Part 6 (1/2)

”I guess you don't want your beau hung.”

”I tell you I killed this man. I am the one to be hung!”

Chapter V

The sheriff turned to David Hautville. ”Guess you'd better take your gal home,” he said, his red, bristling cheeks broad with laughter.

”Guess she's kind of off her balance, she feels so bad about her beau.”

David's black eyes flashed haughtily at Jonas Hapgood, who straightened his face suddenly. He deigned not a word to him, but he turned to his daughter with a stern air. ”Whether it is one way, or whether it is the other way,” said he, ”we go neither by staying here. Come home.”

”I won't go!”

David looked sharply at his daughter's face. Jonas Hapgood's doubt was over him too. He wondered, with a great spasm of wrath, if she could be accusing herself to s.h.i.+eld this man who had played her false.

He grasped her arm again. ”Come,” he said, ”I'll have no more of this,” and Madelon went out with her father. Full of spirit as she was, she had always been strangely docile with him. He had ruled all his children with a firm hand from their youth up, and tuned their wills to suit his ear as he did his viol strings.

”I'll have no foolery,” he said to her, gruffly, when they were out on the road. ”I'll have no putting yourself in the wrong to save a man that's given you the go-by. If ye be fooling me, ye can stop it now if you're a daughter of mine.” He shook his head fiercely at her.

But Madelon answered him with a burst of wrath that equalled his own.

”I stabbed him because I took him for the man who jilted me a-trying to kiss me, with Dorothy Fair's kiss on his lips. _Me!_” she cried; and she raised her hand as if she would have struck again had Burr Gordon and his false lips been there.

Her father looked at her gloomily, then strode on with his eyes on the snowy ground. He was still in doubt. David Hautville had that primitive order of mind which distrusts and holds in contempt that which it cannot clearly comprehend, and he could not comprehend womankind. His sons were to him as words of one syllable in straight lines; his daughter was written in compound and involved sentences, as her mother had been before her. Fond and proud of Madelon as he was, and in spite of his stern anxiety, her word had not the weight with him that one of his son's would have had. It was as if he had visions of endless twistings and complexities which might give it the lie, and rob it, at all events, of its direct force.

Indeed, Madelon strengthened this doubt by crying out pa.s.sionately all at once, as they went on: ”Father, you must believe me! I tell you I did it! I--don't let them hang him! Father!” All Madelon's proud fierceness was gone for a moment. She looked up at her father, choking with great sobs.

David smiled down at her convulsed face. ”She's nothing but a woman,”

he thought to himself, and he thought also, with a throb of angry relief, that she had not killed Lot Gordon. ”Come along home and red up the house, and let's have no more fooling,” he said, roughly, and strode on faster and would not say another word, although Madelon besought him hard to a.s.sure her that he believed her, and that Burr should not be hanged, until they reached the Hautville house. Then he turned on her and said, with keen sarcasm that stung more than a whip-lash, ”'Tis Parson Fair's daughter and not mine that should come down the road in broad daylight a-bawling for Burr Gordon.”

Madelon started back, and her face stiffened and whitened. She shut her mouth hard and followed her father into the house. The great living-room was empty; indeed, not one of the Hautville sons was in the house; even Louis was gone. David took his axe out of the corner and set out for the woods to cut some cedar fire-logs. Madelon put the house in order, setting the kitchen and pantry to rights, going through the icy chambers and making the high feather beds. In her own room she paused long and searched again, holding up her red cloak and her ball dress to the window, where they caught the wintry light, for a stain of blood that might prove her guilt; but she could find none.

Madelon prepared dinner for her father and brothers as usual, and when it was ready to be dished she stood in the doorway, with the north wind buffeting her in the face, and blew the dinner-horn with a blast that could be heard far off in the woods.

Presently her father emerged from under the snowy boughs with his axe over his shoulder, and shortly afterwards Eugene and Abner came, in Indian file, with their guns. Eugene was carrying a fat rabbit by its long ears. Louis and Richard did not come at all. David asked sternly of their brothers where they were, but neither Eugene nor Abner knew.

They had not seen them since David and Madelon left for Lot Gordon's that morning.

Madelon set the food before her father and her brothers, and took her place as usual, and ate as she might have filled a crock with milk or cakes, tasting nothing which she put into her mouth. She did not during the meal say another word concerning the tragedy in which she was living, but there was a strange silent vehemence and fire about her which seemed louder than speech. Now and then her father and her brothers started and stared at her as if she had cried out. Two red spots had come on her brown cheeks; her eyes were glittering with dark light; her lips were a firm red; her fingers stiffened with nervous clutches. She looked as if every muscle in her were strained and rigid for a leap.

After dinner Eugene and Abner went out again with their guns, and David smoked his old pipe by the fire, while Madelon put away the dishes and swept the floor. When her work was finished the pipe was smoked out, and David rose up slowly, clapped his fur cap over his white head, and took up his axe.

”Mind ye say what ye said this morning to n.o.body else,” he said, as he went out the door.

”I'll say it with my dying breath,” returned Madelon, and she caught her breath, as if it were indeed her last, as she spoke.

”Accuse yourself of murder, would ye, and be hung, and leave your own kith and kin with n.o.body to keep house for them, for the sake of a man that's left ye for another girl!”

”Father, I tell you that _I_ did it!”