Sue-Ellie's Choosing

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVI, Issue 17, 28 April 1906, Page 52

Sue-Ellie's Choosing

Ay

Vingie E. Roe

K Tale of the Arkansas Slashlands, in which tlm heroine >® braver than her eourtiera.

BUE ELI.IE stood looking out over the dull, still waters of the bayou. A cold, gray November sky hung low over the sla-lilami®, and the bare. flanged branches of tlie gum-trees stood out against it like delicate black traceries. It was a lonely wilderness, gloomy and dim: and in the heart of the girl, an Arkansan in every inch of her slender figure, the day and the dreary land were mirrored faithfully. Far down and across near the other shore a great black gar leaped up and slapped with a ringing splash that echoed through the stillness. She leaned against a tall, brown cypress tree, whose mates stood like lean mammies thick on the shores of the Bayou Des Are. and looked with troubled eyes into the thing which, hung, dismal, awful, across the future. She was a slim young creature, slight, and drooping a bit through the shoulders, with the inevitable forward poise of those who drag the cotton sack. The coarse, brown skirt sagged a little at the back, and the heavy shoes were laced with leather thongs, but for the *ake of the face which rose above, one forgave instantly the ungainly form. Delicate, white of skin scarlet of curving lip. with great, blue eyes that gazed out wistfully from beneath straight, blaek brows and shadowy lashes, it was one of those rare faces, one sometime® sees in the youth of the slashiand woman. Coiled light on the top of the little head lav* roll on roll of shining whitegold hair, and over her entire demeanour lay the habitual meekne-s of her life. She put her right arm up against the cypress and leaned her forehead on it. while the fingers of the left picked slowly at the splitting, satiny bark. Slow tears dropped one by one on the damp, dead mens at her feet *T wouldn’t keer.” she said. speaking aloud after the manner of those who live in the silent places. **ef hit wa'n't fer mammy, but she air afeard o’ pap. same as me. an" hit's ns had with both the others. Ef on'y I bed ®euse o' thing®, an’ could think out a way! Thar ahorely is a way outen hit fer me. 'ithout ” The vision of two men—one middle-aged, crafty, black of brow, a strange man from the mountains: the other young, but with a face whose very smile was abomination to the girl—rose up before her. And then another whieh drew the bitterest tears of all. "Oh. Brit—Brit!" she cried, and her thin little breast heaved with sob®—so potent and bitterer than all others is the grief of humiliation. Time was when a lank, brown horse stood tied of Sunday night- at the rickety gates of the cabin baek on the old log road, and Sue-Ellie had lived in a golden dream. But tnat was hack in the summer—before the Daily girl had moved into the neighbourhood, and the zest of life and all else had gone out of it since thenAnd many things had come into it: » fear that had always been there, and a slowly-growing horror whieh the father whom she feared had forced upon her openly at last, and whieh had sent her. sick with despair, out in the bleak, dead woods to reconcile the barter of her life to the gain of the savage, wrinkled, creature whose will was law to the two women in the cabin on the road. What matter that with large gen-’r-osity she was given her choice of two evils when either meant a living death? She waa utterly helpless before a power which ruled her, and the sudden peril filled her with panic. The blue eyes grew black with angui-h. and the tears dried on her face. She must think; still this wild fear, and think. She drew the old skirt close around her slender ankles, and ®at down at the feet o< the cypress.

The du-k of tlie early night had fallen when the girl entered the bare-floored home, and the mother—withered, brown, but with a faint memory of the beauty which lived in her daughter—knelt in the light of the wide fireplace, turning the potatoes whieh baked in the ashes. Sue-Ellie took the turning-stick front her and set silently to work, but there wa® a calm about her. a subtle sense of peace, and in her face something had been born in the hours of her absence. The drooping -boulders lifted themselves a bit, and the eyes held a new light, the quiet dignity of -elf-strength new-found. — From the corner of the hearth old man Ciaibourn watched her as he smoked, and misinterpreted the signs. She drew the rough table into the light of the fire, and laid the common meal, and once, as she passed her mother, she patted the hard, dark hand. A common misery had driven the two into a closer sympathy than was usual between the women of the slashes. "Pap!” said Sue-Ellie suddenly, when her father had nearly finished his supper in silence. "Huh?" The women seldom addressed him without his speaking first. "Pap. ye said as how ye’d let me have my will ’bout these two men. D'ye keer 'bout how I fix hit—how 1 make my eh'iee. I mean?" The pulse at the base of the girl's throat was beating to suffocation. She turned away to a pan on the hearth. The old man’s eyes followed her sharply, but there was carelessness — elaborate eareles-uess—in every line of the bending figure. He pushed back his chair and returned to the hearth. From a jutting iog be took the pipe he had laid up for supper and lighted it. “As I said before, ye shelf her yer pick 'tween Tom Denloe an' Jake Powers, an' I don't keer how ye fix hit. But one yell take 'fore Sat-d'y week. Choose a- ye please. No child o' mine shell be denied her cb'ice.” The girl felt a dizzy sense of joy. and quickly carried the pan® into the next room. The mother, though dulled by a life of submission, saw dimly the irony of the word®, and her heart ached for her only eui-d. "Don't ye fret, manumy." said SueEllie. when she followed into the outer room: "don’t ye fret for me. Thar's a chanct outen hit. an’ I'm a-goin’ ter try. On'y a chanct,'’ she cautioned against sudden hope, and her face held the desperate c=dds. ‘ On'y a chanct, but hit's wuili a try.” The girl finished her work in silence, but ever before her eyes hung that slender “chanet.” Pitted against it. honour, happiness, humiliation, life itself: and

