Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1901 — Hetty, or The Old Grudge. [ARTICLE]

Hetty, or The Old Grudge.

By J. H. CONNELLY.

CHAPTER Xll.— (Continued.) Quick and terrible 'in his sudden wrath the giant sprang to his feet and without a word started at a rapid walk for the scene of conflict. His heavy rifle was gripped in his left hand and his friends, fearing he would do a seore of murders If he went into a fight with that weapon —even though he used it only as a club—laid hold of it and of him, crying: “Leave the gun, Uncle David! Leave the gun!” A dozen of (hem together so tried to hold him, but setting his jaws together tightly, nud with his eyes blazing, he strode on, not seeming even to observe what they were doing. And the terror of his comiu'g flew ahead of him, so that fleeing Mulveils shrieked into McCloskey’s ns they darted by: “Run! Save yourselves! Uncle Dave is coming!” Camerons, flocking from ail directions at the war-cry, asked no questions and made no parley, but fell straightway upon every Mulveil in sight. Speedily the fighting was general over one-half the town, and the roar ,of combat was like tliat upon a hard fought battlefield save that there was no sound of firearms. Strangely enough, though the • combatants were frenzied with rage, sometimes in desperate straits and frequently had loaded guns in their hands all through the strife, not a single shot was fired, and though there were many broken lini'bs and bruised skulls, no one was shot or murdered. That fate, however, would have befallen John Cameron had his rescue depended solely upon Uncle David and his Cameron brethren, rr _.A~. Hetty Mulveil happened to be in the street and to hear, before it reached Uncle David, that alarming cry: “They're killing John Cameron in McCloskey’s!” Without an instant’s hesitation she ran to-her lover’s aid and fearlessly plunged into the murderous conflict about him. In ten seconds more, she would have been too late. The second Cameron had disappeared among the unconscious Mulveils strewing the floor, and John stood alone, with his foes closing thickly around him, wounding each other by the eager ferocity of their blows at him. Still lie wielded the heavy stool, and, wherever it fell, an arm dropped disabled, or a man tumbled headlong with a bruised skull, but the end was plainly near. He was too much exhausted to evade blows, and gradually • they were beating him down; his breath came in hoarse gasps; blood from a gasl. in his forehead ran into his eyes and blinded him; yet he fought desperated} to keep his feet, knowing well that to fall was'to lose hope. As Hetty sprang into the door, a man knocked senseless by one of John s wile sweeps of the stool, .fell against her. dropping into her arms the rifle with •Which he had been endeavoring to bruin her lover. She seized the gun and held it, while slipping on one side to let him tumble to the floor, where he lay quiet. No one seemed to notice her advent, and for a moment she stood irresolute, hardly able to see anything clearly in that semiobscurity, into which she had- so suddenly come from the brilliant sunlight outside. Then her overstrained senses seemed to intensify her powers of perception, and she saw with inexpressible horror, and more clearly as it seemed to her than by mere natural vision, death hovering over her lover. A heavy iron weight, hurled by some cowardly miscreant behind him, struck the back of his head and sent him plunging forward, senseless, vyitli wide-stretch-ed hands, face downward to the, floor. At that moment came the warning yell from a fleeing Mulveil at the door: “Run! Save yourselves! Uncle Dave, is coining!” The W|Olves did not wait to mingle their quarry, hut struck by sudden terror, dashed to the street and fled away; all save one, Rufus Goldie. He had been keeping himself as safe a? possible, on the outer edge of the fray, waiting for such an opportunity as this, and now sprang forward with a shout of triumph, swinging an ax above his head. But before he could bury its blade in the brain of the helpless man prone before him, his infernal joy was blighted. Love was swifter than hate. Strong ns an Amazon and quick as a panther, Hetty delivered a crushing blow upon his right Shoulder with a rifle that had so providentially fallen into her hands, and he staggered backward with a scream .of pain, as his shattered arm fell to his side. “Cowardly murderers!" the girl cried, swinging the rifle to strike again. With an oath lie jumped to the door to readiirik it only in time meet UncletDavid, who floored him by one of those mighty blows the giant so seldom trusted himself to strike. Hetty dropped upoti one knee and raised her lover in her strong arms to a sitting posture. The sight of his sad plight quite overcame her. “Oh, my love —my darling! They have killed you!" she moaned, sobbing, and kissing him. UneHf David brought in a hnndftil of snow, which he applied to his brow and temples. Slowly his conifelonsuess returned, nnd without any vague mgntal wanderings, such as might well have been expected; for his first feeble words were: “If this isn’t a dream, I’m in big luck. Kiss me again, Hetty, if it’s real.” CHAPTER XIII. Constable Muiyeil’s tine scheme lind come utterly to naught. His assistant Goldie’s collar hone nnd shoulder had been so mashed that it was feared he would be somewhat crippled for life. He fcffnself had been so mauled tha\ it was at first doubtful if he would recover, and a fortnight in bed bad not altogether made him well. The Mulveils had been * thoroughly whipped in tie finest faction fight that had occurred in years, and, for it all, there was a* offset in injury, to

