Crossing the street diagonally, Henley came to a little two-story frame
building near the post-office. Pausing before the door, he looked in and
saw old Welborne seated at his desk near an open window. The
money-lender was thin, had parchment-like skin, massive eyebrows, and
long, gray hair, which never seemed to have been trimmed, and was massed
on the greasy collar of his faded black alpaca coat. He was past seventy
years of age, and the hand which held his pen shook visibly. Henley went
in, and as he did so old Welborne laid down his pen and turned round in
his revolving-chair. He nodded and grunted, and motioned to a
three-legged stool near the desk.
Henley sat down on it, and as he did so he drew out a couple of cigars,
and, holding them in the shape of a letter V, he extended them toward
the old man. "I'm advertising a new brand," he said, cordially. "Take
one, and whenever you want a good smoke drop in. You'll find 'em as free
from cabbage-leaves as any in this town. One thing certain, you don't
have to bore a hole through 'em to start circulation."
"Drumming up trade, eh?" The money-lender smiled as he took the cigar,
and, pinching off the tip with his long thumb-nail, he thrust it between
his gashed and stained teeth. "Well, I don't blame any man for trying to
turn a penny during hard times like these. But, Lord, Alf, you'd make a
living if you was on a bare rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I
take off my hat to any man that could handle a busted circus like you
did. I wouldn't have touched that pile of junk at your figure if it had
been given to me, and yet--well, every man to his line."
Henley scratched a match on the sole of his shoe and lighted his cigar.
"I've been just a little afraid that your nephew--that Hank Bradley may
have told you about the little spat me and him had at the store the
other day--"
"I heard it," Welborne broke in, with an indifferent smile. "I was
standing in the door; he was full; he ought to have been kicked out; you
done right; he's a lazy, good-for-nothing scamp, but don't talk to me
about him. I pay him what is coming to him, board him for next to
nothing, and there my responsibility ends. I'm not fighting his
battles--huh, I guess not! How's trade over your way?"
"N. G." Henley puffed, squinting his right eye to avoid the smoke which
curled up from the end of his cigar, as he looked absently at the dingy
window-panes and the cobwebs hanging from the cracked and bulging
plastering overhead. "We can sell plenty on tick, but getting paid is
the devil. Jim Cahews is a good man, but he can't say no--to a
petticoat, anyway. While I was away he went it rather reckless. Why, he
let one little woman that has heretofore been the brag of the county get
in clean up to her neck."
Old Welborne ceased smoking; his dim, blue eyes twinkled. "I'll bet a
dollar to a ginger-cake I know who you mean," he said, eagerly.
"Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't," Henley said. "But I've had
enough of her foolishness and promising and never coming to time. I'm
not in business for my health. She's a neighbor of mine, and I always
admired her plucky fight, but charity begins at home. I'm not running
an orphan asylum, nor an old woman's home. Jim misunderstood me, anyway.
I told 'im her account was all right, and for him not to bear down too
hard on her, and I went to Texas and forgot all about it. But, holy
smoke! when I got home and looked at the books I was fairly staggered at
the figures. She's over there at the store now, and I had to talk to her
straight, and she won't get a bit deeper in my debt. I've got to call a
halt."
"I think I might set your mind at rest on what she owes you," Welborne
said, with an unctuous smile. "There is no use beating about the bush,
Henley, you know she's in debt to me, and you've come over to see if I
can help you out. Well, I can. I am in the shape to do it. Me 'n you
have clashed several times in our deals and had hard feelings, but there
is no use keeping up strife. We can work together now. Me and her own
that farm in partnership, and I've had enough of it. I've made a fair
give-or-take offer, and nothing is to prevent her from closing out and
paying you what she owes you. I've got eight hundred dollars in cash
ready to hand her at any minute."
"You don't say!" Henley's look of gratified surprise was perfect. "Well,
she's in a better fix than I thought. She ain't much of a hand to tell
her business, and I thought she had--well, about run through her pile."
