Mary passed down the hall and paused a moment at the door. Joe Norman was the man who, indirectly, had exiled Jess Dreer. But finally she opened the door and stepped in with a calm face. Joe rose to greet her.
He was so changed that she almost cried out. The youthful curves were gone from his face. He seemed suddenly to have grown up. His eyes were dull and very deeply shadowed.
All her anger, all her loathing melted away. She went straight to him and took his hand.
“If I'd known it would be as easy as this,” said Joe Norman, smiling faintly, “I'd of come before.”
“But you're changed, Joe. What's happened—” She checked herself suddenly.
“I was thinking the same thing,” murmured Joe. “You're changed, too, Mary. Thinner. Not so much color. But—it sort of makes your eyes look bigger. And you're quieter, too.”
She was wondering why there was no sting in seeing him. “Do you know, Joe,” she said suddenly, “we were both too young. And what's happened has waked us up, changed us both. If there'd been any bad feeling, it's all gone now.”
“I'm glad to know that,” said the boy soberly. “I'm leaving Salt Springs and going off. I wanted to shake hands and know that it was square between us before I started.”
“But where are you going, Joe?”
“I'm cutting loose. I don't know where I'll land.”
“You've been in trouble, Joe.”
“Pretty bad. You see—me and my folks—you'll hear about it, anyway, so you might as well hear it from me. We had a difference, and they sort of threw me out, Mary.”
“Thanks. But between you and me, I have an idea that it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was different all the time, and just lately I've found it out.”
He began to study the floor, hunting for something to say and finding nothing; and the girl was silent likewise.
“I suppose I'll be going. But we don't see you around much lately. I hear folks talking about it.”
“I've settled down. I stay about the house. You'd think I were waiting for something to happen to see me. Good-by, Joe.”
He took her hand, but at the door he turned again.
“Something sort of bothers me about what you said just now, Mary.”
“You can talk straight out to me, Joe. We're old friends.”
“I was wondering—if you really wasn't waiting for something or for somebody?”
“No—I guess not. What put the idea in your head?”
“Well, people say a good many things. I won't believe 'em, if you say they're wrong; I haven't believed 'em up to now. But what they say is that it was you that got Dreer away from the house that night. And that it was because of you that Dreer met—”
But he was studying her face, and the pain in it. All at once he dropped his hat and took her hands.
“About Dreer? You're sort of fond of him, Mary?”
“He's the kind you only have to see once to know. I seen him once, and I know him already better'n any man I ever met. Mary, it's true. You're fond of him, sort of?”
“You've heard too much talk, Joe. Forget all that.”
Once more he turned toward the door. When he looked back again, she caught in his face an expression of profound pity. An instinctive fear rose in Mary Valentine; she slipped between him and the door.
“What's behind your questions? Tell me that before you go. Do you know something—about—him?”
She was making no attempt at concealment now. Her heart was in her white face, in the great eyes that met the eyes of the boy. And he winced before her.
“Joe!” she cried under her breath. “They've taken him! That's why Uncle Morgan and the rest have looked at me so queerly the last day or two. They've known, but they wouldn't tell me!”
“Mary, I swear it isn't that!”
“You're lying, Joe. I can see the whole truth behind your eyes. Oh, Joe, tell me what's happened! Tell me they haven't taken him!”
But the boy shrank from her; there was something like fear in his face. He said, wondering: “Mary, you do love him!”
“I do. I'm proud of it, Joe. I love the ground he walks on and the air he breathes. One shake of his head is more to me than all the talk I've ever heard from men or women. You see that I've humbled myself to you, Joe. I've hidden nothing. And now—be just as true to me. Tell me what you know!”
“There's nothing that can be helped. It's as good as done already.”
“What? For Heaven's sake, what?” She stopped, her lips parted.
“Joe,” she whispered, “he's already dead! They've hunted him down—with numbers!”
“I can stand it—so long as I know. Anything is better than imagining.”
“Only one thing. Tell me where it was?”
“If I'm wrong to tell you,” said the boy, “God forgive me. I've done you wrong before, Mary.”
“I'll forgive it all—everything that may happen—but tell me the truth, Joe!”
“Then—it ain't happened yet, Mary. But it'll happen before morning is well on. An hour after the sun comes up. That's the time they've set.”
“Then why are you here? Why haven't you raised the town?”
It crushed the words unspoken on her lips.
“Besides, they kept me at home under guard for fear I'd do something. When I got out, I came here. It was too late to follow 'em when they let me loose.”
“Yes. Too late to do anything, Mary.”
She ground both hands against her face.
And then she heard him say: “It's too late. Even if it was day, it'd be too late, though then I might try to ride across the hills on the short cut. But by night—it'd be suicide, Mary!”
She had come to life suddenly.
“Oh, Joe, you know that short way? Would it take me there before morning?”
“Even then it'd be an hour too late—even if you killed your hoss, Mary.”
“But if I could fight all night—and come within an hour of saving him? Joe, you'll show me the short cut?”
“I'd do more'n that. I'd ride with you, Mary. I got a—debt to Jess Dreer that needs paying terrible bad. But it ain't possible, I tell you.”
She became calm, though her hands were shaking.
“I'm going into my room to change my clothes to an old suit of Charlie's. While I do that, you go out to the barn and get the boys to saddle Uncle Morgan's Gray Tom for me. You'll do that, Joe?”
“Will nothing change you, Mary?”
“I'm not going because I have hope, but simply because I got to do something. Joe, will you help me?”
