Donald Henderson Clarke - Lady Ann

“It’s going to rain today,” he said, drying himself vigorously.

“Breakfast is ready whenever you are,” Ann announced.

After Clarence had eaten twelve wheat cakes, a half-dozen sausages and three cups of coffee, and had lighted his pipe, Ann said:

“There’s a dead tramp down in our pasture by the brook.”

Clarence took his pipe from his mouth and stared at Ann, blue smoke oozing from his nostrils and mouth.

“A what?” he asked.

“A dead tramp,” Ann repeated.

Clarence stroked his mustache and exclaimed:

“Well, I’ll be!”

He held his blue gaze on Ann’s hazel eyes. Ann’s face was inscrutable; her eyes held a curious blank expression.

“Why in the Dickens didn’t you tell me last night?” Clarence demanded, getting up from the table.

“I don’t know,” she replied.

He pushed back his chair and arose, running his hand through his hair. He smoothed his mustache, looking at her curiously. He snorted:

“You ain’t just trying to fool me, are you, Little One?”

Ann shook her head earnestly.

“Honest I’m not,” she said. “There’s a tramp there, dead. At least, I think he is a tramp.”

Clarence bored her with his gaze. Ann smiled nervously, turned her head sidewise, and looked at him from the corner of her eyes.

“What are you staring at me like that for, Uncle Clarence?” she asked.

Clarence looked solemn and shook his head.

“Because there’s something funny about this,” he said. “I don’t understand it. It’s got me beat.”

An hour and a half later, Clarence and Dr. Benham, who also was the County Physician, approached the body of Gold Tooth Billy Bangs. They stood for a moment, silent. Clarence spat a stream of tobacco juice and said drily:

“Laid out purty, ain’t he?”

Dr. Benham nodded. He bit off the end of a fresh cigar, and then slowly extracted a pair of gold-bowed spectacles from a case and put them on.

“Give me a hand, Clarence,” he said.

He grunted as he kneeled by the body. He peered in the face, felt the head, ran expert fingers over the torso. He examined the hands. He grunted again as he arose to his feet, and coughed as he steadied himself on Clarence’s arm.

“My eyes aren’t so good, Clarence,” he said, holding out his right hand. “What do you make of that?”

Clarence took several long strands of feminine hair from the doctor. They were brown with reddish glints. Clarence raised his eyes to Dr. Benham’s.

“There’s some skin under the cadaver’s nails,” Dr. Benham added, stripping off his spectacles and restoring them to the case with hands which trembled in unison with his head. The doctor now lighted the cigar which he had been holding cold between his teeth. Clarence stood, looking down at the strands of hair.

“Annie,” Clarence said. “I thought there was something wrong.”

Dr. Benham took the cigar from his mouth with his right hand and took Clarence by the arm with his left hand.

“This tramp died of heart failure,” he said, a ghost of a grin on his lips, but his tired, wise eyes fierce. “That’s my official finding.”

Clarence twisted the lengths of hair in big, brown fingers.

“I don’t see why she didn’t tell me,” he said. “I knew something was the matter.”

“No scratches visible on her?” Dr. Benham asked.

Clarence shook his head in the negative.

“Well,” Dr. Benham continued, “then she must’ve been swimming in the brook when this tramp jumped her. She struggled, and she’s a strong, vigorous youngster, and somehow he fell and cracked his head against a rock. And it killed him. The scratches he made are covered by her clothes.”

“Then she laid him out all neat and nice,” Clarence said, “and drove the cows home and fixed supper, without saying a word. It’s beyond me.”

Dr. Benham looked up at the gray sky.

“It’s starting to rain,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Dr. Benham unbuckled the case on the dashboard of his Goddard, and pulled out the storm apron, which he called a boot. Clarence helped him to snap it into place. The reins led from the doctor’s hand through a flap in the apron to the mouth of the black gelding, Tom, who alternated with old Sam in hauling Dr. Benham around the countryside.

“Might take a reef in Tom’s tail,” Dr. Benham suggested.

“Just a minute,” Clarence said.

He crawled sidewise out of the Goddard, leaned over the shaft, caught Tom’s long black tail, and put a knot in it. He was back in the Goddard within thirty seconds. He swept off moisture with a big hand.

“Teeming,” he said.

Dr. Benham chirruped to Tom, who was young and frisky and nervous to be in action, and Tom stepped off, his feet squelching in the mud and splashing in suddenly formed puddles.

Tom laid himself right into his towing job as if he loved it. His handsome head was held so high that the moderate check rein hung loose along his glistening neck. His powerful hip muscles flexed and straightened, giving an impression of living power.

The two occupants of the Goddard looked ahead at the rain-slashed road, winding between stone fences and split rail fences and dripping trees and drenched bushes, through the isinglass window in the boot. It was dry and cozy in the heavy vehicle, rumbling over the narrow road. Clarence cleared his throat. He said:

“What do you make of Annie not saying anything, Doc? Is it natural?”

The doctor kept his eyes on the road. He replied:

“It’s natural for Ann, Clarence. She comes of hard stock—those Steeles.”

“And the Smiths,” Clarence suggested.

The doctor nodded.

“I pulled three teeth for Annie,” he said, “and she never said boo, just opened her mouth and held up her face and looked at me while I used the forceps. When I vaccinated her you would’ve thought she enjoyed it.”

“She drove the cows home, same as usual,” Clarence said.

The doctor lighted a fresh cigar. He said: “Pioneer stock. Most of us around here are the same, but we’ve softened up a little. Those Smiths and Steeles and Crafts have kept right on being pioneers. If she could take the deaths of her father and mother as easy as she did, I guess she wouldn’t be the kind to worry much over a tramp.”

“That’s so,” Clarence said. “Annie inherited the old New England granite. It’s in her blood. I’m worried about her,” Clarence added. “She’s got fire along with the granite. The boys are after her already.”

Dr. Benham grunted. He said: “If she has any troubles nobody’ll ever hear her complain.”

When they went into Clarence’s house, Clarence called:

“Annie.”

Ann walked into the hall from the kitchen. She had one of Clarence’s heavy socks in her hands. She said:

“How do you do, Doctor Benham? I was just darning some of Uncle Clarence’s socks. It seems as if he pushed his toes through the ends on purpose. Will you have a cup of coffee and a doughnut?”

Dr. Benham laughed.

“You know my weakness, don’t you, Annie. I’ll have the coffee and the doughnut, thank you.”

“It’ll only take a minute,” Ann said.

Dr. Benham winked at Clarence and followed Ann into the kitchen. She was measuring ground coffee into a pot.

“I thought I’d like to put a little something on those scratches you got,” he said.

“How did you know I had scratches?” Ann asked, motionless for an instant.

“I could tell you a little bird told me,” Dr. Benham replied, “but that wouldn’t be fair. The tramp had some of your hair in his hand, and there was skin under his nails.”

Ann’s big hazel eyes were fixed on his face. She took a deep breath. Slowly her head twisted to one side, so that she was looking at him from the corner of her eyes, the gesture inherited, or acquired, from her mother.