"She can get the money if she will have common-sense," said Welborne;
"but women never know how to 'tend to business, and she may act stubborn
to the end and force me to put up the land for sale. It wouldn't fetch
much, and you and me'd both lose by it. The best thing to do is to make
her have sense, and if you will--if you will talk straight to her about
your debt, maybe she'll sell out and be done with it."
"Well, I can talk straight enough, if you'll leave it to me," Henley
said, with what looked like a frown of chronic resentment. "It makes me
mad to think she'll keep me out of my money while you are offering her
enough to square off."
"Well, go over to the store and see what you can do to bring her to her
senses," the money-lender proposed, with a smirk which twisted his
sallow visage into a grimace. "If you can bring her to reason, we'll
both get--get what's due us."
"All right," Henley said, in a tone of gratitude. "You come on over in a
minute. I'll tell her I've heard of your offer, and that I won't stand
anymore foolishness."
Henley sauntered back to the store. His face was set and colorless as he
approached Dixie. She glanced up, and he was shocked by the look of
despair in her great, sorrowful eyes.
"He's coming over," Henley said. "Everything is cocked and primed. He
thinks you may take his money--he thinks I'm going to _make_ you do it.
You needn't talk much, but stick to it that you want his offer writ down
in black and white and will have it before you'll move a peg. I'll write
it and have it ready for him to sign. If he does, we are solid; if not,
we are lost. I don't know that I ever tackled anything quite as ticklish
as this, for he is as wary and sly as a fox. We mustn't give 'im time to
think, if we can help it. Sh! there he is now. Don't mind anything I
say, no matter how harsh it sounds--remember, I'm working for your good,
and using fire to stop fire."
She nodded and smiled knowingly, but said nothing, for the money-lender
was approaching. When Welborne was quite near, Henley suddenly said
aloud: "You are a woman, but I ain't going to stand any more
foolishness. You've been saying all this time that you can't get the
money, and yet here is a cash offer of eight hundred dollars staring you
smack-dab in the face."
"I never had the offer until this morning," Dixie said, with what he
recognized as astonishing diplomacy. Her face was out of sight under the
hood of her sunbonnet, her handkerchief to her eyes.
"She's willing to do what's right," Henley said to Welborne. "The only
thing she holds out for is to have the proposition down in writing. Of
course, there is no need of it, but women know nothing about business,
and will have every detail carried out, and so I scratched it down here.
It is a plain give-or-take offer of eight hundred dollars either way,
and she ain't in no fix to refuse."
Henley dipped a pen in the ink and held the paper toward the old man.
There was an incipient wave of innate distrust in Welborne's manner as
he glanced from the bowed form of the girl to that of the waiting
storekeeper.
"Let her have her way about it," Henley advised. "Women will have
everything complete or you can't do a blessed thing with 'em. It don't
mean anything to you; you've made her a fair give-or-take offer."
"Yes, of course I have," Welborne said, conquering his qualms, and with
a quivering hand he signed the paper. He had no sooner done it than
Henley laid it face downward on a blotting-pad and, with a steady hand,
stroked its back. The eyes he fixed on Dixie, who was covertly watching
him, fairly danced as he raised the paper and folded it carefully.
"Now, you two have got the proposition down in fair legal shape, and
nothing stands between you and a deal. Miss Dixie, you are just a woman,
and may not know the ways of the business world, so I want to tell you
on my honor that this is what all fair-minded men call an absolutely
straight proposition, and when you've acted on it, it would be wrong for
you to ever say anybody coerced you or took advantage of you. You
understand that you've got a right either to pay eight hundred and own
the farm, or take eight hundred and sell your half. Is that plain to
you?"
"Yes, I understand it perfectly," Dixie answered, glancing first at him
and then at the expectant and suave money-lender.
"And you understand it, too, don't you, Mr. Welborne?"
"Yes, I understand it," the eager old man replied, craftily. "And you
know, Alf Henley, that I wouldn't have made as liberal an offer to
anybody but this girl. She's in a tight fix and needs the money, and the
farm has gone down to less 'n half of what it was worth when me and her
bought it."
"Well, then, Miss Dixie," Henley said, significantly, and he held the
paper tightly in his strong hand, "you'll have to decide which thing you
intend to do."
