Approaching the barn, the only appurtenance to the four-roomed house, farther on by a hundred yards, he leaned on the rail fence and looked over into the barnyard at the screw of blue smoke which was rising from a fire under a huge iron boiler.
“Marty’s killin’ hogs,” he said, reflectively. “I mought ‘a’ picked a better day fer gittin’ back; she never was knowed to be in a good humor durin’ hog-killin’.”
He half climbed, half vaulted over the fence, and approached the woman, who was bowed over an improvised table of undressed planks on which were heaped the dismembered sides, shoulders, and hams of pork. His heart was in his mouth, owing to the carking doubt as to his welcome which had been oozing into the joy of freedom ever since he began his homeward journey. But it was not his wife who looked up as his step rustled the corn-husks near her, but her unmarried sister, Lucinda Dykes.
“Well, I never!” she ejaculated. “It’s Dick Wakeman, as I am alive!” She wiped her hand on her apron and gave it to him, limp and cold. “We all heerd you was pardoned out, but none of us ‘lowed you’d make so straight fer home.”
His features shrank, as if battered by the blow she had unwittingly dealt him.
“I say!” he grunted. “Whar else in the name o’ common sense would a feller go? A body that’s been penned up in the penitentiary fer four years don’t keer to be losin’ time monkeyin’ round amongst plumb strangers, when his own folks--when he hain’t laid eyes on his--”
But, after all, good reasons for his haste in returning could not be found outside of a certain sentimentality which lay deep beneath Wakeman’s rugged exterior, and to which no one had ever heard him refer.
“Shorely,” said the old maid, taking a wrong grasp of the situation--“shorely you knowed, Dick, that Marty has got ’er divorce?”
“Oh, yes. Bad news takes a bee-line shoot fer its mark. I heerd the court had granted ’er a release, but that don’t matter. A lawyer down thar told me that it all could be fixed up now I’m out. Ef I’d ‘a’ been at home, Marty never would ‘a’ made sech a goose of ‘erse’f. How much did the divorce set ’er back?”
“About a hundred dollars,” answered Lucinda.
“Money liter’ly throwed away,” said the convict, with irrepressible indignation. “Marty never did quite sech a silly thing while I was at home.”