The
HOUSE of DEATH
A Strange Tale
By F. GEORGIA STROUP
THE THREE women looked about the little kitchen. For some reason, each seemed to avoid the eyes of the other.
"My land, but it’s hot in here!" Mrs. Prentis moved to the north window to raise it.
As she propped up the heavy sash with a thin board that lay on the sill, a gust of hot wind swept through the room from a drought-parched Kansas cornfield.
Seeking relief in action, her daughter, Selina. hastened to the opposite window and pushed it up, as a cloud of dust thickened in the road in front of the house. A small herd of bawling cattle were milling past the house in the heat and glare of the August sun. Their heads drooped dejectedly and their tongues lolled from parched mouths.
"My land, Seliny, there goes another bunch of cattle out west. Does beat all how hard 'tis to get water in this country. Jes' seems to me sometimes like I'd die for a sight of mountains an' green things an' a tumblin' little stream that'd run an' ripple all summer."
Motherly Mrs. Collins wiped the perspiration from her large, red face and fanned herself with her blue sunbonnet.
"Didn't Mamie Judy come from the mountain country?" she asked.
"Yes: we went to the same school. When she was a girl she had the blackest eyes and the prettiest red cheeks of any girl you ever did see. Didn’t look much like she does now! A farmer's wife soon goes to pieces. She was such a lively girl, too—so full of fun. An' now jes' to think what the poor thing’s come to!"
Again the three women avoided each other’s eyes. Then Selina spoke nervously:
"Do you 'spose she did it, Ma?"
"There you go with your 'sposin' again! Better get to work and straighten up this house. That's what we come over for, ain’t it?"
Mrs. Collins rose heavily from her chair and unrolled and donned a carefully-ironed. blue-checked apron.
"Seems kinda funny to have the funeral here, don’t it?"
"Oh, I don't know. The graveyard's handy an' it's so far to the church."
"Yes, that's so: 'tain't far to the cemetry. Always seemed to me that Mamie'd found it kinda spooky, always seein' the graveyard - right through that window there over the stove. Bein' up on ton of that rise, an' only half a mile away, would make it seem to me kinda like livin' in a graveyard."
"Selina, take this here bucket an' bring in some water. My land, I don't see how Mamie ever got through with all her work an' took care of the baby. Her bein' so old, an' it her first made
