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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Cumberland Vendetta, by John Fox Jr.
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+Title: A Cumberland Vendetta
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+Author: John Fox, Jr.
+
+Release Date:  January, 2002  [Etext #3022]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of A Cumberland Vendetta, by John Fox, Jr.
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+Prepared by David Reed haradda@aol.com or davidr@inconnect.com
+
+A Cumberland Vendetta
+by John Fox Jr.
+
+TO MINERVA AND ELIZABETH
+
+A Cumberland Vendetta
+
+I
+
+THE cave had been their hiding-place as children; it was a secret
+refuge now against hunger or darkness when they were hunting in
+the woods. The primitive meal was finished; ashes were raked
+over the red coals; the slice of bacon and the little bag of meal
+were hung high against the rock wall; and the two stepped from
+the cavern into a thicket of rhododendrons.
+
+Parting the bushes toward the dim light, they stood on a massive
+shoulder of the mountain, the river girding it far below, and the
+afternoon shadows at their feet.  Both carried guns-the tall
+mountaineer, a Winchester; the boy, a squirrel rifle longer than
+himself.  Climbing about the rocky spur, they kept the same level
+over log and bowlder and through bushy ravine to the north. In half
+an hour, they ran into a path that led up home from the river, and
+they stopped to rest on a cliff that sank in a solid black wall
+straight under them. The sharp edge of a steep corn-field ran near,
+and, stripped of blade and tassel, the stalks and hooded ears looked
+in the coming dusk a little like monks at prayer. In the sunlight
+across the river the corn stood thin and frail.  Over there a drought
+was on it; and when drifting thistle-plumes marked the noontide of
+the year, each yellow stalk had withered blades and an empty
+sheath. Every-where a look of vague trouble lay upon the face of
+the mountains, and when the wind blew, the silver of the leaves
+showed ashen. Autumn was at hand.
+
+There was no physical sign of kinship between the two,
+half-brothers though they were. The tall one was dark; the boy, a
+foundling, had flaxen hair, and was stunted and ~lender. He was a
+dreamy~looking little fellow, and one may easily find his like
+throughout the Cumberland -paler than his fellows, from staying
+much indoors, with half-haunted face, and eyes that are deeply
+pathetic when not cunning; ignorantly credited with idiocy and
+uncanny powers; treated with much forbearance, some awe, and a
+little contempt; and suffered to do his pleasure-nothing, or much
+that is strange-without comment.
+
+"I tell ye, Rome," he said, taking up the thread of talk that was
+broken at the cave, "when Uncle Gabe says he's afeard thar's
+trouble comm', hit's a-comm'; 'n' I want you to git me a Winchester. 
+I'm a-gittin' big enough now. I kin shoot might' nigh as good as
+you, 'n' whut am I fit fer with this hyeh old pawpaw pop-gun?"
+
+"I don't want you fightin', boy, I've told ye. Y'u air too little 'n'
+puny, 'n' I want ye to stay home 'n' take keer o' mam 'n' the cattle-ef
+fightin' does come, I reckon thar won't be triuch."
+
+Don't ye? " cried the boy, with sharp contempt-" with ole Jas
+Lewallen a-devilin' Uncle Rufe, 'n' that blackheaded young Jas
+a-climbin' on stumps over thar 'cross the river, n' crowin' n' sayin'
+out open in Hazlan that ye air afeard o him? Yes; 'n' he called me a
+idgit." The boy's voice broke into a whimper of rage.
+
+"Shet up, Isom!  Don't you go gittin' mad now.  You'll be sick ag'in. 
+I'll tend to him when the time comes." Rome spoke with rough
+kindness, but ugly lines had gathered at his mouth and forehead.
+The boy's tears came and went easily. He drew his sleeve across
+his eyes, and looked up the river. Beyond the bend, three huge
+birds rose into the sunlight and floated toward them.  Close at
+hand, they swerved side-wise.
+
+"They hain't buzzards," he said, standing up, his anger gone; "look
+at them straight wings!
+
+Again the eagles swerved, and two shot across the river.  The third
+dropped with shut wings to the bare crest of a gaunt old poplar
+under them.
+
+"Hit's a young un, Rome Y" said the boy, excitedly. "He's goin' to
+wait thar tell the old uns come back. Gimme that gun!
+
+Catching up the Winchester, he slipped over the ledge; and Rome
+leaned suddenly forward, looking down at the river.
+
+A group of horsemen had ridden around the bend, and were
+coming at a walk down the other shore.  Every man carried
+something across his saddle-bow. There was a gray horse among
+them - young Jasper's - and an evil shadow came into Rome's face,
+and quickly passed. Near a strip of woods the gray turned up the
+mountain from the party, and on its back he saw the red glint of a
+woman's dress. With a half-smile he watched the scarlet figure ride
+from the woods, and climb slowly up through the sunny corn. On
+the spur above and full in the rich yellow light, she halted, half
+turning in her saddle.  He rose to his feet, to his full height, his
+head bare, and thrown far back between his big shoulders, and,
+still as statues, the man and the woman looked at each other across
+the gulf of darkening air. A full minute the woman sat motionless,
+then rode on.  At the edge of the woods she stopped and turned
+again.
+
+The eagle under Rome leaped one stroke in the air, and dropped
+like a clod into the sea of leaves.  The report of the gun and a faint
+cry of triumph rose from below.  It was good marksmanship, but
+on the cliff Rome did not heed it.  Something had fluttered in the
+air above the girl's head, and he laughed aloud. She was waving
+her bonnet at him.
+
+II
+
+JUST where young Stetson stood, the mountains racing along each
+bank of the Cumberland had sent out against each other, by mutual
+impulse, two great spurs.  At the river's brink they stopped sheer,
+with crests uplifted, as though some hand at the last moment had
+hurled them apart, and had led the water through the breach to
+keep them at peace.  To-day the crags looked seamed by thwarted
+passion; and, sullen with firs, they made fit symbols of the human
+hate about the base of each.
+
+When the feud began, no one knew.  Even the original cause was
+forgotten.  Both families had come as friends from Virginia long
+ago, and had lived as enemies nearly half a century.  There was
+hostility before the war, but, until then, little bloodshed. Through
+the hatred of change, characteristic of the mountaineer the world
+over, the Lewallens were for the Union. The Stetsons owned a few
+slaves, and they fought for them. Peace found both still neighbors
+and worse foes.  The war armed them, and brought back an
+ancestral contempt for human life; it left them a heritage of
+lawlessness that for mutual protection made necessary the very
+means used by their feudal forefathers; personal hatred supplanted
+its dead issues, and with them the war went on. The Stetsons had a
+good strain of Anglo-Saxon blood, and owned valley-lands; the
+Lewallens kept store and made "moonshine"; so kindred and
+debtors and kindred and tenants were arrayed with one or the other
+leader, and gradually the retainers of both settled on one or the
+other side of the river.  In time of hostility the Cumberland came
+to be the boundary between life and death for the dwellers on each
+shore.  It was feudalism born again.
+
+Above one of the spurs each family had its home; the Stetsons,
+under the seared face of Thunderstruck Knob; the Lewallens, just
+beneath the wooded rim of Wolf's Head.  The eaves and chimney
+of each cabin were faintly visible from the porch of the other.  The
+first light touched the house of the Stetsons; the last, the Lewallen
+cabin.  So there were times when the one could not turn to the
+sunrise nor the other to the sunset but with a curse in his heart, for
+his eye must fall on the home of his enemy.
+
+For years there had been peace.  The death of Rome Stetson's
+father from ambush, and the fight in the court-house square, had
+forced it. After that fight only four were left-old Jasper Lewallen
+and young Jasper, the boy Rome and his uncle, Rufe Stetson. 
+Then Rufe fled to the West, and the Stetsons were helpless.  For
+three years no word was heard of him, but the hatred burned in the
+heart of Rome's mother, and was traced deep in her grim old face
+while she patiently waited the day of retribution. It smouldered,
+too, in the hearts of the women of both clans who had lost
+husbands or sons or lovers; and the friends and kin of each had
+little to do with one another, and met and passed with watchful
+eyes.  Indeed, it would take so little to turn peace to war that the
+wonder was that peace had lived so long. Now trouble was at hand. 
+Rufe Stetson had come back at last, a few months since, and had
+quietly opened store at the county-seat, Hazlan-a little town five
+miles up the river, where Troubled Fork runs seething into the
+Cumberland-a point of neutrality for the factions, and
+consequently a battIe-ground. Old Jasper's store was at the other
+end of the town, and the old man had never been known to brook
+competition.  He had driven three men from Hazlan during the last
+term of peace for this offence, and everybody knew that the fourth
+must leave or fight.  Already Rufe Stetson had been warned not to
+appear outside his door after dusk. Once or twice his wife had seen
+skulking shadows under the trees across the road, and a tremor of
+anticipation ran along both banks of the Cumberland.
+
+III
+
+A FORTNIGHT later, court came. Rome was going to Hazlan, and
+the feeble old Stetson mother limped across the porch from the
+kitchen, trailing a Winchester behind her. Usually he went
+unarmed, but he took the gun now, as she gave it, in silence.
+
+The boy Isom was not well, and Rome had told him to ride the
+horse.  But the lad had gone on afoot to his duties at old Gabe
+Bunch's mill, and Rome himself rode down Thunderstruck Knob
+through the mist and dew of the early morning.  The sun was
+coming up over Virginia, and through a dip in Black Mountain the
+foot-hills beyond washed in blue waves against its white disk.  A
+little way down the mountain, the rays shot through the gap upon
+him, and, lancing the mist into tatters, and lighting the dew-drops,
+set the birds singing.  Rome rode, heedless of it all, under primeval
+oak and poplar, and along rain-clear brooks and happy waterfalls,
+shut in by laurel and rhododendron, and singing past mossy stones
+and lacelike ferns that brushed his stirrup. On the brow of every
+cliff he would stop to look over the trees and the river to the other
+shore, where the gray line of a path ran aslant Wolf's Head, and
+was lost in woods above and below.
+
+At the river he rode up-stream, looking still across it.  Old Gabe
+Bunch halloed to him from the doorway of the mill, as he splashed
+through the creek, and Isom's thin face peered through a breach in
+the logs.  At the ford beyond, he checked his horse with a short
+oath of pleased surprise.  Across the water, a scarlet dress was
+moving slowly past a brown field of corn.  The figure was
+bonneted, but he knew the girl's walk and the poise of her head
+that far away.  Just who she was, however, he did not know, and he
+sat irresolute.  He had seen her first a month since, paddling along
+the other shore, erect, and with bonnet off and hair down; she had
+taken the Lewallen path up the mountain.  Afterward, he saw her
+going at a gallop on young Jasper's gray horse, bareheaded again,
+and with her hair loose to the wind, and he knew she was one of
+his enemies.  He thought her the girl people said young Jasper was
+going to marry, and he had watched her the more closely.  From
+the canoe she seemed never to notice him; but he guessed, from
+the quickened sweep of her paddle, that she knew he was looking
+at her, and once, when he halted on his way home up the
+mountain, she half turned in her saddle and looked across at him. 
+This happened again, and then she waved her bonnet at him. It was
+bad enough, any Stetson seeking any Lewallen for a wife, and for
+him to court young Jasper's sweetheart-it was a thought to laugh at.
+But the mischief was done. The gesture thrilled him, whether it
+meant defiance or good-will, and the mere deviltry of such a
+courtship made him long for it at every sight of her with the river
+between them. At once he began to plan how he should get near
+her, but, through some freak, she had paid no further heed to him.
+He saw her less often-for a week, in-deed, he had not seen her at
+all till this day-and the forces that hindrance generates in an
+imperious nature had been at work within him. The chance now
+was one of gold, and with his life in his hand he turned into the
+stream. Across, he could see something white on her shoulder-an
+empty bag. It was grinding~day, and she was going to the mill-the
+Lewallen mill. She stopped as he galloped up, and turned, pushing
+back her bonnet with one hand; and he drew rein. But the friendly,
+expectant light in her face kindled to such a blaze of anger in her
+eyes that he struck his horse violently, as though the beast had
+stopped of its own accord, and, cursing himself, kept on. A little
+farther, he halted again.  Three horsemen, armed with
+Winchesters, were jogging along toward town ahead of him, and
+he wheeled about sharply. The girl, climbing rapidly toward Steve
+Bray-ton's cabin, was out of the way, but he was too late to reach
+the ford again.  Down the road two more Lewallens with guns
+were in sight, and he lashed his horse into the stream where the
+water was deep.  Old Gabe, looking from the door of his mill, quit
+laughing to himself; and under cover of the woods, the girl
+watched man and horse fighting the tide.  Twice young Stetson
+turned his head.  But his enemies apparently had not seen him, and
+horse and rider scrambled up the steep bank and under shelter of
+the trees.  The girl had evidently learned who he was. Her sudden
+anger was significant, as was the sight of the Lewallens going
+armed to court, and Rome rode on, uneasy.
+
+When he reached Troubled Fork, in sight of Hazlan, he threw a
+cartridge into place and shifted the slide to see that it was ready for
+use. Passing old Jasper's store on the edge of the town, he saw the
+old man's bushy head through the open door, and Lewallens and
+Braytons crowded out on the steps and looked after him. All were
+armed. Twenty paces farther he met young Jasper on his gray, and
+the look on his enemy's face made him grip his rifle. With a
+flashing cross-fire from eye to eye, the two passed, each with his
+thumb on the hammer of his Winchester. The groups on the
+court-house steps stopped talking as he rode by, and turned to look
+at him. He saw none of his own friends, and he went on at a gallop
+to Rufe Stetson's store.  His uncle was not in sight. Steve Marcum
+and old Sam Day stood in the porch, and inside a woman was
+crying.  Several Stetsons were near, and all with grave faces
+gathered about him.
+
+He knew what the matter was before Steve spoke.  His uncle had
+been driven from town. A last warning had come to him on the day
+before.  The hand of a friend was in the caution, and Rufe rode
+away at dusk.  That night his house was searched by men masked
+and armed. The Lewallens were in town, and were ready to fight. 
+The crisis had come.
+
+IV
+
+
+BACK at the mill old Gabe was troubled. Usually he sat in a
+cane-bottomed chair near the hopper, whittling, while the lad
+tended the mill, and took pay in an oaken toll-dish smooth with the
+use of half a century. But the incident across the river that morning
+had made the old man uneasy, and he moved restlessly from his
+chair to the door, and back again, while the boy watched him,
+wondering what the matter was, but asking no questions.  At noon
+an old mountaineer rode by, and the miller hailed him.
+
+"Any news in town?" he asked.
+
+"Hain't been to town.  Reckon fightin' 's goin' on thar from whut I
+heerd."  The careless, high-pitched answer brought the boy with
+wide eyes to the door.
+
+Whut d'ye hear? " asked Gabe. Jes heerd fightin' 's goin' on!
