Westerfelt Part 25

misery in yore life, John Westerfelt, an' you hain't a-gwine to throw it off like a ol' coat, an' dance an' make merry. You may try that game; but yore day is over; you already bear the mark of it in yore face an' sunk cheeks. You've got another gal on yore string by this time, too."

"You are mistaken, Mrs. Dawson."

"How about the one at the hotel that nussed you through yore sick spell?"

"There is nothing between us." He hesitated, then added: "Nothing at all, nor there never will be."

"_You_ say thar hain't, but that don't prove it. I want to lay eyes on _her_; I can tell ef you have been up to yore old tricks when I see 'er. Ef she's got a purty face you have."

He made no reply.

She hitched her burden up on her left hip and curved her body to the right. "I'm a-gwine to put up thar, an' I'll see. The Bradleys 'll think quar ef I don't put up with them, I reckon; but I'm gwine to try hotellin' fer once. Right now it's in my line uv business.

Good-mornin'; I don't owe you anything--nothin' in the money way, I mean. Ah! you think I'm a devil, I reckon; well, you made me what I am. I'm yore work, John Westerfelt!"

He stood in the stable door and watched the little bent figure walk away. He saw her pa.s.s the cottages, the store, the bar, and enter the hotel; then he went through the stable into the back yard and stood against the wall in the warm sunlight. He didn't want Washburn to come to him just then with any questions about business. A sudden, startling fear had come to him. He was going to lose Harriet now, and through Mrs. Dawson, and it would be the just consequences of his early indiscretion.

Chapter XVI

As the old woman entered the hotel she saw no one. Looking into the parlor, and seeing it empty, she went down the hall to the rear of the house. The door of the dining-room was open. Mrs. Floyd was there arranging some jars of preserves in the cupboard, and turned at the sound of the slip-shod feet.

"Good-morning," Mrs. Floyd said; "won't you have a seat?"

Mrs. Dawson put her shawl and carpetbag on a chair. "I want to put up heer to-night," she said. "I never put up at a tavern in my life, an'

I'm a sorter green hand at it. I reckon you could tell that by lookin'

at me."

"We are pretty full," said Mrs. Floyd; "but we will manage to make a place for you somehow. My daughter will show you a room. Oh, Harriet!"

"Yes, mother." Harriet came in from the kitchen. She had overheard the conversation. Mrs. Dawson eyed her critically and slowly from head to foot.

"This lady wants to stop with us," said Mrs. Floyd; "show her to the little room upstairs."

Harriet took the carpet-bag. "Do you want to go up now?"

"I reckon I mought as well."

Harriet preceded her to a little room at the head of the stairs. The girl was drawing up the window-shade to let light into the room when the old woman spoke. "You are the gal that nussed John Westerfelt through his spell, I reckon," she said.

Harriet turned to her in surprise. "Yes, he was with us," she replied.

"Do you know him?"

"A sight better 'n you do, I'm a-thinkin'," Mrs. Dawson seated herself, took off her bonnet, and began nervously folding it on her knee. "But not better 'n you _will_, ef you don't mind what yo're about."

Harriet flushed in mingled embarra.s.sment and anger. Without replying, she started to leave the room, but Mrs. Dawson caught the skirt of her dress and detained her.

"You don't know who I am. I had a daughter--"

"I know all about it." Harriet jerked her skirt from the old woman's hand and looked angrily into her face. "She drowned herself because he didn't love her. I do know who you are; you are a devil disguised as a woman! 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. I mean it!"

For a moment Mrs. Dawson was thrown entirely off her guard by the unexpected attack. She rose and stretched out a quivering hand for her carpet-bag, which she had put on the bed. She s.h.i.+fted it excitedly from one hand to the other, and looked towards the door.

"Yo're jest one more uv his fool victims, I kin see that," she gasped.

"He's the deepest, blackest scoundrel on the face of the earth!"

Harriet's eyes flashed. "He's the best man I ever saw, and has had more to put up with. You've come over here to persecute him; but you sha'n't stay in this house. Get right out; we don't want you!"

"Why, Harriet, what on _earth_ do you mean?" exclaimed Mrs. Floyd, suddenly entering the room.

