Mr. Munn started to go out the back way of the hotel, to take the short cut down the alley to his office, then changed his mind. He wanted to get a newspaper. He got the newspaper, glanced quickly at the headlines concerning the trial, and with the paper under his arm, walked down the square and turned to the right toward his office. He met two men whom he knew, and spoke to them. At the drugstore under his office, a clerk was propping the front doors open. ‘It’s sure beginning to look tough,’ the clerk said, ‘for that fellow MacDonald. I was saying just yesterday, it looked like ——’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Mr. Munn said, and turned up the stairs to his office.

  He unlocked the door to the office and entered. He leaned over his desk and scrawled a few lines to the girl. Then he raised the window so that the place could be airing out. Clear sunlight now fell over the western side of the square. People, almost a crowd, were beginning to congregate. He looked at his watch. It was getting on toward time. He left the door unlocked, for the girls should be coming in almost any time now, and went down the back stairs to the alley. He saw no one in the alley.

  He went into the stable to look at his mare. He glanced at his watch again, and saw that he had a few minutes to wait. He did not want to see Professor Ball and the others until it was time to go. It wasn’t that they would ask him questions; it wasn’t that, but he would discover their eyes fixed upon him. He unfolded the paper, and leaning against the stall door, began to read the account of the proceedings of the previous afternoon. He read on, but realized that the words were meaning nothing to him. He stuffed the paper into his pocket, and stood there.

  He entered the hotel by the back way and climbed the narrow back stairs. On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he saw Isabella, waiting. ‘Hurry!’ she said to him, whispering breathlessly, ‘go away. Soldiers, and some other men, they came for you, they’re hunting you. Hurry ——’

  The whiteness of her face was there before him in the dim hall.

  Chapter fifteen

  MOST of the time during the day, if the weather was good, he stayed away from the house. That was safest, he thought, and besides, he didn’t want to get the Proudfits into any trouble if he could help it. On the hill to one side of the Proudfit house was the place he usually stayed. The limestone humped out of the soil there, not jaggedly, but in gray, somnolent-looking masses rounded by weather and furred with lichen. Cedars grew there, with roots that grappled under the limestone and in the crevices. The crevices were filled with rotted leaves and cedar needles and earth, black with humus, which had sifted down. In the winter the moisture collected in those crevices and the cold made icy wedges to thrust, little by little, year after year, toward the heart of the stone. At the foot of the bluff, in the bed of the creek by the Proudfit house, the round boulders stood here and there above the surface of the water.

  High up, on the bluff side of the hill, a spring poured out of an archway of stone. In its basin there, the perfectly clear water eddied ceaselessly, braiding and swelling, swaying the young fronds of fern and the grass which trailed lushly down to the surface, spilling over the lip of stone and plunging down the slope to join the creek below. ‘Soon’s I laid eyes on hit,’ Willie Proudfit had said to Mr. Munn, ‘come-en sliden down that rock that-away, I says, thar my house will set. Sometimes a-nights I lays in bed and I kin hear hit. I lays in bed and I kin recollect the times out in the dry country I laid out some-wheres a-nights and studied on water. In this country the Lord’s done give a man water whichever way he turns, fer drinken and washen, hit looks lak, and a man don’t know how hit is in the dry country, and the thirsten. I been two days without water and my tongue swole in my mouth. I shot me a buffalo, figgeren on the blood, and I seen they was mud caked on her legs — hit was a cow — and new-caked. I cut open her stomach, and thar was the water she’d drunk. And I supped ever drop. And hit give me strength to go on. The way she’d come from, whar the water was. The Canadian River, hit was, and nigh dry. A man don’t know how the dry country is. But even here ain’t ever man got him a spring come-en nigh outer the top of a hill, lak me, and fall-en so he kin lay and hear hit. Nor ever man got him a cold-air cave to keep his milk sweet to his mouth. Hit’s a feature.’

