UNTAUGHT KISSES

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 3, Issue 7, 1 January 1925, Page 12

UNTAUGHT KISSES

by G. B. LANCASTER

I. ""W7ELL, I guess you better git ** them buttons sewed on against I'm back, er there'll be trouble." Erne said nothing. Dave shambled across the littered floor, eased tht tool-kit on his left shoulder where it caught the strap of his one-piece dungarees, and wrenched open the door. The new-risen sun struck his shadow, black on scarlet, over the tern tar-paper on the opposite wall. It quivered there like a distorted cork on two elongated wires. "An 'you better quit watchin' them trains a spell an' git the cabin cleaned up some." Still Effie said nothing. "You hear?" He shot it at her with a darting movement of his stringy neck and a gleam of his pale bulging eyes. "Git teh yeh chores like a decent married woman, 'stead o' moonin' aroun' frettin' feh yeh town-truckmen an' movies an' sech. Here's all the men yeh've a right teh now. An' the only movie ever I seed was niggers practisin' sorceries teh kill each other. Yeh well shet o' sech pisen."

the cheap American clock on the corner shelf; her ears listened for that distant murmur which meant the coming of one of those trains which bore past her for ever the civilisation which was the very blood of her immature, town-spawned body, the one Mecca of her small, town-starved soul. The shrine of that civilisation was under the clock, a table crowded with photographs in gay frames of tinsel and plush, shell and tarnished gilt. "You ain't married yet, Maudie." She smeared the dust from a simpering girl-face. "Reckon I never would a-took Dave if you hadn't bin after him. —y. I wish you had him. Say, Carrie, wouldn't you an' fat Jen be tickled to death to know the way I'm livin' now after all the talk? Well, you ain't goin'

Still Effie said nothing. A woman who achieves silence has won much and lost more. Effie's tenacities, ii few, had bitten deep.

The door slammed. Effie stretched her arms above her fair, touselled head with a tinkling, satisfied laugh. The flesh where the gaudy, soiled wrapper fell away was round and white. Her eyes were saucer-big in a peevish-pretty face, and twenty months with no outlook but pine forest and the railroad track through its heart had not lessened their blueness.

Yawning, she watched as the man slouched over the rough grass of the house-lot. flung the hand-trolly across the metals and set it in motion with awkward movements n( his spider-like body. Clawing at the handle he slid away along the dewwet track as a spider slides on a cobweb-line. Beyond the culvert the night of the spruce forest took him, to spew him out higher up the grade to sunlight and a low yellow blurr that was the stacked thousands of new sleepers awaiting their turn in the roadbed. A distant gleam flashed from the trolly as he over-set il from the rails; faint blue specks joined with his, parted, came and went. The day's work of the linesmen had begun.

Shuffling listlessly in her down-at-heel slippers, Effie went about her work. A wilting bunch of flowers -late purple asters, golden-rod. and crimsoning maple—had been thrust under the window curtain last night by someone unseen. Petulant 1 v Effie rammed them in the stove with a billet of wood after them.

"Lou oughter had more sense. With Dave that suspicious an' all." Yawning still, she fed the chickens, stacked the chipped iron crockery on the. rough shelves, dragged an old-moose-skin over the slop of water on the painted floor, and made a few casual efforts to cope with the desolate untidiness of the bedroom. Among the potatoes, as she washed them, was one shaped queer - ly like a man — Dave when he slept, spider-sprawled and heavy, across the bed. Her little empty laugh tinkled again as she sent it splashing into the pan. "You're getting a good wash for once, you mean thing!" Continually her eyes returned to

