It was well past sundown when Jeff came home to the Sewell house that night. He came in the front door as usual and hung his hat on the tree in the hall. At first he didn't notice the unusual silence.
“I locked the shop,” he called toward the kitchen. “When Uncle Wirt didn't come back—”
That was when he noticed the unnatural quiet of the room—it seemed to be an uneasy hush. Jeff frowned, listening for the familiar sounds that were not there, the rattle of pans, the shaking of the grate in the cookstove. But there was only silence—and still he could feel that the house was not empty.
He walked across the small parlor and into the kitchen, and there was Wirt sitting at the table, seeming even more shrunken and smaller than usual, his face grayer. Beulah was standing beside the cookstove staring dully straight ahead.
Jeff's frown deepened. He shot a quick glance at Beulah, then at Wirt. “What's the matter?”
Wirt cleared his throat, but did not look toward the door where Jeff was standing. “Jeff, you'd better sit down.”
Then the hush came down again, but it was not a passive silence. The very air seemed to crackle. The muteness that had seized his aunt and uncle began to rub on Jeff's nerves. “What's the matter here?” he said again, looking at Wirt. “You didn't come back to the shop. Now I come home and find you and Aunt Beulah looking like you were holding a wake.” When they made no sound, his impatience grew more demanding. “I want to know what's wrong!”
Then, for the first time, Wirt looked up at him. “Jeff, there's something we've got to tell you...”
“No!” The sound was small and thin, almost a wail. Jeff turned quickly to see his aunt cover her face with her hands.
Wirt sighed heavily. “It's no use, Beulah. He'll hear it anyway. Better for it to come from us.”
Jeff was aware of an excited hammering in his chest, and then a sudden silence, as though his heart had stopped its beating. “Is it something about Pa? Is that the trouble?”
Wirt glanced quickly at his wife. “Yes—” he said— “It's something about your pa, Jeff.”
“Then what is it?”
Wirt sat perfectly still, his eyes faded and old. “Do you remember the business about the bank, Jeff? When Jed Harper was killed?”
The hammering began again in Jeff's chest. “I remember.”
“And how your Aunt Beulah identified Nate as the killer?”
For five long years he had trained himself not to think of that day. He had smothered the fire of his anger in the darkest part of his mind, and he had thought until now that the fire was dead. Now he drew himself tall and straight. He said coldly, as though he already knew: “Go on.”
Wirt saw that he could stall no longer. “It appears,” he said quietly, “that Beulah made a mistake that day.”
The working of the mind is a strange thing. Sometimes it accepts only the things it wants to accept and rejects all others—and that is the way it was with Jeff at that moment. He heard the words but could not make himself accept their meaning. He said stiffly, “I don't know what you're talking about.”
But everything about him, from the rigidity of his body to the iron-hard cast of his face, said that he knew. And Wirt saw that telling him was going to be more difficult than he had imagined.
“It was a mistake, Jeff,” Wirt said. “I know it was a terrible thing for Nate, but mistakes sometimes happen. Your aunt simply mistook another man for your pa.”
It was strange that he felt no anger; there was only shock and emptiness as full realization forced its way through the barriers of his mind. It was the wounded man's instant of numbness before the pain begins. He turned slowly away from Wirt and faced his aunt.
“Was it a mistake, Aunt Beulah?”
Beulah could not take her hands from in front of her face. She could not look at him.
“Was it a mistake, Aunt Beulah, or did you do it on purpose?”
She ducked her head quickly, like a child that had been scolded. To Jeff the gesture seemed ridiculous. Then her shoulders began to jerk and he knew that he was seeing his aunt cry for the first time in his life, and that seemed ridiculous too. Suddenly Beulah made that thin little wailing sound again. She threw her apron over her face and ran blindly from the room.
There was a look of worry, almost fear, in Wirt's eyes as he quickly shoved himself up from the table. “Jeff, whatever she did, she did because she loved you. She didn't want anything to hurt you.”
Jeff turned and looked at Wirt without actually seeing him. Then he turned and walked stiffly, out of the kitchen and through the parlor. The front door closed quietly, and Wirt Sewell bent over the table and struck it several times with his fist....
A shocking thing happened later that night. The regular Saturday-night dance on the second floor of the Masonic Temple building was going full swing when Jeff Blaine arrived half drunk and mean, spoiling for a fight. When one of the Cross 4 hands asked Amy Wintworth to dance, Jeff hit him full in the face with his fist. A brawl was started and Elec Blasingame and his night deputy had to break it up, barring all Cross 4 men from the hall and locking Jeff up until he cooled off. “Blood will tell!” the dancers sniffed in disgust.
“Young Blaine—exactly like his pa! They'll both hang at the end of a rope before it's over!”
Elec and Ralph Striker wrestled Jeff out of the hall fighting and kicking, swearing to kill every man in sight. When Amy Wintworth tried to talk to him, he snarled like a tiger.
Striker had his big right fist cocked. “Let me take care of this young tough, Elec!”
“Let him alone!” the marshal snapped. Together, they fought him down the stairway, down to the basement and into the cell.
