Will N. Harben - Westerfelt

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There was a sudden step in the hall; a hand touched the latch; the door
opened cautiously.

"Harriet!"

"Yes, mother."

Mrs. Floyd glided across the floor, sat down on the bed by her
daughter, and stared at her in wonder.

"Where on earth have you been? I have been watching for you all night.
Oh, my child, what is the matter? What has gone wrong?"

"I have been out trying to save Mr. Westerfelt. Toot led the
Regulators down an' they took him out. I warned him, but he would not
go in time and they took him to the mountain."

"Good Heavens! what did they intend to do with him?"

"Most of them meant only to frighten him and to whip him, but Toot
Wambush will kill him if he gets a chance."

"I don't believe they'll harm him," said Mrs. Floyd, consolingly.
"Anyway, we can't do anything; get in bed and let me cover you up; you
are damp to the skin and all of a quiver; you'll catch your death
sitting here."

Mrs. Floyd put her hand round Harriet, but she sprang up and pulled
down a heavy cloak from a hook on the wall.

"I did not come here to go to bed!" she cried. She put the garment on
and strode past her mother to the window. Mrs. Floyd followed her
movements with an anxious glance. At the window Harriet turned and
stamped her foot. "Do you think I'm going to bed when I don't
know--oh, my God, I can't bear it! I can't bear it!" She suddenly
approached her bewildered mother, put her hands on her shoulders, and
turned her face to the light. "You hear me, mother? As God in Heaven
is my witness, if a hair of that man's head is harmed to-night, I'll
kill Toot Wambush on sight. I'll kill him, if I hang for it! I swear
it before God! Do you hear? I swear it--no power on earth shall stop
me! I'll _do_ it!"

Her body swayed. She made a step towards the door and sank down in a
swoon. Mrs. Floyd sprang for a pitcher of water and sprinkled her
face. The girl revived a little, and her mother raised her in her
arms, put her on the bed, and drew the covers over her. Harriet closed
her eyes drowsily. She did not seem wholly conscious. Mrs. Floyd went
down-stairs and lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, and put on some
water to heat. Then she went to the cook's room off the back porch and
shook the door.

"Get up quick, Em', Harriet is sick!" she cried; then she ran up to her
own room, opposite Harriet's, and finished dressing herself. As she
was crossing the hall she saw a man on horseback in the street. She
went out on the veranda and called to him. At first she did not
recognize him, but when he came nearer she saw that it was Washburn.

"Are you going to help Mr. Westerfelt?" she asked, in a low tone, as
she leaned over the railing.

"I've done all that kin be done," he said. "I've been round among the
citizens. They all say we'd be fools to try to do anything, Mrs.
Floyd. Some are skeerd to death, an' others pretend they don't think
Mr. Westerfelt's in danger."

She did not answer, fearing her voice would rouse Harriet, and after he
had ridden away, she went back to the girl's room. Harriet was asleep,
so she left her. A few hours later the barkeeper's wife came into the
kitchen and told Mrs. Floyd the latest news. She dropped the pan she
was cleaning and eagerly ran up to Harriet.

The noise of the opening door roused the girl. She sat up, stared in a
dazed way at her mother an instant, then threw off the coverings and
sprang out of bed.

"I've been asleep; Mr. Westerfelt! Oh, mother, why did you let me--"

"He's all right!" interrupted Mrs. Floyd. "They didn't touch a hair of
his head." Harriet stared open-mouthed.

"He's back safe and sound," went on Mrs. Floyd; "he proved himself
innocent and they let 'im go."

"Oh, mother, mother!" Harriet put her arms round the old woman's neck
and clung to her. "Thank God! Oh, mother, thank God--thank God!"
Then she sat down in a chair and began hastily to put on her shoes.

"What are you going to do?"

"Going to see him."

"Not now; why--"

"I _will_ see him. Let me alone; don't try to stop me!"

"You surely would not go to the stable! He--"

"I'd go anywhere to see him. I don't care what people say; I'm going
to see him."

As Harriet bent to fasten her shoes, Mrs. Floyd touched her.

"Daughter, are you engaged to Mr. Westerfelt?"

Harriet did not look up. She still bent over her shoes, but the
strings lay motionless in her fingers.

