Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1898-03-30
The Heart of Woman.

dead town 1t was upon the surface
yet very little way below it throbbed
with the most intense life. Something,
indeed, in its outer aspect bespoke
that state of things. Every house
was closely shut, and all the wide gar
dens about them full of vagrant, weedy
greenery where they bordered upon
the street, though further in they
showed full filth, and here and there
knots of the gayest autumn posies.
Sometimes from the ja1ousies of up
per windows or the shade of back
porches faces looked cautiously out
faces lined to sharpness with the ten
sion of hope deferred. To comprehend
that, you must hear that Bellsboro
stood throbbing inlet of human fact
III an ocean of rumor forever ebbiug
and flowing. Earlier the town had
held Federal garrison; but one sum-
ner night came gray-coated legion
of flying horse to capture the men in
blue and set them adrift, then itself to
vanish upon the wings of the morn
ing.
After that, chaos. There were no
mails; the telegraph was silent three
days in four; trains ran intermittent
| ly, and but little way either to the
north or south; and as for the river
the tickle Cumber1and-it was too low
for even the Hideout, the little local
freighter, whose captains boast was
that she could run IN a heavy dew.
Mid-October though it was, the air
upon this day was breath of May.
The new young grass would have been
likewise vernal but for it's dapp1e of
red and yellow leaves. Yet, for the
most part, the trees were still green
upon the long river hills about the
town, which had swathings of the
softest blue mist. 1t was in the bits
of pasture land and along the road
sides that sumach and sassafras and
scattered small naples made blurs of
gold and scarlet and the deepest
bloody crimson. All the dozen turn
pixies lay inches deep in powdery white
dust; there had been so little rain
since midsummer, the shrunken water
hardly babbled as it slid down the
river channel between high dun-ye1
low banks whose seamy scars bespoke
the seattle of earlier floods.
Rumors aside, the town had two
things to save it from utter death.
One was contra band trading-the run,
ing southwark things forbidden by
articles of war: guns, quinine, gray
cloth, percussion caps and whisky
and bringing thence in exchange for
them wagon-cargoes of cotton. Nat
ura1ly the risk of such commerce,
which had also tang of patriotism,
gave flip to gossip over it; still, on
the whole, it was not quite so exciting
as specializing of mornings what
Hawkins Henry had done over night,
and what else she would do before
afternoon.
She it was who dashed bareheaded
along the street under eye. A wide
hat with. fiuttering plumes hung at
her pommel; her full long habit skirt
streamed pennon-wise ,hind. For
she had whipped the beast she rode to
dead run, then flung the reins upon
his neck and dropped the bridle-hand
in her lap. Yet now and again she
gave a fresh cut with her jeweled
whip, and, as it fell, set two white
teeth hard in an under lip of the rich
est poppy-scarlet. But never by any
chance did her eyes lift from the road
way or take any cognizance of the
man squirting at her elbow.
Dark eyes they were, full of velvet
| lights. set under darker brows in d
creamy face. She rode lightly, with
the Southern seat, easy, swaying, in.
comparably graceful. Her escort,
though in civilian attire, had that in
pose and ear1ng-dropped heel, in
| fexuous bridle-arm, which bespoke to
to eyes initiate strict cavalry train
| ing.
He wore cavalry spurs, rode cava1
ry saddle, and had in his pocket a
captains commission duly signed and
sealed. He had likewise a pretty
stomach for tho fighting then so
plentiful, which made it all the more
wonderful that now, for two months
at least, he had loitered and daundered
about Bel1sboro on sick leave, when
the scratch he had got in the attack
on the town need not have kept him
fortnight out of saddle.
Jest only but look at that, will you?
the third of the streets quartette said
to his companion, as they stopped
short on the grassed pavement to gaze
after the vanishing riders. Err shame
call it, he went on, hot1y; but then
Joe Henry he needn't of looked for
nothin' better, runnin' off with her
the way he done, and her not quite
fifteen.
True, Mr.. Clark, Joe might of ex-
pected it; but then reckon he didn't.
Eff he had, wild as he is, he couldn't
of been so set on marryin' one of
Hawkins's hell-cats. She's that, no
mistake about it; an they tell me he
calls her so ter her face; an she says
she's proud O. the name-that she
wants ter be thought Hawkins clear