+
+Then every man who came for his meal brought a wild rumor from
+town, and the old miller moved his chair to the door, and sat there
+whittling fast, and looking anxiously toward Hazlan. The boy was
+in a fever of unrest, and old Gabe could hardly keep him in the
+mill.  In the middle of the afternoon the report of a rifle came
+down the river, breaking into echoes against the cliffs below, and
+Isom ran out the door, and stood listening for another, with an odd
+contradiction of fear and delight on his eager face.  In a few
+moments Rome Stetson galloped into sight, and, with a shrill cry
+of relief, the boy ran down the road to meet him, and ran back,
+holding by a stirrup. Young Stetson's face was black with passion,
+and his eyes were heavy with drink. At the door of the mill he
+swung from his horse, and for a moment was hardly able to speak
+from rage. There had been no fight.  The Stetsons were few and
+unprepared. They had neither the guns nor, without Rufe, the
+means to open the war, and they believed Rufe had gone for arms. 
+So they had chafed in the store all day, and all day Lewallens on
+horseback and on foot were in sight; and each was a taunt to every
+Stetson, and, few as they were, the young and hot-headed wanted
+to go out and fight. In the afternoon a tale-bearer had brought some
+of Jasper's boasts to Rome, and, made reckless by moonshine and
+much brooding, he sprang up to lead them.  Steve Marcum, too,
+caught up his gun, but old Sam's counsel checked him, and the two
+by force held Rome back.  A little later the Lewallens left town. 
+The Stetsons, too, disbanded, and on the way home a last drop of
+gall ran Rome's cup of bitterness over.  Opposite Steve Brayton's
+cabin a jet of smoke puffed from the bushes across the river, and a
+bullet furrowed the road in front of him. That was the shot they
+had heard at the mill.  Somebody was drawing a dead-line," and
+Rome wheeled his horse at the brink of it. A mocking yell came
+over the river, and a gray horse flashed past an open space in the
+bushes.  Rome knew the horse and knew the yell; young Jasper
+was "bantering" him.  Nothing maddens the mountaineer like this
+childish method of insult; and telling of it, Rome sat in a corner,
+and loosed a torrent of curses against young Lewallen and his clan.
+
+Old Gabe had listened without a word, and the strain in his face
+was eased.  Always the old man had stood for peace.  He believed
+it had come after the court-house fight, and he had hoped against
+hope, even when Rufe came back to trade against old Jasper; for
+Rufe was big and good-natured, and unsuspected of resolute
+purpose, and the Lewallens' power had weakened.  So, now that
+Rufe was gone again, the old miller half believed he was gone for
+good. Nobody was hurt; there was a chance yet for peace, and with
+a rebuke on his tongue and relief in his face, the old man sat back
+in his chair and went on whittling. The boy turned eagerly to a
+crevice in the logs and, trembling with excitement, searched the
+other bank for Jasper's gray horse, going home.
+
+He called me a idgit," he said to himself, with a threatening shake
+of his head.  "Jes wouldn't I like to hev a chance at him!  Rome ull
+git him! Rome ull git him!"
+
+There was no moving point of white on the broad face of the
+mountains nor along the river road.  Jasper was yet to come and,
+with ears alert to every word behind him, the lad fixed his eyes
+where he should see him first.
+
+"Oh, he didn't mean to hit me.  Not that he ain't mean enough to
+shoot from the bresh," Rome broke out savagely.  "That's jes whut
+I'm afeard he will do.  Thar was too much daylight fer him.  Ef he
+jes don't come a-sneakin' over hyeh, 'n' waitin' in the lorrel atter
+dark fer me, it's all I axe."
+
+Waitin' in the lorrel! "  Old Gabe could hold back no longer.  "Hit's
+a shame, a burn-in' shame!  I don' know whut things air comm' to! 
+'Pears like all you young folks think about is killin' somebody. 
+Folks usen to talk about how fer they could kill a deer; now it's
+how fer they kin kill a man.  I hev knowed the time when a man
+would 'a' been druv out o' the county fer drawin' a knife ur a pistol;
+'n' ef a feller was ever killed, it was kinder accidental, by a Barlow. 
+I reckon folks got use' to weepons 'n' killin' 'n' bushwhackin' in the
+war. Looks like it's been gittin' wuss ever sence, 'n' now hit's dirk 'n'
+Winchester, 'n' shootin' from the bushes all the time.  Hit's wuss 'n
+stealin' money to take a feller-creetur' s life that way!
+
+The old miller's indignation sprang from memories of a better
+youth.  For the courtesies of the code went on to the Blue Grass,
+and before the war the mountaineer fought with English fairness
+and his fists.  It was a disgrace to use a deadly weapon in those
+days; it was a disgrace now not to use it.
+
+Oh, I know all the excuses folks make," he went on: " hit's fa'r fer
+one as 'tis fer t'other; y'u can't fight a man fa'r 'n' squar' who'll shoot
+you in the back; a pore man can't fight money in the couhts; 'n' thar
+hain't no witnesses in the lorrel but leaves; 'n' dead men don't hev
+much to say.  I know it all.  Hit's cur'us, but it act'-ally looks like
+lots o' decent young folks hev got usen to the idee-thar's so much
+of it goin' on, 'n' thar's so much talk 'bout killin' 'n' layin' out in the
+lorrel. Reckon folks 'll git to pesterm' women n' strangers bimeby,
+'n' robbin' 'n' thievin'.  Hit's bad enough thar's so leetle law thet
+folks hev to take it in their own hands oncet in a while, but this
+shootin' from the bresh-hit's p'int'ly a sin 'n' shame!  Why," he
+concluded, pointing his remonstrance as he always did, "I seed
+your grandad and young Jas's fight up thar in Hazlan full two hours
+'fore the war-fist and skull-'n' your grandad was whooped.  They
+got up and shuk hands. I don't see why folks can't fight that way
+now. I wish Rufe 'n' old Jas 'n' you 'n' young Jas could have it out
+fist and skull, 'n' stop this killin' o' people like hogs.  Thar's nobody
+left but you four.  But thar's no chance o' that, I reckon."
+
+"I'll fight him anyway, 'n' I reckon ef he don't die till I lay out in the
+lorrel fer him, he'll live a long time.  Ef a Stetson ever done sech
+meanness as that I never heerd it."
+
+Nother hev I," said the old man, with quick justice.  " You air a
+over-bearin' race, all o' ye, but I never knowed ye to be that mean.
+Hit's all the wus fer ye thet ye air in sech doin's. I tell ye, Rome--
+
+A faint cry rose above the drone of the millstones, and old Gabe
+stopped with open lips to listen.  The boy's face was pressed close
+to the logs.  A wet paddle had flashed into the sunlight from out
+the bushes across the river.  He could just see a canoe in the
+shadows under them, and with quick suspicion his brain pictured
+Jasper's horse hitched in the bushes, and Jasper stealing across the
+river to waylay Rome.  But the canoe moved slowly out of sight
+downstream and toward the deep water, the paddler unseen, and
+the boy looked around with a weak smile.  Neither seemed to have
+heard him. Rome was brooding, with his sullen face in his hands;
+the old miller was busy with his own thoughts; and the boy turned
+again to his watch.
+
+Jasper did not come.  Isom's eyes began to ache from the steady
+gaze, and now and then he would drop them to the water swirling
+beneath.  A slow wind swayed the overhanging branches at the
+mouth of the stream, and under them was an eddy.  Escaping this,
+the froth and bubbles raced out to the gleams beating the air from
+the sunlit river.  He saw one tiny fleet caught; a mass of yellow
+scum bore down and, sweeping through bubbles and eddy, was
+itself struck into fragments by something afloat.  A tremulous
+shadow shot through a space of sunlight into the gloom cast by a
+thicket of rhododendrons, and the boy caught his breath sharply. A
+moment more, and the shape of a boat and a human figure
+quivered on the water running under him.  The stern of a Lewallen
+canoe swung into the basin, and he sprang to his feet.
+
+"Rome!"  The cry cut sharply through the drowsy air.  " Thar he is! 
+Hit's Jas"
+
+The old miller rose to his feet.  The boy threw himself behind the
+sacks of grain.  Rome wheeled for his rifle, and stood rigid before
+the door.  There was a light step without, the click of a gun-lock
+within; a shadow fell across the doorway, and a girl stood at the
+threshold with an empty bag in her hand.
+
+V
+
+WITH a little cry she shrank back a step. Her face paled and her
+lips trembled, and for a moment she could not speak.  But her eyes
+swept the group, and were fixed in two points of fire on Rome.
+
+"Why don't ye shoot! "she asked, scornfully.
+
+"I hev heerd that the Stetsons have got to makin war on
+women-folks, but I never believed it afore."  Then she turned to
+the miller.
+
+Kin I git some more meal hyeh? " she asked.  " Or have ye stopped
+sellin' to folks on t'other side? " she added, in a tone that sought no
+favor.
+
+"You kin have all ye want," said old Gabe, quietly.
+
+"The mill on Dead Crick is broke ag'in," she continued, " 'n' co'n is
+skeerce on our side. We'll have to begin buyin' purty soon, so I
+thought I'd save totin' the co'n down hyeh." She handed old Gabe
+the empty bag.
+
+Well,'' said he, '' as it air gittin' late, 'n' ye have to climb the
+mountain ag'in, I'll let ye have that comm' out o' the hopper now. 
+Take a cheer."
+
+The girl sat down in the low chair, and, loos ening the strings of
+her bonnet, pushed it back from her head.  An old-fashioned horn
+comb dropped to the floor, and when she stooped to pick it up she
+let her hair fall in a head about her shoulders.  Thrusting one hand
+under it, she calmly tossed the whole mass of chestnut and gold
+over the back of the chair, where it fell rippling like water through
+a bar of sunlight. With head thrown back and throat bared, she
+shook it from side to side, and, slowly coiling it, pierced it with the
+coarse comb.  Then passing her hands across her forehead and
+temples, as women do, she folded them in her lap, and sat
+motionless.  The boy, crouched near, held upon her the mesmeric
+look of a serpent.  Old Gabe was peering covertly from under the
+brim of his hat, with a chuckle at his lips.  Rome had fallen back to
+a corner of the mill, sobered, speechless, his rifle in a nerveless
+hand.  The passion that fired him at the boy's warning had as
+swiftly gone down at sight of the girl, and her cutting rebuke made
+him hot again with shame. He was angry, too-more than
+angry-because he felt so helpless, a sensation that was new and
+stifling.  The scorn of her face, as he remembered it that morning,
+hurt him again while he looked at her.  A spirit of contempt was
+still in her eyes, and quivering about her thin lips and nostrils.  She
+had put him beneath further notice, and yet every toss of her head,
+every movement of her hands, seemed meant for him, to irritate
+him.  And once, while she combed her hair, his brain whirled with
+an impulse to catch the shining stuff in one hand and to pinion
+both her wrists with the other, Just to show her that he was master,
+and still would harm her not at all.  But he shut his teeth, and
+watched her.  Among mountain women the girl was more than
+pretty; elsewhere only her hair, perhaps, would have caught the
+casual eye.  She wore red homespun and coarse shoes; her hands
+were brown and hardened.  Her arms and shoulders looked
+muscular, her waist was rather large-being as nature meant it-and
+her face in repose had a heavy look.  But the poise of her head
+suggested native pride and dignity; her eyes were deep, and full of
+changing lights; the scarlet dress, loose as it was, showed rich
+curves in her figure, and her movements had a certain childlike
+grace.  Her brow was low, and her mouth had character; the chin
+was firm, the upper lip short, and the teeth were even and white.
+
+"I reckon thar's enough to fill the sack, Isom," said the old miller,
+breaking the strained silence of the group.  The girl rose and
+handed him a few pieces of silver.
+
+I reckon I'd better pay fer it all," she said. I s'pose I won't be over
+hyeh ag'in."
+
+Old Gabe gave some of the coins back.
+
+"Y'u know whut my price al'ays is," he said.
+
+I'm obleeged," answered the girl, flushing.
+
+"Co'n hev riz on our side.  I thought mebbe you charged folks over
+thar more, anyways."
+
+"I sells fer the same, ef co'n is high ur low," was the answer.  "This
+side or t'other makes no diff'unce to me.  I hev frien's on both
+sides, 'n' I take no part in sech doin's as air a shame to the
+mountains."
+
+There was a quick light of protest in the girl's dark eyes; but the
+old miller was honored by both factions, and without a word she
+turned to the boy, who was tying the sack.
+
+The boat's loose! " he called out, with. the string between his teeth;
+and she turned again and ran out.  Rome stood still.
+
+Kerry the sack out, boy, 'n' holp the gal." Old Gabe's voice was
+stern, and the young mountaineer doggedly swung the bag to his
+shoulders.  The girl had caught the rope, and drawn the rude
+dugout along the shore.
+
+"Who axed ye to do that?" she asked, angrily.
+
+Rome dropped the bag into the boat, and merely looked her in the
+face.
+
+"Look hyeh, Rome Stetson"-the sound of his name from her lips
+almost startled him-"I'll hev ye understan' that I don't want to be
+bounden to you, nor none o' yer kin."
+
+Turning, she gave an impatient sweep with her paddle.  The prow
+of the canoe dipped and was motionless.  Rome had caught the
+stern, and the girl wheeled in hot anger.  Her impulse to strike may
+have been for the moment and no longer, or she may have read
+swiftly no unkindness in the mountaineer's steady look; for the
+uplifted oar was stayed in the air, as though at least she would hear
+him.
+
+"I've got nothin' ag'in' you," he said, slowly, Jas Lewallen hev been
+threatenin' me, 'n' I thought it was him, 'n' I was ready fer him,
+when you come into the mill.  I wouldn't hurt you nur no other
+woman.  Y'u ought to know it, 'n' ye do know it."
+
+The words were masterful, but said in a way that vaguely soothed
+the girl's pride, and the oar was let slowly into the water.
+
+"I reckon y'u air a friend o' his," he added, still quietly.  "I've seed
+ye goin' up thar, but I've got nothin' ag'in' ye, whoever ye be."
+
+She turned on him a sharp look of suspicion. "I reckon I do be a
+friend o' hisn," she said, deliberately; and then she saw that he was
+in earnest.  A queer little smile went like a ray of light from her
+eyes to her lips, and she gave a quick stroke with her paddle.  The
+boat shot into the current, and was carried swiftly toward the
+Cumberland.  The girl stood erect, swaying through light and
+shadow like a great scarlet flower blowing in the wind; and Rome
+watched her till she touched the other bank. Swinging the sack out,
+she stepped lightly after it, and, without looking behind her,
+disappeared in the bushes.
+
+The boy Isom was riding away when Rome, turned, and old Gabe
+was watching from the door of the mill.
+
+Who is that gal? " he asked, slowly.  It seemed somehow that he
+had known her a long while ago.  A puzzled frown overlay his
+face, and the old miller laughed.
+
+"You a-axin' who she be, 'n' she a-axin who you be, 'n' both o' ye
+a-knowin' one 'nother sence ye was knee-high.  Why, boy, hit's old
+Jasper's gal-Marthy!
+
+VI
+
+IN a flash of memory Rome saw the girl as vividly as when he last
+saw her years ago.
+They had met at the mill, he with his father, she with hers.  There
+was a quarrel, and the two men were held apart.  But the old sore
+as usual was opened, and a week later Rome's father was killed
+from the brush.  He remembered his mother's rage and grief, her
+calls for vcngeance, the uprising, the fights, plots, and ambushes. 
+He remembered the look the girl had given him that long ago, and
+her look that day was little changed.
+
+When fighting began, she had been sent for safety to the sister of
+her dead mother in another county.  When peace came, old Jasper
+married again and the girl refused to come home.  Lately the
+step-mother, too, had passed away, and then she came back to live. 
