boy's wooden face betrayed nothing. He did not look at his sister. But suspicions began to troop through his mind. He thought again of the voices he had heard by the river and he remembered that it had become a habit of the girl to disappear for hours in the afternoon.
'Lindy went to her room early. She nursed against her father not only resentment, but a strong feeling of injustice. He would not let her attend the frolics of the neighborhood because of his scruples against dancing. Yet she had heard him tell how he used to dance till daybreak when he was a young man. What right had he to cut her off from the things that made life tolerable?
She was the heritor of lawless, self-willed, passionate ancestors. Their turbulent blood beat in her veins. All the safeguards that should have hedged her were gone. A wise mother, an understanding father, could have saved her from the tragedy waiting to engulf her. But she had neither of these. Instead, her father's inhibitions pushed her toward that doom to which she was moving blindfold.
Before her cracked mirror the girl dressed herself bravely in her cheap best. She had no joy in the thing she was going to do. Of her love she was not sure and of her lover very unsure. A bell of warning rang faintly in her heart as she waited for the hours to slip away.
A very little would have turned the tide. But she nursed her anger against her father, fed her resentment with the memory of all his wrongs to her. When at last she crept through the window to the dark porch trellised with wild cucumbers, she persuaded herself that she was going only to tell Dave Roush that she would not join him.
Her heart beat fast with excitement and dread. Poor, undisciplined daughter of the hills though she was, a rumor of the future whispered in her ears and weighted her bosom.
Quietly she stole past the sassafras brake to the big laurel. Her lover took her instantly into his arms and kissed the soft mouth again and again. She tried to put him from her, to protest that she was not going with him. But before his ardor her resolution melted. As always, when he was with her, his influence was paramount.
"The boat is under that clump of bushes," he whispered.
"Oh, Dave, I'm not goin'," she murmured.
"Then I'll go straight to the house an' have it out with the old man," he answered.
His voice rang gay with the triumph of victory. He did not intend to let her hesitations rob him of it.
"Some other night," she promised. "Not now—I don't want to go now.
I—I'm not ready."
"There's no time like to-night, honey. My brother came with me in the boat. We've got horses waitin'—an' the preacher came ten miles to do the job."
Then, with the wisdom born of many flirtations, he dropped argument and wooed her ardently. The anchors that held the girl to safety dragged. The tug of sex, her desire of love and ignorance of life, his eager and passionate demand that she trust him: all these swelled the tide that beat against her prudence.
She caught his coat lapels tightly in her clenched fists.
"If I go I'll be givin' up everything in the world for you, Dave
Roush. My folks'll hate me. They'd never speak to me again. You'll
be good to me. You won't cast it up to me that I ran away with you.
You'll—you'll—" Her voice broke and she gulped down a little sob.
He laughed. She could not see his face in the darkness, but the sound of his laughter was not reassuring. He should have met her appeal seriously.
The girl drew back.
He sensed at once his mistake. "Good to you!" he cried. "'Lindy, I'm a-goin' to be the best ever."
"I ain't got any mother, Dave." Again she choked in her throat. "You wouldn't take advantage of me, would you?"
He protested hotly. Desiring only to be convinced, 'Lindy took one last precaution.
"Swear you'll do right by me always."
He swore it.
She put her hand in his and he led her to the boat.
Ranse Roush was at the oars. Before he had taken a dozen strokes a wave of terror swept over her. She was leaving behind forever that quiet, sunny cove where she had been brought up. The girl began to shiver against the arm of her lover. She heard again the sound of his low, triumphant laughter.
It was too late to turn back now. No hysterical request to be put back on her side of the river would move these men. Instinctively she knew that. From to-night she was to be a Roush.
They found horses tied to saplings in a small cove close to the river. The party mounted and rode into the hills. Except for the ring of the horses' hoofs there was no sound for miles. 'Lindy was the first to speak.
"Ain't this Quicksand Creek?" she asked of her lover as they forded a stream.
He nodded. "The sands are right below us—not more'n seven or eight steps down here Cal Henson was sucked under."
After another stretch ridden in silence they turned up a little cove to a light shining in a cabin window. The brothers alighted and Dave helped the girl down. He pushed open the door and led the way inside.
A man sat by the fireside with his feet on the table. He was reading a newspaper. A jug of whiskey and a glass were within reach of his hand. Without troubling to remove his boots from the table, he looked up with a leer at the trembling girl.
Dave spoke at once. "We'll git it over with. The sooner the quicker."
'Lindy's heart was drenched with dread. She shrank from the three pairs of eyes focused upon her as if they had belonged to wolves. She had hoped that the preacher might prove a benevolent old man, but this man with the heavy thatch of unkempt, red hair and furtive eyes set askew offered no comfort. If there had been a single friend of her family present, if there had been any woman at all! If she could even be sure of the man she was about to marry!
It seemed to her that the preacher was sneering when he put the questions to which she answered quaveringly. Vaguely she felt the presence of some cruel, sinister jest of which she was the sport.
After the ceremony had been finished the three men drank together while she sat white-faced before the fire. When at last Ranse Roush and the red-headed preacher left the cabin, both of them were under the influence of liquor. Dave had drunk freely himself.
'Lindy would have given her hopes of heaven to be back safely in the little mud-daubed bedroom she had called her own.
Three days later 'Lindy wakened to find a broad ribbon of sunshine across the floor of the cabin. Her husband had not come home at all the night before. She shivered with self-pity and dressed slowly. Already she knew that her life had gone to wreck, that it would be impossible to live with Dave Roush and hold her self-respect.
But she had cut herself off from retreat. All of her friends belonged to the Clanton faction and they would not want to have anything to do with her. She had no home now but this, no refuge against the neglect and insults of this man with whom she had elected to go through life. To her mind came the verdict of old Nance Cunningham on the imprudent marriage of another girl: "Randy's done made her bed; I reckon she's got to lie on it."
A voice hailed the cabin from outside. She went to the door. Ranse Roush and the red-haired preacher had ridden into the clearing and were dismounting. They had with them a led horse.
"Fix up some breakfast," ordered Ranse.
The young wife flushed. She resented his tone and his manner. Like Dave, he too assumed that she had come to be a drudge for the whole drunken clan, a creature to be sneered at and despised.
Silently she cooked a meal for the men. The girl was past tears. She had wept herself out.
While they ate the men told of her father's fury when he had discovered the elopement, of how he had gone down to the mill and cast her off with a father's