Читать книгу The Secret of the Storm Country - Grace Miller White - Страница 15

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While Tess was making her call at Longman's, Helen Young was entertaining her fiance, Ebenezer Waldstricker.

"I shall never be satisfied until Bishop is back in Auburn, Helen," said he, snipping the end from a long cigar.

The girl held up her needle and deftly shot the thread through the eye of it.

"He's sure to be, dear," she soothed. "Here's Deforrest!" She hesitated, laid down her work and stood up.

Professor Young shook hands with Waldstricker as his sister went to his side smilingly.

"Ebenezer wants me to go down to Skinner's with him," she explained. "Won't you come along, too, Forrie?"

The lawyer threw an interrogative glance at the churchman.

"Certainly," he answered. "Why? Anything particular?"

The question was asked of Waldstricker, who lifted his shoulder with a long breath.

"Yes," he replied. "I've a little plan to get hold of Bishop! I'm certain sooner or later he'll land back here among his own people. If I can whet their appetites with money, they'll turn him over the moment he appears."

"No doubt," observed Young. "But the Skinners—What have the Skinners to do with him?"

Waldstricker thought a moment, inhaling the smoke the while.

"The girl, Tessibel, who sings at church might be of great assistance to me," he said presently.

"How?" interjected Deforrest.

"Why, she goes among the squatters daily and would be likely to know if Bishop sneaked into any of their huts. If I can interest her in the reward—I've an idea she'll be of service to me."

"Perhaps," responded Young, in a meditative manner.

Waldstricker looked at Helen smilingly. "I think I started to give you an account of what happened yesterday," he said. "Did I tell you I came to see you, dear?"

Helen sat down and resumed her work.

"Yes, Ebenezer, but I was out!" she smilingly nodded. "I'm so sorry. If I'd known, I wouldn't have gone to town!"

"It didn't matter at all." Then he laughed, coloring a little. "Of course, I always hate missing you."

A loving look passed between the two, and Waldstricker proceeded, "But as long as I was here, I thought I'd speak to Skinner. On the way down the hill I met his daughter coming up. Rather startling personality, that girl! But she's woefully ignorant!"

"She hasn't had much chance, poor little thing," excused Helen. "She really has a beautiful voice, though."

"So I've noticed on Sundays."

"And she studies every minute," Professor Young thrust in, "and is so eager to learn; she's advanced amazingly!" He laughed in a reminiscent manner.

"One day," he proceeded, much amused, "she ran up the hill after me. I didn't notice her until she was at my side, all out of breath. 'Well, some little girl's been running,' I said."

"I want to learn things," she panted.

"Then I asked, 'What things?' and she answered, 'Oh, all about readin' and writin' and the things big rich folks know. If I had books, I'd learn 'em too.' … Naturally I bought the books."

"Naturally," laughed Waldstricker.

"Well, I stopped to ask where she was going and if her father was at home. Then she told me that she was on her way to a seeress, Mother Moll, she called her, wasn't it?"

"Yes," assented Young, nodding his head. "The old woman lives on the north side of the gully."

Waldstricker bent forward and pursued. "I went into the hut with the girl." He stopped and his lip took an upward curve. "The old hag tells fortunes from a pot, a steaming pot full of boiling water, I think."

Here he turned suddenly on Deforrest. "That's got to stop, Young. It's against the Bible, prophesying and the like."

"She's really a harmless old thing, though," replied the lawyer sententiously, "and every squatter on Cayuga Lake loves her. Believe me, Eb, she's absolutely harmless."

"Not harmless if she's disobeying God's law," contradicted Waldstricker, seriously. "Isn't there some way by which she can be turned out of the shack?"

Deforrest shook his head. "Not that I know of as long as she holds her squatter rights. Her people take care of her, and she tells their fortunes to pay for food." He broke off the explanation, only to take it up again, "No, there isn't any way to oust her. Frederick Graves' father tried to get the Skinners off, but failed."

"Oh, I didn't know," observed Waldstricker. "I must have been away at the time." He drew out his watch and looked at it. "Shall we go on down, Helen? It's a little early. I told the girl I'd come at two, but a half an hour doesn't matter. … I can't rest until I get hold of that dwarf."

During the interval in which Helen went for her garden hat, Waldstricker said to Deforrest,

"I may need you, Young, in this Bishop case. I'm privileged to call upon you, of course?"

"I'll do anything I can, Ebenezer," agreed Young.

So it happened that when Tess rounded the mud cellar, she glanced up the hill and saw the three making their way leisurely toward the lake. She gave one bound and literally hurled herself through the shanty door into the kitchen.

"Walderstricker air comin!" she hissed through her teeth in quivering excitement. "Scoot under the tick, Andy! An', Daddy, get on my cot, an' don't say no word less'n they ask ye something face to face. … Let me do the talkin'."

She had no more than settled her father on the cot and heard the last of the dwarf's burrowing in the attic when a long shadow fell across the threshold. Stepping forward, she met Deforrest Young, who held out his hand to her.

