Then, as his brain cleared, he looked to John Brett to hear some correction of that brutality, but there was no change in the expression of the chief.
“Answer when he speaks to you, you dog!” Charlie had said as he struck the blow.
“He’s gonna play Injun on us and keep his mouth shut,” suggested Will Brett.
“Shut up!” John Brett commanded his younger men. “I’ll do the talking here, please. You, Torridon”—he spoke the name as though it were cinders and ashes in his mouth—“you speak up and tell me where the band of murderin’ sneaks will be hiding now.”
Torridon sighed. “Is it likely that I know?” he asked.
“You dunno nothing, maybe?” asked the chief with heavy irony.
“I’ve never spoken to a Torridon in my life . . . that I can remember,” said the boy.
“You didn’t put it into a letter?”
“I’ve never written to one of them, either.”
“It’s a lie!” broke in Charlie Brett, unable to control himself. “Is it likely, I ask you now, that any skunk of a Torridon would spend twelve years without getting in touch with his people?”
John Brett accepted that suggestion with a nod of agreement. “It ain’t likely. It ain’t possible,” he stated. “You see, Paul, there ain’t any use in trying to fool with us. It’ll be easier for you to come straight out with the truth. And if you can get us to the place where we’ll find your murdering crew, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll turn you free, Paul. I’ll turn you free and see you safe and livin’ out of the valley. No man could offer you more than that.”
“Uncle John,” said the boy in a trembling voice, “I swear . . .”
“My name is John Brett,” corrected the patriarch sternly, “and the oaths of the Torridons never was worth the breath that was needed for the speaking of them. Talk on, and leave out the swearing.”
Paul Torridon sighed again. “I don’t even know what’s actually happened,” he said. “And you want to kill me because I can’t talk.”
“You dunno?” said John Brett. “I’ll tell you, then. I’ll tell you that there was four boys in the house of Harry Brett. The oldest was fourteen. The youngest was nine. There was a girl of seventeen and there was Elizabeth Brett, who’s forty. That house was rushed this afternoon. One of the boys got away to tell us what happened. He saw two of his brothers murdered. He saw Elizabeth Brett shot through the head . . .”
“Stop, stop,” whispered Torridon, and grew sick and dizzy with horror.
“You don’t like it?” John Brett sneered. “There’s many a cook that don’t relish the dish of his own makin’. But you’re gonna help to pay us back for this here, Torridon. You’re going to help to pay us back.”
“Listen,” said Torridon, arguing for his life. “If the Torridons came to find some Bretts, as they came through the mountains, isn’t the house of Harry Brett the first one they’d come to? Isn’t that the reason that they attacked the house?”
“Then how did they know that Harry and his two brothers wasn’t at the place?”
“They scouted about it, first.”
“He’s got an answer for everything,” said Will Brett. “Ain’t he a professional word user? Ain’t he a schoolteacher? Let’s listen to him no more. By grab, Uncle John, it’s time that we tied him to a tree and built a fire under his feet . . . so’s we could see to do our shooting.”
John Brett smiled. It was plain that the horrible suggestion was exactly after his own heart. “You hear him, Torridon?” he asked.
“I hear him,” answered the boy.
“That’s what’ll be done to you unless you talk up.”
“There’s nothing I can say.”
Charlie Brett seized his shoulder viciously. “Is that all, Uncle John?” he asked. “Can we have him?”
John Brett had lurched from his chair. The savagery of a barbarian was working in his features, and yet he controlled himself.
“Joe Brett has been taken away by the Torridons. It may be that we’ll have to keep this rat to trade in for Joe. Throw him into the cellar. And keep a watch at the cellar door. Tie him hand and foot and keep a watch. If he gets away, I’ll skin you and hang up your hide to show the Bretts what happens to fools.”
They carried poor Torridon away with them, wrenching and dragging him along.
The creaking cellar door was heaved open and big Charlie said: “Lemme put him down there. Tie his legs with that rope, Will.”
It was done. The legs of Torridon were lashed securely together.
“Now stand him up,” directed Charlie Brett.
They stood up Torridon like a ninepin. And Charlie Brett drove at him with all his might.
Excess of malice spoiled his aim. Instead of landing fully in the center of the face, the blow glanced on the side of Torridon’s head, but nevertheless it was enough to hurl him backward down the steps.
He felt himself going, and purposely made his limbs and body limp. He landed at the bottom of the steps on the damp floor, rolled over and over, and crashed against a big box. There he lay.
He was too overwhelmed with woe to think clearly, but he was able to say to himself that after bright day comes the black night. Now Nancy was at her house. She, too, was hearing the tale of the raid upon the house of Harry Brett. Would she believe that he had conspired against the slaughtered family?
Then he tried to work out the matter in his mind—tried to conceive how people who bore his name, in whose veins his blood flowed, could have contemplated such a horrible massacre—far less, actually to have done the thing.
And after that he lay still without even a thought. He heard feet stamp on the floor above him. He heard loud voices, once or twice. Faintly he could hear the murmur of ordinary conversation. And after a long time there was a rattle of hoofs.
The first division of hunters for the marauding Torridons were coming back, no doubt. And what sort of a report would they make? Had they found their quarry? Had they shot them down like dogs? Or were the destroyers safely away through the woods and into the throat of the mountain pass?
No one came near him for several hours. Then the cellar door was lifted and a glimmer of lantern light broke into the pitchy darkness.
Charlie Brett, with old Aunt Ellen behind him, came down into the improvised dungeon. He kicked the prisoner roughly in the side. “Wake up,” he commanded, although he could see by his lantern that the eyes of the boy were wide open.
“Leave him be,” said Aunt Ellen. “Leave him be. I’m gonna just sit down here and comfort him a little. You go on up and leave the lantern down here with me.”
Charlie merely paused to leer at Torridon. “Things has changed a little, eh?” he said. “You ain’t so much the cock of the walk now. I’ll show you who’s on top, you hound!”
He left them, and Aunt Ellen sat down on a broken box beside the boy and uncovered a steaming dish.
“You gotta eat, dear Paul,” she said. “You gotta eat and save your strength, because maybe you’ll be needing all of it one of these days.”
XIV
It was good roast beef, cut in large chunks. And Torridon, wriggling until he could prop his back against a musty barrel’s side, ate heartily, and then drank the coffee that she had brought with her, also.
She looked like a witch, crouched over an evil deed. But as he ate, she patted him. She brushed the mold and the damp of the cellar from his face and hair. Then she smiled and nodded at him.