She had been kneeling before him in dressing his hurt,
and then in critically regarding her handiwork, she
got to her feet. “I know you oughtn’t,”
she retorted, “but I’m glad you done it.
And I’m thankful every breath I draw. And
now I want you to go. And don’t you
think I done what I done out of love for you, Joseph
Dylks. I’d ‘a’ done it for any
hurt or hungry dog.”
[Illustration: She had begun to wash his wound,
very gently, though she spoke so roughly, while he
murmured with the pain and with the comfort of the
pain]
Dylks got to his feet too, with little moans for the
stiffness in his joints. “I know you would,
Nancy,” he said humbly, “but all the same
I won’t forget it. If there was anything
I could do to show—”
“There’s something you could do besides
drownin’ yourself in the creek, which I don’t
ask you: in the first place because I don’t
want your death on my hands, and in the next place
because you’re the un-fittin’est man to
die that I can think of; but there’s something
else, and you know it without my tellin’ you,
and that is to stop all this, now and forever.
Don’t you pretend you don’t know what I
mean!”
“I know what you mean, Nancy, and the good Lord
knows I would be glad enough to do it if I could.
But I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
“Begin,” she said with a scornful glance
at the long tangle of his hair, “begin by cuttin’
off that horse’s tail of yours, and then stop
snortin’ like a horse.”
He shook his head hopelessly. “It wouldn’t
do, Nancy. They wouldn’t let me draw back
now. They would kill me.”
“They?”
“The—the—Little Flock,”
he answered shamefacedly.
“The Herd of the Lost will kill you if you don’t.”
She said it not in mocking, but in realization of
the hopeless case, and not without pity. But
at his next words, she hardened her heart again.
“I don’t know what to do. I don’t
know where to go. I have nowhere to lay my head.”
“Don’t you use them holy words, you wicked
wretch! And if you’re hintin’ at
hidin’ in my house, you can’t do it—not
with Jane here—she would kill you,
I believe—and not without her.”
“No, Nancy. I can see that. But where
can I go? Even that place in the woods, they’re
watching that, and they would have me if I tried to
go back.”
From an impulse as of indifference rather than consideration
she said, “Go to Squire Braile. He let
you off; let him take care of you.”
“Nancy!” he exclaimed. “I thought
of that.”
She gathered up the basin and the towel she brought,
and without looking at him again she said, “Well,
go, then,” and turned and left him where he
stood.