AN UNUSUAL SHORT STORY IN WHICH LOVE, A MAN'S HONOUR

AND MEDIEAVAL NECROMANCY ARE INVOLVED

to. I might a-had you, Wally. Maybe I was a fool. You sure are a good-looker; but you never will have a red cent, an' Dave doesn't drink, anyway. I wonder would he stop naggin' once in a while if he did. Ah!" Dragging her tattered wrapper about her, she went out hastily. Clear shimmer of heat filled the narrow gut in the forest with the rich odours and the infinite hush of great spaces. But drumming through the silence now was a sound that gathered volume, even as her fibres tightened in response and her face caught light and colour. With the clanging pomp of a conqueror came the train, a mailed and gleaming knight shouting a pa>an of victory, of passion, and promise to the quivering woman. Beneath Effie the

earth shook, above her echoes were exultant in the tree-tops. From the observation-car faces smiled, hands waved. A throbbing channel of life the train tore past, bearing her spirit with it. The sublime tension slackened; the blast of life faded, faded, died With their eternal denial, empty metals and mute forest stepped up into the forefront again. Staggering like one who has been drunken, Effie went in, meeting the set smiles and damning wisdom of the photo• graphs. In the reaction from her ecstasy she screamed at them. "It's hell here! Hell! But you ain't one of you goin' to know it You ain't, Maudie, Carrie, Miranda, you ain't one of you a-comin' pokin' fingers at me. I'll die first. But it's hell! Hell!"

Towards evening she went to the inner room, brushed out her thick yellow hair for the first time thai day, touched her fretful lips with rouge, and clad her slim body in a pink cotton gown, which gave her a childish charm. But to the boy waiting five long, begrudged minutes iii. the kitchen it was no self-con-scious piece of cheap prettines? which came to him at last, but the angel of his hot and dreaming soul. He had her close, with his untaught kisses broadcast over her, before she could give out her rabbit-squeal of protest. And then he held her off, devouring her with shining eyes.

"It's years since I saw you, Effie; years. Honest to God, it is."

"You saw me night before last." "I can't go on just seein'you nights before last." His voice thickened; blood darkened his brown, eager face. "I came to say it. This has got to change. I'm gettin' most crazy, I guess." "You sure are. Leave go of me, Lou. You got me all rucked up." "This has got to change right now. 1 can't stand any more. Oh, Effie, I love you so badly, I—l just can't —an' I daren't think about Dave."

"Guess I don't care much to think of him, either." She smiled straight into the dark, troubled eyes.

"Then come away with me, darling—dearest girl on God's earth. You don't suppose I need to operate that old telegraph down at The Junction for one day more than it takes me to get you? Haven't I told you more'n a thousand times there's a good job waitin' for me any time? You could live like a queen."

"Sure you've told me. 'Pears like you've forgot what I've told you. I won't go with no man 'thout I'm married to him, Lou Baynes." "For God's sake! Don't you 'spose I waul to marry you?" "Well, I guess I ain't goin' with no man 'thout it. Likely! What'd they all say down to Portcrville about it?"

'To hear you talk a man'd think Portcrville was the one place on the map. Darned if I don't sometimes think you care less for me than for these."

He brought an angry fist down among the photographs, sending Maudie and Carrie to the floor. In the blue dusk, which made of them dim smudges, he struck a vibrant note, impervious, vital as the train. But that same law of circumstance which bound the train to the iron rails, bound the woman's soul still to

the tattle of conventional destinies. "All the Porterville folks is my friends, and maybe you don't know what that means. Why, if there was anythin' wrong they'd find out the first minute, an' then where would I be? All of 'em talkin' me over. I can see 'em doin' it. Carrie with that thin red nose of hern, Maudie laffin', and all the boys whisperin' in corners. I won't have it." Her voice shrilled suddenly; the little peaked face flushed and coarsened. "I'd rather die. Yeh! Sure's anything I'd rather lie down before the train and be done with it. Tell you, I won't be talked about an' called down by folk." "Reckon I don't understand you." His young face was stern, accusing. "If you'd go with me right now I'd be the happiest man on earth. An' folk could talk their tongues raw-edged for me." "Aw! If that ain't like a man! They're all my friends, I tell you. I ain't 'lowin' them to pick on me. I ain't goin' to do what ain't proper." "Effie, don't you tell me that what folks say means more to you than love." Bewildered, hurt, heated to white flame, he flung himself against the rock of her shallow conceit—away in despair. "If I could kill the no-'count hound " "You'd be found out. Often I do b'lieve ever'thing's found out sometime." "I might chance it, in the woods, with a gun." He was feeling after the idea a new, queer throb at his heart, a wild suggestion of latent chivalry dazzling him. Effie raised her head. It had a provocative tilt, which rarely

failed to take a man's eye. "Dave's comin'. I can hear the

trolley. You quit out, Lou, or he'll act ugly." "When'll I see you again? I must see you." "I dunno. Go right out that back dor."

