'Smiles', page 129 by Eliot H. Robinson
<< Return to Title Details & Download130
he child to whom he had, for a year, been father and mother as well as brother--sank down on his chair and buried his face in his hands.
"I knowed hit," he muttered in a dead voice.
"Hit haint so," cried the girl, who had by this time wholly relapsed into the mountain speech, as she frequently did still, when laboring under the stress of emotion. "Hit haint so, Judd. We kin save her. We hev got ter save her."
"Thar haint no way." The words were tuned to despair.
"Thar air a way. Thar's one man who kin save Lou's life fer ye, an' we must get him ter do hit.".
She had mentioned no name, but Judd sprang swiftly erect, fists clenched and shaking above his head. "Do yo' think thet I'd be beholden ter thet man, after what I done ter him? Do yo' think thet I'd accept even my sister's life et his hands? I hates him like I does the devil what, I reckon, air ergoin' ter git my soul!"
"Judd!" cried the girl, "yo' don't know what yo'r ersayin'. Hit's blasphemy. Ef Doctor Mac kin save Lou's life--an' he kin--yo'd be a murderer,--yes, a murderer uv yo'r own flesh an' blood, ter forbid him."
Spent by the force of his previous passionate outburst, the man sank tremblingly back into the chair again.
"I kaint do hit, Smiles," he answered piteously. "I kaint do hit, an' hit's a foolish thought anyway. He wouldn't come hyar. Hit takes money fer ter git city doctors, an' I haint got none."
"He will come ef I asks him, an' I hev money, Judd," she said with a pleading voice.
"No, no, no. Ef Lou dies, I reckon I'll kill myself, too; but I forbids ye ter call the man I wronged, an' hates."
Slowly the girl turned away, with a compassionate glance at the bent, soul-tortured youth, went out of the cabin, and softly closed the door.
CHAPTER XIX
"SMILES'" APPEAL
It was snowing when she stepped outside,--a soft, white curtain of closely woven flakes