+All this the old miller told in answer to Rome's questions as the
+two walked away in the twilight. This was why he had not
+recognized her, and why her face yet seemed familiar even when
+he crossed the river that morning. 
+
+"Uncle Gabe, how do you reckon the gal knowed who I was?"
+
+"She axed me."
+
+"She axed you!  Whar?"
+
+Over thar in the mill."  The miller was watching the young
+mountaineer closely.  The manner of the girl was significant when
+she asked who Rome was, and the miller knew but one reason
+possible for his foolhardiness that morning.
+
+"Do you mean to say she have been over hyeh afore?"
+
+"Why, yes, come to think about it, three or four times while Isom
+was sick, and whut she come fer I can't make out.  The mill over
+thar wasn't broke long, 'n' why she didn't go thar or bring more co'n
+at a time, to save her the trouble o' so many trips, I can't see to save
+me.
+
+Young Stetson was listening eagerly.  Again the miller cast his
+bait.
+
+Mebbe she's spyin'."
+
+Rome faced him, alert with suspicion; but old Gabe was laughing
+silently.
+
+"Don't you be a fool, Rome.  The gal comes and goes in that boat,
+'n' she couldn't see a soul without my knowin' it.  She seed ye ridin'
+by one day, 'n' she looked mighty cur'us when I tole her who ye
+was."
+
+Old Gabe stopped his teasing, Rome's face was so troubled, and
+himself grew serious.
+
+"Rome," he said, earnestly, "I wish to the good Lord ye wasn't in
+sech doin's.  Ef that had been young Jas 'stid o' Marthy, I reckon ye
+would 'a' killed him right thar."
+
+"I wasn't going to let him kill me," was the sullen answer.
+
+The two had stopped at a rickety gate swinging open on the road. 
+The young mountaineer was pushing a stone about with the toe of
+his boot.  He had never before listened to remonstrance with such
+patience, and old Gabe grew bold.
+
+"You've been drinkin' ag'in, Rome," he said, sharply, " 'n' I know it. 
+Hit's been moonshine that's whooped you Stetsons, not the
+Lewallens, long as I kin rickollect, 'n' it ull be moonshine ag'in ef
+ye don't let it alone."
+
+Rome made no denial, no defence.  "Uncle Gabe," he said slowly,
+still busied with the stone, " hev that gal been over hyeh sence y'u
+tol' her who I was?"
+
+The old man was waiting for the pledge that seemed on his lips,
+but he did not lose his temper.
+
+Not till to-day," he said, quietly.
+
+Rome turned abruptly, and the two separated with no word of
+parting.  For a moment the miller watched the young fellow
+striding away under his rifle.
+
+"I have been atter peace a good while," he said to himself, " but I
+reckon thar's a bigger hand a-workin' now than mine." Then he
+lifted his voice.  "Ef Isom's too sick to come down to the mill
+to-morrer, I wish you'd come 'n' holp me."
+
+Rome nodded back over his shoulder, and went on, with head bent,
+along the river road. Passing a clump of pines at the next curve, he
+pulled a bottle from his pocket.
+
+"Uncle Gabe's about right, I reckon," he said, half aloud; and he
+raised it above his head to hurl it away, but checked it in mid-air. 
+For a moment he looked at the colorless liquid, then, with quick
+nervousness, pulled the cork of sassafras leaves, gulped down the
+pale moonshine, and dashed the bottle against the trunk of a beech.
+The fiery stuff does its work in a hurry.  He was thirsty when he
+reached the mouth of a brook that tumbled down the mountain
+along the pathway that would lead him home, and he stooped to
+drink where the water sparkled in a rift of dim light from
+overhead.  Then he sat upright on a stone, with his wide hat-brim
+curved in a crescent over his forehead, his hands caught about his
+knees, and his eyes on the empty air.
+
+He was scarcely over his surprise that the girl was young
+Lewallen's sister, and the discovery had wrought a curious change. 
+The piquant impulse of rivalry was gone, and something deeper
+was taking its place.  He was confused and a good deal troubled,
+thinking it all over. He tried to make out what the girl meant by
+looking at him from the mountain-side, by waving her bonnet at
+him, and by coming to old Gabe's mill when she could have gone
+to her own.  To be sure, she did not know then who he was, and
+she had stopped coming when she learned; but why had she
+crossed again that day?  Perhaps she too was bantering him, and he
+was at once angry and drawn to her; for her mettlesome spirit
+touched his own love of daring, even when his humiliation was
+most bitter-when she told him he warred on women; when he held
+out to her the branch of peace and she swept it aside with a stroke
+of her oar. But Rome was little conscious of the weight of subtle
+facts like these.  His unseeing eyes went back to her as she combed
+her hair. He saw the color in her cheeks, the quick light in her
+eyes, the naked, full throat once more, and the wavering forces of
+his unsteady brain centred in a stubborn resolution-to see it all
+again.  He would make Isom stay at home, if need be, and he
+would take the boy's place at the mill.  If she came there no more,
+he would cross the river again.  Come peace or war, be she friend
+or enemy, he would see her.  His thirst was fierce again, and, with
+this half-drunken determination in his heart, he stooped once more
+to drink from the cheerful little stream.  As he rose, a loud curse
+smote the air.  The river, pressed between two projecting cliffs,
+was narrow at that point, and the oath came across the water.  An
+instant later a man led a lamed horse from behind a bowlder, and
+stooped to examine its leg.  The dusk was thickening, but Rome
+knew the huge frame and gray beard of old Jasper Lewallen. The
+blood beat in a sudden tide at his temples, and, half by instinct, he
+knelt behind a rock, and, thrusting his rifle through a crevice,
+cocked it softly.
+
+Again the curse of impatience came over the still water, and old
+Jasper rose and turned toward him.  The glistening sight caught in
+the centre of his beard.  That would take him in the throat; it might
+miss, and he let the sight fall till the bullet would cut the fringe of
+gray hair into the heart.  Old Jasper, so people said, had killed his
+father in just this way; he had driven his uncle from the mountains;
+he was trying now to revive the feud.  He was the father of young
+Jasper, who had threatened his life, and the father of the girl whose
+contempt had cut him to the quick twice that day.  Again her taunt
+leaped through his heated brain, and his boast to the old miller
+followed it.  His finger trembled at the trigger.
+
+"No; by--, no! "he breathed between his teeth; and old Jasper
+passed on, unharmed.
+
+VII
+
+NEXT day the news of Rufe Stetson's flight went down the river
+on the wind, and before nightfall the spirit of murder was loosed
+on both shores of the Cumberland.  The more cautious warned old
+Jasper.  The Stetsons were gaining strength again, they said; so
+were their feudsmen, the Marcums, enemies of the Braytons, old
+Jasper's kinspeople.  Keeping store, Rufe had made money in the
+West, and money and friends right and left through the mountains. 
+With all his good-nature, he was a persistent hater, and he was
+shrewd.  He had waited the chance to put himself on the side of the
+law, and now the law was with him. But old Jasper laughed
+contemptuously.  Rufe Stetson was gone again, he said, as he had
+gone before, and this time for good.  Rufe had tried to do what
+nobody had done, or could do, while he was alive.  Anyway, he
+was reckless, and he cared little if war did come again.  Still, the
+old man prepared for a fight, and Steve Marcum on the other shore
+made ready for Rufe's return.
+
+It was like the breaking of peace in feudal days.  The close kin of
+each leader were already about him, and now the close friends of
+each took sides.  Each leader trading in Hazlan had debtors
+scattered through the mountains, and these rallied to aid the man
+who had befriended them.  There was no grudge but served a
+pretext for partisanship in the coming war.  Political rivalry had
+wedged apart two strong families, the Marcums and Braytons; a
+boundary line in dispute was a chain of bitterness; a suit in a
+country court had sown seeds of hatred. 
+Sometimes it was a horse-trade, a fence left down, or a gate left
+open, and the trespassing of cattle; in one instance, through spite, a
+neighbor had docked the tail of a neighbor's horse-had " muled his
+critter," as the owner phrased the outrage.  There was no old sore
+that was not opened by the crafty leaders, no slumbering bitterness
+that they did not wake to life.  " Help us to revenge, and we will
+he!p you," was the whispered promise.  So, had one man a grudge
+against another, he could set his foot on one or the other shore,
+sure that his enemy would be fighting for the other.
+
+Others there were, friends of neither leader, who, under stress of
+poverty or hatred of work, would fight with either for food and
+clothes; and others still, the ne'er-do-wells and outlaws, who
+fought by the day or month for hire. Even these were secured by
+one or the other faction, for Steve and old Jasper left no resource
+untried, knowing well that the fight, if there was one, would be
+fought to a quick and decisive end.  The day for the leisurely feud,
+for patient planning, and the slow picking off of men from one
+side or the other, was gone.  The people in the Blue Grass, who
+had no feuds in their own country, were trying to stop them in the
+mountain.  Over in Breathitt, as everybody knew, soldiers had
+come from the " settlemints," had arrested the leaders, and had
+taken them to the Blue Grass for the feared and hated ordeal of
+trial by a jury of "bigoted furriners."  On the heels of the soldiers
+came a young preacher up from the Jellico hills, half " citizen,"
+half furriner," with long black hair and a scar across his forehead,
+who was stirring up the people, it was said, " as though Satan was
+atter them."  Over there the spirit of the feud was broken, and a
+good effect was already perceptible around Hazlan.  In past days
+every pair of lips was sealed with fear, and the non-combatants left
+crops and homes, and moved down the river, when trouble began.
+Now only the timid considered this way of escape.  Steve and old
+Jasper found a few men who refused to enter the fight. Several,
+indeed, talked openly against the renewal of the feud, and
+somebody, it was said, had dared to hint that he would send to the
+Governor for aid if it should break out again. But these were
+rumors touching few people.
+
+For once again, as time and time again before, one bank of the
+Cumberland was arrayed with mortal enmity against the other, and
+old Gabe sat, with shaken faith, in the door of his mill. For years
+he had worked and prayed for peace, and for a little while the
+Almighty seemed lending aid.  Now the friendly grasp was
+loosening, and yet the miller did all he could.  He begged Steve
+Marcum to urge Rufe to seek aid from the law when the latter
+came back; and Steve laughed, and asked what justice was
+possible for a Stetson, with a Lewallen for a judge and Braytons
+for a jury.  The miller pleaded with old Jasper, and old Jasper
+pointed to the successes of his own life.
+
+"I hev triumphed ag'in' my enemies time 'n' ag'in," he said.  "The
+Lord air on my side, 'n' I gits a better Christian ever' year."  The old
+man spoke with the sincerity of a barbarism that has survived the
+dark ages, and, holding the same faith, the miller had no answer. 
+It was old Gabe indeed who had threatened to send to the
+Governor for soldiers, and this he would have done, perhaps, had
+there not been one hope left, and only one.  A week had gone, and
+there was no word from Rufe Stetson.  Up on Thunderstruck Knob
+the old Stetson mother was growing pitiably eager and restless. 
+Every day she slipped like a ghost through the leafless woods and
+in and out the cabin, kindling hatred. At every dawn or dusk she
+was on her porch peering through the dim light for Rufe Stetson.
+Steve Marcum was ill at ease.  Rome Stetson alone seemed
+unconcerned, and his name was on every gossiping tongue.
+
+He took little interest and no hand in getting ready for the war.  He
+forbade the firing of a gun till Rufe came back, else Steve should
+fight his fight alone.  He grew sullen and morose. His old mother's
+look was a thorn in his soul, and he stayed little at home.  He hung
+about the mill, and when Isom became bedfast, the big
+mountaineer, who had never handled anything but a horse, a
+plough, or a rifle, settled him-self, to the bewilderment of the
+Stetsons, into the boy's duties, and nobody dared question him.
+Even old Gabe jested no longer.  The matter was too serious.
+
+Meanwhile the winter threw off the last slumbrous mood of
+autumn, as a sleeper starts from a dream.  A fortnight was gone,
+and still no message came from the absent leader.  One shore was
+restive, uneasy; the other confident, mocking.  Between the two,
+Rome Stetson waited his chance at the mill.
+
+VIII.
+
+DAY was whitening on the Stetson shore. Across the river the air
+was still sharp with the chill of dawn, and the mists lay like flocks
+of sheep under shelter of rock and crag. A peculiar cry radiated
+from the Lewallen cabin with singular resonance on the crisp
+air-the mountain cry for straying cattle.  A soft low came from a
+distant patch of laurel, and old Jasper's girl, Martha, folded. her
+hands like a conch at her mouth, and the shrill cry again startled
+the air.
+
+Ye better come, ye pieded cow-brute." Picking up a cedar piggin,
+she stepped from the porch toward the meek voice that had
+answered her.  Temper and exertion had brought the quick blood
+to her face.  Her head was bare, her thick hair was loosely coiled,
+and her brown arms were naked almost to the shoulder.  At the
+stable a young mountaineer was overhauling his riding-gear.
+
+Air you goin' to ride the hoss to-day, Jas?" she asked, querulously.
+
+"That's jes whut I was aimin' to do.  I'm a-goin' to town."
+
+Well, I 'lowed I was goin' to mill to-day. The co'n is 'mos' gone."
+
+"Well, y'u 'lowed wrong," he answered, imperturbably.
+
+Y'u're mean, Jas Lewallen," she cried, hotly; " that's whut ye air,
+mean-dog-mean!
+
+The young mountaineer looked up, whistled softly, and laughed. 
+But when he brought his horse to the door an hour later there was a
+bag of corn across the saddle.
+
+"As ye air so powerful sot on goin' to mill, whether or no, I'll leave
+this hyeh sack at the bend O' the road, 'n' ye kin git it thar.  I'll
+bring the meal back ef ye puts it in the same place.  I hates to see
+women-folks a-ridin' this horse.  Hit spiles him."
+
+The horse was a dapple-gray of unusual beauty, and as the girl
+reached out her hand to stroke his throat, he turned to nibble at her
+arm.
+
+"I reckon he'd jes as lieve have me ride him as you, Jas," she said. 
+" Me 'n' him have got to be great friends.  Ye orter n't to be so
+stingy."
+
+Well, he ain't no hoss to be left out'n the bresh now, 'n' I hain't goin'
+to 'low it."
+
+Old Jasper had lounged out of the kitchen door, and stood with his
+huge bulk against a shrinking pillar of the porch.  The two men
+were much alike.  Both had the same black, threatening brows
+meeting over the bridge of the nose.  A kind of grim humor lurked
+about the old man's mouth, which time might trace about young
+Jasper's.  The girl's face had no humor; the same square brows,
+apart and clearly marked, gave it a strong, serious cast, and while
+she had the Lewallen fire, she favored her mother enough, so the
+neighbors said, "to have a mighty mild, takin' way about her ef she
+wanted."
+
+You're right, Jas," the old mountaineer said; "the hoss air a sin 'n'
+temptation.  Hit do me good ever' time I look at him.  Thar air no
+sech hoss, I tell ye, this side o' the settlements."
+
+The boy started away, and the old man followed, and halted him
+out of the girl's hearing.
+
+"Tell Eli Crump 'n' Jim Stover to watch the Breathitt road close
+now," he said, in a low voice.  " See all them citizens I tol' ye, 'n'
+tell 'em to be ready when I says the word.  Thar's no tellin' whut's
+goin' to happen."