necessary to the gra-ping of it. the upheaval of the simple principles of he< whole existence. This was Tuesday, and on the coming Saturday she had set the time to make her choice, to place herself for ever without the pale of slashland precedent. With her -iraple nature once in revolt, there lay before her nothing but the Straight path to the end. From across tire slashes in every direction came tall, ambling men. each with the inevitable pack of lean hounds at heel, and over his shoulder the gun without whieh he never left the home-cabin. For two hours they had been gathering at the old ground of the yearly turkeyshoots —swarthy, listless men from the swamp-lands, and many from the mountains. grim, silent, slender, watchful of eye and quick, and all unerring shot-. ’ This was the meeting-place of those from miles away, where the current new® of the long summer was exchanged and carried to a hundred cabins in the hackwoods: where weary, worn-out horses were ‘‘swapped"; and where, at times, were settled, before an appreciative audience, the feuds that grew in the lazy land. Thev gathered in knots and talked while they waited for the late-eomers, and the mengrel dogs snarled and snapped around their owners’ feet. Between two weather-beaten posts whieh had marked sneh shooting as the East never saw was already drawn the foot-line in the turf. Out ahead, across a level stretch at fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred yapi®. were tall, grey stakes upon whose rain-bleached faces were carved the records of many of these long, brown rifles. With legs tied and bright eye® blinking in the fail sunlight, the glossy brown target* lay in a shining heap to the left. The judges, two lowland men and a mountaineer, conferred apart. For another hour they talked and waited, until the last possible duplicate of the common type was added to the crowd. Then they drew into a compact mass behind the two posts: some one tied a protesting turkey to the first stake; a slouching man stepped up io the mark, and the shooting match had begun. A few -mall bet- were laid at first, pitiful stake- of the thing® that pas-ed for currency among tliese men: but as the distances were lengthened and crackshot After crack-snot pitted his skill against the rest, excitement began to grow, and the scant silver of the count ry. came out of its half-year hiding. This was th- nearest approach to the cosmopolitan life, and it stood to these silent, starved people of the Imekwond® for that same thing which draws the

