“I overheard—I couldn’t help overhearing.” Then her cheeks grew rosier. “I’ll own up. I listened at the door. I wanted to know. And that’s why I came after you. You have kept our little secret and I know you have done your best in other ways. So that’s why I’m here. I want to thank you. And—I—Well, I think that’s all!”
It seemed to finish it as far as I was concerned, too; I couldn’t pump a word up out of myself. So we stood there and looked up into the trees.
“Father has been talking to them to-day,” she said, after a time. “Perhaps they are warned now and won’t be up to any more mischief. And they ought to be sorry for what they have done to you. I think you can have a lot of influence over them after this.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m going away from here.”
That statement astonished her just as much as it astonished me. I had not thought of announcing my departure ten seconds before; it had not been in my mind that I was going away. But all of a sudden the memory of what I had told the judge about the horse popped into my thoughts. Considering what would be my uncle’s state of mind after the exposure, I reckon the going-away idea followed as naturally as the right answer in a sum of addition.
“I had supposed that your outlook—your position with your uncle—was very promising,” she said. “The town needs smart men.”
The fact that she had spent one thought upon my condition interested me more than the implied compliment.
“If I stay with him I’ll only be a country cheat and horse-dickerer. I want to be something else,” I told her. “This very day my uncle is trying to put up a job on your father. I have told the judge about it.”
“I heard you. It was another reason why I wanted to speak to you—to encourage you in being honest. There’s no need of father bringing you into the matter at all. It would only make trouble between your uncle and you. I’ll speak to father.”
“You’d better not, for then you’d be making trouble for yourself. I’d rather take all the blame of it.”
We stood and looked at each other for a long time.
“I’m not a coward,” she said.
“But it will come out about me blabbing—some way it will come out. There’s no need of you being in the scrape. I’m going away, and I may as well go flying while I’m about it!”
“I hope—” she said, and that was as far as she got. I know how I was feeling inside and perhaps my feelings showed too plainly on that striped face of mine. She looked scared and turned and hurried away. I didn’t know whether she hoped I’d stay in Levant or hoped I’d do well wherever I might roam. I watched her out of sight and she did not turn to look at me. I couldn’t exactly figure that out—whether she didn’t want to give me a last glance or didn’t dare to.
I fingered in my vest pocket while she was running away; when she disappeared I pulled out a packet and opened it. There were three rings in it. One was a coral ring; I bought it when I was fifteen and paid thirty cents for it. I never had the courage to give it to her when we were at school. There was a silver ring which I bought a year later when my circumstances were a little better—better than my courage. Lastly, there was a gold ring which I had secured in a dicker soon after our meeting on Purgatory Hill. I am not going to discourse on the fool impulse which prompted me to buy those rings and stick them in my vest pocket. Nor will I say anything concerning another impulse which made me wrap the rings up and drop them into a cleft in the trunk of an apple-tree. If I did not dare to give them to her, at least I could leave them on her premises. Then I went by back ways to my uncle’s house.
Before I was out of sight of Judge Kingsley’s mansion I looked behind me several times. I didn’t know but I might see a flutter of a handkerchief from some window, for a vague and queer kind of hope was still in me. I saw no flutter, but I did see a strange man who was strolling along my trail. I was too busy with other thoughts to wonder who he might be.
I found my uncle admiring the transmogrified horse.
“I have been whetting the old hellion’s appetite,” he said, and I knew by the expression on his face that he was referring to Judge Kingsley. “I have had half a dozen fellows from the back districts drive one old skate after another into his dooryard, and inside of an hour he’ll have a chance to inspect a few more skeletons and bone-piles. By nightfall he’ll be hungry for a peek at something which doesn’t look as if it would have to be pushed on casters by iron reins. Oh, he’s hungry! He’ll swallow this one.”
More than ever was I coming to understand into what complicated and precious gears I had flung my trig—and what the consequences to me were likely to be.
“Now come out into the harness-room,” commanded my uncle. “I want you to have a look at the Queen of Sheby.”
I had never seen “Squealing John” Runnels, but that this was he I had no doubt. He sat on an upturned grain-bucket with his skirts pulled up about him, wore a woman’s broad hat of dingy black felt, and a veil partly draped his face; he was smoking a corn-cob pipe.
“I’ll be cussed if I see any good sense in being titrivated out like this the whole afternoon,” he complained, in tones as strident as a scolding woman’s. “It’s getting on to my nerves.”
“You’ve got to get used to ’em, you old fool,” barked my uncle, “I don’t propose to have you forgetting yourself. It would be just like you, right in the middle of that dicker-talk, to prill up your dress and reach into your pants pocket for a plug of tobacco. Now get up and let me see you practise walking; and forget that you’re wearing pants.”
Runnels went grunting and limping around the room, whining like a teased quill-pig. His feet were pinched into women’s shoes. My uncle seemed to see much humor in this exhibition, but I couldn’t find any. It looked to me only like a grotesque sham, and pitiful, too, for I knew it was not going to succeed. “Squealing John” appeared to be of the same opinion. He kept complaining that he would not be able to fool a sharp man like the judge, and asked, anxiously, what the law penalty was when a man dressed up like a woman.
“I’m a good mind to let ye foreclose and be shet of the thing,” he said, facing my uncle and cracking together his bony little fists. “All that will come of this trick is that I’ll be took up and sent to jail. I’m a good mind to go to the judge and tell him how I’m persecuted and hectored and see if he won’t take up that bill o’ sale.”
“I’ll kill you if you do—I’ll kill anybody else who blows on me and my plans: Now, Queen of Sheby, remember that this is my champion performance. I ain’t in any frame of mind to be trifled with.”
He went to the oat-bin and brought in his bottle.
“You need to be teaed up a little so that you’ll have some courage, you old angleworm.”
After the two of them had swallowed stiff drinks my uncle turned on me.
“I have half a mind to dress you up instead of Runnels, son. Your face is smooth and you’ve got nerve enough to act the thing out right.”
“I’ll not turn any such trick,” I said. I was angry in a moment. So was he.
“You will if I tell you to.”
“I won’t; and I’ll say further that I don’t think much of this business, anyway.”
“Nor I—and that’s two against one,” declared Runnels, the tip of his thin nose beginning to glow as if new courage had hung out a banner.
Liquor had also given my uncle’s temper an edge of its own; he cuffed Runnels until that lamenting “lady’s” hat fell off. I jumped up and ran away into the fields, for I knew that Uncle Deck was merely warming up on “Squealing John”; as chief mutineer, I was ticketed for the real bout. I lurked about in the pine grove till after sunset.