farmers were beginning to cultivate the land up here, and occasionally you could see one of those sturdy Cherokee houses built of logs and stone, with their enormous outside chimneys, and those big rugged barns that the Indians had built here before the Civil War.
Dunc Lester was not comfortable here among all this evidence of modern civilization, but it was better than being in the hills, waiting for Ike Brunner to kill him.
He had cleared out a place in a dry wash for him and the girl, and hobbled the weary bay in the thicket. There was no use in building a fire, for there was nothing to cook. As the sun disappeared and night came down on them, Dunc opened the sack of parched corn and they ate silently. Leah Stringer had not said a word since he had brought her out of that gully almost twelve hours ago; neither had she fought against coming with him after that first outburst, nor had she cried. It was almost as though she had stopped caring what happened to her.
She had ridden behind the saddle with Dunc for twelve hours with a wound that had opened and started to bleed, but she did not complain; she did not even notice it until Dunc stopped and rebound it for her. For twelve hours he had felt the nearness of her; he had felt her cold arms around his waist and wondered what he was going to say to her when this time of silence ended.
Now the girl lay as still as death at the bottom of the wash, and Dunc sat uneasily with his back against the red-clay wall.
“Leah,” he said at last.
“Yes.”
“We're pretty well out of the hills. I guess it'll be a while before Ike can find us. Is there any place in particular you want to go when we start out tomorrow mornin'?”
“No.”
In his awkward, manlike way he could guess at the bitterness that was choking her. He felt the impulse to reach out and touch her, to comfort her as he had seen his ma comfort the young ones when they got hurt. But he had never had much to do with girls before, and he was shy.
“Leah?”
She said nothing.
“Leah, my ma used to say that hate is a poison that you have to spit up or it will kill you. I don't reckon it would actually kill a body, but I've seen it do some pretty funny things.” He was thinking of burned-over fields and buildings on his home place, and his family forced to flee. “If you feel like talkin',” he said, “I reckon I'm a pretty good listener.”
For a long while she made no sound at all. Then she turned over and her pale face looked up at the darkening sky.
“He was the only thing I ever loved,” she said at last, her voice toneless and dead. “The only thing I ever got a chance to love. My pa went out of his head almost whenever he saw a boy look at me. He said I was evil, and maybe he was right. He said I was born to sin, and maybe he was right about that, too. When I laughed it made him mad. When I wanted to have a good time he claimed the devil was tempting me. So we moved away from the Indian mission, to the hills, where he claimed temptation would be removed.” Her eyes moved and she looked at Dunc for the first time. “I wanted to die,” she said.
“My whole world, my whole life,” she went on flatly, “was locked up in that clearing, walled in by trees and hills. When Ma died there was nobody but Pa, and I think he died a little, too. And then Cal came. He came ridin' out of the woods one day, tall and handsome, and when he smiled at me I didn't care if it was sin or not. And I guess it was. Sin, I mean.”
Dunc swallowed and looked up at the darkness.
“He said he'd marry me,” she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. “He said he'd take me to Arkansas and we'd live in a town where there was lots of people. But he never did it. He kept sayin' wait, and then one day Pa caught us together and shot Cal.”
The way she said it, it sounded completely impersonal, as though she were reading it from a book. Then she seemed to think of something. “Did you know that Ike Brunner killed my pa?”
Dunc nodded. “That's why Ike wanted you dead. He didn't want you to tell.”
“But Cal,” she said, still bewildered. “He tried to kill me too. I came back to the hills to find him, but when I did, he tried to kill me.”
“Cal always did what his brother told him.”
“But not any more.”
“No.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
She turned her face away from him. She made no sound, and he could not see very well in the darkness, but somehow he knew that she was crying again, and he hoped that some of her bitterness would be lost in the tears.
Chapter Eight
Owen Toller returned early from Reunion that Saturday. Before sundown Elizabeth saw him driving the team hard up the sharp incline toward the farm gate, and there was something about the way he stood spread-legged on the wagon bed, crouched forward at the waist, that sharpened the worry that had been nagging at her throughout the long afternoon.
He took the team straight to the barn, unhitched and unharnessed, then came to the house carrying a small box of supplies. Elizabeth tried not to see the hard, grim lines at the corners of her husband's mouth as Lonnie raced to the kitchen and clutched at Owen's leg.
“Daddy, what did you bring me?”