Harriet pointed at Mrs. Dawson. "This woman has come over here to worry the life out of Mr. Westerfelt because he didn't marry her daughter. She wrote threatening letters to him while he was at death's door, and is doing her best now to drive him crazy. She sha'n't stay under this roof while I am here. You know I mean exactly what I say, mother. She goes or I do. Take your choice!"

"Mr. Westerfelt has had a lot of trouble," began Mrs. Floyd, wondering what it could all be about; "everybody here is in sympathy with him.

We are all liable to mistakes; surely you can pardon him if--"

"Not while I'm above ground," shrieked the old woman. She dropped her bag, then picked it up awkwardly, and started to leave by a door which opened into another room. She burst into hysterical weeping when Mrs.

Floyd caught her arm to detain her. "Not while I'm alive an' have my senses," she went on, in sobs and piping tones. "I'll hound him to his grave. I wouldn't stay heer over night to save my life. I'd ruther sleep in a hay-stack ur in a barn-loft."

Harriet turned her white, rigid face to the window, and stood between the parted curtains as still as a statue. Mrs. Floyd tried again to detain the old woman, but she flounced out of the room and thumped down-stairs.

The next morning a young girl came into the village by one of the mountain roads. Her face was sad and troubled, and she looked as if she had walked a long distance. She was poorly dressed, and her shoes were coa.r.s.e and coated with dust, but her face was pretty and sweet.

In front of the meeting-house she stopped and sat down on a log near the road-side. When people pa.s.sed she would draw her sun-bonnet over her face and turn her head from them. Suddenly she rose and trudged on to the post-office.

It was a busy day at Cartwright, and the little porch was filled with loungers. Old Jim Hunter was there with his long-barrelled rifle and a snarling opossum, the tail of which was held between the p.r.o.ngs of a split stick. When the animal showed a disposition to bite anybody, or crawl away, he subdued it instantly by turning the stick and twisting its tail. Joe Longfield had come with a basket of eggs packed in cotton-seed to exchange for their value in coffee, and the two wags were entertaining the crowd with jokes at the expense of each other.

As the girl pa.s.sed into the store Martin Worthy was weighing a pail of b.u.t.ter for a countryman in a slouch hat and a suit of brown jeans. She returned his nod and went to the little pen in the corner in which the mail was kept.

"I cayn't 'low you but ten cents a pound for yore b.u.t.ter," Worthy said to the man. "Yore women folks never _will_ work the water out, an'

it's al'ays puffy an' white. Town people don't want sech truck. It has to be firm and yaller. Look what the Beeson gals fetch once a week. I gladly pay 'em fifteen fer it." He uncovered a pile of firm golden b.a.l.l.s and struck them with his paddle. "Any woman can make sech b.u.t.ter ef they won't feed the cows cotton-seed an' will take 'nough trouble."

When the man had joined the group outside, Worthy came from behind the counter into the pen, wiping his hands on a sheet of brown paper.

"I don't think thar's a thing fer any o' yore folks, Miss Hettie," he said to the girl, "but I'll look jest to satisfy you." He took a bundle of letters from a pigeon-hole and ran them hurriedly through his hands. "Not a thing," he concluded, putting the letters back; "jest as I thought."

She paused for a moment as if about to ask a question. She put a thin hand on the cover of a sugar-barrel, and looked at him timidly from the depths of her bonnet as he came out of the pen, but she said nothing.

As she started to go, her skirt caught on a sliver of the barrel, and, as she stooped to unfasten it, she almost fell forward. But she recovered herself and went out of the door towards the hitching-rack in front, paused, and looked back at the road over which she had come.

"Don't seem to know exactly whar she _does_ want to go," remarked Jim Hunter, breaking the silence which had followed her departure from the store. "Who is she, anyway?"

"Oz Fergerson's daughter Hettie," replied Worthy, leaning against the door-jamb. "She don't look overly well; I reckon that's why she quit workin' at the hotel. She's dyin' to git a letter from some'rs; she comes reg'lar every day an' goes away powerfully disappointed."

"Never seed her before as I know of," said Longfield, handing Worthy his basket of eggs.

The girl suddenly turned down the sidewalk. She pa.s.sed Mrs. Webb's cottage and the bar and went into the hotel. Mrs. Floyd met her at the door.

"Mis' Floyd, I want to see Harriet," she said.