"I must see you, I tell you, or I won't go, Effie " "Ah! You hurt! I'll let you know." She freed herself, closed the door delicately, and showed an expressionless face in the light of the coaloil lamp to the entering man. But once, during supper, she laughed aloud. With the food which Dave was shovelling down went the potato likeness of himself. Dave eating himself! That was the kind of nigger-sorceries Dave had seen on the movies, the kind Old Marm Lina used to talk of. They'd make a wax image of someone and melt it in the sun till the person died. If it melted out long and thin and bulgy in the wrong places it would look just like Dave. She watched him cleaning his plate and picking up crumbs from the table with a moistened forefinger, alert as a spider after the minutest fly. His bony jaws worked constantly in an anticipation of each morsel. His pale, bulging eyes glinted from side to side. She rose suddenly, and his darting look pinned her. "Whadyeh want?" "I've finished." "After that durn train agin, air yeh? Set down." The tremor of the coming train infused her, as ever, with a strange, defiant courage. "I won't." "Yeh will, d— yer!" He had her by the wrist, his spidery fingers chill on her warm, soft flesh. "Set down. One man ain't enough for yeh that yeh must go givin' the glad eye teh ever' one passin', eh? Set down!" ■■ •- - - ■ •■-••-

The sweeping challenge of the train filled the shack. Twisting in his grasp, she thrust head and shoulders from the window. "I will look if I want. You beast 1 You beast! I will." Between the thick dark of the spruces the tail-lights flared scarlet. A face shone in them—ebonyblack, with goggling white eye-balls, and a great mouth of gleaming teeth beneath broad nostrils. Then, with the train and the negro porter and the lights, her spate of strength vanished. Sullenly she went about her tasks, while the man smoked a silent pipe and shambled off to the deep sleep of weariness. Taking the lamp at last she went to the inner room. Dave's attitude across the bed recalled the sprawling potato-image. Beyond him Lou's last gift to her stood on the drawers, a fox at full gallop carved boldly from a beechknot. CHE was very tired, and the lamplight played tricks. On the edges of the dark that negro face came and went, brutal with knowledge, grinning with what? Something that her mind went aimlessly feeling after. About the next midday a linesman tossed Lou a note where he fed with the gang down at the Junction. Lou read it in secret, for even the cheap scent on the gaudy paper was sacred. "Make me a figure of Dave, and bring it where the big stacks of sleepers are on Friday night." Twice he read it—young enough

to be angry, offended. "She sure is having a joke on me. Maybe she thinks I couldn't." His vanity was caught. "Well, guess I can show her better." Hot, resinous odours breathed still from the great stacks of sleepers mellowing through raw umber into the warm, weathered greys of age when Lou came up the line on Friday night. In the quiet twilight they rose, one beyond the other, like massive castles, dungeon keeps, with flowers thick about their bases and the dark, guarding wall of the forest behind. There was peace here, majesty, between the seeded grasses and the far pale sky shredded over with skeins of the south-flying geese. Faintly once and twice their clanging came to him. Once a robin called out of the blue shadows. Scents came clean and pungent, comforting. Nature was going her own way to magic trouble out of the man, and the artist-soul in him could no more help response than it had been able to help reproducing Dave in all his repellent ugliness. These last days had been sheerly evil to Lou. Over the carving of the figure he had conceived a new loathing of Dave, as though the unlovely body was some foul affront to his own grace and youth— manhood and womanhood itself. Secret fear lest Effie had planned thisplanned to drive him into the madness of bloody deeds—had spoilt his days, shamed his love. But now he lay - still and let beauty touch eyes and

spirit with witchcraft fingers, until Effie, brushing with her pink frock the purple fireweed as she came, seemed a rebuke straight from God before which he cast himself down, stammering, worshipping.