"No, he intimated he couldn't marry me, on--on account of my
misfortune. Oh, don't let's talk about it. He and I understand each
other. He loves me, but we're not engaged."

Mrs. Floyd leaned against the mantel-piece. Her face had become hard
and stern. Harriet started to leave the room, but Mrs. Floyd suddenly
stepped between her and the door.

"He intimated that _that_ would keep him from marrying you? My
Lord--the coward!"

"Mother, don't--don't say that!"

"I thought he was a _man_! Why, he is lower than a brute."

Harriet disengaged herself from her mother's grasp, and passed on to
the door. She turned on the threshold.

"I have no time to quarrel with you about him," she said, with a sigh;
"you can have your opinion, nothing on earth will change mine. He
loves me. I am going to see him now, and nothing you can say or do
will prevent me."

Her shoes rattled loosely on the bare floor and on the stairs as she
went down to the street.

During the night the sycamore-trees had strewn the ground with
half-green, half-yellow leaves, and the tops of the fences were white
with frost. Martin Worthy was taking down the shutters at the store
and calling through the window to his wife, who was unscrewing them on
the inside. A farmer had left his team in front of the bar, and she
saw him taking his morning drink at the counter and heard Buck
Hillhouse giving him an exaggerated report of the visit of the
Whitecaps. The eastern sky was yellowing, and a peak of the tallest
mountain cut a brown gash in the coming sunlight. At the fence in
front of Bufford Webb's cottage a cow stood lowing for admittance, and
a milking-pail hung on the gate.

As Harriet passed, Mrs. Webb came out with a bucket of "slop" for the
pig in a pen near the fence. She rested it on the top rail to speak to
Harriet, but the hungry animal made such a noise that she hastened
first to empty the vessel into the trough.

"Good-morning," she said, going quickly to the gate and wiping her
hands on her apron; "did you-uns heer the racket last night?"

"Yes," answered Harriet.

"I didn't sleep a wink. We could see 'em frum the kitchen winder.
It's a outrage, but I'm glad they did no rail harm."

The girl passed on. She found Washburn in front of the stable oiling a
buggy. He had placed a notched plank under an axle and was rapidly
twirling a wheel.

"Where is Mr. Westerfelt?" she asked.

He raised his eyes to the window in the attic. "Up thar lyin' down.
He's not in bed. He jest threw hisself down without undressing."

"Is he asleep?"

"I don't know, Miss Harriet, but I think not."

"Did they hurt him last night, Mr. Washburn?"

"Why, no, Miss Harriet, not a single bit."

She caught her breath in relief. "I thought maybe they had, and that
he was not going to acknowledge it. Are--are you sure?"

"As sure as I could be of anything, Miss Harriet; I believe he is a
truthful man, an' he told me they didn't lay the weight of a finger on
'im. You kin go up an' ax 'im. He ain't asleep; he looked too worried
to sleep when he got back. He walked the floor the balance o' the
night. Seems to me he's been through with enough to lay out six common
men."

Harriet did not answer. She turned into the office and went up the
stairs to Westerfelt's room. Round her was a dark, partially floored
space containing hay, fodder, boxes of shelled corn, piles of corn in
the husk, and bales of cotton-seed meal. She rapped on the
door-facing, and, as she received no response, she called out:

"Mr. Westerfelt, come out a minute."

She heard him rise from his bed, and in a moment he stood in the
doorway.

"Oh, it's you!" he cried, in a glad voice. "I was afraid you were not
well. I--"

"I am all right," she assured him. "But I simply couldn't rest till I
saw you with my own eyes. When I heard they let you off I was afraid
it was a false report. Sometimes, when those men do a bad thing they
try to cover it up. Oh, Mr. Westerfelt, I am so--so miserable!"

He caught her hands and tried to draw her into his room out of the
draught which came up the stairs, but she would not go farther than the
door.

"No, I must hurry back home" she said. "Mother did not want me to come
anyway; she didn't think it looked right, but I was so--so worried."

"I understand." He was feasting his eyes on hers; it was as if their
hunger could never be appeased. "Oh, I'm so glad you come I've had you
on my mind--"

But she interrupted him suddenly. Looking round at the bleak room and
its scant furniture, she said: "I--I thought may be I could persuade
you now to come back to your room at the hotel, where mother and I
could wait on you. You do not look as well as you did, Mr. Westerfelt."

