Читать книгу Hay-Wire - B.M. Bower - Страница 7

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"YOU must have stayed up pretty late with Heinie," Mom broke the moody silence of breakfast time. "How'd he like the cookies? I tried out a new recipe—did he say anything about them, Lynn?"

"No," said Lynn shortly, "he didn't."

"Didn't he eat any? Heinie's the greatest hand for fresh cookies I ever saw in my life. Didn't he so much as taste 'em?"

"No, he didn't." Lynn reached with his fork for another hot cake.

"Well, my land! He must be sick or something, then. Wasn't he feeling well, Lynn? I thought he looked kinda petered out when he was by here. How'd he look, Lynn? Was he complaining any?"

"No," said Lynn, giving her a strange look from under his straight dark brows, "he wasn't complaining, so far as I heard."

"Lynn Hayward," his mother said sharply, pausing with the pancake turner thrust aslant from the hand on her hip, "you didn't go and make Heinie mad, did you? He'll stand joshing, but if he thinks you don't believe him, it hurts his feelings. Poor old fellow, he's got a hard enough row to hoe—you didn't say anything mean, just because you rode off mad, did you, Lynn?"

"Poor old fellow, like hell!"

"What's got into you, Lynn? You surely didn't go and pick a fight with old Heinie?"

Lynn's lips pressed together in the stubborn line his mother used to kiss away when he was a baby. But immediately he pulled them apart and laughed up at her, though a cloud still shadowed his eyes.

"No. I didn't take the stuff to him at all. I went on to the Upper Ranch and stayed there all night, and rode home at daylight to do the milking and feed the horses. So—I ate the cookies myself. They—you sure are an artist when it comes to cooking, Mom."

Rose looked up from her breakfast, her eyes keenly studying Lynn's face. But she didn't say anything. Her mother was speaking, querulously upbraiding Lynn for not doing as he was told.

"And what did you do with them two loaves of bread, for conscience' sake? You didn't eat 'em both during the night, I hope?"

"They're at the Upper Ranch, in the bread box. I'll go get them if you want them so bad."

"You could take them to Heinie, I should think. I don't see what's got into you lately. If it isn't one thing, it's another—"

"Needs his back warmed with a quirt, that's what!" shouted old Joel from the next room. "Gittin' too damn' smart, that's what! You let that lazy hound run over you roughshod. If I could git around I'd mighty quick take the kinks out of him! He wouldn't talk back to me, the way you let him. I'd take the hide off'm with a blacksnake whip—"

The scrape of Lynn's chair as he pushed back from the table halted the senseless tirade while old Joel listened for the step that would tell him what was taking place in the kitchen.

"If you want to feed Heinie, one of the boys can pack stuff to him, Mom," Lynn said as quietly as he could, while a futile rage against his father surged within him. "I've got other things to do. Anyway, I shouldn't think it would hurt him to come after what he wants. He's got a horse, and he isn't—" He was going to say paralyzed, but the thought of that inert figure in the next room checked the word.

"Hat! You goin' to let that worthless whelp give you lip like that?"

"Ah, give us a rest!" Lynn muttered under his breath as he walked out. On her toes and with a warning shake of the head toward her mother, Rose got up silently and followed him, while Mrs. Hayward clattered the stove lids to cover the sound of her going.

"Sid and Joe, you go saddle your horses and take some bread up to Heinie like I promised," their mother directed, when Joel's anathema against Lynn had somewhat subsided and she had carried him his third cup of strong black coffee, well sweetened and scalding hot. "Then you ride on to the Upper Ranch and get that bread and bring it home. It'll mold, and there ain't any sense in wasting good bread."

"Can't we have it for our camp, Maw?" Sid teased. "It's all the same, ain't it, whether we eat it all cut up on the table, or whether we gnaw it up there and pertend it's pemmican. Come on, Maw—let us have it to camp out with! Gee, we can have a reg'lar ole Injun battle if we don't have to come home to get something to eat!"

"Just save washin' dishes for us," little Joe argued with a whimsical grin.

"Well-l, you boys chop some wood before you go, and I don't know but what you can have it," she yielded. "Only, I want you to promise you'll go right straight up to Heinie's first, and take him the stuff I promised he should have. Do you think you can do that, for once in your lives, and not go larruping off after a coyote or whatever comes along?"

