“I’m cotched,” she exclaimed deprecatingly. “I thought I’d peek in and find out what’s going on, though I reckon I ain’t wanted.”
“Not much you ain’t,” he declared, recovering his composure with difficulty. “How’d you come?”
“In the dug-out,” she explained. “I tied Possum in his bunk, and locked him up, and took out. He’s safe enough.”
“Oh, that’s all right. He’ll spend most of his days locked up, ennyhow,” Colty roughly joked.
“He won’t nuther.” She struck at him with an affectation of retaliation. But her face was not jocose, and a tallowy pallor accented the freckles.
“Colty,” she lowered her voice mysteriously, “I have heard shootin’.”
“Naw!” he cried remonstrantly, as if the reluctance to entertain the fact could annul it.
“Whenst on the ruver I heard shootin’,” she declared again.
“Oh, shucks, gal,” he exclaimed. “You couldn’t hear it so fur off.”
“On the water!” she cried, lifting her eyebrows. “The water fetches the sound.”
“He _said_ he wouldn’t shoot,” cried Colty Connover, his lip pendulously drooping. “He said on no account.”
“You b’lieve his gab? Well, you _are_ a softy!” she flung at him. Then, with one end of the apron string in her mouth, she ejaculated murmurously: “I heard shootin’,” looking doubtfully and vaguely over her shoulder.
“Then he’ll swing for it ef he’s killed Ran Ducie. There ain’t a more pop’lar man in the county, nor a better judge of horseflesh.”
“I ain’t carin’ fur Binnhart arter the way he made me trick that crazy loon out’n his secrets an’ then declared he’d gimme nuthin’ thout he found the truck.”
“Pulled the horse an’ lost yer pay, too,” grinned Colty.
“But all the rest will be tarred with the same stick----”
“Not me nor you,” interrupted Colty Connover,--“’cause he said he wouldn’t shoot. He swore he wouldn’t.”
Suddenly she pushed back her tousled red hair as she stood near the glass door, and looked up with a startled apprehension on her face.
“Listen, Colty, listen----! What is that sound--what is that sound?”
Then a strange thing happened. The sun, low in its circuit, was already westering on the October day. Even now its radiance fell through the great windows and open doors all aslant, and lay in deep orange tints athwart the bare, dusty floors. Many a skein-like effulgence was suspended from the panes, and on these fine and fiery lines illuminated motes were scattered like the notation of music on an immaterial cleff. There was no wind, no rustle of the magnolia trees glimpsed without. The river was silent as always. The stillness was intense, indescribable, and, suddenly, with a long drawn sigh, a creaking dissonance, the old house gave forth one loud moan, voicing its sorrows, its humiliation, its inanimate woe.