“Aunt Ellen,” he could not help bursting out, “I always thought that you hated me, and here you are taking care of me. The only one who cares at all.”
“It’s little that I can do for you, lad,” she said.
“You can go to Uncle John and tell him that I’ve sworn to you that I never was in touch with the Torridons. And heaven knows, if I had been there, I would have fought to keep the poor children safe from those brutes. Aunt Ellen, it’s not possible that he or you believe that I could have helped at such a thing.”
“I wouldn’t dare to go near to Uncle John this night,” said the crone. “He’s as black as the raven and as cold as steel, since the boys come home and said that they couldn’t get no trace of the killers.”
“No trace,” murmured the prisoner.
“It’s a weary, weary night,” said Aunt Ellen. “There ain’t been the like of it in the mountains since the night when Hugh Torridon and his people was killed.”
“Who was Hugh Torridon?” asked the boy.
“Now, now, now,” she said. “Would you be wantin’ me to believe that you never heard tell of Hugh Torridon?”
“Never,” he assured her earnestly.
“Ah, but that’s a story,” she said. “And if I stay here to tell it to you . . .”
“Do stay, Aunt Ellen,” he pleaded. “Do stay, because, after you go, I’ll have all the long, black, cold night ahead of me. I’ll be half dead before morning with the damp and the chill, and the horrible smell of the rats, Aunt Ellen.”
“Will you, now?” she said, running her hand gently over his head again. “But what if I stay so long down here comfortin’ you that John Brett raises his voice after me? He’s got a voice that has to be heard.”
She did not wait for an answer, but went on: “Hugh Torridon . . . Hugh Torridon . . . And you never heard of him?”
“I always was afraid to ask about the Torridons,” said the boy. “It always made the Bretts angry to be reminded that there were more people of my name in the world.”
“D’you know why there’s any Torridons alive today?” she asked curiously.
“Tell me, Aunt Ellen.”
“Because of Hugh Torridon. It was him that brought the Torridons up from nothing. They was beaten. Their backs was against the wall when I was a girl. They didn’t have nothin’. They was so poor you wouldn’t believe it. And then Hugh come.
“He was young, but he could talk. He persuaded the whole pack of them to move across the mountains and start farmin’ there. The climate was better and the ground was richer, and pretty soon the Torridons on that side of the mountains was a lot better off than ever they had been on this side. It was a surprisin’ thing how quick they began to make money and get respectable lookin’ again. Pretty soon they was about as rich as the Bretts.” She paused and waggled her head at this important thought.
Then she went on: “After they was strong enough, with all good horses and with all the best kind of pistols and rifles and knives, and everything that men kill deer and each other with, they begun to march in back through the mountains, and, when they found a Brett here and there, they just nacherally shot him.
“Hugh Torridon had the leadin’ of them. He was an iron man. Bullets would bounce off of him, the young men here used to say. Uncle John was a young man, then.” She chuckled with the idea. “The Torridons, they kept walkin’ deeper and deeper into our valleys. I remember when they swept all the cattle off my pa’s place.”
Then she went on: “This man died, and he left a young son, also called Hugh . . . and the young son, he was raised to remember how his father died and to try to get even for it.”
“And how did the first Hugh Torridon die, Aunt Ellen?”
“As he was ridin’ down the riverside,” she said, “there was a couple of clever young Bretts lyin’ in the brush, and they shot him after he’d gone by.”
“Through the back?” said the boy, writhing.
“One bullet was under the shoulder blade and another was right in the middle of the spine. He didn’t make no noise. He just died and dropped out of the saddle.
“Now then, his son, the second Hugh, he come up to his manhood as big and as brave as his father, but he didn’t have the brain. Brains is what wins for everybody. You got brains, poor Paul. That’s why you been amountin’ to something. But anyways, I gotta tell you about this second Hugh, he couldn’t have no pleasure in stayin’ on the far side of the mountains, and so he built him a house of strong logs right over our heads on this slope. We always could see the smoke goin’ up from his place. And he done a lot of harm to us, until finally Uncle John thought it would be a good idea to make a truce. So a truce was made between the Torridons and the Bretts.
“And after that a couple of years went by, peaceful and quiet, but all the while Uncle John was plannin’ and waitin’. And finally he went down with ten good men . . . only ten, because more might’ve made too much noise. He took those men and went to the house of Hugh Torridon and he pried the front door off its hinges, very quiet.
“‘Who’s there?’ sings Hugh Torridon from the darkness.
“But already they was inside. They got into the first room where there was Hugh Torridon’s wife and baby. And Hugh Torridon, when he heard them two screamin’ . . . he sort of lost his wits.”
“Don’t! Don’t!” Paul cried. “You don’t mean that they murdered a woman with a baby beside her?”
“A Torridon is a Torridon, young or old, male or female. Uncle John is the one who knows that. But I was tellin’ you that Hugh Torridon come smashin’ along down the hall and got at that room, where there was two of his family dead, and where there was ten armed men waitin’ for him . . . and, when he come along, the ten got a little mite afraid, because he was so brave. They locked and bolted the door of that room, and then they waited, and Hugh Torridon busted down that door the way a bull would bust down a pasture gate.
“He come in and they let off all their rifles, and they shot Torridon with six bullets through the body and the legs. But he went on and got hold on one of them, and that was Jim Brett, and he strangled Jim Brett as he died.”
“What a glorious man he must have been!” cried the boy.
“He was a great Torridon”—nodding, she agreed—“only that he didn’t have the brains of his pa. But after he’d killed Jim, the rest of the Bretts got a little mite angry, and they went through the house and they killed everyone. There was only one boy left that had been knocked on the head and fell like dead.
“When they had cooled off a little and counted the eight dead bodies, then they begun to think of startin’ home, and just then the boy that had seemed to be senseless, he got up on his feet and began staggerin’ around. They’d cooled off, as I was sayin’, so that they didn’t have the heart to finish him. They just let him live, and Uncle John, he had a pretty good idea, because he said . . . ‘I’ll take him home and raise him up, and we’ll make a man of him, in Jim’s place.’”
She paused.
“Took him home,” echoed poor Torridon. “Took him here. Aunt Ellen, have you been telling me the story of my grandfather, and my father and mother?”
“I been,” she said. She added: “And your baby brother, and your two sisters, and your cousin who . . .”
“Don’t,” whispered the boy. “It hurts me terribly. Ah, Aunt Ellen, but I had to know.”
“Of course you did, honey.” She raised the lantern so that it shone into the eyes of the captive, but, in so doing, she allowed it to fall, unawares, upon her own eyes, and Torridon was amazed to see that she was grinning with toothless, wicked malice.
Then he could understand. It was all a device of her ancient hatred. She had wanted to sit by his side and watch him while she opened wounds of which he never had dreamed. This was her fiendish pleasure, and now she stood up.