British Columbia -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction; Sawmills -- Fiction
"I'll get you hanged," she said. He heard the word "hanged" and
again "hanged" and wondered sickly what it meant. She ran from him
and he watched her. She went to the horse which stood some twenty
yards away. The animal started and walked away and she stopped and
spoke soothingly to it, using low words and bidding it be gentle.
She went round in a circle and got upon the other side of it, and at
last the horse stood still and let her grasp the bridle. Pete
wondered what horse it was and why she was catching it. She brought
it to the shack and slipped the bridle reins over a post.
He saw her use incredible strength and drag Ned Quin into the house.
She cried aloud and sobbed most dreadfully. She put her man in the
shadow, laid his head upon a pillow and covered his wounded face with
white, even as her own was covered. She shut the door and came out.
Pete still sat upon the ground with both hands outspread behind him.
She said that he would be hanged, again she said it. He saw her get
upon his horse and ride away towards the road. Where was she going?
Who was it that was going? What was this woman going for?
These were horrible problems, but he knew, as a man knows things in a
nightmare, when he cannot move, that their solution concerned him.
They concerned him seriously. He struggled to solve them. It seemed
that he spent years, aye, centuries, in the bitter attempt and still
he saw the woman astraddle on a horse go up the rise to the north.
This was a woman, oh, God, what woman?--a woman with a white cloth on
her face, a ridiculous fierce figure who had said "hanged!" What was
"hanged"? What did it mean? And why did she say it to him? What
was he for that matter, and who was he? He struggled hard to
discover that. So far as he could see, he was an unnamed, peculiarly
solitary speck of aching, struggling matter in a world of pain. So
they say the disembodied may feel. His senses were numbed: they sent
foolish messages to him, messages that warned him and alarmed him
without being intelligible. He knew that he was in some great
danger. He saw a house, but did not know it; a gun, but could not
say what it was and why it lay there in the pounded, trodden dust.
Something wet dripped from his head: he put his hand up and saw blood
upon it. Whoever he was, he was hurt in some way. He sighed and
still saw the woman. Now she disappeared. It mattered very much.
Why was she leaving him? He spoke suddenly.
"What's my name?" said Pete.
If he could only get that. On that point hung everything: he felt
sure of that. Now he knew he was a man; he had got so far. But what
manner of man he could not tell. How silly everything was! He
groaned and grinned. Then he started.
"My name's Pete," he said suddenly. "It's Pete!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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