Chapter IX: An Awkward Situation

Upon his return to the house, Jim found Flora alone in the old kitchen preparing supper. Peter Ducat had retired to bed with his rheumatism, Mrs. Ducat was upstairs rubbing his tortured joints with liniment, and the grandfathers were out at the barn. Flora turned from the stove on the instant of Jim's entrance and advanced swiftly to meet him. Her face was pale and her eyes were even brighter than usual.

"You must go right away!" she whispered. "No, rest a few minutes--and then travel fast. I have grub all packed, and your rifle and ammunition ready, and blankets, and a compass. Sit down and rest!"

"But what's the rush?" he asked staring at her. "I promised to wait here for Mark. I can't carry the whole outfit--traps and all."

"You must go west, not north," she replied. "They'll look for you at Kettle Pond. I've planned it all out. Don't stand there like a booby! Sit down and rest while you can."

"What's it all about? You don't seem yourself, Flora."

"Don't be a fool! Homer Steeves has been here. He saw Amos Hammond. Met him on the road and drove him home."

"My dear girl, what are you talking about?"

Flora's eyes filled with tears.

"You can't fool me!" she cried.

"I don't want to fool you. Why should I fool you?"

"Will you go away then, and hide in the woods?"

"I'll go away, if you want me to particularly, but I won't hide. That's flat! Why should I hide? From Amos Hammond, do you mean?"

"Yes--and well you know it! He was still alive when Homer got him to the village, but he may be dead by now! Murder is what the law will call it, however much he deserved to be killed. You didn't tell about meeting him this morning--and now I know why."

"Dead! Murder! Are you crazy? I didn't hurt him. I rolled him about in the snow a bit and slapped his lying face and then threw him back into his sleigh. He drove off all right. I didn't even land him one good crack. I didn't tell you about it because it wasn't worth telling."

"But he is shot! Homer was on the road--quite a piece behind you. He saw Hammond coming, and then he heard a gun. Hammond was all blood when he got to him, and he took him home. So what's the good of bluffing, Jim? You must go, quick!"

"I heard a shot, too! I thought he'd taken a wild one at me for knocking him about, so I kept right on."

"Please don't, Jim. Please shut up and get out of here before the sheriff comes looking for you."

"I'll do nothing of the kind. I didn't shoot the old rube, so why should I run away and hide? I'm not ashamed of what I did do to him, and the sheriff is welcome to the whole story. Flora, do you think I would shoot a man? I didn't return his fire even that night he was blazing away at me."

"But--who shot him, if you didn't?"

"I don't know."

"The law will fasten it onto you, so you must hide! You threatened him one day before Sheriff Hart. How can you prove your innocence?"

"I don't have to. The law has to prove my guilt. I won't run away, that's flat! Anyone who thinks that I fired on a man sitting unarmed in a sleigh is a fool!"

He stood his snowshoes behind the door and pulled off his heavy outer coat. The girl turned back to the stove. The grandfathers came in with the milk pails. Flora did not speak a dozen words during supper. Mrs. Ducat returned to her husband immediately after supper, the old men fell to arguing and smoking beside the stove, and Jim and Flora washed the dishes. Flora washed and Jim dried. The girl was nervous and the young man was decidedly cool. He wasn't worrying about the possible effect upon himself of the assault upon Amos Hammond, but he was hurt and disappointed and offended at the thought that this girl, his friend, could for a moment believe him capable of firing on an unarmed man.

"Will you go to-night?" she asked, clattering the dishes in the pan. "I have it all planned for you and everything ready."

"No, I won't!"

"Then I have to go myself," she whispered, with bowed head and averted face.

"You, Flora? What are you thinking of? Why should you go?"

"To get away! To escape!"

"What are you talking about?"

She turned her head and looked at him with a flushed face and eyes flashing green through tears.

"Flora, what do you mean?" he continued. "Why did you say that?"

"I--I must get away--before morning--from the police!"

