Will N. Harben

“ Toot Wambush has prejudiced the Whitecaps against you. He has convinced them that you reported the moonshiners. They are coming to-night to take you out. The others don't mean to kill you; they say it's just to whip you, and tar and feather you, and drive you out of the place, but he—Toot Wambush—will kill you if he can. He would not let you get away alive. He has promised the others not to use violence, but he will; he hates you, and he wants revenge. He'll do it and make the others share the responsibility with him—that's his plan. ”

“ Coming along the Hawkbill road, about an eighth of a mile distant, they saw a body of horsemen, their heads and shoulders dressed in white. His revolver slipped from his fingers and rang on a fallen anvil. He picked it up mechanically, still staring into the moonlight. Again he wondered if he were afraid, as he was that night at the hotel.
"Run! get out a horse," she cried. "Mr. Washburn is there; he will help you! Go quick, for God's sake! I shall kill myself if they harm you." He stared at her an instant, then he put his revolver into his belt. ”

“ John, Lizzie is not the woman for you. She never will love you deep, or very long. Good-bye.
"SALLY."
Westerfelt put the letter in his pocket and turned his horse into an unfrequented road leading to the mountain and along its side. The air was filled with the subtle fragrance of growing and blooming things. He was as near insanity as a man can well be who still retains his mental equipoise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As Westerfelt put his foot into the stirrup he saw Harriet Floyd glide out of sight into the blacksmith's shop. She had determined not to desert him. As he sprang up, the girth snapped, and the saddle and blanket fell under his feet.
"God, they are on us!" gasped Washburn. One of the gang raised a shout, and they came on with increased speed.
"Up! Up!" cried Washburn, kicking the saddle out of his way. "Quick! What's the matter?" Westerfelt felt a twinge in his old wound as he tried to mount. Washburn caught one of his legs and lifted him on his horse. ”

“ The inflammable material was still bound up in his breast, and it needed but one spark to fire it. What he was struggling against had come down to him from a long line of ancestors, men who would rather have died than brook the thought of a rival, especially in an inferior; men who would have spurned the love of their hearts if it were stained with falsehood under any circumstances, and when, as it was in Westerfelt's case, the provocation was not only deceit, but ardent love for such a man—ah, there was the rub! ”

“ He laughed bitterly.
"He told me so; he's another fool."
"Mr. Westerfelt!"
"I beg your pardon," he amended, quickly; "but any man is a fool to be simply crazy about a woman, and he is."
He saw her raise her little shapely hand to her twitching mouth and experienced one instant's throbbing desire to catch it and hold it and beg her to have mercy on him and help him throw off the hellish despair that rested on him. It was a significant fact that she said nothing to protract the conversation on the line of Bates's proposal. ”

“ A girl wants a husband she can lean on and go to in every trouble she has. You wouldn't fill the bill, Mr. Westerfelt. Good gracious, no!"
She turned back towards the hotel, and like a man with his intelligence shaken from him by a superior force, he tried to keep at her side. In silence they reached the steps of the hotel.
"You'll miss that hack if you don't hurry," she said. "Besides, you've acted as if this was a pest-house ever since mother and I nursed you here and I made such a fool of myself."
"Harriet, if you do not consent to be my wife I don't know what I shall do. ”

“ He was sure Bates wanted to marry her. Such a stolid, matter-of-fact man would never visit a girl with less serious intentions. Bates, of course, was ignorant of the girl's early love for Wambush. He wondered if she would ever confess to the lawyer as she had to him. He thought it unlikely; for he had found it out and mentioned it to her first, and, besides, her experience with him had taught her discretion. Westerfelt would have been more generous in his estimation of her character had he been less jealous, and less angered by the disappointment of not being her escort. ”

“ Do you reckon" (she was avoiding Harriet's eyes) —"do you think that would make any difference with Toot—I mean, with any young man?"
Harriet smiled in spite of the look of gravity in Hettie's eyes.
"Some men might be that way," she finally said, consolingly—she was thinking of the innate coarseness of Hettie's lover—"but I don't think Mr. Wambush is. That was one of the first things my mother ever taught me. She told me she'd learned it by experience when she was a girl. I don't pretend to be better than other girls, but I've always made men keep their distance." ”