"I've already decided," the girl said, looking at Welborne with a placid
stare, "and I'm going to be satisfied. I know the farm isn't any good
now, and will perhaps be lower when the railroad is built the other side
of the mountain, but it is the only home we have, and I've decided to
buy it."
"_Buy_ it?" Welborne gasped, and stared as if unable to grasp her
meaning. "You don't mean that you--"
"Well, well!" Henley cried, "this _is_ a surprise. Here I've been rowing
you up Salt River for your puny little debt to me, and you now say you
are able to own a big chunk of real estate unencumbered. Why, you must
have struck oil somewhere. My, my, my!"
"I don't tell my business to everybody." Dixie, now standing, had thrust
her hand into the pocket of her skirt and was drawing out the bills.
"Here's the money, Mr. Welborne."
A snort that could have been heard to the front door issued from
Welborne's fluttering nostrils. He pushed the money from him, writhed
and tottered, and as he glared furiously at Henley he screamed:
"It's a trick put up between you. I see it, but I won't be buncoed in no
such way. Do you hear me?--no such way!"
He was turning off when Henley, now a different man, stepped before him.
"You are going to act fair for once, you old thief," he said, a gray
look of determination about his mouth and in his fixed eyes. "You've
been swindling this orphan girl all these years, and you are going to
abide by your own signed contract. You are going to do it, or, by all
that's holy, I'll head a gang of mountain-men that will drag you out of
your bed and lay a hundred lashes on your bare back."
"I'll see you in hell first!" Welborne shrieked, and, darting past
Henley, he hurried from the store as fast as his tottering gait would
take him.
"We lost, after all!" Dixie cried, and, sinking back in her chair, the
money clutched in her hand, she burst into tears.
"Not yet, not _plumb_ yet, little girl!" Henley was unconscious of the
vast tenderness of his tone. "Don't cry; be the brave little trick
you've always been."
"I'm not thinking of myself, really I'm not," she sobbed. "But my mother
and aunt have heard about it, and they are awfully upset. They love the
place, and the thought of leaving and being destitute is running them
crazy."
"Look here. Let me have the money," Henley said, his eyes flashing
dangerously. "You go home and be easy. Leave him to me. He sha'n't rob
you like that; I'll drag his bones from his dirty hide and rattle 'em
through the streets before I'll let 'im. This is a Christian community,
and God rules."
"You mustn't bother any more," Dixie said, and as she put the money into
his hands she clung to them tenderly and appealingly. "Blood has been
spilt over matters like this, Alfred, and the whole thing ain't worth
it. His nephew--I intended to warn you before--Hank Bradley is your
enemy, and now Welborne is, and between them"--she broke off with a
convulsive sob, but still clung pleadingly to his hands.
"I don't care if his whole layout is up in arms agin me; he sha'n't rob
you. You are the sweetest, dearest, most suffering little girl the sun
ever shone on, and I'll fight for you as long as there is a speck of
life in me. You go home. I'll come to you the very minute it is
settled."
"And you won't--oh, Alfred, please don't--please don't--for my sake,
don't have trouble with him. You're hot-tempered, and I've let you get
wrought up. Don't you see that it don't make any odds to me?"
"All right, then," he said, smiling, and yet she saw that his smile was
only on the surface. "I promise we won't fight about it. I'll try to
bring him to his senses in some other way. Now, go home. I'll come out
as soon as I possibly can."
It was after nightfall before he saw her again. As he was nearing her
cottage in the vague starlight he saw a figure of some one in the
fence-corner of her pasture which touched the road near his own land. He
surmised that it was she, and that she was there waiting for him, though
her head was bowed to the top rail of the fence and he couldn't see her
face. There was a strip of grass on the roadside, and he walked upon it
that it might deaden his tread till he was close upon her. As it was, he
reached her side without attracting her attention. Then something
clutched all his senses and held him like a dead thing in his tracks,
for he heard her praying in a sweet, suffering voice that lifted him
with it to the very throne of thrones.
"Oh, God, my Maker, my Saviour, my Redeemer," he heard her saying, "give
me the strength to bear it and let no harm come to my dear, dear friend.