"You? Stop crying or I'll shake you! What have the police to do with you?"

"I--I did it. I shot Amos Hammond."

"You! You are mad, Flora! You knew nothing about it until this afternoon. You knew nothing until Steeves told you."

"I pretended not to know, naturally. I wasn't in when you got home before dinner, was I? I came in fifteen or twenty minutes after you. You noticed that, Jim. I shot him. I was in the woods, and I saw him suddenly on the road--and I shot him!"

"Good Lord! Why?"

"I thought of poor old Widow Wilson, and of the time he tried to kill you, and of things he has said about us."

"Good heavens!"

"So you see, I must get away--before morning."

Jim dried three cups in silence.

"I'll go," he said, his voice low but steady. "Tell me what you have planned after the old boys have turned in: and I'll get away before dawn."

"But you said you didn't do it!"

"Well?"

"Why--why have you changed your mind about going?"

"To give the sheriff a run for his money. All you will have to do is keep quiet. You would be safe enough from suspicion without my going, I think, but you'll be doubly safe if I take to the woods."

"Do you believe that of me?"

"What?"

"That I shot Amos Hammond?"

"Haven't you just now told me that you shot him? I don't know what you are trying to get at! Did you shoot him, or didn't you?"

"You should know."

"I believe what you tell me, mad as it sounds."

"Of course I did it. Haven't I told you so? I wonder what you must think of me--for doing such a thing."

"I think you acted on a mad impulse. But that's not what's sticking in my crop. I can understand that, but why did you try to get me to run away and confirm Homer Steeves' suspicion before you told me the truth?"

She gazed at him with many and conflicting expressions in her remarkable eyes--amazement, protest, appeal, anxiety, scorn, doubt, and a gleam of something unutterably tender and kind. Then she suddenly turned from him, sobbing.

"Now ye done it, Jim!" exclaimed Grandfather Ducat from the stove. "Ye're comin' along, lad! Ye're the only young man I see yet could make Flora cry."

Jim lit a cigarette and joined the old men. Flora dried her eyes, put the dishes away on the dresser shelves and went upstairs. Jim and the grandfathers played three-handed cribbage until ten o'clock, and the girl did not reappear once during that time. The old men retired at last, leaving Jim to bank the fire and wind the clock. Jim had no intention of going to bed that night. He was determined to see Flora and speak to her again before his flight. He owed this to her as well as to himself. He must know what she had meant by the look he had seen in her eyes, and he had to give her a chance to thank him for the very serious sacrifice he was about to make for her sake. Also, his heart was set on telling her once more that he thought none the less of her for the mad thing she had done.

He sat by the fire, extinguished the lamp, and smoked a cigarette. He considered the disastrous situation from many angles, but not for a moment did he consider the advisability of standing his ground and stating his innocence and leaving the solving of Flora's problem to herself and the law. He didn't give that course a moment's thought, for Flora was a girl, and all the Ducats were his friends.

He smoked two cigarettes, waiting and listening in the dark, angry and depressed and helpless. At last he fell asleep, despite his determination to remain awake and interview the girl.

He sat up with a jerk and opened his eyes. A gray hint of light was at the eastern windows. The fire was burning and a kettle was steaming on the stove. Flora had been here and had put on the kettle for him. His heart lightened. He lit the lamp at his elbow and looked around the kitchen. He was alone. But perhaps she would be down again? Of course she would be down again! But a glance at the table took the edge off that hope. There lay a sheet of white paper marked with penciled lines, the points of the compass and a dozen words of instruction. A small pocket-compass held it down. About these were clustered dishes, the teapot, cream, bread and butter, sliced cold ham, and a jar of strawberry preserves. On the end of the big table lay his rifle and a large pack made up of a bag of provisions and a roll of heavy blankets.

"Here's you hat: what's your hurry?" said Jim, bitterly.