Effie was fretful. Little lines had come about her mouth-corners through these last days.

"Did you get it done, Lou? The image of Dave? You've brought it?" "What's that? Sure. You dearest girl, if I could only carve you, all out of a white peeled hickory-stick, with these little feet and ankles "

He cradled them in his hands as he set her above him on the logs. He flooded her with asseverations, adorations. The flushed and tender ardency of him irritated her.

"Where is it, then? -You don't want Dave to miss me, I s'pose? I couldn't a-come but he's gone down the track a piece to see Nielson." Half-reluctant, half-proud, with a due sense of dramatic values, Lou brought out the figure silently and propped it upright on the logs. Effie's faint gasp as she shrank away from it struck the creator-light into his eyes. But his lips were tight. Perched on the long spindle-legs with their lumpy knees, Dave peered at the two from under his crazy hat; peered with craned, scraggy neck and thrusting chin and picking fingers; —three brown, rugged inches of malignant watchfulness, trembling on the verge' of speech. "'Pears almost like he was alive," faltered Effie at last.

"I sure have wished he was. Then he'd have felt every cut I gave him." "My, Lou! Did you guess? We—

we're aimin' to do just that thing." "What's that?" "Why," she spoke hurriedly, measuring him with sidelong eyes, "you've heard of Voudou, I guess? Ole Marm Lina uster to tell me, but I'd clean forgot. Then I remembered. You know, Lou? They make figures of folk an' wish evil on to them. And then " "I know." He stared, frowning at her under straight brows. "You don't want to know a thing about all that truck, Effie." "But I do know. Marm Lina taught me. Didn't you guess for why I wanted this? My'y! It is the livin' image of him." She touched it with a pink-pointed finger. "We can do the things to it quite secret, Lou. And that'll fix him, I guess. And—and," her voice rose triumphantly, "no one will ever know. You hear, Lou? No one will ever know one tiling. Oh, my! I am sure glad I

thought of this way. Aren't you?" "Glad?" His eyes travelled distressfully from that malevolent piece of his own handiwork to the radiant flesh and blood against his shoulder. With a sharp, protesting cry he took her to him. "I don't want to have you talk that way or think that way. Forget it. you darlin' girl. Leave him to me, Effie. I'll fix him some day so's he won't trouble you any more. I'll fix him" if I have to follow him around for a week." "And how soon d'you reckon the

police'd be on to you, then? Mighty smart you are, Mr. Lou Baynes. Now, you jes' listen to me; put your head here sos' I can stroke it. My,' plenty girls 'd envy that wave in. your hair." *

A few minutes later he lifted her away, gripping her harder than he; knew.

"Effie, I don't believe in all that truck. I'm not exactly kickin' because of that. But I love you like—like I'd die with it, and so if Dave's got to go out it's me for the extinguisher. You can't have no hand in it. And we can't touch that way, anyhow, darlin'. It's not clean. It's not —not —" he searched for words to explain how hideously the very thought polluted that love which in his eyes was still unpolluted. "It's not clean. Even if I believed in it I couldn't do that way. Never."

For a moment she considered. Then the distant murmur of a coming train inspired her. She jerked free of his hot, anxious grasp. "Then I'll do it alone. I believe in it. I'll go back to Porterville, too. There'll be plenty there glad enough to see me. Keep away!" She snatched up the little wooden figure and fled, stumbling over the rough ground. Scent rose from the crushed, flowers, clover-sweet and poignant, to mingle with the fragrance of her body as he caught her behind the great castellated wedge, swinging her clear of the ground, forcing her lips to his. "I love you," he said violently, "I love you. Ah-h ! I love you." "Lou," she coaxed him, clinging to him with little soft fingers about his neck. "Lou, we'll do it together. We'll do it, won't we? Don't you hate him? Don't you hate him good and plenty like I do, Lou?" "Kiss me."

