Tess of the Storm Country

A dull red flush crimsoned Myra Longman's face. She watched Tess enviously as the girl tiptoed through the doorway and disappeared.

Ben Letts was stretched out on the rope cot, his massive head and thick neck swathed in bandages. Two huge hands, with patches of plaster here and there lay outside the red Indian blanket. The swollen upper lid was tightly pressed over his blind eye, the squint one slowly opening at Tessibel's entrance.

She looked down upon the bandaged face but for a moment; neither of them spoke.

"I see ye comes," Ben broke in at last.

"Yep, I's here ... What do ye want?"

A drop of salt water oozed from the weak eye; Ben moved his head as if in pain.

"Sop up the tear with the rag, will ye, Tess?" he grunted. "It air burnin' like hell fire."

Tessibel took the soiled cloth in her fingers, and not too lightly did as Ben bade her.

"Ye didn't tell Myry how I comed sick, did ye?" asked Ben, settling his head back upon the pillow.

Tess gave a negative gesture.

"Er no one else?"

"Nope!"

"Ye be a pert girl, Tessibel, and I were a cuss for trying to scare ye--but the brindle bull has got to die."

"Nope, he ain't got to die," frowned Tess.

"When I gets up he eats what I gives him," assured Ben. "He has to die, I says, I does.... But ye be a pert gal, Tess."

Ben moved his head to bring the girl within the vision of his one eye.

"What be ye wantin' with me?" Tess muttered. "I wants to go home."

She saw another tear roll down the plastered cheek, and repeated her operation with the rag.

"What do ye want?" she demanded again.

"To tell ye thet I air a goin' to make an hones' woman of ye. I's a goin' to marry ye. I knows I's a pappy, but the brat'll die, and he'll be forgot like yer daddy will!"

Tess instantly froze into a white, tense little form. She did not follow the fisherman's glance as he motioned her to take up the cloth.

"I's a tellin' yer mammy to wipe yer old eye," she said pettishly. "I ain't got no notion of bein' an hones' woman ... I hates yer like I hates Ezry Longman."

She wheeled to go out, but the man stayed her with a grunt.

"I's to be sick for a long time," exclaimed he, "and mammy will step to the grave most any day ... I wants pert fingers to put the plasters on my cuts."