Dawn. S. Fowler Wright
do that, miss. You’ll get bit for sure,” he protested, as he advanced to her assistance, with no clear purpose in his mind.
Bill had no brains worth mentioning, but he knew a dog-fight as something very good to watch and very bad to join.
The choking pull of Muriel’s hands in the mongrel’s collar, and Gumbo’s struggles beneath him, combined to free the latter animal from the grip that held him. The big dog, having his jaws free, became a greater menace to the woman whose hands were dragging at the tightened collar. For the moment he ignored the terrier, who had regained his feet, but was in poor condition to renew the conflict. He struggled savagely to twist free of Muriel’s hands and use his teeth upon her.
“Don’t loose now, miss,” implored the anxious Bill, moving up to help, but uncertain how to begin. He saw that her peril would be increased at once should she loose her grip on the collar. She saw it too, and held on desperately.
Bill, having arrived at the idea, by whatever laborious mental process, that an extra hand might be useful to choke the struggling animal, made a grab at the collar. The dog, seeing his purpose, dodged, and tried to bolt, dragging Muriel along several paces. She stumbled over some impediment in the road, and came to her knees, her grip failing as she did so.
The dog turned on her quickly, the wet jaws striking her throat as a rifle sounded, and he collapsed on the road. He rolled over, howling dismally, the sound sinking to a whimper, which was quickly silent. He twitched, and lay still.
Muriel got up breathlessly from the dust. The two men were on their knees in the road, collecting an assortment of feminine garments which had scattered from the parcel which she had dropped when she went to the rescue of Gumbo, and over which she had fallen as the dog dragged her along. She looked ruefully at their condition, as she interposed to retrieve with more sympathetic and discerning hands than those which were operating upon them.
“I must thank you both,” she said, as they rose and faced one another. Bill Horton grinned sheepishly.
Jack said, “That’s nothing. But I’m glad we came. It was a nasty brute for you to tackle.”
He looked with some respect at the woman before him. He thought vaguely that he had seen her somewhere. It was the voice of a cultured woman, quiet and musical. The figure was small and slight. He hesitated about her age. She was not young, but she had very clear grey eyes and a girl’s complexion, her natural paleness being overcome by the exertions of the last five minutes. She might be forty—probably less. (Actually, she was five years older.) No, he could not recollect where he had seen her previously.
He said, “We came to tell you that it’s not safe here, and to ask you to go back with us. We thought there were two of you. Are you alone?”
Muriel liked his directness. She answered frankly. “There were two. There was a child that died…. Why isn’t it safe here?”
“I can’t tell you in a word. Can we sit somewhere?”
Muriel hesitated. She did not care to introduce such strangers to her secret stores. Then the habit of a lifetime conquered.
“Yes; you’d better come with me to the church. That’s where I’ve been living.”
She turned her eyes to Gumbo, who sat licking his wounds, with as ecstatic a countenance as nature permits a smooth-haired terrier to exhibit. His tail thumped the ground in self-approbation as he saw that the attention of the party was directed upon him. He wasn’t quite clear how the dog had died, but he was quite sure that he had done well. He would always remember the instant chance of the passing paw, and how his teeth had snapped it….
Bill Horton looked him over critically. “He won’t hurt,” he said, meaning something quite different.
Gumbo supported the verdict by jumping up, briskly enough, as they commenced to move toward the church.
Chapter Thirteen
Muriel led her guests to the seats in the porch. She did not invite them farther.
She said, “It’s pleasanter here than inside on a warm evening like this. If you’ll sit down, I’ll get you something to eat.”
They sat down obediently, not saying that they had already explored her resources. She took the parcel from Jack, who had been carrying it since it had been reassembled from the dirt, and retreated into the church.
“It’s a queer meal,” she said, as she returned with a supply of pancakes, which she had cooked the night before, and had meant to last her for the next three days. She was sparing of fires, which meant matches. She brought some of the Brazil nuts also, of which they had already observed her store, and a tin of pineapple. “You’re welcome to this if you can open it,” she added. “I didn’t make a very good job of the last.”
Jack produced a large and complicated knife from a hip-pocket, which included a tin-opener among its numerous blades
They commenced with appetite, but Jack looked with some anxiety at the declining sun, which still shone fitfully through the clouds of a summer storm, though the rain was beating heavily on the stone path.
“We ought to start in half an hour,” he said, opening the subject which he knew had to be faced, and with as little delay as possible.
“Do you live far from here?” Muriel inquired, speaking as casually as she might have done a month ago.
“About four miles—perhaps more,” Jack answered. “But we came through the fields. It’s a bit risky by the road as things are just now.”
“How are they ‘just now’?” Muriel queried. “Hadn’t you better tell me from the beginning? You see, I know nothing.”
She recognized that Bill Horton was unlikely to contribute substantially to the conversation, and addressed herself to Jack Tolley accordingly. She was a good judge of men, and she felt some confidence in his probable character, but she had not the slightest intention of going anywhere with them that night without a better reason than he was at all likely to offer. She was unaccustomed to be led by anything other than her own conceptions of duty or obligation.
Jack considered that she must know something. The events of the last month could hardly have escaped the notice of the least observant. He said, “It’s hard to know where to begin. I’d better introduce myself first. My name’s Tolley—Jack Tolley I’m always called. I was a clerk at the collieries.”
“Yes, I remember you now. I thought I’d seen you before. I’m Muriel Temple. Don’t you—?”
Yes, he remembered now. She had come to the colliery office, perhaps two months ago, with an introduction from one of the directors and a request that she might be shown over the mine. He had only walked across the yard with her, to introduce her to the foreman, but he did not easily forget faces. It was the difference in dress and circumstances. The unexpectedness.
“Well, Miss Temple,” he went on, using a title which was already becoming obsolete in the chaos of the last few weeks, “it’s this way. When the trouble came there were a lot of men down the mine. Some of them got out at once, and went off with the crowd. I suppose they’re dead now. Some of them got caught down below. We got them out—at least, about eighty of them—by an old shaft which hadn’t been used for years. It was an old working that ran—but I needn’t go into that….
“And there were people still going north when the land sank…. I didn’t see that. I was helping to get the cage to work at the old shaft…. But they say that the land just broke off and slipped away. They looked over the edges, and it was hundreds of feet below them, and they could see the people running about, and trying to get back, and it seemed hours before the water flowed over them. There must have been a great part of England that just settled down lower than it had been, and the water couldn’t flow over all of it in a minute. But I didn’t see that. I don’t really know.” He spoke with some irritation of mind. His mental operations were as precise and neat as his person. He had heard a dozen more or less hysterical