John Cameron. The young fellow’s hurts had been almost cured by Hetty’s kisses even before Uncle David led him away from McCloskey’s; and as for the stain that was to have been put upon his good name —it had not stuck. The arrest was so far a failure that nobody seemed to remember that it had been seriously intended or attempted. Goldie’s epithet was recollected only as a foul insult meant to provoke a fight, not as an expression of anything that could possibly have been intended as an allegation of a fact. Taken all in all, “Training Day” had turned out very badly for the Mulveil interest, so far as the constable could see; and he felt a good deal of reluctance about making another attempt to serve that warrant. Simeon had not the satisfaction of knowing it, but in one way the events of “Training Day” had wrought grievously for John and Hetty. The fight had roused up all the Mulveil' fire latent in her mother’s breast. Had peace maintained between the* factions, it i£ altogether probable that Mrs. Mulveil eventually would have grumblingly, but without active opposition, seen her daughter courted and even married by a well-to-do Cameron, and, wben matters had gone so far, danced at their wedding with right good - will. But such hopes were not to be thought of now, when the fend blazed again and the Mulveils had been whipped. “Them Camerons will be walking all over us- and wanting to hang their hats on the horns of the moon, now,” she declared, "but a Cameron hat shall never find a nail in my house again. Three times now, that John Cameron lifts been here after you, Hetty, and if be comes the fourth, I’ll scald him. I wonder you can sit there and look me in the face after what you have done. Surely he must have bewitched you. But twice he lias sat up with you, the last time only the Sunday night before the fight, after you making a monkey of the decent man who is kin to the Mi'veils. And yet you go fighting for him; against your own people, too. What would your father say, if he could see you now, I’d like to know?” “If my father were alive, he would be ashamed of me if I wouldn’t fight to prevent. the cowardly murder of a helpless man. whether friend or foe.” “H-111! Well, I don’t say: ‘No’ altogether to that. When you saw a thing like that about to be done, of course I wouldn’t blame you for stopping it, if you could; but what business had you to be there to see it? Why must you poke your nose into the men’s fighting among themselves?” “To save John Cameron's life.” ■ “Well—all right; you saved it —though there’s neither luck nor grace in a girl lighting against her own people. Butyon saved it. And now let that’be the end of your colloguing with him. Let me hear no more of your John Cameron. If he comes here again, as I told you before, I'll scald him—and you may speak to him just the once more to tell him *<>•” v . • Hetty knew her mother was in earnest, and that it would be useless to attempt argument with her, so said nothing in reply; but if Mrs. Mulveil imagined that her dictum put an end to that love affair, she was never more mistaken in her life. ******* John Cameron of course had to be informed of Mrs. Mulveil’s uncompromising hostility, but it did not seem to depress his spirits greatly. “That’s all right,” he said, complacently. "If she takes any comfort in feeling that way, I have no objection. In fact, I think it is rather fortunate she comes out so flat-footed about it, for now you see, Hetty, there is nothing for us but to go right off and get married. Your idea of waiting until spring will not do at all under these circumstances. You see that?” But Hetty did not quite “see that.” She hesitated at a conclusive revolt against and casting off of the accustomed trammels of maternal authority, l't took fine to convince her that her mother was not, and under no probable circumstances ever would he, amenable to reason in the matter of John Cameron. And until that had been established beyond question in her mind, her meetings with John were necessarily clandestine, infrequent nnd unsatisfactory. They saw each other at church and spelling school, but she did fiot venture to permit him to accompany her home from either —or hardly even speak to her. That they ever had opportunities for exchange of those weighty trifles and important nothings that lovers find it so necessary to say and so sweet to hear was almost wholly due to Danny. John had given him that promised gun, and the imi»’s gratitude was ns unbounded as his joy. John’s generosity had quite won his heart, and made his service in the lovers' behalf active, energetic nnd continuous., It was only necessary for his sister to say to him: “Danny, I'm going over this afternoon to Aunt Eliza’s,” or “to Mtv Plotts,” or to some other neighr bur’s, and the chances were ten to onei that, either in going or returning, she would encounter John Cameron. But the season was against open-air courtship. Cupid in great-coat, fur cap and overshoes is little like himself as lovers know him. John, being a decidedly practical young man, did not take kindly to divorcing love nnd comfort to suit the whim of any old woman. “Don’t get your back up at my saying so, Hetty,” he would argue, “but it is derned nonsense for you and me to wade around knee deep in the snow, getting siiutHier every day, when we might just as well be sitting cosily by our own fireside, in our own home, leaving those who don't like it to do the wnding and snuffliug around outside to their heart’s content.” The impression was growing gradually stronger in Hetty’s mind that John was about right.

