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The bell in the Congregational church steeple rang, calling the faithful to prayer meeting. Just the time we'd planned to steal the pencil, but the great scheme no longer seemed so promising.
"Now what?" Vile asked, just as I was wondering myself. She folded the papers neatly and put them into the pail. "Let's go back to the cabin and get some sleep," she said. "By this time he'll be meek as a lamb—you'll see."
Vile ran ahead of me the last hundred yards or so and got to the cabin first. "He's not here," she said as I walked up.
"No?" I said, trying, for her sake to sound disappointed. I'd been banking heavy on his not being there, else I'd never have agreed to return.
"We got to find him," she said. "No telling what trouble he's liable to get himself into, state he's in."
I hope you won't write me off for a coward when I tell you how little I wanted to go back down that hill. I just wanted to lie on my scratchy pine-bough bed with my full, happy stomach and go to sleep. But how was I going to let her go looking for him alone? Meek as a lamb, huh? The man was as liable to kill her as not. "In the dark?" I asked, for the summer dusk was fast fading into night.
She was determined, so I said we should take the path to Webster's pasture. That way we could make it down without losing our way in the dark. My head was as heavy as my feet. "Wait up," I called to Vile, who was bouncing ahead of me despite the night closing in. "You'll miss the path at that rate." She waited for me to catch up.
"I know it's bad for him, but I can't help wishing I'd brought that wine."
"Don't even think of such a thing!" The girl had no sense sometimes. "It's like poison to him."
"I know," she said sadly. "But at first he's happy. I like to see him happy."
"Just don't forget afterward, when he gets mean and stupid. Just keep that picture in your head."
She left me again and moments later tripped over a root or something, pitching forward. I pulled her to her feet. "Not so fast, Vile. You can't even see your feet. You'll just get hurt if you try to run."
She stayed close after that. There was only the fingernail of a moon, and it was not much use. I was grateful for the well-worn path.
It was about then that I saw the bobbing light. I put my hand on Vile's shoulder. We stopped dead and listened. Somebody was coming our way.
"Who can that be?" Vile whispered.
"Shh," I said. "I don't know." But in my heart I did know. Somehow, while we were running up and down the hill, prayer meeting had come and gone. The light was Pa, come looking for me. Part of me wanted to rush right for that light and throw myself into his arms. But the other, baser part, held back. If he found me now, I'd have hardly given him more worry than Elliot.
"Do you think they're after Zeb?" she whispered anxiously.
"Maybe. Better cut off into the woods until they get by. We don't want them asking us questions."
"No."
Waiting silently in the woods, I could hear what sounded like at least two people heading past us up the hill. They weren't talking. Perhaps they were trying to be quiet. To surprise me. There was only one reason Pa would be climbing the path to the cabin. Willie, my loyal Willie, had betrayed me.
I stood there in the darkness watching the light come up. When it came even to where we stood, I looked away. I didn't want to take a chance of glimpsing Pa's face in the lantern light. We waited until their footsteps were well out of earshot, then found the path and made our way down the hill. At the edge of the woods we moved northward till we were on a line to the sheds. There was a single light pole in the midst of the shed area, the lantern on top lit by gas, so we made for it. I longed to sneak into one of the sheds and spend the night, but Vile didn't stop. We took the route behind the sheds, staying off Main Street.
We snuck through the back yards of the houses between Depot Street and East Hill Road. Off East Hill Road is Prospect Street, where all the people in town who have the prospect of being rich build their houses. The Westons' is the biggest one up there.
I glanced up that direction a little nervously as we crossed East Hill Road, but I didn't have time to worry overmuch about the Westons coming after me. Vile was already grabbing my arm and pulling me toward the back of Wolcott's Drugstore. "Look!" she said. The back door had been battered in. "Hear that?"
Somebody or something was thrashing around inside. Once a poorly trained horse had broken out of the livery stable and galloped up the street through the open door of the meat market. It took half the town either yelling or grabbing to get it out of there. My first thought was that some such thing had happened again—this time in the drugstore. That's what all that crashing of glass and splintering of wood sounded like—a wild horse kicking and rearing at the display cases.
"It's Paw," Vile said. "He's got the blind crazies."
My first impulse, I'm ashamed to say, was to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction. It wasn't altogether yeller-belly—more like common sense. Vile, of course, marched right across the broken-down door like Daniel into the lions' den.
"Vile! Don't be stupid!" She didn't even turn her head. So what could I do? I might have given up being a Christian, but I had not yet given up on being a man. I followed that foolish girl through the storage room into the store itself.
That horse from the livery stable had done less damage than Zeb was doing in Wolcott's Drugstore, a place usually as neat as your grandma's needle case. He was roaring about, thrashing his limbs every which way, taking an entire shelf of bottles down with a single sweep of his big arm.
"Paw!" Vile called to him. "Paw! It's all right. I'm here now. Take it easy. C'mon, Paw, calm yourself down. Please, Paw—" She went closer and closer to him, speaking as gentle as a farmer to a ranting bull.
At first he didn't seem to hear or see her, but when she was a foot or so away, he turned with a roar, grabbing her by her hair. It looked as though he was going to twirl her around his head like that poor chicken. I sprang at his legs, knocking us all to the floor.
