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Updated: May 18, 2025
It came to Joe in an instant that Isom's anger had brought paralysis upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom's name on his lips, when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.
For I'll have to go, in fifteen or twenty years more," he sighed. Ollie made no reply. She was standing with her back still turned toward him, stripping down her sleeves. But the sigh which she gave breath to sounded loud in Isom's ears. Perhaps he thought she was contemplating with concern the day when he must give over his strivings and hoardings, and leave her widowed and alone.
The boy had promised to join him against old Brayton, and here was the Winchester, brand-new, to bind his word. "Git ready, boys; git ready." It was Steve's voice, and in Isom's ears the preacher's voice rang after it. Again that blinding mist before his eyes, and the boy brushed at it irritably. He could see the men buckling cartridge-belts, but he sat still. Two or three men were going out.
Daddy Marcum was leaning on a chair at the door, looking eagerly at each man as he passed. "Hain't ye goin', Isom?" Somebody was standing before him twirling a rifle on its butt, a boy near Isom's age. The whirling gun made him dizzy. "Stop it!" he cried, angrily. Old Daddy Marcum was answering the boy's question from the door. "Isom goin'?" he piped, proudly. "I reckon he air.
Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, even before she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage to run down the hall and call Joe. Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawing from her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a great deal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow.
Isom, with eyes afire, sprang at the old man to strike, but somebody caught his arm and forced him back to the bed. "Shet up, dad," said Steve, angrily, looking sharply into Isom's face. "Don't ye see the boy's sick? He needn't go ef he don't want to. Time to start, boys." The tramp of heavy boots started across the puncheon floor and porch again.
A woman will find more champions than detractors in the face of the most serious charge; especially a young and pretty one, or one whose life has been such as to shape sympathy for her in itself. All her neighbors knew that Isom's wife had suffered. That year of penance in her life brought Ollie before them in a situation which was an argument and plea for their sympathy and support.
If it had not been so niggardly unnecessary, the faculty that Isom had for turning the waste ends of the farm into profit would have been admirable. But the suffering attendant upon this economy fell only upon the human creatures around him. Isom's beasts wallowed in plenty and grew fat in the liberality of his hand.
The coroner was making notes of his own, stroking his black beard thoughtfully, and in the pause between witnesses the assembled neighbors had the pleasure of inspecting the parlor of dead Isom Chase which they had invaded, into which, living, he never had invited them. Isom's first wife had arranged that room, in the hope of her young heart, years and years ago.
"I'll go over to Isom's early in the morning," said Joe, quite sprightly, as if the arrangement had indeed solved all their troubles. He stretched his arms with a prodigious yawn. "You don't need to bother about getting up and fixing breakfast for me, for I'll get some over there." "I hope he'll give you enough," said she.
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