+
+Young Jasper nodded his head, and struck his horse into a gallop. 
+The old man lighted his pipe, and turned back to the house.  The
+girl, bonnet in hand, was starting for the valley.
+
+"Thar ain't no use goin' to Gabe Bunch's fer yer grist," he said.  "
+The mill on Dead Crick's a-runnin' ag'in, 'n' I don't want ye over
+thar axin favors, specially jes now."
+
+"I lef' somethin' fer ye to eat, dad," she replied, " ef ye gits hungry
+before I git back."
+
+You heerd me? " he called after her, knitting his brows.
+
+Yes, dad; I heerd ye," she answered, adding to herself, " But I don't
+heed ye."  In truth, the girl heeded nobody.  It was not her way to
+ask consent, even her own, nor to follow advice. At the bend of the
+road she found the bag, and for an instant she stood wavering.  An
+impulse turned her to the river, and she loosed the boat, and
+headed it across the swift, shallow water from the ford and straight
+toward the mill. At every stroke of her paddle the water rose above
+the prow of the boat, and, blown into spray, flew back and
+drenched her; the wind loosed her hair, and, tugging at her skirts,
+draped her like a statue; and she fought them, wind and water,
+with mouth set and a smile in her eyes.  One sharp struggle still,
+where the creek leaped into freedom; the mouth grew a little
+firmer, the eyes laughed more, the keel grated on pebbles, and the
+boat ran its nose into the withered sedge on the Stetson shore.
+
+A tall gray figure was pouring grain into the hopper when she
+reached the door of the mill. She stopped abruptly, Rome Stetson
+turned, and again the two were face to face.  No greeting passed. 
+The girl lifted her head with a little toss that deepened the set look
+about the mountaineer's mouth; her lax figure grew tense as
+though strung suddenly against some coming harm, and her eyes
+searched the shadows without once resting on him.
+
+Whar's Uncle Gabe? "  She spoke shortly, and as to a stranger.
+
+Gone to town," said Rome, composedly. He had schooled himself
+for this meeting.
+
+When's he comm' back?
+
+Not 'fore night, I reckon."
+
+Whar's Isom?
+
+Isom's sick."
+
+Well, who's tendin' this mill?
+
+For answer he tossed the empty bag into the corner and, without
+looking at her, picked up another bag.
+
+"I reckon ye see me, don't ye? " he asked, coolly.  " Hev a cheer,
+and rest a spell.  Hit's a purty long climb whar you come from."
+
+The girl was confused.  She stayed in the doorway, a little helpless
+and suspicious.  What was Rome Stetson doing here?  His mastery
+of the situation, his easy confidence, puzzled and irritated her. 
+Should she leave?  The mountaineer was a Stetson, a worm to
+tread on if it crawled across the path.  It would be like backing
+down before an enemy.  He might laugh at her after she was gone,
+and, at that thought, she sat down in the chair with composed face,
+looking through the door at the tumbling water, which broke with
+a thousand tints under the sun, but able still to see Rome,
+sidewise, as he moved about the hopper, whistling softly.
+
+Once she looked around, fancying she saw a smile on his sober
+face.  Their eyes came near meeting, and she turned quite away.
+
+Ever seed a body out'n his head?
+
+The girl's eyes rounded with a start of surprise.
+
+Well, it's plumb cur'us.  Isom's been that way lately.  Isom's sick,
+ye know.  Uncle Gabe's got the rheumatiz, 'n' Isom's mighty fond o'
+Uncle Gabe, 'n' the boy pestered me till I come down to he'p him. 
+Hit p'int'ly air strange to hear him talkin'.  He's jes a-ravin' 'bout
+hell 'n' heaven, 'n' the sin o' killin' folks.  You'd ha' thought he hed
+been convicted, though none o' our fambly hev been much atter
+religion. He says as how the wrath uv a livin' God is a-goin' to
+sweep these mount ins, ef some mighty tall repentin' hain't done. 
+Of co'se he got all them notions from Gabe.  But Isom al'ays was
+quar, 'n' seed things hisself.  He ain't no fool!"
+
+The girl was listening.  Morbidly sensitive to the supernatural, she
+had turned toward him, and her face was relaxed with fear and
+awe.
+
+"He's havin' dreams 'n' sech-like now, 'n' I reckon thar's nothing
+he's seed or heerd that he don' talk about.  He's been a-goin' on
+about you," he added, abruptly.  The girl's hands gave a nervous
+twitch. "Oh, he don't say nothin' ag'in' ye.  I reckon he tuk a fancy
+to ye. Mam was plumb distracted, not knowin' whar he had seed
+ye.  She thought it was like his other talk, 'n' I never let
+on-a-knowin' how mam was."  A flush rose like a flame from the
+girl's throat to her hair.  " But hit's this," Rome went on in an
+unsteady tone, "that he talks most about, 'n' I'm sorry myself that
+trouble's a-comm'."  He dropped all pretence now.  "I've been
+a-watchin' fer ye over thar on t' other shore a good deal lately.  I
+didn't know ye at fust, Marthy "-he spoke her name for the first
+time-' 'n' Gabe says y'u didn't know me.  I remembered ye, though,
+'n' I want to tell ye now what I tol' ye then:  I've got nothin' ag'in
+you.  I was hopin' ye mought come over ag'in-hit was sorter cur'us
+that y'u was the same gal-the same gal-"
+
+His self-control left him; he was halting in speech, and blundering
+he did not know where. Fumbling an empty bag at the hopper, he
+had not dared to look at the girl till he heard her move.  She had
+risen, and was picking up her bag.  The hard antagonism of her
+face calmed him instantly.
+
+Hain't ye goin' to have yer grist ground?
+
+Not hyeh," she answered, quickly.
+
+"Why, gal    " He got no further. Martha was gone, and he followed
+her to the bank, bewildered.
+
+The girl's suspicion, lulled by his plausible explanation, had grown 
+sharp  again.  The mountaineer knew that she had been coming
+there.  He was at the mill for another reason than to take the boy's
+place; and with swift in-tuition she saw the truth.
+
+He got angry as she rode away-angry with himself that he had let
+her go; and the same half-tender, half-brutal impulse seized him as
+when he saw her first.  This time he yielded. His horse was at
+hand, and the river not far below was narrow.  The bridle-path that
+led to the Lewallen cabin swerved at one place to a cliff
+overlooking the river, and by hard riding and a climb of a few
+hundred feet on foot he could overtake her half-way up the
+mountain steep.
+
+The plan was no more than shaped before he was in the saddle and
+galloping down the river.  The set of his face changed hardly a line
+while he swam the stream, and, drenched to the waist, scaled the
+cliff.  When he reached the spot, he found the prints of a woman's
+shoe in the dust of the path, going down.  There were none
+returning, and he had not long to wait.  A scarlet bit of color soon
+flashed through the gray bushes below him.  The girl was without
+her bag of corn.  She was climbing slowly, and was looking at the
+ground as though in deep thought.  Reckless as she was, she had
+come to realize at last just what she had done.  She had been
+pleased at first, as would have been any woman, when she saw the
+big mountaineer watching her, for her life was lonely. She had
+waved her bonnet at him from mere mischief. She hardly knew it
+herself, but she had gone across the river to find out who he was. 
+She had shrunk from him as from a snake thereafter, and had gone
+no more until old Jasper had sent her because the Lewallen mill
+was broken, and because she was a woman, and would be safe
+from harm.  She had met him then when she could not help
+herself.  But now she had gone of her own accord.  She had given
+this Stetson, a bitter enemy, a chance to see her, to talk with her. 
+She had listened to him; she had been on the point of letting him
+grind her corn.  And he knew how often she had gone to the mill,
+and he could not know that she had ever been sent.  Perhaps he
+thought that she had come to make overtures of peace, friendship,
+even more.  The suspicion reddened her face with shame, and her
+anger at him was turned upon herself. Why she had gone again that
+day she hardly knew.  But if there was another reason than simple
+perversity, it was the memory of Rome Stetson's face when he
+caught her boat and spoke to her in a way she could not answer. 
+The anger of the moment came with every thought of the incident
+afterward, and with it came too this memory of his look, which
+made her at once defiant and uneasy. She saw him now only when
+she was quite close, and, startled, she stood still; his stern look
+brought her the same disquiet, but she gave no sign of fear.
+
+Whut's the matter with ye?
+
+The question was too abrupt, too savage, and the girl looked
+straight at him, and her lips tightened with a resolution not to
+speak.  The movement put him beyond control.
+
+"Y'u puts hell into me, Marthy Lewallen; y'u puts downright hell
+into me."  The words came between gritted teeth.  "I want to take
+ye up 'n' throw ye off this cliff clean into the river, 'n' I reckon the
+next minute I'd jump off atter ye.  Y'u've 'witched me, gal!  I forgits
+who ye air 'n' who I be, 'n' sometimes I want to come over hyeh 'n'
+kerry ye out'n these mount ins, n' nuver come back.  You know
+whut I've been watchin' the river fer sence the fust time I seed ye. 
+You know whut I've been a-stayin' at the mill fer, 'n' Steve mad 'n'
+mam a-jowerin'-'n' a-lookin' over hyeh fer ye night 'n' day!  Y'u
+know whut I've jes swum over hyeh fer!  Whut's the matter with
+ye?"
+
+Martha was not looking for a confession like this.  It took away her
+shame at once, and the passion of it thrilled her, and left her
+trembling. While he spoke her lashes drooped quickly, her face
+softened, and the color came back to it. She began intertwining her
+fingers, and would not look up at him.
+
+Ef y'u hates me like the rest uv ye, why don't ye say it right out? 
+'N' ef ye do hate me, whut hev you been lookin' 'cross the river fer,
+'n' a-shakin' yer bonnet at me, 'n' paddlin' to Gabe's fer yer grist,
+when the mill on Dead Crick's been a-runnin', 'n' I know it?  You've
+been banterin' me, hev ye? "-the blood rose to his eyes again.  " Ye
+mustn't fool with me, gal, by    , ye mustn't.  Whut hev you been
+goin' over thar fer? "  He even took a threatening step toward her,
+and, with a helpless gesture, stopped.  The girl was a little
+frightened. Indeed, she smiled, seeing her power over him; she
+seemed even about to laugh outright; but the smile turned to a
+quick look of alarm, and she bent her head suddenly to listen to
+something below.  At last she did speak. "Somebody's comm'! "
+she said.  " You'd better git out O' the  way," she went on,
+hurriedly. "Somebody's  comm', I  tell ye!  Don't ye hear? 
+
+It was no ruse to get rid of him.  The girl's eyes were dilating. 
+Something was coming far below.  Rome could catch the faint
+beats of a horse's hoofs.  He was unarmed, and he knew it was
+death for him to be seen on that forbidden mountain; but he was
+beyond caution, and ready to welcome any vent to his passion, and
+he merely shook his head.
+
+Ef it's Satan hisself, I hain't goin' to run." The hoof-beats came
+nearer.  The rider must soon see them from the coil below.
+
+Rome, hit's Jas!  He's got his rifle, and he'll kill ye, 'n' me too! " 
+The girl was white with distress.  She had called him by his name,
+and the tone was of appeal, not anger.  The black look passed from
+his face, and he caught her by the shoulders with rough tenderness;
+but she pushed him away, and without a word he sprang from the
+road and let himself noiselessly down the cliff. The hoof-beats
+thundered above his head, and Young Jasper's voice hailed Martha.
+
+This hyeh's the bigges' meal I ever straddled.  Why d'n't ye git the
+grist ground?"
+
+For a moment the girl did not answer, and Rome waited,
+breathless.  " Wasn't the mill runnin'?  Whyn't ye go on 'cross the
+river?
+
+That's whut I did," said the girl, quietly. Uncle Gabe wasn't thar, 'n'
+Rome Stetson was.  I wouldn't 'low him to grin' the co 'n, 'n' so I
+toted hit back."
+
+Rome Stetson! "  The voice was lost in a volley of oaths.
+
+The two passed out of hearing, and Rome went plunging down the
+mountain, swinging recklessly from one little tree to another, and
+wrenching limbs from their sockets out of pure physical ecstasy. 
+When he reached his horse he sat down, breathing heavily, on a
+bed of moss, with a strange new yearning in his heart.  If peace
+should come!  Why not peace, if Rufe should not come back?  He
+would be the leader then, and without him there could be no war.
+Old Jasper had killed his father.  He was too young at the time to
+feel poignant sorrow now, and somehow he could look even at that
+death in a fairer way.  His father had killed old Jasper's brother. 
+So it went back: a Lewallen killed a Stetson; that Stetson had
+killed a Lewallen, until one end of the chain of deaths was lost,
+and the first fault could not be placed, though each clan put it on
+the other.  In every generation there had been compromises-
+periods of peace; why not now?  Old Gabe would gladly help him. 
+He might make friends with young Jasper; he might even end the
+feud. And then-he and Martha-why not?  He closed his eyes, and
+for one radiant moment t all seemed possible.  And then a gaunt
+image rose in the dream, and only the image was left. It was the
+figure of his mother, stern and silent through the years, opening
+her grim lips rarely without some curse against the Lewallen race.
+He remembered she had smiled for the first time when she heard
+of the new trouble-the flight of his uncle and the hope of conflict. 
+She had turned to him with her eyes on fire and her old hands
+clinched.  She had said nothing, but he understood her look.  And
+now-Good God! what would she think and say if she could know
+what he had done?  His whole frame twitched at the thought, and,
+with a nervous spring to escape it, he was on his feet, and starting
+down the mountain.
+
+Close to the river he heard voices below him, and he turned his
+horse quickly aside into the bushes.  Two women who had been
+washing clothes passed, carrying white bundles home. They were
+talking of the coming feud.
+
+"That ar young Stetson ain't much like his dad," said one.  "Young
+Jas has been a-darin' 'n' a-banterin' him, 'n' he won't take it up. They
+say he air turnin' out a plumb coward."
+
+When he reached the Stetson cabin three horses with drooping
+heads were hitched to the fence.  All had travelled a long way. 
+One wore a man's saddle; on the others were thick blankets tied
+together with leathern thongs.
+
+In the dark porch sat several men.  Through the kitchen door he
+could see his mother getting supper.  Inside a dozen rifles leaned
+against the wall in the firelight, and about their butts was a pile of
+ammunition.  In the doorway stood Rufe Stetson.
+
+IX
+
+ALL were smoking and silent. Several spoke from the shadows as
+Rome stepped on the porch, and Rufe Stetson faced him a moment
+in the doorway, and laughed.
+
+Seem kinder s'prised? " he said, with a searching look.  " Wasn't
+lookin' for me?  I reckon I'll s'prise sev'ral ef I hev good-luck."
+
+The subtlety of this sent a chuckle of appreciation through the
+porch, but Rome passed in without answer.
+
+Isom lay on his bed within the circle of light, and his face in the
+brilliant glow was white, and his eyes shone feverishly. " Rome,"
+he said, excitedly, " Uncle Rufe's hyeh, 'n' they laywayed him,
+'n'____" He paused abruptly. His mother came in, and at her call
+the mountaineers trooped through the covered porch, and sat down
+to supper in the kitchen.  They ate hastily and in silence, the
+mother attending their wants, and Rome helping her.  The meal
+finished, they drew their chairs about the fire.  Pipes were lighted,
+and Rufe Stetson rose and closed the door.