"Sure! You bet, Maw. Gee, two loaves of bread! Can we have butter too, Mom? Gee, We'll give them Injuns fits!"

"You git out there at that woodpile!" came the offstage growl that ran like a discordant undercurrent through every bit of dialogue that took place in the house. "Your mother'll give you fits if you don't do as you're told!"

"Can we, Maw?"

"I'll see how much wood you chop before you go."

With that half promise to add a little zest to the task, the boys went off to make a showing at the woodpile. Experience had made them cunning in the art of piling a half dozen sticks so that they would look like twice as many, and so escape with as little time wasted on work as was possible. They set off in a high lope and higher spirits, having wheedled their mother into adding a jar of currant jam to the butter she indulgently wrapped in a wet cloth for them. Heinie's bundle flopped behind Sid's saddle and a banner of dust settled over the garden as they passed by the fence.

But in an amazingly short time they came tearing back down the trail, their faces pasty white and their mouths loose-lipped and trembling. They stopped with a jerk of their bodies as the horses slid stiffened forefeet in the dust before the kitchen step and they almost fell off their mounts in their hurry to get inside.

"For the land's sake!" cried Rose, wiping dishes at the sink. "Those imaginary Indians go on the warpath for sure?"

"Heinie's dead!" blurted Sid, who always took the lead by virtue of his two extra years.

"His head's all mashed in the back of it!" stuttered little Joe, big-eyed with horror.

"And—and everything's all upset and throwed around every which way!"

"You boys behave yourselves!" Rose admonished them frowningly. "Don't bring your blood-and-thunder stuff in here—shame on you!"

"What's that about Heinie!" Mrs. Hayward came hurrying from Joel's room, a pillow in one hand, its slip in the other.

"He's dead! He is too, Rose! You shut up. If you don't believe it you can go and see. Somebody killed him, Mom. They had a fight, I guess. The table's upset and everything."

Mrs. Hayward sat down on the nearest chair, looking white. She stared vaguely around the room as the pillow slid to the floor beside her.

"Why, I—I don't see—are you sure?"

"'Course I'm sure!" Sid's wits and his courage took heart from the familiar surroundings. He could add grewsome details. He could even feel a pleasurable glow of importance in his knowledge of the tragedy. He was made to go in and repeat the story to old Joel, who listened with the king of diamonds in his fingers, just as he had suspended his fifth spread of solitarie that morning.

"Looks like robbery," he said grimly. "Where's Lynn?"

"He—he just started for town after another bottle of your blood purifier, Dad," Rose told him hesitantly. "I had a dollar and I gave it to him to buy—"

"Nobody but a damn' fool would give a plugged nickel to that pinhead. Never here when he's wanted—"

"Sid, you ride just as fast as you can go and see if you can't catch him," Mrs. Hayward cut in breathlessly. "Tell him what's happened. Tell him he must get the sheriff—some one must telegraph to Lander. Lynn will know what to do, soon as you tell him what happened."

"Just's if he didn't know!" sneered old Joel. "He was up there las' night, wasn't he? Looks mighty damn' funny to me—"

His wife whirled on him in one of her rare furies.

"Joel Hayward, you let me hear another whisper like that and you can starve and rot before I'll ever do a hand's turn for you again! For shame on you! Your own flesh and blood!"

"I never said anything," Joel mumbled in an abashed tone. "I only said—"

"Never mind what you said. You shut your mouth and keep it shut. Sidney, you go overtake Lynn—"

"He can't, Mom. Lynn rode Loney and he was going to hurry back and hoe potatoes." Rose stood with her back to the wall, looking from one to the other. "Let me go, Mommie. This is nothing for a kid to handle."

A long look passed between the two. Mrs. Hayward's eyes wavered to the window. Little Joe was crying with a snuffling whimper. Sid looked plain scared. Old Joel laid down the king of diamonds on the ace, and licked his thumb absent-mindedly, one eyebrow canted upward as he stole a glance at his wife.