He pocketed the paper and compass after a brief examination, poured boiling water on the tea, pulled on stockings and moccasins and turned to the food with a grim but workman-like air. Then, full-fed, he fastened on his snowshoes, donned blanket coat and fur cap, hoisted the pack to his shoulders and made it fast, lit a cigarette, and went out from the warm old kitchen. He circled the cluster of buildings and struck due west, according to instructions. The dogs leaped about him, and it went sore against his nature to have to turn them homeward by flourishing his cased rifle at them. For a long time they refused to believe that he really meant it, that it wasn't a new game, but at last they turned and retired. And Jim Todhunter was alone; he had never felt so absolutely alone before.

Flora Ducat was in the kitchen again within fifteen minutes of Jim's departure. She cleared the table, pausing frequently to listen as if she expected to hear something at the door. When all signs of Jim's breakfast were removed and the table was reset, she banged the stovepipe with the iron spoon. Then she went to the door and opened it. The dogs came bounding in. She closed the door behind her and stood motionless in the biting cold for half a minute, listening and gazing westward over the lightening wastes of snow and forest. There were shadows in her eyes, and her lips trembled pitifully.

Breakfast that morning was an unhappy experience for Flora.

"Ain't Jim been called yet?" asked her mother. "Maybe he's all tuckered out with his snowshoein' yesterday an' would like to eat in bed. Well, he can if he wants to."

"He has gone out," said the girl. "He had something to eat before he went, I guess."

"An' took his snowshoes an' rifle along!" exclaimed the observant Grandfather Ducat. "What's eatin' 'im? He ain't fool enough to strike out for Kittle Pond all by himself, I hope. He's left the new traps behind, anyhow. Jist out a-cavortin' round on his snowshoes for the good o' his health, like as not. Ye can't ever tell what these outsiders will do next."

The morning passed, but James Todhunter did not return. Investigations on the part of old Hercules Ducat disclosed the fact that bacon, flour, tea, bread, sugar, blankets, and Peter's compass were missing. From this he deduced the theory that Jim had gone forth with every intention of making a long journey; and if a long journey, what journey but northward to Kettle Pond and his partner? He explained it all at dinner.

"Reckon that's easy enough," he concluded triumphantly.

"A fool could see it," remarked Grandfather McKim.

Three o'clock came and brought Sheriff Hart in a yellow pung behind a long-gaited gray. The sheriff threw the buffalos over the gray and entered the kitchen before the grandfathers had a chance to get outside to welcome him and to insist on stabling the horse; for Bruce Hart, being a fair man and a kindly one who never exceeded his duties and frequently gave ear to the spirit rather than the letter of the law, was personally popular and usually accepted with resignation in his official capacity. After the workmanlike dispatch of his entrance and a swift professional glance around the kitchen, his attitude relaxed. He shook hands with Mrs. Ducat, with the old man, and with Flora, and asked after the healths and whereabouts of Sam and Peter and Mark and the young man from the States--all with the politest and most sociable air. Mrs. Ducat told him of Peter's rheumatism and Sam's departure for the woods and Mark's venture away up in the Kettle Pond country.

"There'd ought to be fur a-plenty up that way," said the sheriff, laying aside his coon-skin coat and accepting a rocking chair. "Young Todhunter's Mark's partner, so I hear. He bought some traps from Mel Hammond. Is he round anywheres handy now?"

"We ain't seen him all day," said Grandfather McKim. "He's took all of a sudden to larnin' how to snowshoe, an' I reckon he be out rollickin' round somewheres on his webs this very minute."

At that moment, the door opened and old Widow Wilson from Kingswood Settlement entered the kitchen with her staff and her basket and her single-barreled shotgun wrapped up in a shawl. She was cordially welcomed by everyone, the sheriff included. Flora relieved her of her burdens, Mrs. Ducat brushed the snow from her feet, Sheriff Hart closed the door behind her, and Hercules Ducat gave her his own chair. She accepted these attentions graciously, turned back her hood, loosed her cloak and fixed her bright glance knowingly on the sheriff's hairy face.