+
+Thar's no use harryin' the boy," he said; "I reckon he'll be too puny
+to take a hand."
+
+The mother stopped clearing the table, and sat on the rock hearth
+close to the fire, her withered lips shut tight about a lighted pipe,
+and her sunken eyes glowing like the coal of fire in its black bowl. 
+Now and then she would stretch her knotted hands nervously into
+the flames, or knit them about her knees, looking closely at the
+heavy faces about her, which had lightened a little with
+expectancy.  Rufe Stetson stood before the blaze, his hands
+clasped behind him, and his huge figure bent in reflection.  At
+intervals he would look with half-shut eyes at Rome, who Sat with
+troubled face outside the firelight.  Across the knees of Steve
+Marcum, the best marksman in the mountains, lay the barrel of a
+new Winchester.  Old Sam Day, Rufe's father-in-law and
+counsellor to the Stetsons for a score of years, sat as if asleep on
+the opposite side of the fireplace from the old mother, with his big
+square head pressed down between his misshapen shoulders.
+
+"The time hev come, Rome."  Rufe spoke between the puffs of his
+pipe, and Rome's heart quickened, for every eye was upon him. 
+Thar's goin' to be trouble now.  I hear as how young Jasper hev
+been talkin' purty tall about ye-'lowin' as how ye air afeard O' him."
+
+Rome felt his mother's burning look.  He did not turn toward her
+nor Rufe, but his face grew sullen, and his voice was low and
+harsh. "I reckon he'll find out about that when the time comes," he
+said, quietly-too quietly, for the old mother stirred uneasily, and
+significant glances went from eye to eye. Rufe did not look up
+from the floor.  He had been told about Rome's peculiar conduct,
+and, while the reason for it was beyond guessing, he knew the
+temper of the boy and how to kindle it.  He had thrust a thorn in a
+tender spot, and he let it rankle.  How sorely it did rankle he little
+knew. The voice of the woman across the river was still in Rome 5
+ears.  Nothing cuts the mountaineer to the quick like the name of
+coward. It stung him like the lash of an ox-whip then; it smarted
+all the way across the river and up the mountain.  Young Jasper
+had been charging him broadcast with cowardice, and Jasper's
+people no doubt believed it.  Perhaps his own did
+-his uncle, his mother.  The bare chance of such a humiliation set
+up an inward rage.  He wondered how he could ever have been
+such a fool as to think of peace.  The woman's gossip had swept
+kindly impulses from his heart with a fresh tide of bitterness, and,
+helpless now against its current, he sullenly gave way, and let his
+passions loose to drift with it.
+
+"Whar d' ye git the guns, Rufe? "  Steve was testing the action of
+the Winchester with a kindling look, as the click of the locks
+struck softly through the silence.
+
+"Jackson; 'way up in Breathitt, at the eend of the new road."
+
+"No wonder y'u've been gone so long."
+
+"I had to wait thar fer the guns, 'n' I had to travel atter dark comm'
+back, 'n' lay out'n the bresh by day.  Hit's full eighty mile up thar."
+
+"Air ye shore nobody seed ye?"
+
+The question was from a Marcum, who had come in late, and
+several laughed.  Rufe threw back his dusty coat, which was ripped
+through the lapel by a bullet.
+
+They seed me well 'nough fer that," he said, grimly, and then he
+looked toward Rome, who thought of old Jasper, and gave back a
+gleam of fierce sympathy.  There were several nods of approval
+along with the laugh that followed.  It was a surprise-so little
+consideration of an escape so narrow-from Rufe; for, as old Gabe
+said, Rufe was big and good-natured, and was not thought fit for
+leadership. But there was a change in him when he came back
+from the West.  He was quieter; he laughed less  No one spoke of
+the difference; it was too vague; but every one felt it, and it had an
+effect.  His flight had made many uneasy, but his return, for that
+reason, brought a stancher fealty from these; and this was evident
+now.  All eyes were upon him, and all tongues, even old Sam's,
+waited now for his to speak.
+
+"Whut we've got to do, we've got to do mighty quick," he began, at
+last.  " Things air changin'.  I seed it over thar in Breathitt.  The
+soldiers 'n' that scar-faced Jellico preacher hev broke up the fightin'
+over thar, 'n' ef we don't watch out, they'll be a-doin' it hyeh, when
+we start our leetle frolic.  We hain't got no time to fool.  Old Jas
+knows this as well as me, 'n' thar's goin' to be mighty leetle chance
+fer 'em to layway 'n' pick us off from the bresh.  Thar's goin' to be
+fa'r fightin' fer once, thank the Lord.  They bushwhacked us dunn'
+the war, 'n' they've laywayed us 'n' shot us to pieces ever sence; but
+now, ef God A'mighty's willin', the thing's a-goin' to be settled one
+way or t'other at last, I reckon."
+
+He stopped a moment to think.  The men's breathing could be
+heard, so quiet was the room, and Rufe went on telling in detail,
+slowly, as if to himself, the wrongs the Lewallens had done his
+people.  When he came to old Jasper his voice was low, and his
+manner was quieter than ever.
+
+"Now old Jas have got to the p'int whar he says as how nobody in
+this county kin undersell him 'n' stay hyeh.  Old Jas druv Bond
+Vickers out'n the mount 'ins fer tryin' hit.  He druv Jess Hale away;
+'n' them two air our kin."
+
+The  big mountaineer turned then,  and knocked the ashes from his
+pipe.  His eyes grew a little brighter, and his nostrils spread, but
+with a sweep of his arm he added, still quietly:
+
+"Y' all know whut he's done."
+
+The gesture lighted memories of personal wrongs in every breast;
+he had tossed a fire-brand among fagots, and an angry light began
+to burn from the eyes that watched him.
+
+"Ye know, too, that he thinks he has played the same game with
+me; but ye don't know, I reckon, that he had ole Jim Stover 'n' that
+mis'-able Eli Crump a-hidin' in the bushes to shoot me "-again he
+grasped the torn lapel; "that a body warned me to git away from
+Hazlan; n' the night I left home they come thar to kill me, 'n'
+s'arched the house, 'n' skeered Mollie n' the leetle gal 'most to
+death."
+
+The mountaineer's self-control was lost suddenly in a furious oath. 
+The men did know, but in fresh anger they leaned forward in their
+chairs, and twisted about with smothered curses. The old woman
+had stopped smoking, and was rocking her body to and fro.  Her
+lips were drawn in upon her toothless gums, and her pipe was
+clinched against her sunken breast.  The head of the old
+mountaineer was lifted, and his eyes were open and shining
+fiercely.
+
+"I hear as how he says I'm gone fer good. Well, I have been kinder
+easy-goin', hatin' to fight, but sence the day I seed Rome's dad thar
+dead in his blood, I hev had jes one thing I wanted to do.  Thar
+wasn't no use stayin' hyeh; I seed that.  Rome thar was too leetle,
+and they was too many fer me.  I knowed it was easier to git a new
+start out West, 'n' when I come back to the mount'in, hit was to do
+jes-whut I'm - going - to - do - now."  He wheeled suddenly upon
+Rome, with one huge hand lifted. Under it the old woman's voice
+rose in a sudden wail:
+
+Yes; 'n' I want to see it done befoh I die. I hain't hyeh fer long, but I
+hain't goin' to leave as long as ole Jas is hyeh, 'n' I want ye all to
+know it.  Ole Jas hev got to go fust.  You hear me, Rome?  I'm
+a-talkin' to you; I'm a-talkin' to you.  Hit's yo' time now!
+
+The frenzied chant raised Rome from his chair.  Rufe himself took
+up the spirit of it, and his voice was above all caution.
+
+"Yes, Rome!  They killed him, boy.  They sneaked on him, 'n' shot
+him to pieces from the bushes.  Yes; hit's yo' time now!  Look
+hyeh, boys! "  He reached above the fireplace and took down an
+old rifle-his brother's-which the old mother had suffered no one to
+touch. He held it before the fire, pointing to two crosses made near
+the flash-pan.  " Thar's one fer ole Jim Lewallen!  Thar's one fer
+ole Jas! He got Jim, but ole Jas has got him, 'n' thar's his cross thar
+yit!  Whar's yo' gun, Rome? Shame on ye, boy!"
+
+The wild-eyed old woman was before him. She had divined Rufe's
+purpose, and was already at his side, with Rome's Winchester in
+one hand and a clasp-knife in the other.  Every man was on his
+feet; the door was open, and the boy Isom was at the threshold, his
+eyes blazing from his whitc face.  Rome had strode forward.
+
+Yes, boy; now's the time, right hyeh before us all!
+
+The mother had the knife outstretched. Rome took it, and the
+scratch of the point on the hard steel went twice through the
+stillness-one more fer the young un"; the voice was the old
+mother's-then twice again.
+
+The moon was sinking when Rome stood in the door alone.  The
+tramp of horses was growing fainter down the mountain.  The trees
+were swaying in the wind below him, and he could just see the
+gray cliffs on the other shore. The morning seemed far away; it
+made him dizzy looking back to it through the tumult of the day. 
+Somewhere in the haze was the vision of a girl's white face-white
+with distress for him.  Her father and her brother he had sworn to
+kill.  He had made a cross for each, and each cross was an oath. 
+He closed the door; and then he gave way, and sat down with his
+head in both hands.  The noises in the kitchen ceased. The fire
+died away, and the chill air gathered about him.  When he rose, the
+restless eyes of the boy were upon him from the shadows.
+
+X
+
+IT was court-day in Hazlan, but so early in the morning nothing
+was astir in the town that hinted of its life on such a day.  But for
+the ring of a blacksmith's anvil on the quiet air, and the fact that
+nowhere was a church-spire visible, a stranger would have thought
+that the peace of Sabbath overlay a village of God-fearing people. 
+A burly figure lounged in the porch of a rickety house, and yawned
+under a swinging sign, the rude letters of which promised" private
+entertainment " for the traveller unlucky enough to pass that way. 
+In the one long, narrow main street, closely flanked by log and
+framed houses, nothing else human was in sight. Out from this
+street, and in an empty square, stood the one brick building in the
+place, the court-house, brick without, brick within; unfinished,
+unpencilled, unpainted; panes out of the windows, a shutter off
+here and there, or swinging drunkenly on one hinge; the door wide
+op en, as though there was no privacy within-a poor structure, with
+the look of a good man gone shiftless and fast going wrong.
+
+Soon two or three lank brown figures appeared from each direction
+on foot; then a horseman or two, and by and by mountaineers came
+in groups, on horse and on foot.  In time the side alleys and the
+court-house square were filled with horses and mules, and even
+steers.  The mountaineers crowded the narrow street: idling from
+side to side; squatting for a bargain on the wooden sidewalks;
+grouping on the porch of the rickety hotel, and on the court-house
+steps loitering in and out of the one store in sight. Out in the street
+several stood about a horse, looking at his teeth, holding his eyes
+to the sun, punching his ribs, twisting his tail; while the phlegmatic
+owner sat astride the submissive beast, and spoke short answers to
+rare questions. Everybody talked politics, the crop failure, or the
+last fight at the seat of some private war; but nobody spoke of a
+Lewallen or a Stetson unless he knew his listener's heart, and said
+it in a whisper.  For nobody knew when the powder would flash, or
+who had taken sides, or that a careless word might not array him
+with one or the other faction.
+
+A motley throng it was-in brown or gray homespun, with trousers
+in cowhide boots, and slouched hats with brims curved according
+to temperament, but with striking figures in it; the patriarch with
+long, white hair, shorn even with the base of the neck, and bearded
+only at the throat-a justice of the peace, and the sage of his district;
+a little mountaineer with curling black hair and beard, and dark,
+fine features; a grizzled giant with a head rugged enough to have
+been carelessly chipped from stone; a bragging candidate claiming
+everybody's notice; a square- shouldered fellow surging through
+the crowd like a stranger; an open-faced, devil-may- care young
+gallant on fire with moonshine; a skulking figure with brutish
+mouth and shifting eyes.  Indeed, every figure seemed distinct; for,
+living apart from his neighbor, and troubling the law but little in
+small matters of dispute, the mountaineer preserves independence,
+and keeps the edges of his individuality unworn.  Apparently there
+was not a woman in town.  Those that lived there kept housed, and
+the fact was significant.  Still, it was close to noon, and yet not a
+Stetson or a Lewallen had been seen. The stores of Rufe and old
+Jasper were at the extremities of the town, and the crowd did not
+move those ways.  It waited in the centre, and whetted impatience
+by sly trips in twos and three to stables or side alleys for "mountain
+dew." Now and then the sheriff, a little man with a mighty voice,
+would appear on the courthouse steps, and summon a witness to
+court, where a frightened judge gave instructions to a frightened
+jury.  But few went, unless called; for the interest was outside;
+every man in the streets knew that a storm was nigh, and was
+waiting to see it burst.
+
+Noon passed.  A hoarse bell and a whining hound had announced
+dinner in the hotel.  The guests were coming again into the streets.
+Eyes were brighter, faces a little more flushed, and the
+"moonshine" was passed more openly. Both ways the crowd
+watched closely.  The quiet at each end of the street was ominous,
+and the delay could last but little longer.  The lookers-on
+themselves were getting quarrelsome. The vent must come soon,
+or among them there would be trouble.
+
+Thar comes Jas Lewallen! "  At last.  A dozen voices spoke at
+once.  A horseman had appeared far down the street from the
+Lewallen end.  The clouds broke from about the sun, and a dozen
+men knew the horse that bore him; for the gray was prancing the
+street sidewise, and throwing the sunlight from his flanks. Nobody
+followed, and the crowd was puzzled. Young Jasper carried a
+Winchester across his saddle-bow, and, swaying with the action of
+his horse, came on.
+
+"What air he about?"
+
+"He's a plumb idgit."
+
+He mus' be crazy."
+
+He's drunk!
+
+The  wonder ceased.  Young Jasper was reeling.  Two or three
+Stetsons slipped from the crowd, and there was a galloping of
+hoofs the other way.  Another horseman appeared from the
+Lewallen end, riding hastily.  The new-comer's errand was to call
+Jasper back. But the young dare-devil was close to the crowd, and
+was swinging a bottle over his head.
+
+Come back hyeh, Jas!  Come hyeh!" The new-comer was shouting
+afar off while he galloped.  Horses were being untethered from the
+side alleys.  Several more Lewallen riders came in sight.  They
+could see the gray shining in the sunlight amid the crowd, and the
+man sent after him halted at a safe distance, gesticulating; and
+they, too, spurred forward.
+
+Hello, boys! " young Jasper was calling out, as he swayed from
+side to side, the people everywhere giving him way.
+
+"Fun to-day, by- ! fun to-day!  Who'll hev a drink?  Hyeh's hell to
+the Stetsons, whar some of 'em '11 be afore night!
+
+With a swagger he lifted the bottle to his lips, and, stopping short,
+let it fall untouched to the ground.  He had straightened in his
+saddle, and was looking up the street.  With a deep curse he threw
+the Winchester to his shoulder, fired, and before his yell had died
+on his lips horse and rider were away like a shaft of light. The
+crowd melted like magic from the street. The Stetsons, chiefly on
+foot, did not return the fire, but halted up the street, as if parleying.
