The Candidate: A Political Romance
see, Mr. Grayson, when I heerd the dogs barkin', sez I to myself 'it's
robbers, shore'; and before I h'ists the window up-stairs I reaches old
Deadeye off the hooks, and then, if it had 'a' been robbers, it wouldn't
'a' been healthy for 'em."
"I'm sure of that, Mr. Simpson," said Jimmy Grayson; "you don't look
like a man who would allow himself to be run over."
"An' I wouldn't," said the old man, with sudden, fierce emphasis. But he
put the rifle on the hooks over the fireplace. Such hooks as these were
not usual in Nebraska; but Jimmy Grayson was too polite to say anything,
and Harley was still watching every movement of the old man. The driver
returned at this moment from the stable, and, reporting that he had fed
the horses, took his place with the others at the fire.
"I 'low you-uns would like to eat a little," said the old man, laughing
in the same unnatural way. "Marthy, tote in suthin' from the kitchen as
quick as you kin."
The old woman raised her startled, frightened eyes, and for a moment her
glance met Harley's; it seemed to him to be full of entreaty; the whole
atmosphere of the place was to him tense, strained, and tragic; why, he
did not know, but he shook himself and decided that it was only the
result of weariness, the long ride, and the night in the storm.
Nevertheless, the feeling did not depart because he willed that it
should go.
"No, we thank you," Jimmy Grayson was saying; "we are not hungry; but we
should like very much to go to bed."
"It's jest with you," said Simpson. "Marthy, I'll show the gen'lemen to
their room, and you kin stay here till I come back."
The old woman did not speak, but stood in a crouched attitude looking at
Grayson and then at Harley and then at the driver; it seemed to the
correspondent that she did not dare trust her voice, and he saw fear
still lurking in her eyes.
"Come along, gen'lemen," said Simpson, taking from the table a small
lamp, that had been lighted at their entrance, and leading the way.
Harley glanced back once at the door, and the woman's eyes met his in a
look that was like one last despairing appeal. But there was nothing
tangible, nothing that he could not say was the result of an overwrought
fancy.
It was a small and bare room, with only a single bed, to which the old
man took them. "It's the best I've got," he said, apologetically. "Mr.
Grayson, you an' the newspaper man kin sleep in the bed, an' t'other
feller, I reckon, kin curl up on the floor."
"It is good enough for anybody," said Jimmy Grayson, gallantly. As a
matter of fact, both he and Harley had known what it was to fare worse.
"Good-night," the man said, and left them rather hastily, Harley
thought; but the others took no notice, and were soon in sound slumber,
the candidate because he had the rare power of going to sleep whenever
there was a chance, and the driver because he was indifferent and tired.
But Harley lay awake. An hour ago his dream of heaven was a bed, and
now, the bed attained, sleep would not come near. Out of the stillness,
after a while, he heard the gentle moving of feet below, and he sat up
on the bed, all his suspicions confirmed. Something unusual was going on
in this lone house! And it had been going on even before he and the
candidate came!
He listened to the moving feet for a few moments. Then the noise ceased,
but Harley knew that there was no further chance of sleep for him, with
his nerves on edge, and likely to remain there. He lay back on the edge
of the bed, trying to accustom his eyes to the darkness, and presently
he heard a sound, the most chilling that a man can hear. It was the
sound of a woman, alone and in the dark, between midnight and morning,
crying gently, but crying deeply, uncontrollably, and from her chest.
Harley's resolve was taken at once. He slipped on his clothes and went
to the door. His eyes were used now to the dark, and there was a window
that shed a half-light.
He stopped with his hand on the bolt, because he heard the low, wailing
note more plainly, and he was sure that it came from another room
across the narrow hall. He turned the bolt, but the door refused to
open. There was no key on the inside! They had been locked in, and for a
purpose!
Harley was fully aroused--on edge with excitement, but able to restrain
it and to think clearly. There was an old grate in the room, apparently
used but seldom, and, leaning against the wall beside it, an iron poker.
Tiptoeing, he obtained the poker and returned to the door. The lock was
a flimsy affair, and, inserting the point of the poker under the catch,
he easily pried it off and put it gently on the floor.
Then he stepped out into the dusky hall and listened. The woman was yet
crying, monotonously, but with such a note of woe that Harley was
shaken. He had thought in his own room that it was the old woman who
wept thus; but now in the hall he knew it to be a younger and fresher
voice.
He saw farther down another door, and he knew that it led to the room
from which came the sounds of grief. He approached it cautiously, still
holding the poker in his hands, and noticed that there was no key in the
lock. The woman, whoever she might be, was locked in, as he and his
comrades had been; but the empty keyhole gave him an idea. He blew
through it, making a sort of whistling sound with his puckered lips. The
crying ceased, all save an occasional low, half-smothered sob, as if the
woman were making a supreme effort to control her feelings.
Then Harley put his lips to the keyhole again and whispered: "What is
the matter? It is a friend who asks." There was no reply, only a tense
silence, even the occasional sobs ceasing. Then, after a few moments of
waiting, Harley whispered, "Don't be alarmed; I am about to force the
door."