cultured man of the city into the glittering temples of the green cloth—the love of chance and skill; a fire in the blood as eld as the blood that bears it. And here was skill, the unerring work of nerves that knew no tremor, of eyes trained from infancy to the piercing of the distance, and it was the common heritage of them all. At last the common shooting palled, •nd the mark-men began making fancy matches; here a shell turned bottom out beyond the farthest mark, and there a silver coin hung on a swinging card. Worthy of praise each hand that held •n antiquated gun; but finest, surest, steadiest, were two men who worked against each other without a passing word—two men. one young and for ever smiling, the other older, dark of visage, sfrn: and. close behind them both, a silent youth who rode a lank, brown mare. Here was where they took long «hanre«. As the competition became eloser and closer, they watched with eager eyes, pledging their little all. and at last backing their favourites with the tong-eared hounds, and even with the long rifles whose worn stocks held here and there a dee-p. mysterious notch. Stakes were lost and won: the turkeys, acme dead, having served as targets, anti some alive —the prizes for the fancy shots —were separated among the crowd. The interest was rising higher as a man from out the country angrily put up a big. grey mule to prove his marksmanship, when suddenly there appeared upon the shooting ground that unusual eight—a woman. Slight and small, clad in her shabby garments, yet with unwonted dignity •he came. The crowd stared openmouthed. With a movement of her hand, she swept the slatted snnbonnet form her head, and stood before them—old man ClaibouTn's gentle daughter. She was white to the lips, and in her face was the look o’ a shot doe brought to bay. and peering through the sudden forced eevrage were the gaunt eyes of d“spair — Wai' ;ug. Her body trembled with the shrinking of her modest soul. “Gentle-mitt!” she said — and Iter voice eaught.as if her throat were dry—-“gentie-min. I hev come here ter-day ter do somethin’ which yc may think I vsughien't ter. Hit air an awful thing fer a woman ter come among ther men like this, but ther air somethin' troublin' me. an’ I shorely thought ye-ahd hep me see fair play.” The hearts of three men in the crowd stirred with the sudden import of impending things. “Ye a'l knew my pap''—she looked back with sudden fear, though she knew him to be helpless with the liquor she had been at such pains to secure and hide so openly—“ye. know him. an when I tell ye he hev given me till Sat'd'y week ter choose between two men in this hvar crowd—two men Id sooner die than be yined to —who know hit, too, an* yit won't let me go—two men v ho air the best shot- in the slashlands an’ when I tell ye pan hev said as how 1 might fix hit ter suit myself—oh. gen-tle-min. re’ll see why I hev come! With unconscious intuition of the potenev of appeal, she stretched out her hands toward them. They were slow of wit. these men, but the sudden infusion of the dramatic element, so rare in their eventless lives, roused them instantly, as the cry of the cougar in the foothills on moonlight Mights roused every trail-hound in the ■lanhes. Her pale little face, so full of the horror of what she was doing, y et braced with the strength of one who has burned his bridges, quivered with suspense. . There was a moment's tense silence, then a man stepped forward and laid his hand gently on her shoulder. "Ye want that they should shoot it Oil. Sue-Ellie?” he asked. The girl looked into hi- face with excited eyes. ‘•Shoot bit off. Bob-Jack,’ she -aid, with dry lipa; “shoot hit of: —an if they miss—if they miss, oh. Bob-Jack, thar'll be a ehanct fer me. an' I shall hold the mark. Ye'll he'p me. gentle-mini” Quietly the ring stepped back, and pushed to the fore the two men who never missed. The girl walked down the leveh stretch, past the bleached gray stakes. Her limbo were trembling, and in her ears she could hear her own words, ‘‘a dkanet fei me.” In to Ue farthest limit

of the distance, where she stopped and turned half round. She glanced baek at the line where Stood the two men who held her destiny, out over the crowd, where for a fleeting moment her eyes rested on a third face. Slowly lifting her hand, she placed between her lips an old silver dollar, its narrow edge toward the marksman. There rose a hushed murmur from the gathering. My Gawd!” It was the younger man. the smile gone from his face. He dropped the butt of his rine on the ground. The elder one stood ready, no weakness in his erafty eyes. "Tom Deti'oe. yell shoot!” said BobJack. “Sue-EKie shell hev her ehanct.” There was a movement in the crowd as another man. his face as white as that poor little girl's out there, pushed quietly up behind the other two. IJvitloe lilted his gun. stepped to the mark and drew a long, -till sight. The sunlight glinted softly on the warm brown of the old barrel. Even the snarling hounds were still. The strain of a finger, a flash of light, a man peering, shaken, through the smoke; a circle of bending, intense faces—and Sue-Ellie standing unmoved with the thin coin still between her lips. Denloe turned away. Once more the clearing baek, and a man on the line. This time there was no quiver of nerves. Quiet, self-possessed, the mountaineer threw himself on the ground, and. resting his gun on his hand, glanced along the barrel. The girl, waited, every string of her heart fastened to that tiny piece of silver. It was almost here—the "ehanct.” One second—another — Ah! she could fee! it now, the electric coming of that bullet which would hit the mark—lake Powers could not miss! Once more the straining of a hand—a flash —and just at tliae awful moment sue-El'ie felt the relaxing of the muscles along her chin.-Had she done it right? She felt the little rush of air across her upper lip. arid instantly shut her teeth, she was blind and nnmb, but the dollar was still between her lips. One second, and then a voice that thrilled her from head to foot, a voice shaken and hoarse, said: "steady, Sue-Ellie!” Once more —oh, could she stand there again, with the sunlight coming faintly through the darkness, and wait for the sing of that bullet? This was more terrible than both the others, when she had waited for that which was worse than death—this, which was the fulfilment of life! She prayed silently for strength to Help her. She knew dizzily that <he man she loved with all her soil! was looking along that, shining length of steel, with her life and his own held in the points of his narrowed eyes. Steady, he had said. She would win now it sin- never moved again. Once more the electric moment —once wore the straining hand. Ob. if he could only hurry! There was a last flash, a shock, a ring of metal on metal—and. with the autumn landscape circling round her, Sue-Ellie leaned forward into the arms that gathered her up. ‘-Oh, Brit—Brit!” she said.