Christmas Eve on Lonesome | Page 2

broke leaf
and branch and twig until a passage was cleared for his eye and for the
point of the pistol that was gripped in his right hand.
A woman was just disappearing through the kitchen door, and he
peered cautiously and saw nothing but darting shadows. From one
corner a shadow loomed suddenly out in human shape. Buck saw the
shadowed gesture of an arm, and he cocked his pistol. That shadow was
his man, and in a moment he would be in a chair in the chimney corner
to smoke his pipe, maybe--his last pipe.
Buck smiled--pure hatred made him smile--but it was mean, a mean
and sorry thing to shoot this man in the back, dog though he was; and
now that the moment had come a wave of sickening shame ran through
Buck. No one of his name had ever done that before; but this man and
his people had, and with their own lips they had framed palliation for

him. What was fair for one was fair for the other they always said. A
poor man couldn't fight money in the courts; and so they had shot from
the brush, and that was why they were rich now and Buck was
poor--why his enemy was safe at home, and he was out here, homeless,
in the apple-tree.
Buck thought of all this, but it was no use. The shadow slouched
suddenly and disappeared; and Buck was glad. With a gritting oath
between his chattering teeth he pulled his pistol in and thrust one leg
down to swing from the tree--he would meet him face to face next day
and kill him like a man--and there he hung as rigid as though the cold
had suddenly turned him, blood, bones, and marrow, into ice.
The door had opened, and full in the firelight stood the girl who he had
heard was dead. He knew now how and why that word was sent him.
And now she who had been his sweetheart stood before him--the wife
of the man he meant to kill.
Her lips moved--he thought he could tell what she said: "Git up, Jim,
git up!" Then she went back.
A flame flared up within him now that must have come straight from
the devil's forge. Again the shadows played over the ceiling. His teeth
grated as he cocked his pistol, and pointed it down the beam of light
that shot into the heart of the apple-tree, and waited.
The shadow of a head shot along the rafters and over the fireplace. It
was a madman clutching the butt of the pistol now, and as his eye
caught the glinting sight and his heart thumped, there stepped into the
square light of the window--a child!
It was a boy with yellow tumbled hair, and he had a puppy in his arms.
In front of the fire the little fellow dropped the dog, and they began to
play.
"Yap! yap! yap!"
Buck could hear the shrill barking of the fat little dog, and the joyous

shrieks of the child as he made his playfellow chase his tail round and
round or tumbled him head over heels on the floor. It was the first child
Buck had seen for three years; it was his child and hers; and, in the
apple-tree, Buck watched fixedly.
They were down on the floor now, rolling over and over together; and
he watched them until the child grew tired and turned his face to the
fire and lay still--looking into it. Buck could see his eyes close
presently, and then the puppy crept closer, put his head on his
playmate's chest, and the two lay thus asleep.
And still Buck looked--his clasp loosening on his pistol and his lips
loosening under his stiff mustache--and kept looking until the door
opened again and the woman crossed the floor. A flood of light flashed
suddenly on the snow, barely touching the snow-hung tips of the
apple-tree, and he saw her in the doorway--saw her look anxiously into
the darkness--look and listen a long while.
Buck dropped noiselessly to the snow when she closed the door. He
wondered what they would think when they saw his tracks in the snow
next morning; and then he realized that they would be covered before
morning.
As he started up the ravine where his horse was he heard the clink of
metal down the road and the splash of a horse's hoofs in the soft mud,
and he sank down behind a holly-bush.
Again the light from the cabin flashed out on the snow.
"That you, Jim?"
"Yep!"
And then the child's voice: "Has oo dot thum tandy?"
"Yep!"
The cheery answer rang out almost at Buck's ear, and Jim passed death

waiting for him behind the bush which his