CHAPTER VII

ANOTHER WORD AS TO HETTY

If Wint had expected immediate conflict, he was to be disappointed. For after Kite left his office that day, nothing happened; neither that day, nor the next, nor the next. Amos told Wint that Kite would strike, in his own time, and strike below the belt. Wint laughed and said he was ready to fight, foul or fair. But--neither foul blow nor fair was struck. Radabaugh reported that his orders had been obeyed. Lutcher had left town, temporarily, it was said. His rooms off the alley were locked, and he had gone so far as to give Radabaugh a key, so that the marshal might make sure, now and then, that Lutcher’s store of drinkables was not disturbed. One shipment did come in for Mrs. Moody. It was labeled “Canned Goods”; but Jim Radabaugh made it his business to inspect all sorts of goods consigned to Mrs. Moody, and he found this particular box contained goods in bottles instead of cans. He emptied the bottles into the creek, across the railroad tracks from the station, and told Mrs. Moody about it. She threw a stick of firewood at him, then wept with rage because he dodged it successfully.

For the rest, Hardiston was quiet. The lunch-cart man whom Radabaugh had suspected took his cart and left town. Kite met Wint on the street and greeted him as pleasantly as usual. Jack Routt cultivated him, and joked him about his ideas of morality. One night, at Routt’s home, he offered Wint a drink. Wint looked thoughtfully through the smoke of his pipe as though he had not heard. When Routt repeated the offer, Wint declined politely.

The business of being Mayor occupied very little of Wint’s time. Early in June, Foster, the city solicitor, brought a stranger to see Wint about a street carnival which wanted to come to Hardiston the last week in June. Wint agreed to grant the permits necessary.

“You understand,” he told the man, “that this is a dry town.”

The stranger winked, and said he understood. Wint shook his head gravely. “I’m afraid you don’t understand,” he said. “This is a dry town. There’s no booze sold here. Last summer, I remember, there was some selling in connection with your carnival, here. If you try that this time, I’ll have to close you up.”

The man looked surprised and disgusted. “What is this, a Sunday school?” he demanded.

“No,” said Wint. “Just a dry town.”

“How about the games?”

Wint smiled good-naturedly. “Oh, don’t make them too raw. I’ve no objection to ‘The cane you ring, that cane you get.’”

“Hell!” said the man. “We won’t make chicken feed.”

“You don’t have to come.”

But the stranger said they would come, all right. After he had gone, Wint told Foster the carnival would bear watching. Foster agreed, but said the merchants wanted it. “Brings the farmers to town every day, instead of just Saturday, you know.”

“I know,” said Wint. “Well, let them come.”

After a week of quiet, Wint decided that Kite and his allies had put the lid on. “But they’re just waiting,” Amos warned him. “Waiting till they get a toe hold on you, somehow. Watch your step, Wint.”

Wint said he was watching. “I wish they’d start something,” he said. “Hot weather’s dull, with no excitement.”

“There’ll be enough excitement,” Amos assured him.

Routt walked home with Wint one afternoon, talking over a proposition that he had brought up a day or two before. Since Wint was going to be a lawyer, he said, they ought to go in together. Wint was already so well advanced in his reading that Routt thought in another year or eighteen months he could take the examinations. “There’s a big practice waiting for the right people down here,” he told Wint enthusiastically. “Dick Hoover and I are going to get together when his father dies. The old man is pretty feeble. You come in with us. We’ll do things, Wint.”

Wint was pleased and somewhat flattered by the suggestion, and thought well of Routt for it. But he only said, good-naturedly, that it was still a long way off, and that there would be times enough to talk about the matter when he was admitted to the bar. Nevertheless, Routt dwelt on it insistently, so insistently that instead of turning aside toward his own home at the usual place, he came on toward Wint’s father’s house, still talking. It did not occur to Wint that there was any purpose in Routt’s thus accompanying him. He had heard that Routt and Kite had been seen together, and asked Jack about it. Routt explained that he had to keep in touch with all sorts. A mixture of business and politics, he said, and Wint was satisfied.

When they came in sight of the house, it was still an hour before supper time; and Hetty Morfee was sweeping down the front steps and the walk to the gate. They saw her while they were still half a block away, and Routt said casually:

“Hetty still working for your mother, I see.”

Wint nodded. “Yes; I guess she’s pretty good.”

Routt agreed. “If she’d only keep straight. But....”

“I don’t think she’s that kind,” said Wint.

“I hope not,” Routt assented. “Hope she doesn’t--get into trouble. If she ever did, in this town....”

Wint said nothing; and Routt added: “She’d need a friend, all right.” And again: “She’d need some one to take her part. But he’d be in Dutch, whoever he was.”

He looked at Wint sidewise. They were near the gate now, and Wint said: “Come in and have supper.”

Routt shook his head. “Not to-night.”

Hetty looked up, at their approach, and Wint called: “Hello, Hetty.”

She said: “Hello, Wint.” Routt repeated Wint’s greeting, and the girl looked at him with curiously steady eyes, and said:

“Hello, Jack.”

Wint thought, vaguely, that there was some repressed feeling in her tone; but he forgot the matter in bidding Routt good-by, and went inside, leaving Hetty at her task, while Routt went back by the way they had come. Hetty watched him go. He did not look toward her, did not turn his head. She watched him out of sight.

* * * * *

Jack Routt took Agnes Caretall to the moving pictures that night. Wint saw them there. He was with Joan. Afterward, Routt and Agnes walked home together.

Routt did most of the talking, on that homeward walk. Now and then Agnes seemed to protest, weakly, at something he was urging her to do. One near enough might have heard him speak of Wint. But there was no one near.

When they reached her home, there was a light in the sitting-room window. That meant Amos was there; and Routt said he would not go in. “But you’ll remember, won’t you, Agnes,” he asked, “if you want to do something for me?”

She said softly: “I do want to do anything for you.”

He laughed at her gently. “How about him?”

“I hate him,” she said, with a sudden intensity that was not pretty to see. “I hate him. Hate him, I say.”

“What’s he ever done to you?” Routt teased; and she said:

“Nothing,” as though that one word were an accusation.

Routt put his arm around her; and she clung to him with a swift, terrified sort of passion, as though afraid to let him go. It seemed to embarrass him; he freed himself a little roughly.

He left her standing there when he hurried away.