She greeted her friend with a dubious smile, and taking his hand, bowed awkwardly to his sister. In her confusion she ignored Waldstricker entirely. Their presence in the squatter's hut was so portentous and the time for the preparations to receive them so short, Tessibel's wits almost deserted her.

"Come in, all of ye," she stammered, at last, and stepped backward across the uneven kitchen floor toward the cot at the further side of the room.

Then she placed chairs for them, and when all were seated, settled herself on the floor near Daddy Skinner, and shaking her curls back from her face, looked with grave brown eyes from one to the other of the ominous group.

"I'm very glad to see you, Tessibel," said Helen graciously.

"I air awful glad to see you, too, Ma'am," returned Tess, still embarrassed.

Miss Young smiled toward Ebenezer, then back at the girl.

"You remember Mr. Waldstricker, don't you, Tess, dear?"

Tessibel allowed her gaze to rest on the elder. Of course she remembered him. What did he desire of Daddy Skinner? That was all she wanted to know.

"Yep," she answered, more calmly. "I remember 'im, sure I do! He—"

Waldstricker interrupted her with a quick interrogation.

"We had a little meeting yesterday, didn't we, Miss Tessibel? You didn't wait for me to tell you what I wanted." He delivered this most affably, and Tess counted him very handsome, indeed, when both corners of his mouth went up, but she knew that other trick of those lips. Not knowing how to explain her flight, she kept silent. Deforrest noted the shadow that clouded the lovely face and ascribed it to embarrassment. Thinking to put her at her ease, he asked,

"Have you been studying today, my dear?"

"Well I guess I have!" The girl sent him a radiant, grateful smile. "I studies every day, an' air learnin' my Daddy a lot of things now, ain't I, Daddy?" She looked backward at the man on the cot as she asked the last question.

"Yep," affirmed Skinner, faintly.

"Daddy air sick," she explained. "You'll be excusin' 'im if he don't talk. I'll do all the gabbin' if ye don't mind."

Tessibel had regained her self-control. She knew that Waldstricker's presence meant danger to her loved ones, Daddy and Andy Bishop. In their defense, eager to hinder him, her quick thought sought his purpose in coming to the shack. Could it be about Mother Moll, she wondered. She would ask him. Looking up at Waldstricker, she addressed him timidly,

"I hope, sir, ye ain't mad at Mother Moll any more?"

Waldstricker, intent upon his idea of interesting her in the search for his father's murderer, waived her question aside. He would attend to the witch and her fantastic mummeries later.

"Never mind the old woman now," he began pompously. "I came here today on purpose to see you about another matter."

Why, yesterday he had said he wanted to talk to Daddy; now today he wanted to speak to her. She sat up a little straighter, each shoulder carrying its load of red curls, the ends of which lay in a bronze tangle.

"I'd do anything I could," she answered shyly, a lovely red dyeing her face.

"I knew you would! Mr. Young has told me how anxious you are to learn and to improve your condition. … Isn't that so?"

Tess nodded, looking from the speaker to Deforrest, who threw her his ever-ready smile. Her gaze returned to the churchman and he continued,

"Now, I've a plan which, if it succeeds, will give you lots of money! You could do almost anything you'd want to then."

Tess didn't move, only stared back at the handsome, swarthy face incredulously.

"I couldn't earn much," she ventured, gulping. "I get five bucks every Sunday fer singin' at the church, but—"

"Oh, I don't mean a few dollars," Waldstricker told her. "I was talking about a lot—thousands."

Daddy Skinner straightened out on the cot and Tess tried to swallow, but couldn't. She knew now that he referred to the reward for Andy.

"Lordy massy!" she got out at last, huskily.

Deforrest Young coughed, and Waldstricker's hand went quickly to his face.

"I'll explain about it," he said, "and then you can decide if you wish to do it."

"All right," replied Tess, leaning her chin on her hand. "Gowan an' blat it out."

"I suppose you know my good old father was murdered," the visitor asked her after a slight period of silence on his part.

Andy and what he had told her about the brawl in the saloon raced through Tessibel's mind.

"I heard 'bout it," she replied, nodding.

"And you've heard, too, probably, the man who murdered him escaped from Auburn a little while ago?"

Tess wanted to say "No," but she feared a long explanation would follow which might trouble Daddy and the wee man in the garret, so she acquiesced by bowing her head. "I guess he were the man Daddy were talkin' 'bout, weren't he, Daddy?"

She turned toward her father, but his red lids were closed, and he was breathing heavily.

"Daddy goes to sleep awful easy!" she excused to all three. Then she told Waldstricker, "Yep, Daddy said the man broke out o' jail."

The man she spoke to looked keenly at her.

"The officers feel pretty sure he'll make his way down the lake side," he explained, "eventually landing among his own people."

A flash of the brown eyes and a quick stiffening of the supple body under the red curls expressed the girl's resentment at the slur implied in the speaker's statement.

"Among us squatters, I s'pose ye mean?" demanded Tess, belligerently.

