On the afternoon of the following day Dixie came to the store. At the
moment Cahews was busy with some customers on the side of the house
devoted to dry-goods, and Henley was at his desk in the rear drawing a
cheque to pay for some cotton he had bought from a farmer. Dixie walked
straight toward him, but Henley did not see her till she was quite
close, then he was struck by the unusual pallor and tense gravity of her
face. He sprang up at once and proffered a chair.
"I want to talk to you," she said, her lips quivering, and she motioned
toward the waiting farmer. "Finish with him; I'm in no hurry."
Henley complied, a startled concern for her rendering him all but
incapable of resuming the business with the customer. He had to go out
to the farmer's wagon to read the marks on the cotton-bale for record,
and even as he made the notes in his book and directed the unloading of
the wagon he was saying to himself: "She's in trouble--something has
gone wrong. She never was knocked out like that before."
On his return he entered at the side-door, and as he was crossing the
yard to reach it he caught sight of her when she thought she was
unobserved. She was pressing her hands to her face, and her whole form
seemed to have wilted. She heard his step and essayed to assume a light
mood of greeting, but it was a poor pretence, at best. She smiled as
she looked up, but it was a cold, bloodless effort.
"I may as well tell you, Alfred, that I'm in trouble," she began,
tremulously, as he sat down near her. "You've always said I had a long
head on me for a girl, but I reckon I can manage just so far, and not a
bit farther. I can plant and sow and gather and reap, and even market
small dribs of things, but I'm a fool in big business matters, and I've
gone and got my foot in it. I'm up to my neck in the mire, and I'm
sinking inch by inch."
"What's wrong, Dixie?" he said, consolingly. "You mustn't let yourself
give up this way. It ain't like you."
"Well, it's about my farm," she said, and she paused to steady her
voice, which seemed to fail her.
"I see," Henley said. "Old Welborne is charging you too high interest.
You ought to shift the mortgage to somebody more human--somebody with at
least a thimbleful of soul. That man is the hardest taskmaster on earth.
He'd skin a flea for its hide and tallow."
"Mortgage? I'm afraid you wouldn't exactly call it a mortgage, Alfred.
Listen; I've just got to tell you about it. You are my friend. I know
you'll tell me the best thing to do, and I'll abide by your advice. When
I bought the farm from Uncle Tom, who, you remember, wanted to sell out
to move to Alabama when the trade was made, I only had a thousand
dollars ready money, and the price was two thousand. Uncle Tom was
anxious to close out and get away, and so he looked about for somebody
that would lend me the balance. Times was awfully hard then, and nobody
had any money on hand but Welborne, and he said he'd let me have it at a
reasonable rate of interest. Somehow Welborne never would get ready to
make out the papers and turn over the money, and Uncle Tom was nearly
out of his head with worry over the delay."
"One of the old dog's tricks!" Henley said, angrily. "I know him through
and through. But go on; go on."
"Well, it was the last day before Uncle Tom was to go that Welborne
finally said he was ready and had us come to his office. I haven't got
head enough to tell you all he said, for it was so mixed up. He went on
at a frightful rate about how hard it had been for him to call in money
enough to accommodate us, and finally made a proposition. He said in
order to make himself plumb secure the farm must be bought in his name
and mine as partners, with the understanding that whenever I got the
money I could buy him out. Somehow I felt uneasy then, but Uncle Tom
declared it was plumb fair. Sam Deacon, the young man who was studying
law here then, was in the office, and he told me it was all right and
perfectly safe, and so under all that pressure I consented. I have never
told a soul about it. Somehow the longer it went on the more foolish it
seemed for a girl like me to be in partnership with that old
money-shark, and I was ashamed."
"Well, even then," said Henley, still perplexed, "your interest must be
safe. I reckon you've had your scare for nothing."
"I haven't told you all yet," Dixie sighed. "The big rent I've had to
pay him on his half has kept my nose to the grindstone, so that I'm even
deeper in debt to him now than I was at the start."
"Rent?" exclaimed the storekeeper, staring blandly.
"Yes, nothing would suit Mr. Welborne but that his part was worth two
hundred a year, and he refused right out to trade any other way."
A light broke on Henley. He whistled softly, and his brawny hand
clutched his knee like a vise as he leaned forward.
"I see, I see," he panted, his eyes large in pitying surprise. "He was
dodging the law against usury. He has it fixed so that he's making no
violation of law, and yet he is getting at least two and a half times as
much as he'd be entitled to. Instead of eighty dollars a year--eight per
cent.--he's getting two hundred. You've already paid him for the value
of his part over and over. My Lord, my Lord, and you--you who have had
such a hard time! But have you never made any payment at all besides the
rent?"
"It was all I could do to rake up the two hundred a year," Dixie
answered, huskily. "Once, though, when cotton went high and I had made
six bales, I offered him a hundred dollars to lessen my debt, but he
wouldn't take it. He said it was too little to count, and that new
papers would have to be drawed up to make a proper credit, and for me to
keep it and spend it on some implements I needed. But I haven't told you
the worst yet, Alfred. He now says land has gone down in value, and that
he needs the money he's put in, and that I must buy him out, or him me,
he don't care which, but a transfer has to be made. He says if I hain't
got the money, and refuse his liberal cash offer, the property will have
to be put up at public outcry and settled that way."
