Death in The Woods汇总Word文档下载推荐.docx

1、s and asks for some dog-meat. She may spend ten or fifteen cents, but when she does she asks for something. Formerly the butchers gave liver to any one who wanted to carry it away. In our family we were always having it. Once one of my brothers got a whole cows liver at the slaughter-house near the

2、fairgrounds in our town. We had it until we were sick of it. It never cost a cent. I have hated the thought of it ever since.The old farm woman got some liver and a soup-bone. She never visited with any one, and as soon as she got what she wanted she lit out for home. It made quite a load for such a

3、n old body. No one gave her a lift. People drive right down a road and never notice an old woman like that.There was such an old woman who used to come into town past our house one Summer and Fall when I was a young boy and was sick with what was called inflammatory rheumatism. She went home later c

4、arrying a heavy pack on her back. Two or three large gaunt-looking dogs followed at her heels.The old woman was nothing special. She was one of the nameless ones that hardly any one knows, but she got into my thoughts. I have just suddenly now, after all these years, remembered her and what happened

5、. It is a story. Her name was Grimes, and she lived with her husband and son in a small unpainted house on the bank of a small creek four miles from town.The husband and son were a tough lot. Although the son was but twenty-one, he had already served a term in jail. It was whispered about that the w

6、omans husband stole horses and ran them off to some other county. Now and then, when a horse turned up missing, the man had also disappeared. No one ever caught him. Once, when I was loafing at Tom Whiteheads livery-barn, the man came there and sat on the bench in front. Two or three other men were

7、there, but no one spoke to him. He sat for a few minutes and then got up and went away. When he was leaving he turned around and stared at the men. There was a look of defiance in his eyes. Well, I have tried to be friendly. You dont want to talk to me. It has been so wherever I have gone in this to

8、wn. If, some day, one of your fine horses turns up missing, well, then what? He did not say anything actually. Id like to bust one of you on the jaw, was about what his eyes said. I remember how the look in his eyes made me shiver.The old man belonged to a family that had had money once. His name wa

9、s Jake Grimes. It all comes back clearly now. His father, John Grimes, had owned a sawmill when the country was new, and had made money. Then he got to drinking and running after women. When he died there wasnt much left.Jake blew in the rest. Pretty soon there wasnt any more lumber to cut and his l

10、and was nearly all gone.He got his wife off a German farmer, for whom he went to work one June day in the wheat harvest. She was a young thing then and scared to death. You see, the farmer was up to something with the girl-she was, I think, a bound girl and his wife had her suspicions. She took it o

11、ut on the girl when the man wasnt around. Then, when the wife had to go off to town for supplies, the farmer got after her. She told young Jake that nothing really ever happened, but he didnt know whether to believe it or not.He got her pretty easy himself, the first time he was out with her. He wou

12、ldnt have married her if the German farmer hadnt tried to tell him where to get off. He got her to go riding with him in his buggy one night when he was threshing on the place, and then he came for her the next Sunday night.She managed to get out of the house without her employers seeing, but when s

13、he was getting into the buggy he showed up. It was almost dark, and he just popped up suddenly at the horses head. He grabbed the horse by the bridle and Jake got out his buggy-whip.They had it out all right! The German was a tough one. Maybe he didnt care whether his wife knew or not. Jake hit him

14、over the face and shoulders with the buggy-whip, but the horse got to acting up and he had to get out.Then the two men went for it. The girl didnt see it. The horse started to run away and went nearly a mile down the road before the girl got him stopped. Then she managed to tie him to a tree beside

15、the road. （I wonder how I know all this. It must have stuck in my mind from small-town tales when I was a boy.） Jake found her there after he got through with the German. She was huddled up in the buggy seat, crying, scared to death. She told Jake a lot of stuff, how the German had tried to get her,

16、 how he chased her once into the barn, how another time, when they happened to be alone in the house together, he tore her dress open clear down the front. The German, she said, might have got her that time if he hadnt heard his old woman drive in at the gate. She had been off to town for supplies.

17、Well, she would be putting the horse in the barn. The German managed to sneak off to the fields without his wife seeing. He told the girl he would kill her if she told. What could she do? She told a lie about ripping her dress in the barn when she was feeding the stock. I remember now that she was a

18、 bound girl and did not know where her father and mother were. Maybe she did not have any father. You know what I mean.Such bound children were often enough cruelly treated. They were children who had no parents, slaves really. There were very few orphan homes then. They were legally bound into some

19、 home. It was a matter of pure luck how it came out. IIShe married Jake and had a son and daughter, but the daughter died.Then she settled down to feed stock. That was her job. At the Germans place she had cooked the food for the German and his wife. The wife was a strong woman with big hips and wor

20、ked most of the time in the fields with her husband. She fed them and fed the cows in the barn, fed the pigs, the horses and the chickens. Every moment of every day, as a young girl, was spent feeding something.Then she married Jake Grimes and he had to be fed. She was a slight thing, and when she h

21、ad been married for three or four years, and after the two children were born, her slender shoulders became stooped.Jake always had a lot of big dogs around the house, that stood near the unused sawmill near the creek. He was always trading horses when he wasnt stealing something and had a lot of po

22、or bony ones about. Also he kept three or four pigs and a cow. They were all pastured in the few acres left of the Grimes place and Jake did little enough work.He went into debt for a threshing outfit and ran it for several years, but it did not pay. People did not trust him. They were afraid he wou

23、ld steal the grain at night. He had to go a long way off to get work and it cost too much to get there. In the Winter he hunted and cut a little firewood, to be sold in some nearby town. When the son grew up he was just like the father. They got drunk together. If there wasnt anything to eat in the

24、house when they came home the old man gave his old woman a cut over the head. She had a few chickens of her own and had to kill one of them in a hurry. When they were all killed she wouldnt have any eggs to sell when she went to town, and then what would she do?She had to scheme all her life about g

25、etting things fed, getting the pigs fed so they would grow fat and could be butchered in the Fall. When they were butchered her husband took most of the meat off to town and sold it. If he did not do it first the boy did. They fought sometimes and when they fought the old woman stood aside trembling

26、.She had got the habit of silence anyway-that was fixed. Sometimes, when she began to look old-she wasnt forty yet-and when the husband and son were both off, trading horses or drinking or hunting or stealing, she went around the house and the barnyard muttering to herself.How was she going to get e

27、verything fed?-that was her problem. The dogs had to be fed. There wasnt enough hay in the barn for the horses and the cow. If she didnt feed the chickens how could they lay eggs? Without eggs to sell how could she get things in town, things she had to have to keep the life of the farm going? Thank

28、heaven, she did not have to feed her husband-in a certain way. That hadnt lasted long after their marriage and after the babies came. Where he went on his long trips she did not know. Sometimes he was gone from home for weeks, and after the boy grew up they went off together.They left everything at

29、home for her to manage and she had no money. She knew no one. No one ever talked to her in town. When it was Winter she had to gather sticks of wood for her fire, had to try to keep the stock fed with very little grain.The stock in the barn cried to her hungrily, the dogs followed her about. In the

30、Winter the hens laid few enough eggs. They huddled in the corners of the barn and she kept watching them. If a hen lays an egg in the barn in the Winter and you do not find it, it freezes and breaks.One day in Winter the old woman went off to town with a few eggs and the dogs followed her. She did n

31、ot get started until nearly three oclock and the snow was heavy. She hadnt been feeling very well for several days and so she went muttering along, scantily clad, her shoulders stooped. She had an old grain bag in which she carried her eggs, tucked away down in the bottom. There werent many of them, but in Winter the price