Halo Of Spears by Blassingame Wyatt

Author:Blassingame, Wyatt.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LANGUAGE. LINGUISTICS. LITERATURE, Literature, Literature
Publisher: Doubleday And Company Inc.

He stopped. "Hello, honey. I didn't see you." He stood there, looking up at her as if finding her here had somehow changed his plans. "I thought you'd be asleep. I was going to try to slip in without waking you."

"I had to get up with Ellie. I'd just gone back to bed and was still awake when I heard the horse."

"Is anything wrong with Ellie?"

"She had to wee-wee. That's all."

"You'll catch cold. Go on back to bed."

"I'm not cold." And then, "It's so late. Did anything go wrong at the camp?"

"Nothing." He came up the steps then and went past her and hung Black Annie on its nail. "I stayed to make out my reports. And then I just decided I'd ride on home. You better get back to bed, honey."

"You want something to eat? I didn't save any supper for you because I didn't think you were coming home tonight. But it won't take a minute to fix "

"I don't want anything."

"It won't take but a minute/'

"I'm not hungry. But you must be cold."

"No," she said, feeling the cold around her mouth, at the muscles of her jaws. And then she said, not wanting to and not able to keep from it, "You whipped somebody tonight."

"That fellow Mayfield, and his nigger." He went past her into the unlighted house and on to the bedroom. The windows were misted with moonlight. He sat on his side of the bed and began to take off his clothes. "He was soldiering on the job all day, Frank said. And when Frank prodded him, the nigger started at him with a puller."

"I thought you said he—this Mayfield—worked as hard as he could."

"He's working whenever I see him." There was a sudden edge to his voice. "I can't be everywhere in the woods at one time. I can't watch all of them all the time. Maybe Frank was lying. Maybe he just wanted them whipped. But a captain has got to back up his guards or get rid of them."

"Of course." She was in the bed now, the cover pulled up around her. But she was still cold. "Frank has more of his prisoners punished than any of your guards, doesn't he?"

"They all got to have a man disciplined sometimes." And then, "I reckon he does."

"Why don't you get rid of him?"

"He's got four kids. And he aint good for anything except guarding. That little bit of land he's got won't raise anything more'n collards. Besides, he's a good guard. He gets work out of his men—as long as you don't let him beat them up to where they can't work."

He pulled the nightgown over his head and stood up in the moon-faint darkness, his back turned to her, and got out of his underwear and let the gown fall around him. He folded the underwear on a chair over the back of which his trousers had already been carefully hung. And said suddenly, violently,

184 Hdo of Spears

half shouting it into the stillness,

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