Tess of the Storm Country

"Can you breathe?" asked Young, in a low voice. "And can you help yourself a little?"

"Yep," came back the faint answer.

"Then, when I put out my foot, take hold of it, and make no noise, for your enemy is but a short distance away, and he meant to kill you. Now, come up.... There! Don't lean too heavily upon me, for the rocks are slippery."

Without any more conversation, the two men, one wet and weak, with bleeding head, with a gash over his right brow, crossed the forest toward the tracks. By dint of persuasion, Young forced the boy to give his father's name. He had caught enough of the talk between the fishermen to know that Tess was the cause of their quarrel. But what Ezra had threatened to tell about Skinner he did not know. Two miles from Ithaca the boy became light-headed and feeble. His tongue was loosened in his delirium, and Young heard a story that made his heart beat faster and revived hopes he had considered almost dead. Through the moonbeams that slanted to the tracks he imagined he saw a little figure skirting the rays, with flying red hair. Not for anything in the world would he lose sight of the boy. He had the first clue in the case that so interested him. Acquittal for the father of Tessibel Skinner was within his grasp. It was late when he dragged Ezra, laughing and gibbering, into a private hospital. He installed a nurse beside the boy, bidding her keep a record of any delirious mutterings he might make, and to observe silence about them.

* * * * * Ben Letts wondered what Satisfied Longman would ask about his son. He spoke to the father first, his thick brain trying to avoid trouble.

"Ye air both got a lot of nerve to keep three men at the south reel, when I air the only one here."

"Where's Ezy?" asked Longman.

There was no anxiety in his voice. He was tumbling the fish into the cars.

"I ain't no way a-knowin' where he air. He skipped away, and said how he wanted to speak to his pappy, and I ain't seed him since.... Ezy were a fool when he was born."

"Gone home, like a sneakin' kid," put in Jake Brewer. "He ain't no hankerin' for nettin'. He ain't been right since Orn Skinner shot the gamekeeper."

"He air my brat," replied Longman, "and he air good, if he does do what he oughtn't to sometimes. I air satisfied with him.... Let's go home."