He smiled and shook his head.

"It's mighty good of you to ask me," he returned, "but this is good
enough for me, and I don't want to be such a bother. The Lord knows I
was enough trouble when I was there."

A look of sharp pain came upon her sensitive face for an instant, then
she said; "I wish you wouldn't talk that way; you weren't one bit of
trouble."

He looked away from her. He was, indeed, not at his best. His beard
had grown out on his usually clean-shaven face and his cheeks looked
sallow and sunken. He was tingling all over with a raging desire to
throw his arms about her and tell her how he loved her and longed to
make her his wife, but suddenly a mind-picture of Toot Wambush rose
before him. He saw her deliberately lying to the officers to save him
from arrest, and--worse than all--he saw her in the arms of the
outlaw's father sobbing out a confession of her love. He told himself
then, almost in abject terror of some punishment held over him by God
Himself, that Mrs. Dawson's prayers would be answered--if--if he gave
way. "No," he commanded himself, "I shall stand firm. She's not for
me, though she may love me--though she does love me now and would wipe
out the past with her life. A woman as changeable as that would change
again." Then a jealous rage flared up within him, and he laid a
threatening hand on either of her shoulders and glared into her eyes.

"I told you last night I'd never bring up a certain subject again,
but--"

"Then you'd better not," she said, so firmly, so vindictively, that his
tongue was stilled. "I came here out of kindness; don't you
dare--don't you insult me again, Mr. Westerfelt."

"Oh, do forgive me! I--" But she had shaken off his hands and moved
nearer the stairway.

"You made a promise last night," she reminded him, "and I did not dream
you had so little respect for me as to break it so soon."

He moved towards her, his hands outstretched imploringly, but a sound
from below checked him. Some one was speaking to Washburn in the
office. Then footsteps were heard on the stairs, and Mrs. Bradley,
followed by Luke, waddled laboriously up the steps. She was wiping her
eyes, which were red from weeping. She glanced in cold surprise at
Harriet, and passing her with only a nod, went to Westerfelt and threw
her arms around his neck. Then with her head on his breast she burst
into fresh tears.

"You pore, motherless, unprotected boy," she sobbed. "I can't bear it
a bit longer. Me 'n' Luke wus the cause o' yore comin' to this
oncivilized place anyway, an' you've been treated wuss 'an a dog. Ef
Luke had one speck o' manhood left in him, he'd--"

Bradley advanced from the door, and drew his wife away from Westerfelt.

"Don't act so daddratted foolish," he said. "No harm hain't been done
yet--no _serious_ harm." Still holding her hand, he turned to
Westerfelt; "They've tried to do you dirt, John, I know, but them boys
will be the best friends on earth to you now. Ef you ever want to run
fer office all you got to do is to announce yorese'f. Old Hunter wus
down at Bill Stone's this mornin' as we passed buyin' his fine hoss to
replace yore'n."

"I reckon they've run Toot Wambush clean off," put in Mrs. Bradley,
looking significantly at Harriet. She expected the girl to reply, but
Harriet only avoided her glance. Mrs. Bradley rubbed her eyes again,
put her handkerchief into her pocket, and critically surveyed the damp,
bedraggled dress of the girl.

"It's mighty good of you to come down to see 'im all by yourself so
early," she said; "some gals wouldn't do sech a thing. The report is
out that you notified John of what the band intended to do."

Harriet nodded, and looked as if she wanted to get away.

"It wus mighty good of you, especially as you an' Toot are sech firm
friends," went on Mrs. Bradley; "but it's a pity you wusn't a little
sooner with yore information."

"She told me in plenty of time," corrected Westerfelt. "It was my
fault that I didn't get away. I didn't go when Miss Harriet told me
to."

His reply did not please Mrs. Bradley, as she showed by her next
remark. "I'd think you'd be afeerd o' makin' Toot madder at you 'n he
already is," she said to Harriet.

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 pass 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
nobody 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 damn 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 spunky all by hisse'f last night, in
that moonlight an' sassed all of us to our teeth was Cap. Westerfelt's
boy--by God, I jest want some hound dog to come an' take my place on
God's earth--so I do. I want some able-bodied cornfield nigger 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
appetite 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 passing 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 passengers 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.

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