast, the fluffy white of her nightgown peered through. From the sidewise-tilted head, a tide of golden hair poured past her throat and over the white arm to her waist.
    She seemed to Purdue to have passed the wistful beauty of girlhood, and yet she was not a woman.
    â€œPa,” she was saying, and the half-lisping murmur of her dialect ran like a flow of water in the heart of Lazy Purdue, “what has happened? I heard a cry like old Dinah a little while ago. Something has happened!”
    â€œHoney, dear, there ain’t nothin’ the matter. You go back to yo’ bed and sleep.”
    But her eyes had widened as they fell upon thegrim and dark-stained torso of Lazy Purdue standing, towering, behind her parents. She ran lightly down the steps, pressed aside her parents, and stood bravely before Lazy, but he could see her glance growing full and steady with premonition. He pressed his lips hard together and returned her gaze.
    â€œWhat have you-all brought into this house?” she pleaded. “Stranger, what terrible thing have you brought heah, and what’s that blood on yo’ breas’?” A desperate meaning came into her eyes, and she caught the hard muscles of his naked arm with her hands.
    â€œIt’s George!” she said. “Oh, my God!” She whirled and faced her father. “Father!”
    He strove to meet her eyes, but a tremulousness came on his face and his head sank.
    â€œFather!” She was beside him now, and her arms were around him, and she was kissing the old and wrinkled face. “Pa,” she said, “poor ol’ Pa, take me where he is!”
    He led her silently into the room, but, when she saw the body, she cried out—a sharp, hurt sound with a little drawling moan at the close. She broke away from his arms and ran to the body and knelt beside it.
    Lazy Purdue was conscious of a cold sweat on his face and a terrible faintness in his heart.
    The girl rose slowly and faced them with a hard and changed face. “Pa,” she said softly, in a tone that belied the hard-clenched hands and the narrowed eyes.
    Her father took a step forward and faced her, but made no answer. She pointed dumbly to the moveless figure behind her.
    â€œAye,” said Conover, “don’ I know what it means? Dear God, don’ I know? There must be blood paidfor this . . . an’ I . . . an’ I can hardly shoot a rifle from a rest.”
    There was a moment of grim silence. The girl’s finger still was pointing and the question was still in her eyes, but there was no further answer.
    â€œMarion,” said the old man at last in a calmer voice, “they’s some way out of this, an’ I reckon I’ll find it. Now, you-all go to bed. I reckon I got to think. Marion, you-all go to bed.”
    She hesitated, and then walked slowly from the room with bent head.
    The old man turned to Lazy Purdue. “An’ you, suh,” he said gently, “I know you will honor us by sleeping under my roof