  He had built his house right at the creek bank, with the little branch from the falls running into the creek just behind it. And the cave, where the moisture dripped from the green, pelt-thick moss, was at the foot of the bluff just beside the house. Inside the cave, in the chill shadow, the crock jars of milk stood in rows. Willie Proudfit’s wife would set her candle on a shelf of stone, for even at noon the candle was needed, and dip the milk with a tin dipper and pour it into her big, blue pitcher. Then, from another crock, she would take a pat of butter. Holding the heavy pitcher in one hand, but out from her body strongly and easily, she would move across the patch of young grass toward the house. She would set it on the table, by her husband’s plate, and smile. ‘Willie, now he’s the beatenest,’ she would say, ‘fer milk.’

  ‘Now I thank you,’ he might say, and pick up the pitcher; or he might only look up at her, not quite smiling, and say nothing, for he was not a man to talk much except on those infrequent evenings when, lying stretched out like a cat on the boards of the little porch, he would reach back into his mind for some incident out of those years he had spent on the plains. He would tell it, not exactly for them, it seemed, but for the telling, speaking slowly and tentatively. Reaching back into these past times, he was like a man who, in a dark closet, runs his fingers over some once-familiar object and tries, uncertainly, to identify it. ‘They’s a passel of things,’ he would say, ‘on God’s earth fer a man to study a-bout, and ain’t no man e’er seen ’em all. But I seen some. I seen gullies so deep and wide, you could throw that-air hill in hit, lock-stock-and-barr’l, and n’er no diff’rence to a man’s sight. And the gully with colors spread out in the light, fer as air eye can see, lak a flag. Colors like the colors in the sky at sun, and layen thar on the ground lak the sky had come fall-en down.’ Then he had paused. Mr. Munn and Willie Proudfit’s wife, and her niece and nephew, sitting there in chairs, with Willie Proudfit lying there on the floor scarcely visible in the darkness — they had not said anything. Down the creek, in the patch of marshy ground there, the frogs had been piping. ‘The Indians taken them colors outer the earth,’ Willie Proudfit, resuming as though there had been no silence, had said, ‘and paint theirselves.’ And he had paused again, and there were only the night sounds. Then, ‘When they dance,’ he had added.

  ‘Heathen,’ the nephew had said, in the darkness.

  ‘Heathen,’ Willie Proudfit had repeated, in his soft, slow voice, ‘heathen, in a way of speaken.’ He had fallen silent, brooding backward into those times. Then he had said, ‘But them dancen, hit ain’t only frolic and jollification.’ Then: ‘They’s a passel of things, and the Lord God, he made ever one. In his mighty plan, and ain’t a sparrow falleth.’

  But some evenings he didn’t speak a word.

  He was a medium-sized man. His face was thinnish, and it had lines in it, tiny lines that meshed multitudinously in the leathery-looking skin, but it was neither an old nor a young face. The skin was brown like an oak leaf, so brown that against it the bluish-green eyes looked pale, and the very blond hair looked silvery like the hair of an old man. He wore his hair longer than any man Mr. Munn ever remembered seeing, down to his neck behind and cut off square. One Sunday morning, just after breakfast, Mr. Munn saw him sitting on the chunk of limestone that formed the back step, with his wife just behind him cutting his hair. When she became aware of Mr. Munn standing there, she lifted away from the task the heavy, clumsy-looking shears, which made a tiny, dry sound when the blades engaged on the thick hair, a sound like a heel on sand, and looked at him. ‘Willie Proudfit’s hair,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Willie was a little towhead when he was a young ’un.’

  ‘A towhead,’ Willie Proudfit said, ‘but my nose n’er drooped and run.’

  ‘Hit do look lak young ’un’s noses droop and run more these days,’ she conceded.

  ‘The Indians,’ Willie Proudfit said, ‘they named me a name in their way of talken.’

  His wife ran the fingers of her free hand over his hair. ‘I’m gonna keep on a-callen you Willie,’ she declared.

  ‘Hit means Man-with-hair-white-like-wind-on-water,’ he said. ‘They give it to me fer a name. Me being a towhead.’