The door was of flimsy pine, and it gave quickly to the poker's
leverage. Then, this useful weapon still in hand, Harley stepped into
the room, where he heard a deep-drawn sigh that expressed mingled
emotions.
There was a window at the end of the room, and the moonlight shone
clearly through, clothing with its full radiance a tall, slim girl, who
had risen from a chair, and who stood trembling before Harley, fully
dressed, although her long hair hung down her back and her eyes were red
with weeping.
She was handsome, but not with the broad face of the West. Hers was
another type, a type that Harley knew well. The cheek-bones were a
little high, the features delicate, the figure slender, and there was on
her cheeks a rosy bloom that never grew under the cutting winds of the
great plains.
Harley knew at once that she was the daughter of the old couple below
stairs.
"Do not be afraid of me," he said, gently. "I know that you are in great
trouble, but I will help you. I, too, am from Kentucky. I was born
there, and I used to live there, though not in the mountains, as you
did."
The appeal and terror in her eyes changed to momentary surprise. "What
do you know of me?" she exclaimed.
"Very little of you, but more of your father. Years ago I was at his
house in the Kentucky mountains. He was a leader in the Simpson-Eversley
feud. I knew him to-night, but I have said nothing. Now, tell me, what
is the matter?"
His voice was soothing--that of a strong man who would protect, and the
girl yielded to its influence. Brokenly she told the story. Many men had
been killed in the feud, and the few Eversleys who were left had been
scattered far in the mountains. Then old Daniel Simpson said that he
would come out on the Great Plains, more than a thousand miles, and they
had come.
"There was one of the Eversleys--Henry Eversley--he was young and
handsome. People said he was not bad. He, too, came to Nebraska. He
found out where we lived; he has been here."
"Ah!" said Harley. He felt that they were coming to the gist of the
matter.
The girl, with a sudden passionate cry, threw herself upon her knees.
"He is here now! He is here now!" she cried. "He is in the cellar, bound
and gagged, and my father is going to kill him! But I love him! He came
here to-night, and my father caught us together, and struck him down.
But we meant nothing wrong. I declare before God that we did not! We
were getting ready to run away together and to be married at Speedwell!"
Harley shuddered. The impending tragedy was more terrible than he had
feared.
"You can do nothing!" exclaimed the girl. "My father is armed. He will
have no interference! He cares nothing for what may come after! He
thinks--"
She could not say it all; but Harley knew well that what she would say
was, "He thinks that he has been robbed of his honor by a mortal enemy."
"Can you stay quietly in this room until morning?" he asked. "I know it
is hard to wait under such circumstances, but you must do it for the
sake of Henry Eversley."
"And will you save him?"
"He shall be saved."
"I will wait," she said.
Harley slipped noiselessly out, and, closing the door behind him, went
to his room, where he at once awakened the candidate.
Jimmy Grayson listened with intense attention to Harley's story. When
the tale was over, he and Harley whispered together long and earnestly,
and Jimmy Grayson frequently nodded his head in assent. Then they awoke
the driver, a heavy man, but with a keen Western mind that at once
became alert at the news of danger.
"Yes, I got my bearings now," he said, in reply to a question of
Harley's. "I asked the old fellow about it when I came up from the
stable, and Speedwell is straight north from here. I can take one of the
horses and hit the town before daylight. I know everybody there."
"But how about the dogs?" asked Jimmy Grayson. "Can you get past them?"
"No trouble there at all. After we came, the old fellow locked 'em up in
a stall in the stable and left 'em there. I guess he didn't want to look
to us as if he was too suspicious."
"Then go, and God go with you!" said Jimmy Grayson, with deep feeling.
The driver left at once, not by the stairway, near the foot of which the
old man might be watching, but by a much simpler road. He raised the
window of the room and swung out, sustained by Jimmy Grayson's powerful
arms until his feet were within a yard of the ground. Then he dropped,
ran lightly across the lawn, sprang over the wire fence, and soon
disappeared in the grove where the girl had said that the horses were
waiting. Jimmy Grayson closed the window with a deep sigh of relief.
"He will do his part," he said; "now for ours."
He did not seek to sleep again, and Harley could not think of it. One
task occupied him a little while--the replacing of the lock on the
door--but after that the hours passed heavily and in silence. The flush
of dawn appeared in the east at last, and then they heard a faint step
in the hall outside and the gentle turning of a key in a lock. Jimmy
Grayson and Harley looked at each other and smiled grimly, but they said
nothing. A half-hour later there was a loud knock on their door, and old
Daniel Simpson bade them rise and get ready for breakfast.
"It is chiefly in your hands now," said Harley, in a low tone to Jimmy
Grayson.
"We'll be down in a few minutes, and we have had a good night's sleep,
for which we thank you," he called to the old man.
"You're welcome to it," replied Simpson. "You'll find water and towels
on the porch down-stairs, and then you can come straight in to
breakfast."
They heard his step passing down the hall to the stairway, where it died
away, and then they dressed deliberately. On the porch they found the
water and towels as Simpson had said, and bathed and rubbed their faces.
A golden sun was just rising from the prairie, and beads of water from
the night's rain sparkled on the trees and grass. The wind came out of
the southwest, fresh and glorious.