SETTLING WITH WOODELL.
So passed the days away. What added brawn came to the strong young
fellow's arms from the driving of the rails and lifting them to place!
Brown, almost, as the changing beech-leaves his face, and the palms of
his hands became like celluloid. He was unlike the farmers, though,
for he lacked the farmers' stoop--he had not to dig nor mow, nor rake
nor bind. He swung his ax or maul, and commanded the red oxen in
country speech, and deeper and deeper into the forest grew the fence.
And, of evenings, he was with Jenny, and Sundays he was in the town.
What days they were, with all their force, and health, and lawless
abandonment, though in the line of nature. He drank not, nor smoked,
nor ate made dishes. He was like an unreasoning bobolink, or hawk, or
fawn, or wolf. But there grew apace the problem of Jenny.
One night, as the two were walking, each caught a glimpse of something
dark, which moved swiftly through the bushes some distance from the
road.
The girl started.
"What is the matter?" Harlson said.
"Did you not see it--that shadow in the bushes?"
"Yes. Some one was there. What of it? Some of the boys are
coon-hunting."
"It wasn't that," she whispered. "I know what it was. It was Harrison
Woodell, and he is watching."
"Well, he might be in much better business. Are you fond of him?"
"I like him very much," she answered, simply, "but sometimes I am
afraid."
He laughed.
"He'll not hurt you. He dare not."
"But he may hurt you."
Another laugh.
"Don't you think I can take care of myself?"
"Oh, yes"--hurriedly--"but one of you may get hurt, and I don't want
anything to happen to either of you. Oh, Grant! You must be careful!"
He was impressed, though he did not show it. There may have been some
of that magnetic connection, of which the scientists have told us so
little, between minds tending toward each other, with sinister intent
or otherwise, when all conditions are complete. Harlson felt in his
heart that the girl's apprehensions were not altogether groundless,
but, as was said, he was in perfect health and had a pride, and he cast
away the thought and but made love. And he prospered wickedly. It was
late when the girl reached her home again, and she went in tremblingly
and silently. So bent had been their footsteps that neither Harrison
Woodell nor other living thing could have been near them and unseen.
Down the tree-fringed roadway and across the field to the barn went
Harlson, and wondered somewhat at himself. Into what had he developed,
and how would it all end? He was elated, but uneasy. He was glad the
fence was nearing completion, and that with the money due him life in
the big city would begin. He clambered upon the clover-mow, and tossed
about uneasily on the blanket upon which he had thrown himself still
dressed. It was some time before he slept, and then odd dreams came.
He thought he had taken Jenny to the town, and that Mrs. Rolfston
seemed always near them, yet in hiding. They could not get away from
her. Then came a time when she had crept up behind them and over his
head had thrown a noose, and was drawing it tighter and tighter and
strangling him, and he could not, somehow, raise his hands to free
himself. He was suffocating! He struggled in his agony and
awoke--awoke to find his dream no dream at all! to feel a hand on his
throat, a knee upon his chest, and to know that he was being choked to
death!
More than once in later life Grant Harlson felt himself very near the
line which men who have crossed once may not repass, but never later
came to him the feeling of this moment. It was but a flash of thought,
for the physical being's upheaval followed in an instant, but it was a
flash of horror. Then began an awful struggle.
Borne down deeply in the yielding clover, Harlson had little chance to
exert his strength, which, with that grip upon his throat, could not
last long at most; but he writhed with all the force of desperation,
and wrenched loose, at last, one arm, which had been pressed useless
against his side. With the free hand he clutched his adversary's
collar and strained at it, while he heaved with all his power to turn
himself below. The couch was not far from the edge of the great mow,
but of that he was not thinking, nor of the fact that the hay had, in
the stowing away, been built out, so that the mow well overhung the
barn floor. Well for him that it was so! There was a sudden loosening
and sliding as the struggle in the darkness became fiercer, and then,
parting from the mass, a section of the mow, a ton at least in weight,
shot downward, carrying upon it the two men, who, as it struck the
floor beneath, rolled from its surface through the great open doors,
down the steep incline, up which wagons were driven on occasion, and
leaped to their feet together, there in the clear moonlight.