  ‘Towhead,’ she repeated, and ran her fingers through his hair, petting him. She treated him like a child, sometimes, Mr. Munn noticed, with a toying and patronizing tenderness. But she was probably twenty-five years younger than he was, or more. She was girlish-looking and slightly made, except for a fullness of her high breasts, over which the calico of her dress stretched almost tightly. Certainly, she was not yet thirty, and seemed younger except at those times when she fell into long silences, her black eyes, even as she moved about her tasks, seeming withdrawn from the objects about her. It was as though she had absorbed something of the gravity and aloofness of her husband, like a precocious child who is usually with adults or is much alone. She was an energetic woman, and competent with her hands, which seemed to know their occupations so well that when she sank into one of her fits of abstraction they could proceed as though they possessed a life and a way of their own. But now and then, when she was working out in her little garden patch, Mr. Munn, from his place up by the spring on the bluffside, had seen her pause and lean on her hoe, not for a minute or two, but for a long time, looking off down the valley. At first he had thought it was because she was tired, but when suppertime came she moved as briskly as in the morning and was as ready with her smile. Once he had come down from the cover on the bluff and had offered to help her in the garden, but she had said no, she was just fooling around anyway, because she didn’t want to stay in the house, the weather being so nice, and he ought to keep out of sight.

  He had offered to help Willie Proudfit in the field, too. And had had the same answer. He had insisted: ‘Nobody’ll know me, not with this beard and all. Hell, I don’t know myself in the mirror.’

  ‘Naw, naw,’ Willie Proudfit had said, ‘but hit don’t do no good to start folks guessen. If’n they don’t see you round much they’ll git used to the notion of you being here painless. They’ll hold hit in their heads, but they won’t be a-thinken a-bout hit. Some folks knows you’re stayen here. They’ll just git used to hit. I said you was a feller I used to know out in New Mexico, and yore health was porely and you was stayen here till you got on yore feet. I said yore name was Barclay. I knowed a man named Barclay once, he ——’

  ‘I can go somewhere else,’ Mr. Munn offered. ‘I’ll get you all in trouble.’

  Willie Proudfit shook his head. ‘Naw,’ he replied, ‘you ain’t a-leave-en. Not and a friend of Doctor MacDonald. And that time they had that-air rally in Bardsville, I was a-standen thar, and I listened to what you said, and I says to myself, that ’un’s a man fer you. You ain’t a-leave-en.’

  ‘It’ll get you in trouble. They’ll be getting after me, sooner or later.’

  ‘Won’t no man be took in my house,’ the other man said, and shook his head; ‘not and me able.’

  But they had not been after him. Not yet, and the weeks had passed, since the morning when he had run down the back stairs of the hotel and had looked wildly up and down the alley, seeing no one, and had run into the stable. The hall had still been empty, as before. That had been his piece of luck. He had climbed to the loft and burrowed into the hay. He had lain there, hour after hour, with a handkerchief over his face to keep off the dust and with the coarse hay turning into a bed of knives and the sweat covering his body with the effort of stillness, and his throat dry and rasping with thirst. Twice during the day, he had been sure, the soldiers had come. He had heard the voices below, numerous and portentous and excited, but muffled by the hay.

  Late at night he decided to come down, to take his chance. He guessed that he couldn’t hold out another day. And by this time they must have figured that he had managed to get out with the crowd. He would have to gamble that there wouldn’t be a guard on the stables, except the old negro watchman. Not moving, he lay in the hay and thought of the watchman, of seeing his eyes open with surprise to show the whites and his lips spread for a cry. It became, on the instant, sharp as reality for him, the brown face, the lips opening to show the old, broken, yellow teeth; and his muscles contracted as for a spring, or a blow, his fingers crooked — they knew, they were doing their thinking, they had their plans — and his heart gave a sudden, cold, almost exultant knock at the ribs.

  No, he thought. And no. Not that. With an effort he straightened his fingers. He felt giddy and hollow, like a man recoiling from the unexpected, irrevocable deed, already performed in an instant outside of will. Then he said, no, I won’t. He did not know whether he had said the words out loud.

  It’s because I haven’t eaten all day, he thought; that’s why I’m this way.

  Then he began, cautiously, to part the weight of hay above him.

  He remembered that the old negro man’s name was Jim. He said to himself, his name’s Jim.

