The Bondboy

  CHAPTER X

  LET HIM HANG

  The will was duly signed and witnessed, and bore a notarial seal. It wasdated in the hand of the testator, in addition to the acknowledgment ofthe notary, all regular, and unquestionably done.

  "His son!" said Sol, amazed, looking around with big eyes. "Why, Isom henever had no son!"

  "Do we know that?" asked Judge Little, as if to raise the question ofreasonable doubt.

  Son or no son, until that point should be determined he would have theadministration of the estate, with large and comfortable fees.

  "Well, I've lived right there acrost the road from him all my life, andall of his, too; and I reckon I'd purty near know if anybody knowed!"declared Sol. "I went to school with Isom, I was one of the littlefellers when he was a big one, and I was at his weddin'. My wife shelaid out his first wife, and I dug her grave. She never had no children,judge; you know that as well as anybody."

  Judge Little coughed dryly, thoughtfully, his customary aspect of deepmeditation more impressive than ever.

  "Sometimes the people we believe we know best turn out to be the ones weknow least," said he. "Maybe we knew only one side of Isom's life. Everyman has his secrets."

  "You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?" asked Sol, takingthe scent avidly.

  The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous,scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight andwhite in her chair. She did not appear to see them; she was looking atJudge Little with fixed, frightened stare.

  "That is not for me to say," answered the judge; and his manner ofsaying it seemed to convey the hint that he _could_ throw light onIsom's past if he should unseal his lips.

  Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, "Myfriend, John B. Little." Isom had never spoken in her hearing that wayof any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reachingback to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty oldkey to some past romance in Isom's life.

  "Laws of mercy!" said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation whichsurely must have burst her if it had been repressed.

  "This document is dated almost thirty years ago," said the judge. "It ispossible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of thepremises to determine that."

  "In sixty-seven he wrote it," said Sol, "and that was the year he wasmarried. The certificate's hangin' in there on the wall. Before that,Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and gotall of his learnin' and smart ways. I might 'a' went, too, just as wellas not. Always wisht I had."

  "Very true, very true," nodded Judge Little, as if to say: "You're onthe trail of his iniquities now, Sol."

  Sol's mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked fromthe judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believedthe true light of the situation had reached his brain.

  "Walker--Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of thecountry to name a boy after--never was."

  "His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!" corrected his wife.

  "Oh!" said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about him as quickly asit had puffed up. "I forgot about her."

  "Don't you worry about that will, honey," advised Mrs. Greening, goingto Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman'sshoulders; "for it won't amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, andeven if he did by some woman he wasn't married to, how's he goin' toprove he's the feller?"

  Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proofthat her argument was indubitable.

  "It--can't--be--true!" said Ollie.

  "Well, it gits the best of me!" sighed Greening, shaking his uncombedhead. "Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play offa joke like that on anybody."

  "After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom's papersin the chance of finding another and later will than this," said JudgeLittle. "And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legalprecaution and formality, Mrs. Chase----"

  The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs,as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understandingnothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was requiredof her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. Heproceeded:

  "As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this documentfor probate this afternoon."

  Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deepdepository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocketmust have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron'sbeard.

  Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of hermotherly arm.

  "I think I'll go upstairs," said the young widow.

  "Yes, you do," counseled Mrs. Greening. "They'll be along with thewagons purty soon, and we'll have to git ready to go. I think they musthave the grave done by now."

  The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs andfaltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Soland Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.

  "Ain't it terrible!" said one woman.

  "Scan'lous!" agreed the other.

  Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.

  "Old sneaky, slinkin', miserly Isom!" she denounced. "I always felt thathe was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin' was too goodfor him--he orto been hung!"

  In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening'svehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She saton her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. Anhour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future wassecure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper whichprying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent herhead upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.

  Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that periodout of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No oneknew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so,they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memoryof that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensatefor it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had notcome between her and Curtis Morgan that night--what night, how long agowas it now?--how much kinder and happier for her indeed?

  With the thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by hismeddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed,cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan thathour. Old Isom would have been living still, going about his sordid waysas before she came, and the need of his money would have been removedout of her life forever.

  Joe was at the bottom of all this--spying, prying, meddling Joe. Let himsuffer for it now, said she. If he had kept out of things which he didnot understand, the fool! Now let him suffer! Let him hang, if he musthang, as she had heard the women say last night he should. No act ofhers, no word----

  "The wagons is coming, honey," said Mrs. Greening at her door. "We mustgit ready to go to the graveyard now."