Their only reaMy comfortable interviews were at the house of Mrs. Davis —the distant neighbor whom Hetty had been visiting on the day she rescued John from his perch on a knob of the Devil’s Backbone. That good woman intuitively grasped the situation upon the occasiop of the young couple’s first apparently accidental meeting in her presence, and thereafter, if the course of their t/ue love; did not* run smoothly, the fault was not hers. During hours at a time she would leave them alone together in her cosy sitting room, whilq she busied herself with household duties in the kitchen, singing like a lark for sheer sympathetic happiness of heart, and keeping a sharp lookout on the lane, to see that nobody came to surprise them. But that was all too good to last. Mrs. Mulveil looked with suspicion upon the great intimacy that seemed to have suddenly sprung up between Hetty and Mrs. Davis. “I don’t see,” she said querulously to Mary Elder, "for what she wants to ride over there two or maybe three times in a week. I’ll be bound it’s no ‘Rose of Sharon’ or ‘Liberty Tree’ quilting patterns she does be going after all the time. And the eftsy way .she takes it about that John Cameron not being let come snooping around her, is’nt natural. It wouldn’t surprise me a mite if she met him over there, and I’m just going to find out the first time she goes to Mrs. Davis’ again. But don’t you tels her I said so.” “No, I will not,” promised Mary. And she did not. But that evening, when she and Hetty were sitting together by tlie kitchen tire, Mary, affecting an air of mystery and pretending fear of being overheard, said, in an impressive whisper: “I was looking at a book of Danny’s to-day—the one about birds and beasts—and came across something that I do not believe.” Hetty, who was no thick-witted girl, unable to take a hint, comprehended readily that she was to look for a meaning under the mere words which, in themselves, were certainly not of so incendiary a character as to demand such caution in their utterance. But she simply replied, with a glance of Intelligence: “I should.think so. I’ve read that book myself. What was it, dear?” “It says that when the ostrich is pursued by hunters,, it sticks its foolish head into a pile of sand, imagines itself then entirely covered from sight, and lies there quietly until its pursuers come and seize it. Do you think it can be true that there is any bird so simple?” “No, I don’t,” answered Hetty, promptly, with her eyes snapping as she leaned over dose to her friend’s ear and whispered with emphasis: “Nor any girl, eith-* er—about hex-e!” The next time Hetty rode over to Mrs. Davis’ to get some points about a peculiarly intricate pattern on which her heart was set —Danny started out a good, hour before her to go squired hunting —Mrs. Mulveil offered no objection to her daughter paying the visit, and did not even notice the disappearance of the erratic Danny, who went and came with his gun as he pleased; but an hour after Hetty rode off the old woman saddled another horse and followed. John Cameron, b£ appointment made at their last preceding meeting, was waiting at Mrs. Davis’ for his true love, when she arrived and breathlessly told him she was-almost- afraid to come over for fear her mother would be upon, her heels atany minute. “How could she know of our meeting here?” asked the young man. “I don’t think she knows, but I am sure, from something Mary Elder said to me, that she suspects, and if she does, she will do her best to find out. Danny is in the bushes by the road at the edge of the woods, and will fire two shots if she comes along, so as to give time for you to get out of the way; and I guess there, is not much danger of her catching us, but it does make me feel awful nervous.” “Ami it makes me feel consarned mean to be dodging and hiding in this. way. I tell you what it is, Hetty : If we are to be chased out of here, that settles it. I’ll be a sufferin’ lamb no longer for any old woman under the broad canopy. Which do you think you’d prefer to live with the rest of your life—your mother or me?”