HTHEY stood silent while, unseen, his boyhood in that moment. He stood supreme upon the apex of his —man, with the woman in his arms. Waves of clamorous sound rushed around them and sank away to the silence of a full tide. Shad-. ows took all existence but their own, and in the very heart of that the man kissed the woman again. "What do you want me to do, Effie? I'll do anything—anything." "Come, then." Here and there below the roadbed the bleached grass was smeared with black where Dave and his fellows had burnt condemned sleepers through the day. One smear blinked a red eye through the close-gather-ing dark, and hand in hand they wen t to it, stubbing on white dead stumps, hidden stones, bunches of tangle-weed. Effie knelt by the glimmer, blowing it. "Fetch some dried leaves and things, Lou. Hurry." In leaving her he lost that glori--ous, satisfying sense of security. The hush of the dim forest was suddenly so acute, so personal, that it almost hurt. Air, too unstable to be a wind, breathed damply on his forehead, the nape of his neck, as he stopped, gathering the sticks Hurriedly he came back. "Here they are. What do you want a fire for, Effie ?" "Kneel down hereright beside me." "You know I dont' believe in it no more than " "Kneel down." • ■- The flames blazed up, striking out the two white faces and the little

brown, gnarled figure between. On the boy's face showed troubled reluctance, distaste, impatience. His eyes were fixed on her. With lip caught in her little sharp teeth and soft face set she was for the time beyond posing, unconscious of his look. She shook out a blue checked handkerchief of Dave's. "I brought this. Char it, Lou, and rub the ash over him." Silence and the leap of the flames. Then a low, hysterical giggle. "My, how it does smell! You rub it on, Lou. I don't want my hands to get all of a muck." "What's that you're saying now, Effie?" "Hush! It's part of the charm. Keep rubbin'. Lou, did you hear anythin' ?" He heard the beat of blood in his ears. "No. What next?" She held out a blue-veined wrist. "Prick that with your knife. Not too deep." "I'll be " "Prick it, I tell you. Now your own. Now we let the blood run over him together. An' we wish him evil together. Say it after me, Lou. Say it!" In the midst of the low mutter a twig snapped, faint and far off. But the sound brought the man to his feet with the sweat running off . him. Hurriedly he glanced over his shoulder at the blank black that seemed to press on him. "That's enough, Effie. Come home." "Yeh. Thats' enough, I guess. We've got him for sure now. You hear, you mean ole Dave?" She rocked on her heels in the flickering light. "You hear ? I can take your ' arms an' legs an' break 'em if I like. I can hold you over the fire till you reckon you're in hell. I can! You'll sure find out directly what I can do. But you'll never know who's doing it. I'll be watchin' you groan _ an' kick, an' you'll never know. I'll pinch you. Feel thatand that " She plucked at the defenceless thing, dandled it, mocked it, venting on it all the banked-up vindictiveness of years. "You wanna know what's got you, eh, you mean ole Dave? But you can't find out. My, I'll pay you now. There ain't a bone in your body won't ache when I get through. You'll be wishin' you was dead before I'm through. An' then you will be dead. An' then " "For God's sake! Stop!" Effie looked up. Slowly, subtly her face changed. She dropped the doll and held her arms up. . "Lou. Oh, you boy, Lou!" she cooed. "How you hate him! It makes me sick to think what he must a-done to make you hate him like that." She shot him another glance. Then she smiled. There was nothing in this man would ever fathom her femininity. "But I love you, Lou." "Keep on lovin' me." He pulled her up to him with unsteady hands. "An' come away outer this place. Effie. I shouldn't a let you _ come here. It don't all mean nothing, I know. But I do hate it, darlm'.Such a fool thing to do, wasn't it?" His laugh was forced. All the healthy fleslv and blood of him was in revolt—stirred, alarmed, despite itself. Effie glanced down. The flickering flame brought a semblance of laughter to the figure lying near the ash. "He looks near alive, Lou. He cert'ly does." '.'Yep. The boys 'lowed it was the best thing ever I did." "The boys?" She leant back from