"Look here, Dixie, little friend," Henley said, his tense face furrowed
with sympathy, "you've been in powerful bad hands. Your Uncle Tom never
gave the matter a minute's consideration--all he was after was getting
away to his new home, and that young lawyer that advised you didn't have
the sense of a gnat, or was in old Welborne's pay. The paper is a legal
one, I know, for that old hog has never done a thing he could be handled
for. You've committed yourself into the hands of the slyest, most
unprincipled old thief that ever blinked under the eye of justice. He is
telling you the truth. He can sell you out, according to law, whenever
either he or you are dissatisfied with the contract. He knows you've
improved that place till it is worth double what you paid for it, and
he thinks you are in such a tight place that you'll give up in despair
and let him have what you've made by such hard licks. I know that trick,
and it is the lowest and meanest one among traders. He's got you in a
worse fix than you may imagine."
"But how can the farm be worth as much as you say it is when he says he
is willing to take eight hundred for _his_ half, which cost originally a
thousand?" Dixie wanted to know.
"That's the old 'give-or-take' dodge," Henley explained. "He's kept his
eye on you, and he's satisfied that you can't possibly raise eight
hundred dollars, and that you will take his eight and be glad to get it.
I could help you out of this in a minute--clean out, for I've got the
idle money and it would tickle me to death to advance it to you, but he
wouldn't sell. He's telling you he'll give or take, but he wouldn't
_take_; that ain't his dirty game."
"So he really can sell me out at auction?" Dixie groaned.
"Yes, but that would be his last resort," Henley said. "He thinks he's
got you under his thumb, and that he'll scare you into accepting his
cash. Wait, keep your seat; let me study over it; there must be some
way. The Lord Almighty wouldn't let a grasping old skunk like that rob a
helpless girl like you. Welborne didn't make you the give-or-take offer
in writing--I'm sure he didn't; he's too slick for that?"
"No, he drove by home yesterday and called me out to the gate. He says
land has gone down on account of the new railroad passing on the other
side of the mountain, and that we both made a big mistake in paying as
much as we did."
"The old liar!" Henley cried. "The road's coming to Chester, and he
knows it. He thinks Chester will grow, and your farm will be cut up into
town building sites. He's determined to get your property by hook or
crook. Some'n must be done, and that right off. Let me study a minute."
Henley went to the side-door and looked out. Dixie saw him step down
into the junk-filled yard, and move aimlessly about from one spot to
another, his hands locked behind him. His head was bowed, and his fine,
strong face darkened by a steady frown. Jim Cahews came looking for him
to ask some question, but he waved him away. Dixie heard him cry out
impatiently: "Don't bother me!--let me alone! For the Lord's sake, go
back, go back!"
Cahews returned to his customer, and Dixie remained seated, her eyes
fixed on Henley. He seemed to have forgotten that she was near; he
seemed scarcely to know where he was himself, for once he drew himself
to a seat on a big dry-goods box and sat swinging his legs to and fro,
his gaze on the cloud-flecked sky. Then the pendulum-like movement, the
pounding of his heels would cease; with a hand clutching the box on
either side of him he would lean forward, lock his feet together beneath
him, and bite his lip. Suddenly he got down and came back to her, a
certain light of decision in his eyes.
"I've tackled a heap of jobs," he said, as he sat down beside her, "and
I've beat old Welborne more than once, but I generally steer clear of
him. I've been trying to think up some way to thwart him, but it is
powerful hard to devise any means to get at him. Now, if we just could
manage to get him to make his give-or-take offer before a witness we'd
have him good and tight, but he'd be too slick to do it. If he did make
it, you see, you could plank down the money I'll lend you and settle the
thing on the spot. Now listen, Dixie, there is only one possible way
open, and that is to trick the old scamp into writing down his offer and
signing it. I know something I'd like to try on if you'd forgive me for
the--the false light I'd have to put you in for a few minutes."
"False light? Why, what do you mean, Alfred?"
"Why, it's like this, amongst business men"--Henley flushed to the
eyes--"now and then two scamps (like me 'n him, for instance) kind o'
join forces against a weaker person and work together in harness like.
Now, if you just wouldn't think too hard of me, I could sort o' let on
to old Welborne, you see, that you was up to your eyes in debt to me,
and that--that the thing had been running on till I was--well, was plumb
tired out, and ready to come down on you."
"Oh, I see." A faint smile broke over the girl's shrewd face. "Why, I
wouldn't care what you did or said, Alfred," she cried. "He's trying to
rob me, and I'd have a right to protect myself."
"Well, then, enough said." Henley fell into an attitude of relief. "You
set here, and I'll run over and chat with him. I may fetch him here, and
if I openly abuse you and dun you to your teeth, you must take it all in
good spirit. You can hang your head and pretend to be sort o' shamed, if
you like; it will help to carry the thing out. Any girl that could sell
that old lion's cage for as much as you did--and in the way you did
it--ought to know how to pull the wool over Welborne's eyes. You see,
when the old devil is made to believe that I'm down on you and
determined to have a settlement, he'll think you are in more desperate
straits than ever. Wait!"
Henley went to the big iron safe in a corner of the room and counted out
a roll of currency. He folded it tightly and gave it to her. "Stick that
down in your pocket," he said, "and have it ready, and, remember, you
are to let on all the way through that you are willing to sell out, but
before you do so you want his proposition put down in black and white.
He may think it is just some cranky woman's notion, and do it--he may,
and he may not; our chances hang on that one thing. You are a dead
goner if you don't get that paper."
"I understand fully," Dixie said, her lips drawn firmly. "The only thing
I don't like is borrowing your money."
"Don't be silly," Henley snorted. "You are good for it, and I'd rather
lend money to you than anybody else on earth. Don't let that bother
you."
"Well, I won't, then," the girl said. "I know you want to help me, and
I'm very thankful for such a friend."