“ Floyd came to Harriet, who was still seated in the parlor, an expression of deep thought on her face.
"Harriet," said the old lady, wiping her damp hands on her apron, "Hettie has gone to work washing dishes in there like a house a-fire. I declare she's a big help; as soon as she comes about I feel rested, for I know she won't leave a thing undone. What have you been saying to her? I never saw her so cheerful. She's been runnin' on in the kitchen like a fifteen-year-old child. I declare I can't keep from liking her. You must a-told her some'n about Toot Wambush." ”

“ Mrs. Slogan sank back on the bench of the loom, but she didn't set the thing in motion; she had an idea that the slightest sound might draw the attention of the bustling inmate of the room across the passage, and just then she was not prepared to exchange greetings.
Peter stood at the window, his head now enveloped in smoke, and kept peering out at the porch from which Mrs. Dawson was moving the various articles pertaining to her bed, such as slats, posts, railings, mattress, pillows, sheets, and coverings.
"She's as busy as a hoss's tail in fly-time," he observed. "Oh, Lawsy mercy!" ”

“ You are entirely too sensitive, too—"
"Mother, you don't know anything about it," said Harriet. "When you told me I was not your child I actually prayed to die. It has been the only real trouble I ever had. I never see poor, worthless people without thinking that I may be closely related to them, and since Mr. Westerfelt has been here and told me about his aristocratic relatives and his old family, I have been more unhappy than ever. I was going to tell him some day, but he saved me the trouble."
"I can't imagine how he knew it," gave in Mrs. Floyd, thoughtfully. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Westerfelt leaned against the mantel-piece; he had never felt such utter despair. It was like being slowly tortured to death to hear her speaking so frankly of the thing which he had never been able to contemplate with calmness. ”

“ Marthy would a-done as well by Ward as she did by me, I reckon. When women once git married they come down to hard-pan like a kickin' mule when it gits broke to traces."
Westerfelt drew the blankets closer about him. The road had taken a sharp turn round the side of a little hill, and the breeze from the wide reach of level valley lands was keen and piercing. Bradley's volubility jarred on him. It brought an obnoxious person back, and roughly, into the warm memory of Harriet Floyd's presence, and gentle, selfless tenderness. ”

“ Westerfelt, sometimes I am afraid, really afraid, your sickness has affected your mind, you speak so strange and harsh to me. Surely I do not deserve such cruelty. I am just a woman, and a weak one at that; a woman driven nearly crazy through troubling about you." She raised a corner of her shawl to her eyes. ”

“ I was afraid I let him see too plain that I was a fool about him, but some men like that, I reckon; he always seemed to come oftener. Harriet, one thing has worried the life nearly out of me. I heard Frank Hansard say a young man never would think as much of a girl after she let him kiss her. I'm no hypocrite—I'm anything else; but as much as I'd love to have a young man I cared for kiss me, I'd die in my tracks before I'd let 'im put his arm around me if I thought it would make 'im think less of me. ”

“ Floyd was running up and down in the hall, excitedly calling for Harriet, but the crowd was too anxious to hear Westerfelt's reply to notice her.
"If nothing else will suit you, yes," answered Westerfelt, calmly. "I don't think human beings ought to spill blood over a matter of business, and I don't like to fight a man that's drinking, but since you have behaved so in this lady's presence, I'm really kinder in the notion."
"Come on, then," blustered Wambush. "I'm either yore meat or you are mine." ”

“ It was a thing the old man would have said to anybody else and in the same tone, but it irritated Westerfelt. The silence of the couple behind convinced him that it was Bates and Harriet, for men in love do not talk much. Mrs. Wambush turned her head and took off her gingham bonnet to get a good look at the man her son had tried twice to kill. Her features were so much like Toot's that Westerfelt, who had never seen her before, thought he had discovered the fountain-head of the young outlaw's villany. ”

“ He may have caused your daughter's death, but he did not do it intentionally, but you—you would murder him in cold blood if you could. You have come all the way over here to drive him to desperation. You—you are a bad woman. ”

“ Bates threw his book on a table. "Do I look like a man that's goin' to marry the prettiest and the best girl in the world? Westerfelt, I didn't sleep a wink last night."
"That's bad."
"Looky' heer, don't give me any shenanigan; you knowed what she'd do for me. You knowed mighty well."
"Me?"
"Yes, dad burn it; you know she loves you."
"What are you talking about?"
"If you don't know it you are a numskull. She intimated to me that she loved some feller, but that she never intended to marry anybody. I'm no fool. I know who she meant. Look here!" Bates suddenly rose to his feet. ”