Part 28

The old man nodded, with a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy, then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless. When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's hand as though he found its warmth and firmness sustaining.

"Let's git into the timber," said Piney, and they rode forward a little way quite silent. "I don' want Mist' Steerin' to look back an' see me here," the boy explained. In the growth where the hills began to roll down toward Choke Gulch, Piney stopped short, with a detaining hand upon Bernique's bridle.

"I hearn," he said. His young face was so grey and solemn that Bernique regarded him questioningly. "I was simlike half asleep up there in the bushes. Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened. I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you cayn't tell nobody! Mist' Steerin', he cayn't tell nobody!--but Me!" the boy was breathing harder, his face was growing greyer, "Unc' Bernique, I'm f'm the hills, an' not like them," the blood began suddenly to come back to his lips; he raised in his stirrups and slashed at the branches of a black-jack tree with his riding switch, as though he cut a vow across the air, high up. "But what I can, I will!" he cried, and clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'--an' fer him!" he choked. Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely. "She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken crescendo.

Old Bernique stared at the boy in exaltation. "God above!" he shouted, "if that is it, it begins to be hope in my old breast! All may come right yet, and no oaths broken!"

"None broke!" cried Piney. "One more took! I'm a-ridin' saouth, to Madeira Place, Unc' Bernique;" he gathered up the reins from his pony's neck,--"I'm a-goin' to Miss Sally Madeira to tell her abaout Mist' Steerin';" he was blind with hot, young tears. "She'll do the rat thing whend she knows, Unc' Bernique;" he had put the pony about,--"I'll see you on the hills in the mornin'!" he was gone down the yellow road like a winged Mercury.

On the hills behind him, Old Bernique, comprehending and envying, locked his hands on his saddle-horn in a vehement tension. His lips moved, and what he said seemed to float out after the flying figure of the boy like a benediction.

Chapter Fifteen

A MISTAKE SOMEWHERE

The afternoon of that day was golden out at Madeira Place. Through the kitchen windows the sun streamed in, in broad, unfretted bands of light. Just beyond the window the crab-apple trees and the quince trees and the pear trees and the damson trees were rioting in blossom.

The kitchen itself was a place to take comfort in. By a table sat fat black Chloe, seeding raisins, when she was not asleep. Before another table stood Sally Madeira, her brown, round arms bared to the elbow, flapping cake batter with a wooden paddle. With her sense of eternal fitness the girl was a fine housekeeper as easily as she was a sweet singer and a good horsewoman. She had kept the past beautifully intact in the old brick-floored room. Overhead hung strings of red peppers, streaks of scarlet on the heavy black rafters. Little white sacks of dried things, peas and beans and apples, depended from hooks. Against the walls were quaint old tin safes, their doors gone, their shelves covered with dark blue crockery. The tin and brass stuff shone brightly. On a low shelf stood a great piggin of water, a fat yellow drinking gourd sticking out of it. The whole picture was a kitchen pastel, delicately toned, a kitchen of the long ago, Sally Madeira fitting into it exquisitely, re-establishing the stately domesticity of an old regime by her fine adaptability and appreciation.

Chloe brought the raisins over to Miss Madeira at last, and let them drop slowly into the crock, watching carefully for stray bits of stem.

"Simlike nowadays ef he teef go agin a hardness spile he tas' fuh de cake," she said anxiously.

"We do have to humour his poor appetite, don't we, Chloe? Never mind, he'll be better soon, I hope."

"Whut madder wid he, Miss Sally, innyhow, Honey?"

"Just overwork, I think, Chloe. Works all the time; in the office now, bent double over his desk."

The darky shuffled restlessly on her flat feet. "Simlike to me he pester'd. I d'n know. Miss Sally, who else gwine eat dishyer cake tumorreh, Honey?"

"I'm not expecting any company at all, Chloe. Father isn't really well enough to care to talk to people."

"Miss Honey, simlike de house gittin' mighty lonesome nowadays. Taint like it uster be."

"Do you feel it, Chloe? Do you know I've grown to like it better quiet." The girl's voice was wistful, she let the batter trickle recklessly while she gazed off out of the window. Then she sighed and began to beat the batter very hard.

"Miss Honey-love?"

"Yes, Chloe."

"That tha' Mist' Steerin' aint ben come no mo' fuh gre't while, air he?"

"No."

"Samson he say he gwine ride down by Redbud this evenin'."

"Well, Chloe, I'm sorry that I can't send an invitation to your favourite, but I'm afraid Father isn't well enough--oh, there's Piney, Chloe!"

The boy had come up the bridle-path slowly, his mission weighting him and making him languid. At the latticed porch he jumped to the ground, turned the pony's nose into the grass and came into the kitchen.

"Howdy, Miss Sally. Hi, Chloe. Cand I have a drink, please'm, Miss Sally?"

He drank long and greedily from the gourd dipper, so long that Sally Madeira turned to him laughingly at last. "Well, Piney, son, got Texas fever?" she began, and then, being quick of wit, saw at once that the boy's pallor, his thirst, his absorption meant something especial. "I'm glad you came, Piney," she went on capably, and gave the batter paddle to Chloe. "I've been wanting to see you all day to have a little talk with you. Let's go out under the crab-apple tree."