Browning chief. [volume] (Browning, Mont.) 1941-1953, 1941-01-24
CHAPTER vm-Csetinssd

Wills came back and Marian
drove away without a word. She
sat, stiff1y erect, behind the wheel,
looking straight ahead, the stern line
of her lips and the guarded chill Of
her eyes hiding the aching tumult
that seethed in her heart.
She was hating herself for being
SO vulnerable. for the mad desire
she had now to swing into lonely
side road and let the engine die,
while she cried helplessly and pitt
fully in this mans arms.
He was sitting straight. He hadn't
cared, of course. That had been fe-
yer, the foolishness of illness, that
had made him look at her adoringly
and clutch at her fingers and say
things about gypsy tambourines and
her face burning behind his eyelids
all night long.
But she, Marian Morgan, who all
her life had been so fercely indi-
vidualistic, her mind as coolly prac-
teal as well-made watch, always
sure, always self-contained, was no
longer sure. If this was being in
love, it was white pain and tor
ment and cruelty past belief. She
stared at the damp road, scudding
under, and at the leafiess bushes
slipping by, and fought for the grim
pride she hId from her father, and
with it the sharp tonic of anger
that made it easier to be frigid and
not to look around at this man, sit
ting SO near to her, who, even re-
mote and unconsidering as he ap-
peared, could make tingling flashes
of awareness tremble along her
arms and hands so that the steering
wheel quivered.
She fixed her mind on old Tom.
Remembering things, remembering
days when her father lay slowly dy-
ing, when the house was heavy with
the tragic air of sorrow, when peo-
pie walked on tiptoe somberly and
telephones were muffled with wads
of paper. She had been very young
then, practically child. but old
enough to be frightened and TO suf-
fer keenly. She had been summoned
home from school into an atmos-
phere Of doom, and her one comfort
had been old Tom.
Many times, when her mother was
busy and harassed at the mill, and
the incoherent mumblings of the
paralyzed sick man made Marian's
young flesh creep and her throat
cramp horribly, old Tom had ap-
peared in the drive, steering rack
ETY. old truck.
Got to 60 up toward Little Fork
to fetch them boys in. You come
along and 60 with me. Woods is too
lonesome when you get as old as I
be. Feller gets to talking to him
self and next thing you know they'll
be telling round town that old Tom
Pruitt has gone crazy"
On those trips Tom had taught
her all he knew. The ways of the
woods creatures, how to tell poison
oak from the harmless five-leaved
creeper, how to keep silent and OBJ
serve while snake shed its skin.
He had told her stories of early
days before the highways penetrat-
~ eAAS AAAS64ilohAS, "ICH d W
WaynesvilSe was a days journey,
when wagons had to be taken apart
and carried over the mountains, and
what dim roads there were followed
the beds of streams and were prac-
teal only for men on horseback.
He had taught her a little of the
odd reserve of the mountain people,
the friendliness that met an ad-
vance halfway but never presumed,
never was forward, that rested al
ways on stony base of elemental
pride. The scalawag sons of noun
tain men who ran liquor, set fires,
and poached deer on the game re-
serves, he despised and disowned.
Country trash" he dismissed
them. Braggarts and liars avoided
him.
Gentle, mild, and kind-how could
old Tom have done this incredible
thing? What temporary madness
had possessed him? Whatever the
impulse, Tom had believed himself
fundamentally justified. It was an
old law. In the mountains a man
defended his own. Now, he accepted
the penalty with digniaed grace.
She could not desert him.
Virgie would hire the best lawyer
available, but lawyer could do
little with Tom and nothing at all
for him till it was known whether
the man. Cragg, would live or die.
At little store on the edge of
the county-seat, Marian stopped and
bought bag Of little cakes, q pack
age Of raisins. Always on their
trips in the old truck, Tom had car
ried raisins loose in the pocket of
his denim coat. She had seen him
many times. Turing q mountain jay
Or squirrel nearby, scattering raj
sins on the moss 1t the foot Of
tree.
The deputv taller Vas n n.o she