+Young Jasper joined his party, and they, too, stood still a moment,
+puzzled by the irresolution of the other side.
+
+"Watch out! they're gittin' round ye!  Run for the court-house, ye
+fools !-ye, run! "  The voice came in a loud yell from somewhere
+down the street, and its warning was just in time.
+
+A wreath of smoke came about a corner of the house far down the
+street, and young Jasper yelled, and dashed up a side alley with his
+followers.  A moment later judge, jury, witnesses, and sheriff were
+flying down the court-house steps at the point of Lewallen guns;
+the Lewallen horses, led by the gray, were snorting through the
+streets; their riders, barricaded in the forsaken court-house, were
+puffing a stream of fire and smoke from every window of
+court-room below and jury-room above.
+
+The streets were a bedlam.  The Stetsons were yelling with
+triumph.  The Lewallens were divided, and Rufe placed three
+Stetsons with Winchesters on each side of the courthouse, and kept
+them firing.  Rome, pale and stern, hid his force between the
+square and the Lewallen store.  He was none too quick.  The rest
+were coming on, led by old Jasper.  It was reckless, riding that
+way right into death; but the old man believed young Jasper's life
+at stake, and the men behind asked no questions when old Jasper
+led them.  The horses' hoofs beat the dirt street like the crescendo
+of thunder.  The fierce old man's hat was gone, and his mane-like
+hair was shaking in the wind.  Louder-and still the Stetsons were
+quiet-quiet too long. The wily old man saw the trap, and, with a
+yell, whirled the column up an alley, each man flattening over his
+saddle.  From every window, from behind every corner and tree,
+smoke belched from the mouth of a Winchester. Two horses went
+down; one screamed; the other struggled to his feet, and limped
+away with an empty saddle.  One pf the fallen men sprang into
+safety behind a house, and one lay still, with his arms stretched out
+and his face in the dust.
+
+From behind barn, house, and fence the Lewallens gave back a
+scattering fire; but the Stetsons crept closer, and were plainly in
+greater numbers.  Old Jasper was being surrounded, and he
+mounted again, and all, followed by a chorus of bullets and
+triumphant yells, fled for a wooded slope in the rear of the
+court-house. A dozen Lewallens were prisoners, and must give up
+or starve.  There was savage joy in the Stetson crowd, and
+many-footed rumor went all ways that night.
+
+Despite sickness and Rome's strict order, Isom had ridden down to
+the mill.  Standing in the doorway, he and old Gabe saw up the
+river, where the water broke into foam over the ford, a riderless
+gray horse plunging across.  Later it neighed at a gate under Wolf's
+Head, and Martha Lewallen ran out to meet it.  Across under
+Thunderstruck Knob that night the old Stetson mother listened to
+Isom's story of the fight with ghastly joy in her death-marked face.
+
+XI
+
+ALL night the court-house was guarded and on guard.  At one
+corner of the square Rufe Stetson, with a few men, sat on watch in
+old Sam Day's cabin-the fortress of the town, built for such a
+purpose, and used for it many times before. The prisoners, too,
+were alert, and no Stetson ventured into the open square, for the
+moon was high; an exposure anywhere was noted instantly by the
+whistle of a rifle-ball, and the mountaineer takes few risks except
+under stress of drink or passion.  Rome Stetson had placed pickets
+about the town wherever surprise was possible.  All night he
+patrolled the streets to keep his men in such readiness as he could
+for the attack that the Lewallens would surely make to rescue their
+living friends and to avenge the dead ones.
+
+But the triumph was too great and unexpected.  Two Braytons
+were dead; several more were prisoners with young Jasper in the
+courthouse; and drinking began.
+
+As the night deepened without attack the Stetsons drank more, and
+grew reckless.  A dance was started.  Music and "moonshine" were
+given to every man who bore a Winchester. The night was broken
+with drunken yells, the random discharge of fire-arms, and the
+mono-tone of heavy feet. The two leaders were helpless, and the
+inaction of the Lewallens puzzled them.  Chafed with anxiety, they
+kept their eyes on the court-house or on the thicket of gloom where
+their enemies lay.  But the woods were as quiet as the pall of
+shadows over them. Once Rome, making his rounds, saw a figure
+crawling through a field of corn.  It looked like Crump's, but
+before he could fire the man rolled like a ball down the bushy bank
+to the river. An instant later some object went swiftly past a side
+street-somebody on horseback-and a picket fired an alarm. The
+horse kept on, and Rome threw his rifle on a patch of moonlight,
+but when the object flashed through, his finger was numbed at the
+trigger.  In the moonlight the horse looked gray, and the rider was
+seated sidewise. A bullet from the court-house clipped his hat-brim
+as he ran recklessly across the street to where Steve Marcum stood
+in the dark behind old Sam's cabin.
+
+"Jim Hale 'll  git him as he goes up the road," said Steve,
+calmly-and then with hot impatience, "Why the hell don't he
+shoot?
+
+Rome started forward in the moonlight, and Steve caught his arm.
+Two bullets hissed from the court-house, and he fell back.
+
+A shot sounded from the bushes far away from the road. The horse
+kept on, and splashed into Troubled Fork, and Steve swore bitterly.
+
+"Hit hain't Jim.  Hit's that mis'able Bud Vickers; he's been a-stan
+din' guard out'n the bushes 'stid o' the road. That was a spy, I tell
+ye, 'n' the coward let him in and let him out. They'll know now
+we're all drunk! Whut's the matter?
+
+Rome's mouth was half open.  He looked white and sick, and Steve
+thought he had been hit, but he took off his hat. " Purty close! " he
+said, with a laugh, pointing at the bullet-hole through the brim.
+
+Steve, unsuspicious, went on: "Hit was a spy, I tell ye.  Bud was
+afeard to stan' in the road, 'n' I'm goin' out thar 'n' twist his damned
+neck. We've got 'em, Rome!  I tell ye, we've got 'em! Ef we kin git
+through this night, and git the boys sober in the morning, we've got
+'em shore!"
+
+The night did pass in safety, darkness wore away without attack,
+and morning broke on the town in its drunken stupor.  Then the
+curious silence of the Lewallens was explained.  The rumor came
+that old Jasper was dead, and it went broadcast.  Later, friends
+coming to the edge of the town for the bodies of the dead
+Lewallens confirmed it. A random ball had passed through old
+Lewallen's body in the wild  flight for the woods, and during the
+night he had spent his last breath in a curse against the man who
+fired it.
+
+Then each Stetson, waked from his drunken sleep, drank again
+when he heard of the death. The day bade fair to be like the night,
+and again the anxiety of the leaders was edged with fear. Old
+Jasper dead and young Jasper a prisoner, the chance was near to
+end the feud, or there would be no Lewallen left to lead their
+enemies. But, again, they were wellnigh helpless.  Already they
+had barely enough men to guard their prisoners.  Of the Marcums,
+Steve alone was able to handle a Winchester, and outside the
+sounds of the carousal were in the air and growing louder.  In a
+little while, if the Lewallens but knew it, escape would be easy and
+the Stetsons could be driven from the town.
+
+Oh, they know it," said Steve.  "They'll be a-whoopin' down out O'
+them woods purty soon, 'n' we re goin to ketch hell.  I'd like to
+know mighty well who that spy was last night. That cussed Bud
+Vickers says it was a ha'nt, on a white hoss, with long hair flyin' in
+the wind, 'n' that he shot plumb through it.  I jus' wish I'd a had a
+chance at it."
+
+Still, noon came again without trouble, and the imprisoned
+Lewallens had been twenty-four hours without food. Their
+ammunition was getting scarce.  The firing was less frequent,
+though the watch was as close as ever, and twice a Winchester had
+sounded a signal of distress. All knew that a response must come
+soon; and come it did. A picket, watching the river road, saw
+young Jasper's horse coming along the dark bushes far up the river,
+and brought the news to the group standing behind old Sam's
+cabin. The gray galloped into sight, and, skirting the woods, came
+straight for the town-with a woman on his back.  The stirrup of a
+man's saddle dangled on one side, and the woman's bonnet had
+fallen from her head.  Some one challenged her.
+
+Stop, I tell ye! Don't ye go near that courthouse! Stop, I tell ye! I'll
+shoot! Stop!"
+
+Rome ran from the cabin with a revolver in each hand. A drunken
+mountaineer was raising a Winchester to his shoulder, and,
+springing from the back of the gray at the court-house steps, was
+Martha Lewallen.
+
+"I'll kill the fust man that lifts his finger to hurt the gal," Rome
+said, knocking the drunken man's gun in the air.  "We hain't fightin'
+women!"
+
+It was too late to oppose her, and the crowd stood helplessly
+watching.  No one dared approach, so, shielding with her body the
+space of the opening door, she threw the sack of food within. Then
+she stood a moment talking and, turning, climbed to her saddle.
+The gray was spotted with foam, and showed the red of his nostrils
+with every breath as, with face flushed and eyes straight before
+her, she rode slowly toward the crowd.  What was she about?
+Rome stood rigid, his forgotten pistols hanging at each side; the
+mouth of the drunken mountaineer was open with stupid wonder;
+the rest fell apart as she came around the corner of the cabin and,
+through the space given, rode slowly, her skirt almost brushing
+Rome, looking neither to the right nor to the left; and when she
+had gone quite through them all, she wheeled and rode, still
+slowly, through the open fields toward the woods which sheltered
+the Lewallens, while the crowd stood in bewildered silence
+looking after her. Yells of laughter came from the old court-house. 
+Some of the Stetsons laughed, too; some swore, a few grumbled;
+but there was not one who was not stirred by the superb daring of
+the girl, though she had used it only to show her contempt.
+
+" Rome, you're a fool; though, fer a fac', we can't shoot a woman;
+'n' anyways I ruther shoot her than the hoss. But lemme tell ye, thar
+was more'n sump'n to eat in that bag! They air up to some dodge."
+
+Rufe Stetson had watched the incident through a port-hole of the
+cabin, and his tone was at once jesting and anxious.
+
+"That grub won't last more'n one day, I reckon," said the drunken
+mountaineer.  We'll watch out fer the gal nex' time.  We're boun' to
+git 'em one time or t'other."
+
+"She rid through us to find out how many of us wasn't dead drunk,"
+said Steve Marcum, still watching the girl as she rode on, toward
+the woods; "'n' I'm a-thinkin' they'll be down on us purty soon now,
+'n' I reckon we'll have to run fer it. Look thar boys!"
+
+The girl had stopped at the edge of the woods; facing the town, she
+waved her bonnet high above her head.
+
+"Well, whut in the--! "he said, with slow emphasis, and then he
+leaped from the door with a yell. The bonnet was a signal to the
+beleaguered Lewallens.  The rear door of the courthouse had been
+quietly opened, and the prisoners were out in a body and
+scrambling over the fence before the pickets could give an alarm.
+The sudden yells, the crack of Winchesters, startled even the
+revellers and all who could, headed by Rome and Steve Marcum,
+sprang into the square, and started in pursuit.  But the Lewallens
+had got far ahead, and were running in zigzag lines to dodge the
+balls flying after them. Half-way to the woods was a gully of red
+clay, and into this the fleetest leaped, and turned instantly to cover
+their comrades. The Winchesters began to rattle from the woods,
+and the bullets came like rain from everywhere.
+
+"T-h-up!  T-h-up!  T-h-up! " there were three of them-the peculiar
+soft, dull messages of hot lead to living flesh. A Stetson went
+down; another stumbled; Rufe Stetson, climbing the fence, caught
+at his breast with an oath, and fell back. Rome and Steve dropped
+for safety to the ground. Every other Stetson turned in a panic, and
+every Lewallen in the gully leaped from it, and ran under the
+Lewallen fire for shelter in the woods. The escape was over.
+
+"That was a purty neat trick," said Steve, wiping a red streak from
+his cheek.  " Nex' time she tries that, she'll git herself into trouble."
+
+At nightfall the wounded leader and the dead one were carried up
+the mountain, each to his home; and there was mourning far into
+the night on one bank of the Cumberland, and, serious though Rufe
+Stetson's wound was, exultation on the other. But in it Rome could
+take but little part. There had been no fault to find with him in the
+fight. But a reaction had set in when he saw the girl flash in the
+moonlight past the sights of his Winchester, and her face that day
+had again loosed within him a flood of feeling that drove the lust
+for revenge from his veins. Even now, while he sat in his own
+cabin, his thoughts were across the river where Martha, broken at
+last, sat at her death vigils. He knew what her daring ride that day
+had cost her, with old Jasper dead out there in the woods; and as
+she passed him he had grown suddenly humbled, shamed. He grew
+heart-sick now as he thought of it all; and the sight of his mother
+on her bed in the corner, close to death as she was, filled him with
+bitterness. There was no help for him. He was alone now, pitted
+against young Jasper alone. On one bed lay his uncle-nigh to death.
+There was the grim figure in the corner, the implacable spirit of
+hate and revenge.  His rifle was against the wall.  If there was any
+joy for him in old Jasper's death, it was that his hand had not
+caused it, and yet-God help him!-there was the other cross, the
+other oath. 
+
+XII
+
+THE star and the crescent were swinging above Wolf's Head, and
+in the dark hour that breaks into dawn a cavalcade of Lewallens
+forded the Cumberland, and galloped along the Stetson shore. At
+the head rode young Jasper, and Crump the spy.
+
+Swift changes had followed the court-house fight. In spite of the
+death of Rufe Stetson from his wound, and several other Stetsons
+from ambush, the Lewallens had lost ground. Old Jasper's store
+had fallen into the hands of creditors -" furriners "-for debts, and it
+was said his homestead must follow.  In a private war a leader
+must be more than leader. He must feed and often clothe his
+followers, and young Jasper had not the means to carry on the
+feud. The famine had made corn dear.  He could feed neither man
+nor horse, and the hired feudsmen fell away, leaving the Lewallens
+and the Braytons and their close kin to battle alone. So Jasper
+avoided open combat and resorted to ambush and surprise; and,
+knowing in some way every move made by the Stetsons, with great
+daring and success.  It was whispered, too, that he no longer cared
+who owned what he might want for himself. Several dark deeds
+were traced to him. In a little while he was a terror to good
+citizens, and finally old Gabe asked aid of the Governor. Soldiers
+from the settlements were looked for any day, and both factions
+knew it. At the least this would delay the war, and young Jasper
+had got ready for a last fight, which was close at hand.
+
+Half a mile on the riders swerved into a wooded slope.  There they
+hid their horses in the brush, and climbed the spur stealthily. The
+naked woods showed the cup-like shape of the mountains there-a
+basin from which radiated upward wooded ravines, edged with
+ribs of rock. In this basin the Stetsons were encamped. The smoke
+of a fire was visible in the dim morning light, and the Lewallens
+scattered to surround the camp, but the effort was vain. A picket
+saw the creeping figures; his gun echoed a warning from rock to
+rock, and with yells the Lewallens ran forward. Rome sprang from
+his sleep near the fire, bareheaded, rifle in hand, his body plain
+against a huge rock, and the bullets hissed and spat about him as
+he leaped this way and that, firing as he sprang, and shouting for
+his men. Steve Marcum alone answered. Some, startled from
+sleep, had fled in a panic; some had run deeper into the woods for
+shelter. And bidding Steve save himself, Rome turned up the
+mountain, running from tree to tree, and dropped unhurt behind a
+fallen chestnut. Other Stetsons, too, had turned, and answering
+bullets began to whistle to the enemy, but they were widely
+separated and ignorant of one another's position, and the Lewallens
+drove them one by one to new hiding-places, scattering them more. 
