Westerfelt Part 24

The girl did not look at her. She was watching Westerfelt, who had suddenly moved to the bed and sat down. When she spoke she directed her explanation to Bradley rather than to his wife.

"Mother and I thought Mr. Westerfelt ought not to stay here alone, and that we'd get him to come over to the room he had in the hotel; so we--"

"You an' yore mother hain't knowed 'im sence he wus knee-high like me an' Luke has," jealously retorted Mrs. Bradley. "I reckon it's time we wus givin' the boy a little attention. We've got the buggy down thar waitin', John, an' a hot breakfast ready at home. I won't stand no refusal. You jest got to come with us; you needn't make no excuse."

"I'm not sick," answered Westerfelt, with a faint smile. He glanced at Harriet. With an unsteady step she was moving away. He wanted to call to her, but the presence of the others sealed his lips. She turned out into the semi-darkness of the loft, and then they heard her descending the stairs.

The sun was rising as she went back to the hotel. No one was in the parlor. She entered it and closed the door after her. She drew up the window-shade and looked down the street till she saw Mrs. Bradley and Westerfelt pa.s.s in a buggy. Then she went into the dining-room, where a servant was laying a cloth on a long table, took down a stack of plates from a shelf, and began to put them in their places.

When breakfast was over that morning Westerfelt went back to the stable. While sitting in the office. Long Jim Hunter came to the door leading a fine bay horse, a horse that Westerfelt recognized at a glance as one he had seen and admired before.

"Oh, Mr. Westerfelt," he called out over Washburn's shoulder, who had gone to him. "I wish you'd step heer a minute. I know you don't do the rough work round heer, but I like to have my dealings with the head of a shebang. Wash, heer, never did have much more sense 'n a chinch, nohow."

"What can I do for you, Mr. Hunter?" asked the man addressed, coming out.

There was a decidedly sheepish look in the old man's face, and he swung the halter of the horse awkwardly to and fro.

"Well, you see, it's jest this way, Westerfelt," he began, with an effort. "I've bought this blamed hoss frum Bill Stone an' I want to leave 'im heer with you. I want you to put 'im through any sort o'

work you see fit; he's too blam' fat an' frisky anyhow."

Westerfelt comprehended the whole situation, but he did not want to accept the horse. "Why, Mr. Hunter, really--" he began.

"Oh, we'll take yore hoss," laughed Washburn. "We kin take the kinks out'n his mane an' tail an' make 'im wish he never wus born. Oh, Lordy, yes, we want 'im, an' ef you've got a good saddle an' bridle ur a buggy hustle 'em around."

"Well, you'd better 'tend to 'im." Hunter tossed the halter to Washburn. "I'll be blamed ef I want 'im." And he turned and without another word walked away.

"It's wuth three o' the one they shot," was Washburn's laconic observation. He looked the animal over admiringly and slapped him so vigorously under the belly that the horse grunted and humped his back.

Cartwright, like nearly every other Georgian village, had its lawyer.

Bascom Bates was a young man of not more than thirty, but he was accounted shrewd by many older legal heads, who had been said to have advised him to move to a larger place. When business did not come to his office, Bates sometimes went after it. If a woman lost a husband in a railway wreck or was knocked off the track where he had no right to be, Bates called as early as possible and offered to direct a suit against the corporation for damages at half the usual price--that is, as Bill Stone once put it, the widow got half and Bates half, which n.o.body seemed to think exorbitant, because it cost a lawyer a good deal to get his education, and court convened but twice a year. He was among the first to call on Westerfelt that morning, and with a mysterious nod and crooking of his fingers in the air he induced the young man to follow him into one of the vacant stalls in the back part of the long building.

"Thar's something that has jest struck me, Westerfelt," he began, in the low voice of an electioneering candidate, and he possessed himself of one of Westerfelt's lapels and began to rub his thick, red fingers over it. "I wouldn't have you mention me in the matter, for really I hain't got a thing ag'in any of these mountain men, but I thought I'd say to you as a friend that this is a damageable case. Them men could be handled for what they done last night, and made to sweat for it--sweat hard cash, as the feller said."

Westerfelt stared at him in surprise.

"Oh," he said, "I never thought of that. I--"

"Well, there ain't no harm in looking at the thing from all sides,"

broke in the lawyer, as deliberately as his professional eagerness would permit. "A good price could be made out of the ring-leaders anyway. Old Jim Hunter's got two hundred acres o' bottom land as black as that back yard out thar, an' it's well stocked, an' I know all the rest o' the gang an' their ability to plank up. Maybe it wouldn't even get as far as court. Them fellers would pay up rather than be published all over creation as--"

Westerfelt drew back, smiling. He did not really dislike Bates, and he attributed his present proposition to the desire to advance in his profession, but he was far from falling into the present proposal.

"I haven't the slightest intention of prosecuting, Mr. Bates," he declared, firmly. "In fact, nothing could persuade me to take a single step in that direction."

The face of the lawyer fell.

"Oh, that's the way you feel. Well," scratching his chin, "I don't know as it makes much difference one way or the other, but I hope, Mr.

Westerfelt, that you won't mention what I said. These fellers are the very devil about boycottin' people."

"It shall go no further," answered Westerfelt, and together they walked to the front. A few minutes after Bates had gone across the street to his office, old Hunter slouched into the stable and stood before Westerfelt. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in Bates's direction and grinned uneasily. Then he spat, and delivered himself of this:

"I'll bet I kin make a powerful good guess at what that feller wanted to see you about."