him in sudden horror. "You never showed it to no one?" "Why, how d'you imagine I'd get it done 'cept in the cabin o' nights? They were all so interested." "You showed it! Then, if anythin' happens Dave they'll suspicion it. Someone will sure suspicion it. An' they'll get talkin', an' start puttin' things together. An' if ever you an' me I tell you they'll find out. Oh, my! Oh, my "But," he stared perplexed, "how can they find out? What is there to find out anyway? We don't believe that this " "Sure I believe. Alarm Lina seen it happen times an' over. Lou, Lou, maybe he's sick now. Maybe they're suspicionin' now, wonderin' why you made it. An' once talk gets started a forest-fire ain't a circumstance to it. I've lived in a town, an' I got plenty friends, an' I know. Oh, oh!" She slipped down in the grass, rocking to and fro with fear and despair. Lou made a quick step. "Le's burn the darn thing an' be done with it. Reckon it weren't decent to do it, anyways." "No, no." She caught at him in a frenzy. "You can't burn it now or you'll be burnin' Dave. It is Dave now. Lou. he's lookin' at us. He's lookin' at us like he was alive. Oh! Oh! We wished the evil spirit into him, an' it's there. See —just where the red flame's flickering. He's watchin' us. Oh, my!" "For any sake; Effie, don't talk that way "Look at him, I ask you! I see his fingers movin' like he was pickin' up crumbs. I hear him groanin'. What shall we do? I'm frightened. Oh, my, I'm frightened, Lou!" "Don't!" "Oh, I wisht we hadn't done _ it, I do. I could put the evil on him, but I guess I don't know how to take it off. He'll be sick, an' he'll die, an' ever' one 'll suspicion things, an' they'll be after us like a pack a wolves. I know what they are. I got plenty friends. CHE crouched at his feet with hidden face. But he stood motionless, with the hair stirring on his nape and a sense about him of nameless things, unintelligible, evil things; of faces that passed, fleshless of feet that ran nowhither; of flickerings as though the motionless dark was being suddenly swept by great winds in measureless, terrible intervals of time that were gone before his brain could acknowledge them. He heard his voice speaking, ;thin and far-off. "It's not true. I don't believe it." "Will you look at him. I ask you?" Her hot hands clutched him, and together they stared at the thing which they had brought into being and dared not destroy. And from the dead ash the debased, distorted thing stared back, as though grimly conscious of its awful power. Effie fell to moaning and shuddering. "Lou. what shall we do with it? What shall we do? Oh, it's fierce to do a thing we can't get undone again. Lou, do you reckon God's sendin' a judgment on us already?" "Quit it, curse you!" She whimpered down into the grass again. He turned desperately, striking out as though to fling off something which crowded him unseen. And then the pressure surely came on the other side. He stood motionless, breathing deep, with clenched hands and the sweat running _ off him. Hints, warnings, premonitions of other lives, other men, other evils long quiescent but loosed now by his own act flocked about him. With