I can bear the loss of my home, but not to have harm come to him. Oh,
Lord, help--" She raised her head, and their eyes met and clung
together. He had a folded paper in his hand, and he extended it to her.
His voice rose and broke in a wave of huskiness: "Here is the deed,
Dixie, little girl," he said. "The farm is yours. The transaction is
recorded at the court-house. Nothing can take it from you now."
"Mine, Alfred, mine, did you say?"
"Yes, I had trouble; he died hard; he saw it was all up with him after
he'd signed that agreement, but it was like pulling eye-teeth to get the
deed made out. He'd write a line, and then throw down the pen and cry
and whine like a baby. I'm ashamed to say it, but once I got mad and
caught him by that slim neck of his and pushed him down under his desk
and held him there. My thumb was in his throat. I clutched too tight. I
thought I'd killed him. The Lord must have restrained me. He was black
in the face and as limber as a rag. It was then that he give in. He'd
have held out to the end, but I was holding something over him. Women
all over the county are lending him money at a low rate, and I showed
him that if this trick of his agin you was published they'd lose faith
in him and make him pay up. He saw his danger and give in. But, my! how
it rankles. It's the first time he was ever whipped to a dead finish."
With the deed in her hand Dixie stood staring at him, her beautiful
mouth twitching with emotion, her great eyes aglow with joy. She started
to speak, but a sob rose within her and she lowered her head to the
rail. The beams of the rising moon fell on her exquisite neck; her
wonderful tresses lay massed on her shoulders.
"Don't--don't cry, Dixie," he said. "I can't bear it." He laid his hand
on her head and let it rest there gently.
Presently she looked up, caught his hand in both of hers and pressed her
lips to it. "You are the sweetest, best, noblest man in the world,
Alfred. I can't thank you. I'll--I'll choke. I'm so--so happy.
Good-night."
He stood at the fence and watched her till she had disappeared in the
cottage, and then, like a man in a delightful, bewildering dream, he
turned his face toward the lights in his own house.
Old Wrinkle was waiting for him at the gate, and he held it open for
him. "Your supper--sech as it is--is on the table waitin' for you," he
said, picking his teeth with a splinter from the fence. "Ma got it ready
for you; I've had mine; I made me some mush out of the yaller corn-meal
Pomp fetched from the mill. Mush-an'-milk, with a dab o' cream an' a
pinch o' salt, is all right to sleep on. We've had a day of it; Hettie
has gone all to flinders, and went to bed at sundown with a crackin'
headache, an' eyes swelled as big as squashes. Her uncle Ben is in
trouble. He sent her a letter fifty pages in duration by one of his
niggers. As well as I can make out betwixt Hettie's spasms her uncle
Ben's fine Baltimore lady has turned him down. Thar seems to be a Yankee
feller in the way. She advanced a hundred reasons fer deciding not to
retire to lonely mountain-life. She's riled up, for one thing, on the
nigger question--says she understands a lady has to go armed to the
teeth just to walk from the well to the back porch, an' that she never
had learned to shoot, nohow. The Yankee feller has more scads than Ben,
an' has bought an estate in New York City which he lays at her feet as
an inducement. Het an' Ben must be slices off the same block, for his
letter was soaked in salt water, an' she had to run a hot flatiron over
hern before it would do to send. He writ her that she was the only
faithful woman on earth--he was hintin' at Dick's burial arrangements, I
reckon--an' that if she was thar he'd put his head in her lap an' have a
good cry. They would have had to swap laps if they had been together
to-day, for Het needed a foot-tub to take care of her overflow. Well,
I'm keepin' you from your royal banquet. You'll find it on the
dinner-table, with the cloth all drawed up over it like a bundle ready
for the wash. Ma tied it up that way to keep the cat out of it. I don't
think the cat 'u'd care for any of it, but I reckon Jane 'lowed the
thing mought paw it over in the hope o' strikin' some'n worth while."
Conscious of little that the old man was saying, Henley passed on into
the dimly lighted farm-house, experiencing a vague sense of relief that
he was not just then to face his wife.