“Here’s the little Dorset, and, by the heavens, he’ll grow up like the big ones! If I had my way, I’d take ‘em, old and young, and stretch their necks. They’ll never come to no good. Little that they’ll ever do for the world.”
By his looks, but more by what he had to say, I knew that this was a Connell. Another from the crowd caught at my shoulder and wrenched me around.
“Hey, you young vermin,” he shouted, “has your pa been here? D’you hear me?”
I was too sick with fear to speak. I could only stare at him. My throat was as dry as though a handful of sand had been poured down it.
The man drew back his fist and struck me in the face. “There’s the Dorset blood for you,” he said. “Wild horses couldn’t draw out of him what he knows about his clan.”
There was one place where fear was given all the credit that could have been offered to courage. They turned on Uncle Abner then, and he talked freely enough. What he said was a mere tissue. of lies. Partly I suppose, he wanted to win the favor of the crowd by showing that he was very little of a Dorset, at the best. Partly, too, he wanted to prevent the return of my father, because he feared further claims made on that stolen money which he - the hypocrite - claimed had been spent upon me. At any rate, he told them freely that my father had been there, stated that he himself, at the point of a gun, had been forced unwillingly to bring food to the fugitive, and declared that my poor father had expressed a determination to go West and there strive to find a new life.
“If he has that in his mind,” said Uncle Abner, “he’ll head straight up the river, I guess. If you’re in doubt, you ought to go straight up the banks. That’ll bring you to him if anything will.”
They could not doubt his sincerity. They left almost at once with a great rush for there was a high price offered for the head of Will Dorset, and that reward, even more than the excitement of a manhunt, had brought out such a crowd on this dark night. I tried to squeeze out on the heels of the others, but Uncle Abner caught me and pulled me back. There was such a devil in his face that Aunt Agnes stammered at him and asked him, with a shaking voice, what he intended to do with me. He told her, with an oath, to get off to bed and lock her door if she wanted to keep trouble out.
She ran into her room, then, and slammed the door. I think she dreaded my uncle more than she dreaded God, and yet she was a very religious woman. But from what I have seen of the hearts of men and women, they are more governed by dread than by anything else - except hatred. Yes, I suppose that love is a stronger thing than either, now and then, but as a rule love comes in a flash and disappears again, but hate or dread can rule all of a life, as it had ruled Aunt Agnes. She married my uncle from fear of him; she had been his slave for nearly twenty years for the same reason. He gave her wages of one kind word a month, and that was all. I did not understand it then, but now that I have had time to think over it, I feel that nothing I have seen in my travels and my wild life was half so dreadful as the existence of my poor aunt.
When I was alone with Uncle Abner, he turned to me with a ghastly smile on his face. He was fairly drunk with rage and with the opportunity of spending it. He had been knocked down and abused. He had had his hoard of money broken open, and the greater part of it seized. He had been shamed and disgraced. All of these harms he was to take out on me, and I have never seen such a devilish relish for the work as was in his face. He was trembling from head to foot. His very lips were shaking, and now his tongue lolled out and went across his lips. He went, to the gratification of his rage like a starved glutton, approaching a table loaded with a feast.
I knew that after he had struck me one blow he would go mad with the pleasure of it and kill me or, worse, maim me for life. He began to stroke my head, and the tips of his fingers were like iron, and there was still that loose-lipped devil’s smile upon his mouth.
It may seem strange that I was not afraid of him. But that is the fact. Or perhaps there is a super fear above and beyond ordinary terror, just as there are calls and cries in the insect world, so shrill and high that they pass through the human ear and are not heard at all. I was cold with dread, but I was not trembling. I had possession of my body and my nerves. I could think swiftly and surely. There was no one to call to. I was alone with this brute, and he was so much more powerful than I, at least in this frenzy of his, that he was able to take my two wrists with one hand and keep them frozen there in helplessness.
I knew, too, that, if I showed the slightest fear of him, I should instantly feel all of his cruel strength. I had to avoid that, and I had to smile. And smile I did. You will think it strange. But I tell you on my honesty that I could have laughed aloud, if laughter would have served my purpose. But I did smile steadily into his face. And that made him hesitate. It takes a super devil to harm a thing mat seems to trust it, but my uncle was a super devil, indeed. Presently I saw the black madness coming back across his face and, at the same time, there was a change in the wind that had been blowing steadily up the river. It altered now and struck straight down the valley, bearing with it a great clamoring of the hounds. I could hear the yell of Trelawney’s big, spotted boar hound above the rest.
“Uncle Abner! Uncle Anner!” I cried up to that awful face of his. “They have overtaken Father. They have turned him back… and he’s ninning this way again! Hell come here for shelter, and that’ll bring the crowd after him. What’ll we do, Uncle Abner? What’ll we do?”
The last of this I let out in a wail of terror into which I put all the agony of fear that was already in me. Uncle Abner turned his back for a second to listen, while the wind carried the clamor of the dogs loudly about us. I feared that he might see, as I had seen, that it was the wind and not the approach of the dogs themselves, but his mind was too clouded by his passion to make any nice observance. He cast me away from him with a sweep of the hand that sent me crashing against the wall, and he reached for his rifle.
There was no doubt about the welcome that he intended to extend to my poor father, if he returned. At that moment, however, the wind fell away after a breath of quiet. We could hear the yelling of the dogs as far away as ever. He saw that he had been tricked, and he turned to me with a shout of fury, but I was already at the door.
“You hell brat!” screamed Uncle Abner, and lunged at me. His great claw reached me just as I jerked the door open. The feel of his finger tips, even through my shirt, was like the feel of red hot irons grinding into my flesh, but I was already underway. If the shirt had been strong cloth - the sort of shirt I should have been wearing, if his story to my father about money spent on me had been true - he would have snatched me back. But that shin was worn to tatters and rubbed thin with many washings. It gave like the rotten thing it was, and I, naked to the waist, leaped away into the night.
ADVENTURE
He followed me for a dozen strides, but he might as well have lumbered after a whippet, for I was off in an ecstasy of speed, winging away like a driving hawk. I heard him shout and threaten to shoot. The trees were only six leaps away, and I bounded among them as the rifle crashed behind me. There was one crackle as the bullet cut through the branches before me. Then I was alone, racing for life.
I was sixteen years old, lean and hard as a hunting dog, and with the wind of a foxhound. After the first wild burst had taken me half a mile from the house, I stood leaning against a tree, taking my breath, and listening. After a time I made out the far, far cry of the hounds, still going up the river, and that was a great comfort to me. For I told myself that, if a man like my father had managed to keep his distance as long as that, they would never catch him. He would use his wits to baffle them. In the meantime the great desire in my heart was to join him, and mat I could never manage to do, at present, because between us was my uncle, like an angry ghost, and beyond my uncle was the troop of men and their dogs. What was best for me was to keep straight on and put as much solid ground between me and my uncle as I could possibly manage. Now that my panting had died away, I could hear the forest whispering, and a whippoorwill was calling sadly somewhere near me, and the sharp, sweet breath of the pines was blowing about me. When I lifted up my face, I saw beyond the blackness of the trees the night blue of the sky, dotted with the gold of the stars.