a desperate effort of will he stooped, picked up the image and thrust it into his shirt. Then he lifted Effie, feeling his flesh rebel from her touch. "You come on back now. It's getting late and cold. Walk careful. It's mighty rough here." He helped her up to the track between the rails, and, although their bodies brushed together as they went, it seemed that the brooding night itself, impact with inhibitions, menaces, had shut down between them. —you've got it, Lou?" "Yeh. Don't you fret." "You'll put it away awful safe?" '•'Yeh." At the gate of the lot they parted, meeting neither hands nor lips. "There's a light in the kitchen. He's there. "Yeh." "Youyou'll take awful good care of it?" "Yeh. Don't you fret." 11. TIE awoke from the dead sleep of JLJ - healthy youth with the world of men and forest and iron road grown familiar and normal again. The sense of smirch, of gilt somewhere, was not gone, and a cold wind blew between grey sky and earth. But he took the little image out boldly and held it to the light. "I made you. You're nothing but a chip o' wood. Effie sure did get v: me fooled proper last night. Now I'll go put you in the stove. See?" The brown, peaked face stared up at him. Across the neck his blood and Effie's made a rusty stain where it had dribbled down last night. "I'll go put you in the stove right nowwhat's that He turned sharply, seeing weak sunlight flicker on the empty wall. A sound that was not sound raced , by him; a touch that was bodiless as breath came on his forehead. Then the sweat broke out and he stood up shaking. "Got a fever last night when the wind changed, I guess. I'll take a dose of quinine." And then he locked the image hastily away in • the bottom of his box and went out. Duty took him down the line that day. But he did his work ill, and evening found him at the back door of Effie's cabin. The dusk was chill, where a cold, clammy wind went seeking, and Effie's blue-eyed beauty was pinched and bleak. "Darling!" He reached his arms, suddenly aware of the over-master-ing love-hunger which had been no more than one of the tumult of emotions throughout the day. "Oh, Lou. Dave's sick. He's terrible sick. He's talking' queer." "What's that?" "He come home sick last night. I didn't dare let you know. He's all rolled up an' gasping like he was chokin'. Lou, where you got—- " 'Way down in the bottom of my box, all wrapped up in my winter underwear. It's safe as everything, Effie." "Then that's why he's chokin'. He — ltcan't get no air." Through the gloom of the little low place they stared at each other, so utterly silent that they heard the startled leap of their own hearts. The man thrust off something unseen with an imperious hand. "It's not, either. I tell you it can't be. What does the doctor " "He keeps sayin' he don't want a doctor, an' I'd be scared to. He—he might find out, if . . . Lou, von crn riVht hark an' nut "Tt some

place where It'll get air an' be all comfortable."

"You've just got to stop this," he said sternly, trying not to over-shout the beating of his heart. "You've just got to stop it. Such things are not possible. To hear you talk one'd think that chip o' lumber was alive." "It is alive. We made it alive. We —we couldn't be feelin' this way if we hadn't done suthin' awful. Oh, Lou, I'm that frightened. There ain't anyone asked you about the carvin'', is there?"

"Only Mathson. He won't worry you any. He went East on the morning train."

"East? Then maybe he'll go to Porterville. He has Maudie's address from me. He was that set on her portrait I had to give it. Oh, my! He cert'ly will tell her 'bout that carvin', an' if Dave dies she'll suspicion things. She will. There never was anyone like Maudie for suspicionin' things. An' Marm Lina told her all them things, too. Oh, my! Oh!"

"Now, you quit talkin' this way." He kissed her close and fiercely. "If Dave dies we'll get married, an' that's all there is to it. Now, I'll go right in an' see him. Maybe he's just got a chill with this changin' weather."

From the tumbled bed Dave's gaunt, malignant face and protruding, pale eyes looked up with a horrible unfamiliarity. Already the mysterious dignity of severe illness had set him apart, accentuated his mortal rights and his tragic immortalities. Lou gazed at him, stricken. Urged by unholy desire, he had been attempting to tamper with this man's life, his life to come, the life of his soul for ever.

"You're sick," ■he said weakly. "Why, you're awful sick. I guess you " The eyes rolled, stared. In the parched crimson face they seemed to be popping from their sockets. Words came slowly, with the grating sound of tide on a pebble-beach. "Whadyer want? Who are you, anyways? Take this freight-train outer my stummick." He fought for air, flailing his knotted arms about. The dark, close, little room seemed overwhelmed, bursting with the heavy clatter of his breathing. Indefinable terror seized Lou.

"Say, I guess you've got pneumonia. You have, haven't you? I'll hike off for a doctor right now "Doctor?" The wild eyes showed sudden understanding, alarm. "Come here."

Gaunt, picking fingers twisted in Lou's cuff. "Whadyer talkin' of doctors for? They're for sick men. I ain't sick. Tell me I ain't. Effie — she's feared o' suthin". It ain't me. I'm strong man."

He struggled to rise and fell sideways, gasping and writhing. Under Lou's gentling hands the skin burnt, dry as tinder. "Sure you're strong. You're doing fine. Let go of me and I'll get a doctor. I swear to God, anything I can don't look at me like that. Wanting a drink, are you?"

"I won't have a drink. I wanta — get my ■ —■ breath. Gimme my—breath."

