CHAPTER XIV

THE SHERIFF ENSNARED

Evidently the feminine portion of the population did not agree with him.

One was openly hostile--a Mrs. Garland. But she may not have been unprejudiced, for her maiden name had been Grace Hawes. For some reason--not unconnected with her manner of arrival in Badger--the married women fought shy of Hetty and kept their daughters rigidly aloof. She perceived this quickly enough--long before the men remarked it--and accepted it as she did everything else, with a species of pa.s.sive disdain.

"What for do you let these here fellers get off them b.u.m jokes?" said Lafe suddenly, one day at dinner. He was in high dudgeon. The sheriff was a regular boarder at the Fashion now, but seldom did he offer a word to the waitress, or she one to him.

"If it amuses them, let 'em do it. It don't hurt me," she said, unruffled.

"Yes it does, too, hurt you. Say, you'd ought to wear a high collar."

"You mind your own business," Hetty cried hotly and flushed to the tips of her ears.

The white, white column of her neck was always bare, for she knew its beauty full as well as did anybody else and wore her dress cut low accordingly; and Mr. Johnson had noted with consuming rage that it held the rapt gaze of the diners. Indeed, she was a strapping, fine woman.

Black hair, heavy black eye-brows, blue eyes and a dazzling skin--they made an unusual combination. Hetty carried herself fearlessly erect. Her figure was full but supple, and she walked as if her body held inexhaustible reserves of strength.

He said no more then, but later broke out with the stunning declaration that waiting on table was no fit job for a lady--not with a lot of lazy loafers round, especially. His proposition was that she get out of the Fashion and go to live with the Widow Brown, who was a nice, respectable woman, and would be company for her. And the sheriff would see that she got a job of some sort. Or perhaps she would like to go on a visit to Mrs. Floyd, whose husband owned the Lazy L range. He would secure her an invitation.

"You're awful kind, aren't you?" she said. "You make me think of Bessie and her fellow, you do."

Lafe intimated that these individuals were unknown to him, but he fain would hear more.

"Why, this fellow of Bessie's--Bess worked next to me at the store--he wanted to reform her, he said--Bess was really too fly."

"Well? Why shouldn't he?"

"Huh! Reform her!" said Miss Ferrier. "He only wanted to keep everybody else away."

"She's tough." Lafe a.s.sured himself of this again and again as he went home. "She's mighty tough; yes, sir. Else she couldn't talk that away.

And them friends of hers. A city's a rotten place."

Of course, he, too, asked her to go riding. She thanked him, but refused.

"I'll treat you proper," he said.

"You can bank on it you will. But I won't go. No, thanks."

A silver heart he purchased for her, together with an enormously long chain, was returned without a syllable of explanation, although the gift was dispatched anonymously. The sheriff was much chagrined. Hetty did her task above criticism when he was at table, but all efforts to establish a friendlier footing met with rebuffs.

"I'll be doggoned if you ain't nicer to these here other fellers than you are to me," said Lafe, after a fortnight of this.

"Why shouldn't I be?"

"Why shouldn't--? I swan I don't know."

The admission was wrung from him slowly, and he appeared to be deep in thought during the remainder of the meal. His manner thenceforward took on a grave, distant politeness that Hetty found peculiarly galling.

Meanwhile, the world wagged on about as usual.

One day he listened with a very bad grace to certain compliments paid by a puncher to Hetty. He considered them to be in execrable taste, probably because her badinage in reply lacked its usual sting. He frowned sullenly, and Mr. Johnson's reputation was such that this surly demeanor greatly disconcerted her admirer, much to Hetty's annoyance.

The sheriff lingered after the others had risen from the table.

"I'll find out right now," he said determinedly.

Hetty happened to lean over his shoulder to remove some dishes. With a dexterous twist, he pinioned her arms and kissed her full on the mouth.

She was quite pa.s.sive under it, gazing steadily into his eyes when he paused.

"Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself," was all she said.

"I ain't complaining," he answered thickly. Yet he released her.

A bad week followed for Lafe. He was irascible, quick to snap up a word, which was foreign to him. So insulting was his behavior that the landlord of the Fashion feared he would have to shoot Lafe some day when he caught him without a gun.

The sheriff occupied a two-roomed frame shack on the edge of town. It was a cheerless hole of a place. His barn, where he kept his three horses, was inviting by comparison. Often of nights he paced the bare floor of the bedroom, and more than once the faint dawn was whitening the windows, and the c.o.c.ks of all Badger were l.u.s.tily heralding the sun, before he threw himself down to sleep. One evening he deposited his lantern on a chair and sat down in another beside it, and in that half-light tried to reason out the whole problem. About midnight he threw away his cigarette and prepared for bed.

"Well," he said, ruffling the sheet with his toes, "I give in. She may be worse'n ol' Dutch Annie, but I've got to have her. That's all there is to that."

He sought Hetty next evening after her work was done at the Fashion. She was standing in the rear doorway of the annex.

"I want you to marry me," he began.

"You do, do you? I suppose you think you're doing something mighty fine to ask me, don't you?" A slight color rose in her cheeks.

"Never mind what I think. I can't do without you. It must be love, I reckon, though it ain't what I thought that was. But I want you to marry me, anyhow. Will you?"

"No, I won't," she said.

"Yes, you will, too."

"I wouldn't marry you, Lafe Johnson, if you were the last man on top of earth." She turned indoors.

The sheriff went home, very quiet indeed.

CHAPTER XV

HOW HE WON A WIFE

Three days pa.s.sed, and they were much the same as before. Then, on a sunshiny morning, the sheriff strolled back from the bar of the Fashion to glance into the dining-room, minded to seek another interview. Hetty was sitting by a window. Her face was red and streaked with tears. She was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief. He tiptoed out of the place.

At dinner Lafe was very brusque and stated his wants with sharpness.