+To his right Rome saw Steve Marcum speed like a shadow up
+through a little open space, but he feared to move, for several
+Lewallens had recognized him, and were watching him alone. He
+could not even fire; at the least exposure there was a chorus of
+bullets about his ears. In a moment they began to come obliquely
+from each side-the Lewallens were getting around him. In a
+moment more death was sure there, and once again he darted up
+the mountain. The bullets sang after him like maddened bees. He
+felt one cut his hat and another sting his left arm, but he raced up,
+up, till the firing grew fainter as he climbed, and ceased an instant
+altogether. Then, still farther below, came a sudden crash of
+reports. Stetsons were pursuing the men who were after him, but
+he could not join them. The Lewallens were scattered everywhere
+between him and his own man, and a desccnt might lead him to
+the muzzle of an enemy's Winchester. So he climbed over a ledge
+of rock and lay there, peeping through a crevice between two
+bowlders, gaining his breath. The firing was far below him now,
+and was sharp.  Evidently his pursuers were too busy defending
+themselves to think further of him, and he began to plan how he
+should get back to his friends. But he kept hidden, and, searching
+the cliffs below him for a sheltered descent, he saw something like
+a slouched hat just over a log, scarcely fifty feet below him. 
+Presently the hat was lifted a few inches; a figure rose cautiously
+and climbed toward the ledge, shielding itself behind rock and
+tree.  Very quietly Rome crawled back to the face of the cliff
+behind him, and crouched behind a rock with his cocked rifle
+across his knees. The man must climb over the ledge; there would
+be a bare, level floor of rock between them-the Lewallen would be
+at his mercy-and Rome, with straining eyes, waited. There was a
+footfall on the other side of the ledge; a soft clink of metal against
+stone. The Lewallen was climbing slowly-slowly. Rome could hear
+his heavy breathing. A grimy hand slipped over the sharp comb of
+the ledge; another appeared, clinched about a Winchester-then the
+slouched hat, and under it the dark, crafty face of young Jasper.
+Rome sat like the stone before him, with a half-smile on his lips.
+Jasper peered about with the sly caution of a fox, and his face grew
+puzzled and chagrined as he looked at the cliffs above him.
+
+"Stop thar!"
+
+He was drawing himself over the ledge, and the low, stern voice
+startled him, as a knife might have done, thrust suddenly from the
+empty air at his breast. Rome rose upright against the cliff, with
+his resolute face against the stock of a Winchester.
+
+"Drap that gun!"
+
+The order was given along Stetson's barrel, and the weapon was
+dropped, the steel ringing on the stone floor. Rome lowered his
+gun to the hollow of his arm, and the two young leaders faced each
+other for the first time in the life of either.
+
+Seem kinder s'prised to see me," said the Stetson, grimly.  " Hev ye
+got a pistol?
+
+Young Jasper glared at him in helpless ferocity.
+
+"Naw!"
+
+"Knife?"
+
+He drew a long-bladed penknife from his pocket, and tossed it at
+Rome's feet.
+
+"Jes' move over thar, will ye?"
+
+The Lewallen took his stand against the cliff. Rome picked up the
+fallen rifle and leaned it against the ledge.
+
+"Now, Jas Lewallen, thar's nobody left in this leetle trouble 'cept
+you 'n' me, 'n' ef one of us was dead, I reckon t'other could live
+hyeh, 'n' thar'd be peace in these mount'ins. I thought o' that when I
+had ye at the eend o' this Winchester.  I reckon you would 'a' shot
+me dead ef I had poked my head over a rock as keerless as you." 
+That is just what he would have done, and Jasper did not answer. 
+"I've swore to kill ye, too," added Rome, tapping his gun; "I've got
+a cross fer ye hyeh."
+
+The Lewallen was no coward. Outcry or resistance was useless. 
+The Stetson meant to taunt him, to make death more bitter; for
+Jasper expected death, and he sullenly waited for it against the
+cliff.
+
+"You've been banterin me a long time now, 'lowin' as how ye air
+the better man o' the two; n' I've got a notion o' givin' ye a chance
+to prove yer tall talk.  Hit's not our way to kill a man in cold blood,
+'n' I don't want to kill ye anyways ef I kin he'p it.  Seem s'prised
+ag'in.  Reckon ye don't believe me?  I don't wonder when I think o'
+my own dad, 'n' all the meanness yo folks have done mine; but I've
+got a good reason fer not killin' ye-ef I kin he'p it.  Y'u don't know
+what it is, 'n' y'u'll never know; but I'll give yer a chance now fer
+yer life ef y'u'll sw'ar on a stack o' Bibles as high as that tree thar
+that y'u'll leave these mount'ins ef I whoops ye, 'n' nuver come back
+ag'in as long as you live.  I'll leave, ef ye whoops me. Now whut do
+ye say?  Will ye sw'ar?
+
+"I reckon I will, seem' as I've got to," was the surly answer.  But
+Jasper's face was dark with suspicion, and Rome studied it keenly.
+The Lewallens once had been men whose word was good, but he
+did not like Jasper's look.
+
+"I reckon I'll trust ye," he said, at last, more through confidence in
+his own strength than faith in his enemy; foi Jasper whipped would
+be as much at his mercy as he was now.  So Rome threw off his
+coat, and began winding his homespun suspenders about his waist.
+Watching him closely, Jasper did the same.
+
+The firing below had ceased.  A flock of mountain vultures were
+sailing in great circles over the thick woods. Two eagles swept
+straight from the rim of the sun above Wolf's Head, beating over a
+turbulent sea of mist for the cliffs, scarcely fifty yards above the
+ledge, where a pine-tree grew between two rocks. At the instant of
+lighting, they wheeled away, each with a warning scream to the
+other. A figure lying flat behind the pine had frightened them, and
+now a face peeped to one side, flushed with eagerness over the
+coming fight.  Both were ready now, and the Lewallen grew
+suddenly white as Rome turned again and reached down for the
+guns.
+
+"I reckon I'll put 'em a leetle furder out o' the way," he said,
+kicking the knife over the cliff; and, standing on a stone, he thrust
+them into a crevice high above his head.
+
+"Now, Jas, we'll fight this gredge out, as our grandads have done
+afore us."
+
+Lewallen and Stetson were man to man at last. Suspicion was gone
+now, and a short, brutal laugh came from the cliff.
+
+"I'll fight ye! Oh, by God, I'll fight ye!"
+
+The ring of the voice struck an answering gleam from Rome's gray
+eyes, and the two sprang for each other. It was like the struggle of
+primeval men who had not yet learned even the use of clubs. For
+an instant both stood close, like two wild beasts crouched for a
+spring, and circling about to get at each other's throats, with
+mouths set, eyes watching eyes, and hands twitching nervously.
+Young Jasper leaped first, and the Stetson, wary of closing with
+him, shrank back.  There were a few quick, heavy blows, and the
+Lewallen was beaten away with blood at his lips. Then each knew
+the advantage of the other. The Stetson's reach was longer; the
+Lewallen was shorter and heavier, and again he closed in. Again
+Rome sent out his long arm. A turn of Jasper's head let the heavy
+fist pass over his shoulder. The force of the blow drove Rome
+forward; the two clinched, and Jasper's arms tightened about the
+Stetson's waist. With a quick gasp for breath Rome loosed his
+hold, and, bending his enemy's head back with one hand, rained
+blow after blow in his face with the other. One terrible stroke on
+the jaw, and Jasper's arms were loosed; the two fell apart, the one
+stunned, the other breathless. One dazed moment only, and for a
+third time the Lewallen came on. Rome had been fighting a man;
+now he faced a demon. Jasper's brows stood out like bristles, and
+the eyes under them were red and fierce like a mad bull's. Again
+Rome's blows fell, but again the Lewallen reached him, and this
+time he got his face under the Stetson's chin, -'id the heavy fist fell
+upon the back of his head, and upon his neck, as upon wood and
+leather. Again Rome had to gasp for breath, and again the two
+were fiercely locked-their corded arms as tense as serpents. 
+Around and around they whirled, straining, tripping, breaking the
+silence only with deep, quick breaths and the stamping of feet,
+Jasper firm on the rock, and Rome's agility saving him from being
+lifted in the air and tossed from the cliff. There was no pause for
+rest.  It was a struggle to the end, and a quick one; and under stress
+of excitement the figure at the pine-tree had risen to his knees-
+jumping even to his feet in plain view, when the short, strong arms
+of the Lewallen began at last to draw Rome closer still, and to
+bend him backward. The Stetson was giving way at last. The
+Lewallen's vindictive face grew blacker, and his white teeth
+showed between his snarling lips as he fastened one leg behind his
+enemy's, and, with chin against his shoulder, bent him slowly,
+slowly back. The two breathed in short, painful gasps; their
+swollen muscles trembled under the strain as with ague. Back -
+back - the Stetson was falling; he seemed almost down, when-the
+trick is an old one-whirling with the quickness of light, he fell
+heavily on his opponent, and caught him by the throat with both
+hands.
+
+"'Nough? " he asked, hoarsely. It was the first word uttered.
+
+The only answer was a fierce struggle. Rome felt the Lewallen's
+teeth sinking in his arm, and his fingers tightened like twisting
+steel, till Jasper caught his breath as though strangling to death.
+
+"'Nough?" asked the hoarse voice again.
+
+No answer; tighter clinched the fingers. The Lewallen shook his
+head feebly; his purple face paled suddenly as Rome loosed his
+hold, and his lips moved in a whisper.
+
+"'Nough!"
+
+Rome rose dizzily to one knee. Jasper turned, gasping, and lay
+with his face to the rock. For a while both were quiet, Rome,
+panting with open mouth and white with exhaustion, looking down
+now and then at the Lewallen, whose face was turned away with
+shame.
+
+The sun was blazing above Wolf's Head now, and the stillness
+about them lay unbroken on the woods below.
+
+"I've whooped ye, Jas," Rome said, at last; "I've whooped ye in a
+fa'r fight, 'n' I've got nothin' now to say 'bout yer tall talk, 'n' I
+reckon you hevn't nuther.  Now, hit's understood, hain't it, that y'u'll
+leave these mount'ins?
+
+Y'u kin go West," he continued, as the Lewallen did not answer. "
+Uncle Rufe used to say thar's a good deal to do out thar, 'n' nobody
+axes questions. Thar's nobody left hyeh but you 'n' me, but these
+mount'ins was never big 'nough fer one Lewallen 'n' one Stetson, 'n'
+you've got to go.  I reckon ye won't believe me, but I'm glad I didn't
+hev to kill ye. But you've promised to go, now, 'n' I'll take yer word
+fer it." He turned his face, and the Lewallen, knowing it from the
+sound of his voice, sprang to his feet.
+
+"Oh-!"
+
+A wild curse burst from Rome's lips, and both leaped for the guns.
+The Lewallen had the start of a few feet, and Rome, lamed in the
+fight, stumbled and fell.  Before he could rise Jasper had whirled,
+with one of the Winchesters above his head and his face aflame
+with fury. Asking no mercy, Rome hid his face with one arm and
+waited, stricken faint all at once, and numb. One report struck his
+ears, muffled, whip-like.  A dull wonder came to him that the
+Lewallen could have missed at such close range, and he waited for
+another. Some one shouted-a shrill hallo. A loud laugh followed; a
+light seemed breaking before Rome's eyes, and he lifted his head.
+Jasper was on his face again, motionless; and Steve Marcum's tall
+figure was climbing over a bowlder toward him.
+
+"That was the best fight I've seed in my time, by God," he said,
+coolly, " 'n', Rome, y'u air the biggest fool this side o' the
+settlements, I reckon. I had dead aim on him, 'n' I was jest
+a-thinkin' hit was a purty good thing fer you that old long-nosed
+Jim Stover chased me up hyeh, when, damn me, ef that boy up thar
+didn't let his ole gun loose.  I'd a-got Jas myself ef he hadn't been
+so all-fired quick o' trigger."
+
+Up at the root of the pine-tree Isom stood motionless, with his long
+rifle in one hand and a little cloud of smoke breaking above his
+white face. When Rome looked up he started down without a
+word. Steve swung himself over the ledge.
+
+"I heerd the shootin'," said the boy, " up thar at the cave, 'n' I
+couldn't stay thar. I knowed ye could whoop him, Rome, 'n' I seed
+Steve, too, but I was afeard-"  Then he saw the body. His tongue
+stopped, his face shrivelled, and Steve, hanging with one hand to
+the ledge, watched him curiously.
+
+" Rome," said the boy, in a quick whisper, "is he daid?
+
+" Come on! " said Steve, roughly. "They'll be up hyeh atter us in a
+minute.  Leave Jas's gun thar, 'n' send that boy back home."
+
+That day the troops came-young Blue Grass Kentuckians.  That
+night, within the circle of their camp-fires, a last defiance was cast
+in the teeth of law and order.  Flames rose within the old court-
+house, and before midnight the moonlight fell on four black walls.
+That night, too, the news of young Jasper's fate was carried to the
+death-bed of Rome's mother, and before day the old woman passed
+in peace. That day Stetsons and Lewallens disbanded. The
+Lewallens had no leader; the Stetsons, no enemies to fight. Some
+hid, some left the mountains, some gave themselves up for trial. 
+Upon Rome Stetson the burden fell. Against him the law was set.
+A price was put on his head, his house was burned-a last act of
+Lewallen hate-and Rome was homeless, the last of his race, and an
+outlaw.
+
+XIII
+
+WITH the start of a few hours and the sympathy of his people one
+mountaineer can defy the army of the United States; and the
+mountaineers usually laugh when they hear troops are coming. For
+the time they stop fighting and hide in the woods; and when the
+soldiers are gone, they come out again, and begin anew their little
+pleasantries.  But the soldiers can protect the judge on his bench
+and the county-seat in time of court, and for these purposes they
+serve well.
+
+The search for Rome Stetson, then, was useless.  His friends would
+aid him; his enemies feared to betray him.  So the soldiers
+marched away one morning, and took their prisoners for safe-
+keeping in the Blue Grass, until court should open at Hazlan.
+
+Meantime, spring came and deepened-the mountain spring. The
+berries of the wintergreen grew scarce, and Rome Stetson, " hiding
+out," as the phrase is, had to seek them on thc northem face of the
+mountains.  The moss on the naked winter trees brightened in
+color, and along the river, where willows drooped, ran faint lines
+of green. The trailing arbutus gave out delicate pink blossoms, and
+the south wind blew apart the petals of the anemone. Soon violets
+unfolded above the dead leaves; azaleas swung their yellow
+trumpets through the undergrowth; over-head, the dogwood tossed
+its snow-flakes in gusts through the green and gold of new leaves
+and sunlight; and higher still waved the poplar blooms, with honey
+ready on every crimson heart for the bees. Down in the valley
+Rome Stetson could see about every little cabin pink clouds and
+white clouds of peach and of apple blossoms. Amid the ferns about
+him shade-loving trilliums showed their many-hued faces, and
+every opening was thickly peopled with larkspur seeking the sun.