They stood glaring at each other. Grant Harlson gasping, but himself
again, as he inhaled the blessed air. Each stood at bay and watchful.
"Woodell!"
The man glared at him savagely.
"What does it mean! What were you going to do?"
"I was going to kill you."
"Then they would have hung you."
"No, they wouldn't; they would never have found you."
"Did you have a knife?"
"I didn't need one--if the cursed hay hadn't come away."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I'm going to kill you."
There was a look in the man's eyes which showed he was not jesting.
Harlson thought very rapidly just then. He recognized the earnestness
of it all, but his sudden terror was now gone. Here were light and air
and even terms with the other. The effect of the choking had passed
away. He felt himself a match for Woodell.
With the revulsion of feeling came then suddenly upon him a rage
against this would-be midnight slayer so great that he was calm in his
very savagery. He laughed, as was his way.
"You were very foolish. You should have brought a knife or club. Kill
me! Why, man, do you suppose if you were to try to get away now I
would let you go? I want you, you murderer, I want you!" And he
reached out his hands toward the other and opened and shut them
clutchingly; and then with a snarl Woodell leaped forward and the two
men grappled like bull-dogs.
Well for Harlson was it that through all the weeks he had been swinging
the maul and ax, and that his muscles were hard and his endurance
great, for Woodell was counted one of the strong men of the region. As
it was, in point of sheer strength, the two were about evenly matched,
but there was a difference in their resources. One was
gymnasium-trained, the other not.
In country wrestling there are the side-hold, and square-hold, and
back-hold, and rough-and-tumble, the last the catch-as-catch-can of
stage struggles. In early boyhood Harlson had learned the tricks of
these, and in the college gymnasium he had supplemented this wisdom by
persistent training in every device of the professional gladiators. He
was there considered something better than the common. And this,
though a life depended on it, was but a wrestling-match. It was but a
struggle to see which should get the other in his power, and blows
count but little in a death-grapple.
They swayed and swung together, but so evenly braced and firm that
minutes passed, while, from a little distance, they would have seemed
but motionless. All who have watched two well-matched wrestlers will
recognize this situation.
In each man's mind was a different immediate aim. Woodell wanted
Harlson on the ground and underneath him; he wanted his hand upon his
throat, and to clutch that throat so savagely and so long that the
man's face would blacken and his tongue protrude, and his limbs finally
relax, and the work attempted on the hay-mow be done completely!
Harlson had but one thought: to overmaster in some way his assailant.
There was a sudden change, a mighty movement on the part of Woodell,
and in an instant the struggle was over.
Glorious are your possibilities, O pretty grip and heave, O
half-Nelson, beloved of wrestlers! What a leverage, what a perfection
of result is with you! What a friend you are in time of peril!
Woodell, too bloodthirsty to feint or dally, released his hold and
stooped and shot forward, his arms low down, to get the country hold,
which rarely failed when once secured. And, even as he did so, in that
very half-second of time, there was a half-turn of the other's body, an
arm about his neck, a wrench forward to a hip, and, big man though he
was, nothing could save him!
His feet left the earth; he whirled on a pivot, high and clear, and
came to the ground with a force to match his weight, his body, like a
whip-lash, cracking its whole length as he struck.
Stunned by the awful shock, he did not move. His adversary stood
glaring at the still form for a moment, dazed himself by the sudden
outcome, then dashed into the barn, came out with a harness
throat-latch and a pitchfork, strapped Woodell's hands together, pulled
them over his knees, and between the knees and wrists passed the long
ash fork-handle. The man, slowly recovering his senses, was "bucked"
in a manner known to any schoolboy; as securely bound as if with
handcuffs and with shackles; as helpless as a babe!