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Show Hawk" Wind nw Lie. cu -rnnnivr mi i rn D- APPLETON-CENTURY CO. BY HELEN TOPPING MILLER w-N U-service CHAPTER XVII Continued 16 "I'll have to scour the windshield," Wills said. "I can't see through it." Air that cut their, faces rushed In as he opened the door. Marian thought of old Tom the thin, torn old coat he had worn In the jail his feet sloshing through the freezing mud, wind cutting through mercilessly. merci-lessly. "Oh hurry I" she whispered. "But Mother, what If he didn't come this way?" "He came this way. He took the old log trail across the ridge, and crossed the river on that swinging bridge." "There's a light," said Branford Wills. "The gate is beyond that big tree. It's steep beyond you'd better j change gears." I "Has he had time " "He left before dark. A boy saw him go. They didn't miss him till supper time " "If only they had locked the door," Marian mourned. "We may be in time." Virgie was hopeful. The house that sprang out of a gnarled darkness of old apple-trees was bleak and somber and somehow some-how desolate. "The door's' open " breathed Marian. Virgie gave a little groan. "I'll go," she said. "You wait here." "Not alone, Mother." "No not alone," Wills sprang out after her. Marian hurried after them, slipping slip-ping and panting, in the wan beam of their headlights. But somehow she knew it was too late. She had known it when the dreary old house leaped out of the darkness, out of the solitude and silence which for a year it had known. "Don't let her come," Virgie warned sharply. "But I'm coming," Marian answered, an-swered, setting the chin she had from David Morgan. "Take my hand," Wills said. "I can walk alone." But she took the hand. Held it tight, clutched by the dread of that sinister, opened door. Beyond that door a lamp fluttered in the draft Beyond it was a deserted de-serted room, where coals glowed in a base burner and Wallace Withers' elastic-sided shoes sat warming on the floor. Shoes he would never wear any more. "Don't come closer," Virgie called sharply. But Wills went on and Marian would not let go his hand, though her flesh was icy and her hair lifted a little on her head, at what lay there, face upward in front of that open door. Wallace Withers had been shot cleanly through the head. This time Tom's gun had not jammed. "Don't touch anything," Wills warned. "Is there a telephone in this house?" Virgie, a little sick because she could not hate even a dead, cruel old man who had wronged her, shook her head. "Not even a well," she said. "But we've got to find Tom!" Marian began sobbing wildly. "Take care of her," Virgie said to Wills wearily. "I'll get a sheet. I know where they are. I can't leave him lying there like that" She had heard Marian's little choking cry, "Oh, Bran Bran " She had seen Wills holding her in 1 his arms. Suddenly she was old ' and lonely, and this was death lying ly-ing face up to the hostile sky and out of the aloof hills a winter wind howled in desolation. Suddenly sha was sorry for Wallace Withers. He had been lonely, tool They found Tom Pruitt at dawn. Men with lanterns and dogs had crashed and slid through the Icy night cursing the storm and the darkness. And all night Virgie had sat by the stove in Wallace Withers' With-ers' house, looking straight ahead of her, musing on the tangled tragedy of life and the way greed snarled the twisting strands, wove traps and nooses and webs for hopes and high ambitions to be choked in. Wills and Marian had gone for help and met a posse on the road. But light was under the hemlocks along the river bluff when they found Tom. Virgie saw them coming, slowly, up the frozen lane, and knew what they had found. "He went over them rocks down there where the river runs under the cliff," a deputy said. "He was heading back toward your place I reckon, Mis' Morgan, and he missed his footing in the dark. I wouldn't take on, Mis' Morgan I reckon it's just as well." "Yes," said Virgie, tonelessly, "it's just as well." Somehow she got home. Riding in somebody's r,ackety car, cold and weary and aching from head to foot with a sorrow that was rigid and steely like bonds around her heart and throat. The mountains and the woods were frigidly incased in a coating of icy glass. The streams were hidden and from the stack of the mill a wan steam drifted. The fires were banked and tomorrow tomor-row the barkers would whirl again, gnashing their steel teeth into unresisting un-resisting wood, grinding and spewing spew-ing and sucking away the life-blood of a green tree so that missals could be printed for praying nuns and letters let-ters written to old mothers. The mill would go on. The mill would go on and Tom would not be there. David would not be there. A sudden, stark, awful loneliness got Virgie Morgan by the throat as she walked into her own house, and sank into the chair that had the print of David Morgan's thin shoulder-blades. She couldn't go on she couldn't alone! And then suddenly she was not alone. Youth was there, with lights and hot coffee and gentle hands. Marian and Branford Wills. "We've stopped fighting, Mother we found out we were terribly in love with each other. Do you mind, Mother? Take off her shoes, Bran, and rub her feet I'll get her slippers." slip-pers." Branford Wills knelt at her feet, lean and brown, with his deep voice and gentle eyes. "I can't go on without her," he said. "I know what a presumptuous fool I am " "I'm glad,' said Virgie numbly. She would have liked a son like this lad, she was thinking. Lucy was there and Stanley Daniels, Dan-iels, looking sheepish and relieved and eager to help. They were scrambling scram-bling eggs, they announced. "We thought you'd need us, Mrs. Morgan," Lucy said, brightly, little red coins shining in her cheeks. Suddenly Virgie began to sob. They were so brave and so reckless reck-less and so gallant. Their eyes were so clear. They were youth going on! "Yes, I need you!" she said hoarsely. THE END |