From the Valley of the Missing. Grace Miller White
ye?"
"Yep."
"Then set down an' I'll tell ye."
Lem, growling impatience, seated himself.
"Flea Cronk ain't for you, Lem!"
"Who said as how she ain't?" demanded Lem, starting up. The cat spat viciously, startled by the sudden movement. "I wish ye'd left that damn cat to hum! I hain't no notion to be bit by no cat."
"Kitty won't bite ye if ye let me alone—will ye, Kitty? I ain't never afeard of nothin' when I got him with me—be I, Kitty, pretty pussy?"
"Stop a cooin', ye bughouse woman," snarled Crabbe, "and tell me what ye got to!"
"I said Flea wasn't for you."
"Ye lie!"
He made a desperate move toward her; but the cat rose threateningly, its hair standing on end in a mound upon the humped back. Lem fell away with an oath, and Scraggy, smiling wanly, petted the vicious brute.
"I said ye was to keep away, Lem. Wait till I get done. Flea's got to be some 'un else's, not yers."
"Who's?" Lem's voice rose; but he did not advance toward her.
"I dunno; but I seed him. He rides a black horse, and has a fine, big body and wears yeller boots. This afternoon when the day was darkenin' I saw him from the railroad bed, and I saw Flea's spirit a travelin' with him. I know that ye cared for her this long time back; but ye can't have her."
"Who be the feller?" demanded Lem, frowning.
"I said I didn't know, and I don't."
"Were Flea with him?"
"Nope; not in her body, but jest in her spirit."
"Rats! Scoot along with ye, and take yer cat and get out!"
Scraggy had not noticed the blood oozing from Lem's, cheek until she had received her dismissal. She passed a long, red, bare arm about the animal and asked:
"Who bit yer cheek, Lem?"
"Who says it were bit?"
"I say it. I see white teeth a goin' in it. And I see red lips ag'in' it with deadly hate."
Lem glanced forbiddingly at the woman. "The bats be a comin' again," he muttered, "and there ain't no tellin' what she'll do. If it wasn't for that blasted cat, I'd chuck her in the lake!"
But he dared not carry out his threat; for Scraggy was muttering to herself, the cat rebuffing her rough handling.
In another minute she rose and made toward the steps. Her eyes fell upon Lem, and sanity flashed back into them.
"I gived the boy to the woman—with golden hair," she stammered, as if some power were forcing the words from her. "Ye would have killed him. Yer kid be a livin', Lem!"
Truth rang in her statement, and the man got to his feet abruptly. He had almost forgotten the black-haired little boy. Only when Scraggy's name was mentioned to him did he remember. But the woman's words awoke a new feeling in his heart, and mentally he counted back the years to the date of his son's birth. Scraggy was still looking at him in bewilderment, scarcely realizing that her story had been told to the enemy of her child. She battled with a desire to blurt out the whole truth; but the man's next words silenced her.
"Who be the golden-haired woman, Scraggy?" he wheedled.
"What woman—what golden-haired woman?"
"The woman who has our brat."
Like lightning a sudden joy filled Scraggy's heart. Her benumbed love for Lem Crabbe grew mighty in a moment and rushed over her. His words were softly spoken with an old-time inflection. She sank down with a cry. She was so near him that the cat rose and spat venomously. Lem's curses brought Scraggy out of her dreams.
"Chuck that damn cat to the bank," ordered Lem, "if ye want to stay with me! Do ye hear? Chuck him out!"
"Nope, I ain't a goin' to! I'm goin' hum."
"Not till ye tell me where the boy is. Didn't ye throw him in the river?"
"Nope."
"What did ye do with him?"
"Gived him away."
"Ye lie! That winder was open, and the river was dark as hell. Ye throwed him in, I tell ye!"
"Nope; I gived him to a woman—"
She stopped and edged toward the stairs, all her old fear of him returning. Reaching the short flight, she bounded up, the cat clinging to her sleeve. Lem did not follow; for the crazy woman had frightened him. He stood with hushed breath, holding grimly to the wooden table. A voice from the deck of the scow came down to him.
"I gived him to a rich woman on a yacht. He's rich with mints of money. Yer kid's a gentleman, Lem Crabbe!"
He sprang after her to the deck; but nothing greeted him save the cry of an owl from the ragged rocks and the glistening green of the cat's eyes as Scraggy hurried away.
CHAPTER SIX
After eating his supper, Lon, sullen and moody, looked out upon the lake, reviewing in his mind the terrible revenge he was soon to complete. He took his pipe slowly from his pocket and filled it with coarse tobacco. Soon gray rings lifted themselves to the ceiling and faded into the rafters. As the smoke curled upward, his mind became busy with the past, and so vivid was his imagination that outlined in the smoke rings that floated about him was a girlish face—a face pale and wan, but a loving, sweet one to him. He could see the fair curls which clung close to the head; the eyes, serious but kind, seemed to strike his memory in unforgotten glances. To another than himself the smoke-formed face would have been plain, perhaps ugly, the weakness of her race showing in every feature; but not to him. So intent was he with these thoughts that the present dissolved completely into the past, and beside him stood a small, fond woman. In his imagination she had risen from that grave which he had never been able to find in the Potter's Field. The personality of his dead wife called upon his senses and made itself as necessary to him then as in the moment of his first rapture when she had placed her womanly might upon his soul.
His revenge upon Floyd Vandecar would be finished when the gray-eyed Flea, so like her own father, went away with the one-armed man, to eke out her destiny amid the squalor of the thief's home.
For months he had been enthralled with the satisfaction of the last act in the one terrible drama of his life; for it had played with his rude fancy as a tigress does with her prey, inflaming his hatred and keeping alive his desire for retaliation. Flukey was a good thief, although obeying him at the end of the lash, and Flea would receive her portion of hate's penalty on her fifteenth birthday.
Cronk did not heed the pitter-patter of his mother's feet as she cleared the table, nor did he hear the droning of the twin's voices in the loft above. He was thinking of how the dead woman with her child—his child, the one small atom he would have loved better than himself—would be well avenged when Flea went away with Lem.
Lon had kept track of the doings of the young district attorney. He knew that he had gone to the gubernatorial chair but the year before. The squatter smiled gloomily as he remembered the words of a newspaper friendly to Vandecar, in which he had read that Syracuse was full of painful memories for the new governor, and that Floyd Vandecar had taken his family down the Hudson, to make another home at Tarrytown, where Harold Brimbecomb, a youthful friend, resided. Another expression of dark gratification flitted over Lon's heavy features as he reviewed again the purport of the article. It had plainly said that in the new home there would be fewer visions of a lost boy and girl to haunt the afflicted parents. Lon realized in his savage heart that the change of scene would not lessen the grief of the stricken family. It was his one satisfaction to brood over the bereaved