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The loungers at the hotel would appear, Cahews and Pomp, and, and Bradley recalled Welborne's reference to the lynched man, and shuddered. Yes, drunk as he was, he could see that, easy as the deed was of execution, escape would be most difficult.
"Pa says she's managed to get out of old Welborne's debt," Mrs. Henley went on, taking her knee in her hands and lifting her foot from the ground and swinging it to and fro. "Lots of folks thought he'd finally sell her out of house and home. I didn't think, myself, that she'd ever pay out, but she seems to have succeeded. I give her full credit for all she is, Alfred.
"Why, when you advanced the money to get her out of old Welborne's clutch she was so happy she sung day and night, and me and her Aunt Mandy thought the worst was over, because well, because you seemed so kind and friendly that we felt like you would not push her, that you'd give her plenty o' time to make the payments.
But what struck me most of all was the glazed look in old Welborne's eye; he looked like he wasn't hearin' a word the fellow was spoutin', but was thinkin' o' some'n else plumb different. I walked on and hung about outside till the tombstone man come out. He was as mad as Hector. I seed he was, an' stopped 'im in a offhand way and axed him what luck.
As she passed along by old Welborne's diminutive office Henley noticed that Hank Bradley, who had been drinking about town through the day, came from the doorway and bowed to her conspicuously, his slouch-hat almost sweeping the pavement as he bent downward. She passed on with a bare nod and quickened her step till she entered the post-office, a few doors farther on.
It is a plain give-or-take offer of eight hundred dollars either way, and she ain't in no fix to refuse." Henley dipped a pen in the ink and held the paper toward the old man. There was an incipient wave of innate distrust in Welborne's manner as he glanced from the bowed form of the girl to that of the waiting storekeeper. "Let her have her way about it," Henley advised.
I'd rather strut by her house with a husband that was able to take me in out of the wet than anything else I know of, and I want to rest. I want to sleep one night without dreaming of old Welborne's flabby jaws, blinking eyes, and harsh voice snarling at me.
It was when he said life wasn't what it was cracked up to be, nohow, and he didn't doubt that Dick was a sight better off where he was at than here in this earthly wrangle. I thought to myself, I wonder what Alf would say in his far-off retreat to a statement of that sort. "The marble monument looks all right in Welborne's new graveyard, an' he has a right to be proud of his enterprise.
"The agent was so mad that he wouldn't explain what the speculation was, but I heard it that evenin'. Hank Bradley was tellin' it to a crowd at the post-office. You know Hank makes all manner of sport of his uncle behind the old skunk's back. He told a tale, too, that I'd never heard. It seems that old Welborne's mother-in-law died, and Welborne went to a undertaker to buy 'er coffin.
This morning, in the golden light, against the mountain background, it seemed an inspiration, as a flag of peace might appear to a tired soldier. Hank Bradley was the orphaned son of old Welborne's sister, and he lived in his uncle's home in lieu of any other that was available.
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