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"Do you know," said Mitch, "them pictures your grandma had of soldiers stay in my mind. They looked old and grown up with beards and everything; but after all, they're not so old and they went away and was killed and lots of 'em are buried up there some without names. Think of it, Skeet.
"Here," he says, "here's the envelope marked with Mitchie's name, you take this, Skeet, because you and Mitchie worked together, and if you want to give me the envelope marked with your name, I guess I'll take it I seem to have to." So that's the way it was done. And he said to pa: "Hard, there never was a better man than you, or a better name or family than yours, or a better boy than Skeet."
To Skeet, standing by, watching to see that her mother didn't overdo in talking to me, she said, "Dear, go down stairs. Jane's left her dinner on the range and gone to the grocery. You look after it while she's away." When we were alone, she lay back in her chair, eyes closed, or seemingly so, and made her statement.
Have the door open," the young fellow said. And on the instant there came a call for me from the side entrance. "Mr. Boyne are you in there? May I speak to you, please?" It was Skeet Thornhill's voice. I went out into the entry. There, climbing down from the old Ford truck, leaving its engine running, was Skeet herself. Her glance went first to the door I closed behind me.
Then we walked clear to the back of the orchard, clumb the rail fence, walked through the meadow a roundabout way and came to the road on the other side of the Tate farm. So here we struck out for Atterberry, so as to walk the railroad to Havaner. We thought we could make Oakford before night. When we got fairly started Mitch said, "Something terrible has happened to me, Skeet it's terrible."
The little one forebore her threat of making him dance with her, came back to her chair and tucked herself in, snuggling up to the girl beside me, getting hold of a hand and looking at me across it. She rejoiced, it seems, in the nickname of Skeet, for by that the other now spoke to her whisperingly, saying it was too bad about the dance. "That's nothing," Skeet answered promptly.
Rainey, my mother, put a pistol down so as to make it seem that my father, Joe Rainey, had carried a pistol. Suppose I was their son and was up in the tree and saw what I saw, what would I do?" "Then you'd have to testify," said I. "You don't know what you're sayin', Skeet. You don't see that I love my father, and he's been murdered; and I love my mother, and she has really murdered him.
And, Skeet, when I saw that, when I saw that it was her as well as her ma that wanted me away, and meant to keep away from me something kind of froze through me or burned maybe, and then froze my heart got like a big stone, and I could see it just as if it had been scalt and then turned white and shiny and kind of numb like my foot I cut in two.
"'Well, mother, says I, 'put on your bilin' water an' we'll see if dead tarrapin is fit fur to eat! She smiled through her cryin', and put the water on, an' when it began to bubble in the pot, I lifted up one of them tarrapins an' dropped him in the bilin' water, an' Jack, I'll be dog-goned if them other three tarrapins didn't run right off the table an' drop on to the flo' an' skeet for that cellar door!
Then I told her Mitch and I had walked out, and she took me into the kitchen and made me help her. By and by she went into the pantry for somethin' and when she came out she said: "Do you like blackberry pie, Skeet?" "Yes'm," I said. "Well, I guess you do and you like milk, too. And now you go down to the cellar and get another crock of milk do you hear?
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