He fought for it in the delirium of acute pneumonia. Lou's mind, struggling to grapple with practicalities, could focus on nothing but that image wrapped in suffocating woollen-wear at the bottom of his trunk.

"You let go of me, Dave. I'll fix something to help you." "Yah ! Kip Effie off—teeter in' aroun'them heels. Iwannagit

my breath. Gimmemythar it is!" He clutched empty air fell to moaning in half-unconsciousness. Hastily Lou went out, putting Effie from him with shaking hands. "I'm going right back. He must have a doctor. I guess you'd better be laying hot cloths on his chest. Maybe it'd ease him." "They'd not be no good. Nor a doctor wouldn't. An' he gits riled up the minute he sees me. He was always that contrary. Lou, you take it right out of that box an' set it some place where it'll get air. If he dies "

"He's not going to die. Yeh, I'll do it. I'm goin' now." Down near the Junction a freighttrain passed him, drawing a banner of sparks athwart the cold dark. Effie shut out its thunder with hands to her ears.

"I don' wanna hear you. I don' wanna. Folks down there to Porterville hcarin' things, finding out " With sudden, tigerish ferocity she sprang on Maudics' photograph, ripping it from the frame and thrusting it into the stove. Light flared up momentarily over her crumped pink cotton frock and wide-eyed, scared face. "You'r not goin' to find out anythin' 'bout me, Maudie. You not goin' to. There ain't no one ever spoke bad of me. Not even you couldn't. Tell you, there ain't no one ever comin' up here to spy on me." Later she glanced at the clock, went slowly to the inner room. "Lou must a-bin back this good while. Maybe Dave's well by now." In the bed Dave lay twisted sideways, face upturned, picking fingers and hoarse, terrible breathing quiet at last. The woman tip-toed to him; bent down, touched him. Then, scuffling on her trodden-over, high heels, she fled from the room, bolting the door behind her with wild, clawing hands.

111. TT was midnight when two packmen stopped at the Junction, demanding food and shelter of the men at the linesman's cabin. "There's a shack two mile further up with a dead man in it. We would stay there, for the night's black like hell an' no good to be out in, but they don't want people. We saw the light an' looked. That was enough." Lou heard, lying in his bunk. And for a space it seemed to him that he saw a straw spun up in an eddy of flame, a leaf whirled through bottomless dark colder than any ice. Somehow, struggling with the dazed belief that his limbs were strands of rope, powerless to aid his body, he huddled on some clothes and gained the telegraph shack. On the window-ledge the little wooden figure stood rigid, with the keen wind blowing over it. "Maybe I gave him too much air. Maybe "

And then he was on his knees, wrenched in spasms of prayer the like of which he had never known man could endure. "God, I never meant to do it. God, I'll be a good man. A good man. She's not to blame. God, I love her that much I couldn't keep away from her. But I never meant it. I did send for the doctor to come on the midnight train. I did take That outer the box. God, don't go to punish us. I love her. God, I got to take her right now. Don't punish us." The coming of the midnight train brought into the hushed front room a note which Effie, crouched in the

rocking-chair, with every light but one in the house around her, recognised before she understood its mean-

ing. Then she sprang up with stretched eyes and mouth and hands clenched. There was a prescient wavering in the steady throb, a slackening. A train was going to stop at the forest shack.

Effie tore open the door and rushed out into the chill dark. The track glimmered knife-keen in dim starlight; the rough ground laid pitfalls, overset her, so that she slipped off her shoes and raced on between the rails.

"Don't you stop! Don't stop!" She screamed it impotently at the monster roaring down on her with bloodshot, accusing eyes. "It weren't me. I never did nothin', I tell you." Lanterns were dipping and blinking curious-eyed about the track and the hot black belly of the stationary, steaming engine, when a half-naked man, looking like one risen from the dead, thrust through the crowd. But he stayed among them a moment only. Awe-stricken passengers and crew made way when, with eyes that did not see and hands that did not feel, he ran out through their midst and vanished up the track into the windy night. Something fluttered from one gripped hand as he went. It was a scrap of blood-stained cotton — pink cotton of Effie's frock. * * * * >"