Dixie Hart | Page 3

William N. Harben
a hoss trade
I'd made with a cousin o' his, and it ended in blows. The crowd parted
us, and he went one way and me another; but after that he hated me like
a rattlesnake, and he told her not to let me come there again. He might

not have made that demand if he had thought it over, for it sorter give
'er a stick to poke 'im with. She used to say nice things about me to egg
him on, and he often went with her for no other reason than to keep me
away. Well, you can see how it was. She wanted to beat the other gals,
and he wanted to outdo me, and, in the wrangle, they got married one
day all of a sudden."
"And you felt bad, I reckon," Dixie Hart said, sympathetically.
"I wanted to die," Henley answered, grimly. "I cursed man and God.
That gal was my life. I was as blind as a bat in daytime."
"Then I've heard," the girl pursued, "that he neglected her and finally
went off West with Hank Bradley, and almost quit writing to her."
"Yes," Henley nodded, "and she moped about home as pale as a dead
person, and never seemed interested in anything that was going on. All
that didn't do me any good, I'm here to tell you. Her trouble become
mine. I toted it night and day. I wasn't fit for work. I was as nigh crazy
as a man could well be out of an asylum."
"Then the news come back that he was dead?" The girl leaned on the
fence and looked down.
"Yes; Hank Bradley come home, and told how Dick was blowed away
in the awful tornado that destroyed that new town in Oklahoma. Hank
had helped hunt for his body; but it never could be identified among the
hundreds that was picked up, and so his remains never was brought
home. That one fact nearly killed Hettie. I'm talking plain, Dixie, but
me and you are good, true friends, and I want you, anyway, to
understand my fix. I used to watch her taking walks all by herself in the
woods, always in her thick, black veil, and bowed over like, as if she
was under a heavy load. I reckon no woman the Lord ever constructed
is quite as attractive to the eye uncovered as she is partly hid, for we are
always hunting for perfection, and so nothing under the sun seemed to
me to be so good and pure and desirable as Hettie did. I even gloried in
the attention she paid his mammy and daddy. I thought it was fine and
noble, and that it gave the lie to the charge that women are changeable.

I don't want you to think that I rate her any lower now, either, Dixie, for
I don't. She's a sight better woman than I am a man, and I certainly
dogged the life out of her till she agreed to marry me. She told me fair
and square at the start that she'd always love him, and I told her that it
wouldn't matter a bit. It hurts my pride a little now, but that ain't her
lookout. Folks say she's odd and peculiar, and that may be so, too, but
she was that way all along, and it's a waste of time to criticise anybody
for what they can't help."
"I've always liked her," the girl said. "She certainly attends to her own
business, and that is more than I can say for my chief enemy, Carrie
Wade. Alfred, that girl hates the ground I walk on, and yet she keeps
coming to see me. She has me on her visiting list so she can devil me.
She has no work to do at home, and so she comes over to nag me. She
never has a beau or gets a thing to wear without trotting over to tell me
about it or flaunt it in my face. She even makes fun of me for having to
work in the field, and is actually insulting sometimes. I'd shut the door
in her face, but it would only please her to think she'd made me mad."
"She's more anxious to get attention from men than any woman I ever
laid eyes on," Henley declared, resentfully. "When drummers come to
sell me goods, she scents 'em a mile down the road, and is in the store
pretending to want to buy some knickknack or other before they open
their samples. I oughtn't to talk agin a lady, Dixie, but she lays herself
open to it, and is so much like a man in some things that I forget what's
due her as a woman. She has such a
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