"Yes, go! And hurry, Rose. Be careful, won't you? Poor Heinie! Whoever in the world would want to do a thing like that! A poor man like him—it couldn't have been robbery. Heinie didn't have anything." She stopped with a gasp of suspicion, Joel's words recalled like a blow in the face. Lynn's unaccountable attitude that morning toward Heinie—oh, no, it was unthinkable! With a muttered sentence about Rose, and something she must tell her, Mrs. Hayward left the room, the two boys clattering at her heels. No one ever remained in Joel's room by choice; the boys least of all.

"You boys go to work at that woodpile!" Their mother commanded them sharply. "And you cord the wood too, so I can see just how much you've done. Don't you let me catch you loafing—Lynn will have enough on his hands without getting in and doing your chores for you."

"Oh, Maw-w!" whined little Joe. "Can't we go and see the sheriff when he comes? We're the ones that found—"

His mother gave him a distracted slap and a push toward the woodpile, and there was that in her face which stifled Joe's perfunctory howl and sent the two boys to do her bidding.

Rose had already saddled her own little gray horse with the strain of Arabian that gave wings to his feet and an almost human intelligence to his equine brain. Mercury, she had named him in a spasm of romantic fervor, when Lynn first led him to the door on her twentieth birthday not so long ago. But that mood had passed as such moods do, so now the horse was plain Merk and a devil slept under his sleek hide. But he was keen and sure footed with a gait like velvet, and even his devilment was a joy to Rose.

She looked up now when Merk's eloquent ears told her some one was coming, and led the horse out of the corral and up the path to meet her mother.

"You will be careful, Rose! You know what your father said—what he thinks—and the way the boy acted this morning, I don't know—Lynn's got an awful temper when he's roused, and he was all wrought up over that Hay-wire slur. If Heinie heard it in town and started to josh him about it, I don't know—I'm 'most afraid to think!"

"I wouldn't think, if I were you, Mommie. I'll get hold of Lynn and tell him first—don't you worry, Mom. Lynn's got a lot to him besides his temper. He—he couldn't do a thing like that. Or even if he had, don't you suppose he's got brains enough not to say what he did at breakfast? Anyway, I'll find out the truth, and—and Mommie, no matter what comes up, we stand pat for Lynn!" She gathered the reins up short, spoke admonishingly to the tensed and waiting Mercury, and swung to the saddle as easily as Lynn would have done.

"Keep everybody away from Dad," she leaned to warn her mother fiercely. "Don't let any one in the house if you can help it—or if you must, keep him quiet if you have to gag him!" Something of Lynn's dumb rage gleamed in her eyes that were usually so clear and so softly whimsical. "He hates Lynn, Mother. I honestly believe he's insane on the subject. He'd accuse him to any one he dared say it to. He looks at Lynn sometimes as if he'd like to kill him, and would if he could get his hands on him. I never said it before. But after this—we can't let Dad see anybody. Thank God," she added under her breath, "he can't walk!"

"Rose! That's a terrible thing to say!"

"It's a terrible thing to have to think of one's own father—but he's made us all think it more or less. You too. That room reeks of venom, and it's mostly for Lynn. Thank God we can protect Lynn now. Keep your word, Mom. If he so much as yeeps, shut down on the grub. He just sits there and stuffs himself, anyway. It'd do him good to skip a meal or two".

"You and Lynn—you're so hard, sometimes!"

"Lynn and I need to be. Keep the boys away from there, too. Let them camp out if they want to, when this excitement is over, so they won't be scared. And watch Dad. It isn't Heinie we have to think of now, Mom; it's Lynn."

"Oh, my God! To think that my boy—"

"Cut that right out, Mom! Even your thoughts. Lynn didn't. I know he didn't. Good-by, Mommie dear. Don't you worry a minute."

She faced forward, leaned a little and slackened the reins a fraction of an inch. Mercury leaped like a panther and was off down the trail at a run. Rose's mother watched the gray pony whip around the bends in the creek bottom and go streaking up the hill beyond. Most horses would have slowed to a walk on that steep climb, but Mercury had the lungs of a mountain goat.

"My, how that girl does ride!" Mrs. Hayward heaved a deep sigh as she turned back to the house. "She and Lynn are no more like the rest of us than light is like night. I wonder if Lynn meant to come back? Rose seemed to think—"

It was an ugly thought to plague that harassed woman, and it was not made easier to bear because she must hide it deep within her soul and give no sign.