  He crept to the head of the ladder above the hall. Below him, he could make out the faint light. After a while it moved. The watchman was going down to the other end of the stable. Now there was only the fainter light that came into the hall from a street light in the alley. He let himself down the ladder, quickly. He did not have time to look into the alley before he stepped out. He scarcely cared what was there. The old negro man with the lantern, that was what he was fleeing from, it seemed.

  No one was in the alley. He moved down the alley, away from the light, trying not to run. He put his tongue out on his dry lips, and thought of water.

  They would be watching the roads. He couldn’t go out any road. He would have to work down the alleys, and try to get out to the fields through back yards and ditches. That was his chance.

  It worked. It was not much more than an hour till light when he got out past the last houses. He managed to reach a patch of woods beyond the first field, crawling part of the way in an old ditch, then following an osage hedge for cover. In the woods he ran wildly through the whipping underbrush and the snatching briars. At the edge of the woods he found a stock pond. He lay in the trampled mud of the edge, with the cold mud sliding up between his fingers and covering his hands, and drank. He lay on the mud then, closed his eyes, and felt that he could never get up. But after a while, he opened his eyes. The dark trees were there, and above, the sky, where light now grew. Those things were there in a stark purity, an emptiness, an innocence, a primal namelessness. He lay, feeling the slow, minute suction of the mud beneath his body, and stared at the treetops, the heave of the dark mass on the sky. The light was growing on the sky. His mind named that: light.

  He got up and went on.

  He found a garden patch near a cabin at the edge of the woods, and stuffed his pockets with lettuce and young onions. He ate some of the onions as he went along. He covered two or three miles down a lane, where he had the cover of a hedge, before it was too near day to be safe. He hid in another patch of woods all day. There was a ditch in the woods, and he drank some water from it. He ate the lettuce and the onions sparingly, to make them last. But by afternoon the onions had given him a sharp, retching cramp. After the pain had worn off, he slept some, lying on the pile of dead leaves in the thicket by the ditch. When he woke up the last time, it was dark. That night he managed to reach the Campbell place.

  He was afraid to approach the house, but he lay in the barn, dozing fitfully. In the middle of the morning, he managed to attract Mr. Campbell’s attention. He stayed in the barn for three days. Mr. Campbell smuggled food out to him, and after dark the first night, a blanket and a pillow. ‘I don’t mind having you,’ Mr. Campbell said that night, squatting in the loft, in the dark, while Mr. Munn lay stretched out on the blanket. ‘It’s not that I mind. It’s just that this section right round here ain’t too safe. Soldiers on the road out by my place not more’n two days ago.’

  Mr. Munn scarcely heard, sinking again into a sweet daze of weariness. ‘Uh-huh,’ he replied. Mr. Campbell’s words flowed away from him. He knew that they would have meaning for him later. But not now.

  ‘Now a little north of here, it’s safer. Things been right quiet up there. And there’s a feller up there thinks a world of Doctor MacDonald. The doc stayed up there with him off and on, fishing and hunting. I went up once with the doc, just once, not being much of a hand to be hunting and fishing, and spent a night and a day up there in this feller’s place. Feller name of Proudfit, a quiet-spoken feller. You heard the doc speak about him?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn responded, letting Mr. Campbell’s words slide and break and re-form meaninglessly in his mind like quicksilver, ‘I reckon so.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go see him. I’ll go tomorrow and fix it up. This Proudfit feller, he’ll do anything for the doc, and after all you’ve done for the doc.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything for him,’ Mr. Munn said.

  ‘Well’ — and Mr. Campbell hesitated — ‘I don’t know what you’d call anything, then.’

  ‘Not enough, anyway. And they’ll nail him. Yes’ — he rolled over on his side as though to rise — ‘they’ll nail him. They made a deal. With Turpin.’

  Mr. Campbell did not speak for a moment or two. Then he replied, in a flat tone, ‘Turpin’s gone.’

  ‘Gone!’ Then: ‘Gone where?’

  ‘To hell,’ Mr. Campbell said, ‘if I had my way. I reckon the Lord’ll agree with me.’