Westerfelt smiled good-naturedly. He felt irresistibly drawn towards the old man.

"Do you think you could, Mr. Hunter?"

"I'd bet a ten-acre lot agin a ginger-cake. An' I'll bet some'n else; I'll bet ten dollars 'gin a nickel that Cap. Westerfelt's boy ain't a-gwine to harbor no ill-will agin one o' his daddy's old friends that wus actin' the d.a.m.n fool 'fore he knowed who he wus monkeyin' with."

"You'd win on that bet, Mr. Hunter," and Westerfelt gave the old man his hand.

Hunter's shook as with palsy as he grasped and held it. Tears rose in his eyes. "Lord, Lord A'mighty!" he said, "when I reecolect that the young chap 'at stood up thar so s.p.u.n.ky all by hisse'f last night, in that moonlight an' sa.s.sed all of us to our teeth was Cap. Westerfelt's boy--by G.o.d, I jest want some hound dog to come an' take my place on G.o.d's earth--so I do. I want some able-bodied cornfield n.i.g.g.e.r to wear a hickory-withe out on my bare back." Then he dropped Westerfelt's hand and strode away.

Chapter XV

Westerfelt accepted the urgent invitation of the Bradleys to live in their house awhile. For the first week his wound gave him pain and his appet.i.te failed him, which was due as much, perhaps, to mental as bodily trouble, for Harriet Floyd was on his mind constantly.

Thoroughly disgusted with himself for having in the past treated the hearts of women lightly, he now drew the rein of honor tightly when he thought of his position and hers. He told himself he would never go to see her again till he had made up his mind to forget her love for Wambush and every rasping fact pertaining to it, and honorably ask her to be his wife. There were moments in which he wondered if she were not, on her part, trying to forget him, and occasionally, when his spirits sank lowest, he actually harbored the fear that her affection might already have returned to Wambush. He recalled something he had once heard that a woman would love a man who was unfortunate more surely than one who was not, and this thought almost drove him mad with jealousy, for was she not likely, through pity, to send her heart after the exile? Now and then, in pa.s.sing the hotel, he caught a glimpse of Harriet on the veranda or at the window, but she always turned away, as if she wished to avoid meeting him, and this pained him, too, for she had become his very life, and such cold encounters were like permanent steps towards losing her forever, which, somehow, had never quite shaped itself into a possibility in his mind.

It was a warm day in the middle of November, Westerfelt and Washburn stood at the stable waiting for the hack, which, once a day, brought the mail and pa.s.sengers from Darley. It had come down the winding red clay road and stopped at the hotel before going on to the stable.

"I see a woman on the back seat," remarked Washburn. "Wonder why she didn't git out at the hotel."

In a moment the hack was in front of the stable, and Budd Ridly, the driver, had sprung down and was helping a woman out on the opposite side. When she had secured her shawl and little carpet-bag, she walked round the hack and came towards Westerfelt.

It was Sue Dawson. She wore the same black cotton bonnet and gown, now faded and soiled, that she had worn at her daughter's funeral.

"Howdy' do?" she said, giving him the ends of her fingers, and resting her carpet-bag on her hip. "I _'lowed_ you'd be glad to see me."

There was a malicious gleam in her little blue eyes, and her withered face was hard and pale and full of desperate purpose.

"How do you do?" he replied.

She smiled as she slowly scrutinized him.

"Well, you _don't_ look as if you wus livin' on a bed of ease exactly,"

she said, in a tone of satisfaction; "you've been handled purty rough, I reckon, fer a dandified feller like you, but--" She stopped suddenly and glanced at Washburn, who was staring at her in surprise, then went on: "Budd Ridly couldn't change a five-dollar bill, an' he 'lowed I might settle my fare with the proprietor uv the shebang. Don't blame Budd; I tol' 'im I wus well acquainted with the new stableman; an' I am, I reckon, ef _any_body is. I had business over heer," she went on, as she got out her old-fashioned pocket-book and fumbled it with trembling fingers. "I couldn't attend to it by writin'; some'n's gone wrong with the mails; it looks like I cayn't git no answers to the letters I write."

Washburn took the money and went into the office for the change.

"I didn't see what good it would do to write, Mrs. Dawson," said Westerfelt; "maybe it was wrong for me not to, but I've had a lot to bear; and you--"

"_That_ you have," she interrupted, her face hardening, as she looked across the ploughed fields, bordered by strips of yellow broom-sedge, towards the pine forests in the west. "You wus cut bad, I heer, an'

laid up fer a week ur so, an' then the skeer them Whitecaps give you on top of it must a' been awful to a proud sperit like yore'n; but even sech as that will wear off _in time_. But nothin' _human_, John Westerfelt--nothin' _human_ kin fetch back the dead. Sally's place is unoccupied. I'm doin' her work every day, an' her dressin' an' pore little Sunday fixin's is all still a-hangin' on the wall. She wus the only gal--"

Washburn came back with the change. The old woman's thin hands quivered as she took the coin and slowly counted the pieces into her pocket-book, Washburn suspected from the expression of Westerfelt's face that the conversation was of a private nature, so he went out to the hack to help Budd unharness the horses.

"No," went on the old woman, sternly, "you've brought about a pile o'