“Why, what a question, John! You know well enough. I love my mother; but if I have to give up anybody, it will not be you, John.” “Then is she follows you here to-day, off we go to-morrow. What do you say?” “I’m not saying anything. John.” “And I’m talking for two?” “I guess you are. John.” Seizing her impulsively in his embrace and kissing her, he exclaimed: “I’m the happiest fellow in the Keystone State, my darling, and I hope to thunder she comes. But it’s clearly understood that, whether she does now or waits for another occasion, her appearance shall be the signal for you becoming Mrs. John Cameron the next day?” “Isn’t that just a little —a Jittle sudden, John?” “The more sudden it is, the less chance is given for anybody anticipating and interfering with it.” While they were still engaged in providentially laying their plans to meet the probable contingencies of the future, Mrs. Davis, who had been leR watching the kitchen, suddenly put her plump*, good-natured face in at the sitting room door, calling to them: “Two shots have just been fired, Hetty; by Danny, I guess. If so, she’ll be' here in a minute, and we’ve got no time to lose. John, snatch them horses out of the bedroom. Push that stand back, Hetty, and get hold of the end there. Don’t let it come loose on the big one.” While she rapidly gave her orders, the young man quickly brought out and set up the two tall trestles, locally known as “horses,” upon which the women lifted the quilting frame—previously rolled up and laid on the floor along the wall—nnd pegged it out so as to expose a generous expanse of the elaborate patchwork stretched upon it. Then Mrs. Davis considerately withdrew, to see if Mrs. Mulveil was really coming, but almost instantly reappeared, exclaiming: “Law snkes! If she isn’t at the gate already! And she’s ’lighting down to open it herself. Up with you, John. She wants to surprise us, and we musn’t let her do it.” John laughingly scrambled up a ladder pendent straight against tbe wall, and disappeared, through a square open trap in the slab ceiling. Then, detaching the ladder from it* hooka, he drew it up Into the loft with him.

Mrs. Davis and Hetty, taking seats cm opposite sides of the quilting frame, appeared to be gravely occupied with the intricacies of that overpoweringly magnificent but exceptionally difficult pattern known as “the Mexican Pi’ny and Cy-press-and-Star. Border;” presenting a tableau.‘so innocent and undeserving of suspicion that when Mrs. Mulveil abruptly opened the door and entered upon it, she brushed for her, error and precipitancy. ■ (To be continued.)