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She was not a pretty girl, according to the local standards, but there was about her, even at twenty-two, a clear-headedness and a restful serenity that promised well for Ben Westerveld's future happiness. But Ben Westerveld's future was not to lie in Emma Byers's capable hands. He knew that as soon as he saw Bella Huckins.
The scarlet sun in magnified splendor was ablaze low down in the saffron west. The world seemed languorously afloat in the deep, serene flood of light. Shadows were lengthening slowly. The clangor of a cow-bell vibrated in the distance. The drone of Andy Byers's voice overbore it as he recommenced.
"Run away! Never come back no more! Gone!" A vague idea that had been in Abner's mind since Byers's last visit now took awful shape. Before the unfortunate Byers could collect his senses he felt himself seized in a giant's grasp and forced against the tree. "You coward!" said all that was left of the tolerant Abner his even voice "you hound!
Byers's arm, and walked along a small side veranda the depth of the house, stepped off, and apparently plunged with his guest into the primeval wilderness. It has already been indicated that the site of the Big Flume Hotel had been scantily cleared; but Mr. Byers, backwoodsman though he was, was quite unprepared for so abrupt a change.
Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken fervor. "Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like troo fr'en'," he said thickly.
Once Ben had said: "Pop says I can have the north eighty on easy payments if when " Emma Byers had flushed up brightly, but had answered equably: "That's a fine piece. Your pop is an awful good man." Beneath the stolid exteriors of these two there was much that was fine and forceful. Emma Byers's thoughtful forehead and intelligent eyes would have revealed that in her. Her mother was dead.
"Tom tole ye WHAT?" asked the tanner, puzzled by Byers's grave, anxious face, and Rufe's mysterious sneers. Rufe broke into the liveliest cackle. "Tom, he 'lowed ter me ez he war tucked up in the trundle-bed, fast asleep, that night when his dad got home from old Mis' Price's house, whar he had been ter hear her las' words.
For Tom was his son, and he had not suspected filial treachery in the matter of the spectral blackberry bush. Rufe stared in his turn, not comprehending Byers's surprise. "TOM," he reiterated presently, with mocking explicitness. "Tom Byers I reckon ye knows him. That thar freckled-faced, snaggled- toothed, red-headed Tom Byers, ez lives at yer house. I reckon ye MUS' know him."
But Abner's clutch of Byers's shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin silent tears. "Mary Ellen your first wife?" repeated Abner vacantly.
Byers's display of impatience was not lost upon Rufe, and it added to the general acrimony of their relations.
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