"Yes," nodded the elder, with a contemptuous smile at the angry young face.

Tess hated that tone in people's voices when they talked about squatters.

"And I was wondering if you wouldn't like to earn the reward offered for Bishop's capture," Waldstricker finished abruptly.

Tessibel's foresight had discounted the effect of this announcement. To save Andy, she must deceive Waldstricker and persuade him to leave the search of the Silent City in her hands. Her brown eyes were bright with her purpose; she smiled slowly up at him showing every white tooth.

"You bet I would!" she exclaimed, shaking her curls as she tossed her head. "How much air it, huh?"

"Five thousand dollars," replied Waldstricker.

"Jeedy!" gasped Tess. "That air a pile of money. I bet I earn it! … What'd ye bet?"

She turned impetuously to Deforrest Young, and he laughed.

"I hope you may!" was all he said.

Tess was all eagerness now, her cheeks flaming and her eyes dancing.

"But I wouldn't know the man if I seen 'im in any of the squatter's huts, huh?"

She flung this at Waldstricker, more of a question than a statement.

"He's a dwarf," he answered immediately, "and very small—like this. Sandy Letts knows him and is looking for him, too."

At his statement, Tessibel's quick imagination pictured Sandy's brutal face and greedy eyes, and for a moment her flaming courage almost faltered.

"If a dwarf sneaks down here," she observed with a sweep of her hand toward the door, "I'd get 'im easy. I know everybody."

"But would I have to halve up with Sandy, eh?" she continued, as though struck with a new thought.

"Not unless Sandy helped you find him," Ebenezer replied genially. "You could do as you pleased about that."

"Oh, Sandy couldn't help me, not a bit," Tess argued earnestly. "Sandy ain't liked any too well 'round here."

"Well, manage it as you choose."

Waldstricker smiled at his success with the girl. "I don't care for Sandy myself," he continued. "All I want is to get Andy Bishop." His face hardened with hate as he pronounced the dwarf's name.

Tess put her hands under the curls over each shoulder and drew them together beneath her chin.

"Five thousand dollars!" she ruminated. "I'd have a bully time a spendin' it, wouldn't I? … I'd buy my Daddy a new overcoat every day fer a year, an' I'd git 'im four new beds—one fer every corner of this here kitchen, an' I'd git 'im a flannel shirt thick as a board to keep the pains from 'is bones. … Then, I'd buy me a cow an' a calf an' a horse an' a little baby pig an' a few cats an' a lot of dogs, an' I'd let all the squatter brats play in my flower garden—"

Helen broke off this chatter with an amused laugh.

"Then mebbe I'd go to school a while," Tess kept on, "an' learn myself a lot out o' books, an' after that I'd take singin' lessons an' I'd sing to everybody what asked me—Then mebbe—" She dropped back for lack of words. "I wonder if that'd take the hull of the five thousand."

Waldstricker stood up.

"You've got the right idea of spending money," he laughed. "And now, young lady, we'll leave you, and if you hear that this dwarf is in any of your friends' huts, you let me know, and I'll come right down."

"Sure," said Tess, heartily. "Ye bet I will."

Scrambling to her feet, she lifted the ruddy curls and flung them back on her shoulders. To Ebenezer, watching her, came like a haunting memory the witch's cry, "Hair, stranglin' ye—God, what hair!"

But he dismissed the suggestion easily and turned to Helen, smiling.

"Why not bring Miss Skinner to the next musicale and have her sing? … Wouldn't you like that, Tess?"

"I'd get scared stiff," gasped Tessibel, terrified.

"But, Tess, dear," Helen thrust in, "I'd teach you the songs, and—"

The girl was looking down upon her dress, her face gathering a deep red.

Miss Young divined what was going on in the girlish mind.

"And I'd help you make a new dress," she went on.

"A hull lot of money folks'd be there, eh?" Tess demanded. Oh, how afraid she always was of a crowd of those—different people!

Her words directed Waldstricker's attention to the contrast between this squatter girl in the bare shack and the fashionable folk who'd throng his spacious drawing room.

"Well, a few," he answered, "but you come along with Miss Young just the same, will you?"

Tessibel took the outstretched hand awkwardly enough and as quickly dropped it and began to fumble with her own fingers. She looked down at the floor while she traced a line on it with her toe.

"Mebbe," she replied in a very subdued voice.

She stood in the door and watched them walk slowly up the hill. Then she turned back into the kitchen.

"My God, brat!" sobbed a voice through the hole in the ceiling. "Wasn't that a nice list of beautiful things ye was goin' to buy? Oh, kid, I air bettin' Waldstricker gits me."

Tess chuckled low, as she turned her face upward.

"Andy," she said, "ye needn't be worryin' 'bout me an' Jesus handin' ye over to that old elder. Why, Him an' me air goin' to stick to you like pitch to a nigger."

She turned to go, but hearing a sigh, took four steps up the ladder and finished,

"Why, honey, Waldstricker air got as much chance a ketchin' you as a tallow dog has chasin' an asbestos cat through hell."