+The giant magnolia and the umbrella-tree spread their great
+creamy flowers; the laurel shook out myriads of pink and white
+bells, and the queen of mountain flowers was stirring from sleep in
+the buds of the rhododendron.
+
+With the spring new forces pulsed the mountain air.  The spirit of
+the times reached even Hazlan.  A railroad was coming up the
+river, so the rumor was. When winter broke, surveyors had
+appeared; after them, mining experts and purchasers of land.  New
+ways of bread-making were open to all, and the feudsman began to
+see that he could make food and clothes more easily and with less
+danger than by sleeping with his rifle in the woods, and by fighting
+men who had done him no harm.  Many were tired of fighting;
+many, forced into the feud, had fought unwillingly. Others had
+sold their farms and wild lands, and were moving toward the Blue
+Grass or westward.  The desperadoes of each faction had fled the
+law or were in its clutches. The last Lewallen was dead; the last
+Stetson was hidden away in the mountains. There were left
+Mareums and Braytons, but only those who felt safest from
+indictment; in these a spirit of hostility would live for years, and,
+roused by passion or by drink, would do murder now on one side
+of the Cumberland and now on the other; but the Stetson-Lewallen
+feud, old Gabe believed, was at an end at last.
+
+All these things the miller told Rome Stetson, who well knew what
+they meant. He was safe enough from the law while the people
+took no part in his capture, but he grew apprehensive when he
+learned of the changes going on in the valley. None but old Gabe
+knew where he was, to be sure, but with his own enemies to guide
+the soldiers he could not hope to remain hidden long. Still, with
+that love of the mountains characteristic of all races born among
+them, he clung to his own land.  He would rather stay where he
+was the space of a year and die, he told old Gabe passionately,
+than live to old age in another State.
+
+But there was another motive, and he did not hide it.  On the other
+side he had one enemy left-the last, too, of her race-who was more
+to him than his own dead kindred, who hated him, who placed at
+his door all her sorrows. For her he was living like a wolf in a
+cave, and old Gabe knew it.  Her-he would not leave.
+
+"I tell ye, Rome, you've got to go.  Thar's no use talkin'.  Court
+comes the fust Monday in June. The soldiers ull be hyeh. Hit won't
+be safe. Thar's some that s'picions I know whar ye air now, 'n'
+they'll be spyin', 'n' mebbe hit'll git me into trouble, too, aidin' 'n'
+abettin' a man to git away who air boun' to the law."
+
+The two were sitting on the earthen floor of the cave before a little
+fire, and Rome, with his hands about his knees and his brows
+knitted, was staring into the yellow blaze. His unshorn hair fell to
+his shoulders; his face was pale from insufficient food and
+exercise, and tense with a look that was at once caged and defiant.
+
+"Uncle Gabe," he asked, quietly, for the old man's tone was a little
+querulous, " air ye sorry ye holped me? Do ye blame me fer whut
+I've done?"
+
+"No," said the old miller, answering both questions; "I don't. I
+believe whut ye tol' me. Though, even ef ye had 'a' done it, I don't
+know as I'd blame ye, seem' that it was a fa'r fight. I don't doubt he
+was doin' his best to kill you."
+
+Rome turned quickly, his face puzzled and darkening.
+
+Uncle Gabe, whut air you drivin' at? " The old man spat into the
+fire, and shifted his position uneasily, as Rome's hand caught his
+knee.
+
+Well, ef I have to tell ye, I s'pose I must. Thar's been nothin'
+pertickler ag'in ye so fer, 'cept fer breakin' that confederatin' statute
+'bout bandin' fightin' men together; 'n' nobody was very anxious to
+git hol' o' ye jes fer that, but now "-the old man stopped a moment,
+for Rome's eyes were kindling-" they say that ye killed Jas Lew
+allen, 'n' that ye air a murderer; 'n' hit air powerful strange how all
+of a suddint folks seem to be gittin' down on a man as kills his
+fellow-creetur; 'n' now they means to hunt ye til they ketch ye."
+
+It was all out now, and the old man was relieved.  Rome rose to his
+feet, and in sheer agony of spirit paced the floor.
+
+"I tol' ye, Uncle Gabe, that I didn't kill him."
+
+So ye did, 'n' I believe ye. But a feller seed you 'n' Steve comm'
+from the place whar Jas was found dead, 'n' whar the dirt 'n' rock
+was throwed about as by two bucks in spring-time. Steve says he
+didn't do it, 'n' he wouldn't say you didn't.  Looks to me like Steve
+did the kuhn', 'n' was lyin' a leetle. He hain't goin' to confess hit to
+save your neck; 'n' he can't no way, fer he hev lit out o' these
+mount'ins-long ago."
+
+If Steve was out of danger, suspicion could not harm him, and
+Rome said nothing.
+
+"Isom's got the lingerin' fever ag'in, 'n' he's out"i his head.  He's
+ravin' 'bout that fight. Looks like ye tol' him 'bout it. He says,' Don't
+tell Uncle Gabe'; 'n' he keeps sayin' it.  Hit'll 'most kill him ef you
+go 'way; but he wants ye to git out o' the mount'ins; 'n', Rome,
+you've got to go."
+
+"Who was it, Uncle Gabe, that seed me 'n' Steve comm' 'way from
+thar?
+
+He air the same feller who hev been spyin' ye all the time this war's
+been goin' on; hit's that dried-faced, snaky Eli Crump, who ye
+knocked down 'n' choked up in Hazlan one day fer sayin'
+something ag'in Isom."
+
+"I knowed it-I knowed it-oh, ef I could git my fingers roun' his
+throat once more-jes once more-I'd be 'mos' ready to die."
+
+He stretched out his hands as he strode back and forth, with his
+fingers crooked like talons; his shadow leaped from wall to wall,
+and his voice, filling the cave, was, for the moment, scarcely
+human.  The old man waited till the paroxysm was over and Rome
+had again sunk before the fire.
+
+"Hit 'u'd do no good, Rome," he said, rising to go. "You've got
+enough on ye now, without the sin o' takin' his life. You better
+make up yer mind to leave the mount ins now right 'way. You're
+a-gittin' no more'n half-human, livin' up hyeh like a catamount.  I
+don't see how ye kin stand it. Thar's no hope o' things blowin' over,
+boy, 'n' givin' ye a chance o' comm' out ag'in, as yer dad and yer
+grandad usen to do afore ye. The citizens air gittin' tired o' these
+wars. They keeps out the furriners who makes roads 'n' buys lands;
+they air ag'in' the law, ag'in' religion, ag'in' yo' pocket, 'n' ag'in'
+mine. Lots o' folks hev been ag'in' all this fightin' fer a long time,
+but they was too skeery to say so.  They air talkin' mighty big now,
+seem' they kin git soldiers hyeh to pertect 'em. So ye mought as
+well give up the idea o' staying hyeh, 'less'n ye want to give
+yourself up to the law."
+
+The two stepped from the cave, and passed through the
+rhododendrons till they stood on the cliff overlooking the valley.
+The rich light lay like a golden mist between the mountains, and
+through it, far down, the river moaned like the wind of a coming
+storm.
+
+Did ye tell the gal whut I tol' ye?"
+
+"Yes, Rome; hit wasn't no use.  She says Steve's word's as good as
+yourn; 'n' she knowed about the crosses.  Folks say she swore awful
+ag'in' ye at young Jas's burial, 'lowin' that she'd hunt ye down
+herse'f, ef the soldiers didn't ketch ye.  I hain't seed her sence she
+got sick; 'pears like ever'body's sick.  Mebbe she's a leetle settled
+down now-no tellin'. No use foolin' with her, Rome. You git away
+from hyeh.  Don't you worry 'bout Isom-I'll take keer o' him, 'n'
+when he gits well, he'll want to come atter ye, 'n' I'll let him go. He
+couldn't live hyeh without you.  But y'u must git away, Rome, 'n'
+git away mighty quick."
+
+With hands clasped behind him, Rome stood and watched the bent
+figure slowly pick its way around the stony cliff.
+
+"I reckon I've got to go.  She's ag'in' me; they're all ag'in' me. I
+reckon I've jes got to go. Somehow, I've been kinder hopin'-"  He
+closed his lips to check the groan that rose to them, and turned
+again into the gloom behind him.
+
+XIV
+
+JUNE came. The wild rose swayed above its image along every
+little shadowed stream, and the scent of wild grapes was sweet in
+the air and as vagrant as a bluebird's note in autumn. The
+rhododendrons burst into beauty, making gray ridge and gray cliff
+blossom with purple, hedging streams with snowy clusters and
+shining leaves, and lighting up dark coverts in the woods as with
+white stars. The leaves were full, woodthrushes sang, and bees
+droned like unseen running water in the woods.
+
+With June came circuit court once more-and the soldiers.  Faint
+music pierced the dreamy chant of the river one morning as Rome
+lay on a bowlder in the summer sun; and he watched the guns
+flashing like another stream along the water, and then looked again
+to the Lewallen cabin. Never, morning, noon, or night, when he
+came from the rhododendrons, or when they closed about him, did
+he fail to turn his eyes that way. Often he would see a bright speck
+moving about the dim lines of the cabin, and he would scarcely
+breathe while he watched it, so easily would it disappear. Always
+he had thought it was Martha, and now he knew it was, for the old
+miller had told him more of the girl, and had wrung his heart with
+pity.  She had been ill a long while. The "furriners " had seized old
+Jasper's cahin and land.  The girl was homeless, and she did not
+know it, for no one had the heart to tell her. She was living with
+the Braytons; and every day she went to the cabin, "moonin'' n'
+sorrowin' aroun'," as old Gabe said; and she was much changed.
+
+Once more the miller came-for the last time, he said, firmly. 
+Crump had trailed him, and had learned where Rome was. The
+search would begin next day-perhaps that very night-and Crump
+would guide the soldiers. Now he must go, and go quickly.  The
+boy, too, sent word that unless Rome went, he would have
+something to tell. Old Gabe saw no significance in the message;
+but he had promised to deliver it, and he did.  Rome wavered then;
+Steve and himself gone, no suspicion would fall on the lad. If he
+were caught, the boy might confess.  With silence Rome gave
+assent, and the two parted in an apathy that was like heartlessness.
+Only old Gabe's shrunken breast heaved with something more than
+weariness of descent, and Rome stood watching him a long time
+before he turned back to the cave that had sheltered him from his
+enemies among beasts and men. In a moment he came out for the
+last time, and turned the opposite way. Climbing about the spur, he
+made for the path that led down to the river. When he reached it he
+glanced at the sun, and stopped in indecision.  Straight above him
+was a knoll, massed with rhododendrons, the flashing leaves of
+which made it like a great sea-wave in the slanting sun, while the
+blooms broke slowly down over it like foam. Above this was a
+gray sepulchre of dead, standing trees, more gaunt and spectre-like
+than ever, with the rich life of summer about it. Higher still were a
+dark belt of stunted firs and the sandstone ledge, and above
+these-home.  He was risking his liberty, his life.  Any clump of
+bushes might bristle suddenly with Winchesters. If the soldiers
+sought for him at the cave they would at the same time guard the
+mountain paths; they would guard, too, the Stetson cabin. But no
+matter-the sun was still high, and he turned up the steep. The ledge
+passed, he stopped with a curse at his lips and the pain of a
+knife-thrust at his heart.  A heap of blackened stones and ashes
+was before him. The wild mountain-grass was growing up about it. 
+The bee-gums were overturned and rifled. The garden was a
+tangled mass of weeds. The graves in the little family
+burying-ground were unprotected, the fence was gone, and no
+boards marked the last two ragged mounds. Old Gabe had never
+told him. He, too, like Martha, was homeless, and the old miller
+had been kind to him, as the girl's kinspeople had been to her.
+
+For a long while he sat on the remnant of the burned and broken
+fence, and once more the old tide of bitterness rose within him and
+ebbed away. There were none left to hate, to wreak vengeance on.
+It was hard to leave the ruins as they were; and yet he would rather
+leave weeds and ashes than, like Martha, have some day to know
+that his home was in the hands of a stranger.  When he thought of
+the girl he grew calmer; his own sorrows gave way to the thought
+of hers; and half from habit he raised his face to look across the
+river. Two eagles swept from a dark ravine under the shelf of rock
+where he had fought young Jasper, and made for a sun-lighted
+peak on the other shore. From them his gaze fell to Wolf's Head
+and to the cabin beneath, and a name passed his lips in a whisper.
+
+Then he took the path to the river, and he found the canoe where
+old Gabe had hidden it. Before the young moon rose he pushed
+into the stream and drifted with the current.  At the mouth of the
+creek that ran over old Gabe's water-wheel he turned the prow to
+the Lewallen shore.
+
+Not yit! Not yit! " he said. 
+
+XV
+
+THAT night Rome passed in the woods, with his rifle, in a bed of
+leaves. Before
+daybreak he had built a fire in a deep ravine to cook his breakfast,
+and had scattered the embers that the smoke should give no sign.
+The sun was high when he crept cautiously in sight of the
+Lewallen cabin. It was much like his own home on the other shore,
+except that the house, closed and desolate, was standing, and the
+bees were busy. At the corner of the kitchen a rusty axe was
+sticking in a half-cut piece of timber, and on the porch was a heap
+of kindling and fire wood-the last work old Jasper and his son had
+ever done. In the Lewallens' garden, also, two graves were fresh;
+and the spirit of neglect and ruin overhung the place.
+
+All the morning he waited in the edge of the laurel, peering down
+the path, watching the clouds race with their shadows over the
+mountains, or pacing to and fro in his covert of leaves and flowers. 
+He began to fear at last that she was not coming, that she was ill,
+and once he started down the mountain toward Steve Brayton's
+cabin.  The swift descent brought him to his senses, and he
+stopped half-way, and climbed back again to his hiding-place. 
+What he was doing, what he meant to do, he hardly knew. Mid-day
+passed; the sun fell toward the mountains, and once more came the
+fierce impulse to see her, even though he must stalk into the
+Brayton cabin.  Again, half-crazed, he started impetuously
+through the brush, and shrank back, and stood quiet.  A little noise
+down the path had reached his ear. In a moment he could hear
+slow foot-falls, and the figure of the girl parted the pink-and-white
+laurel blossoms, which fell in a shower about her when she
+brushed through them. She passed quite near him, walking slowly,
+and stopped for a moment to rest against a pillar of the porch. She
+was very pale; her face was traced deep with suffering, and she
+was, as old Gabe said, much changed. Then she went on toward
+the garden, stepping with an effort over the low fence, and leaned
+as if weak and tired against the apple-tree, the boughs of which
+shaded the two graves at her feet.  For a few moments she stood
+there, listless, and Rome watched her with hungry eyes, at a loss
+what to do.  She moved presently, and walked quite around the
+graves without looking at them; then came back past him, and,
+seating herself in the porch, turned her face to the river.  The sun
+lighted her hair, and in the sunken, upturned eyes Rome saw the
+shimmer of tears.
+
+"Marthy! " He couldn't help it-the thick, low cry broke like a groan
+from his lips, and the girl was on her feet, facing him.  She did not
+know the voice, nor the shaggy, half-wild figure in the shade of the
+laurel; and she started back as if to run; but seeing that the man did
+not mean to harm her, she stopped, looking for a moment with
+wonder and even with quick pity at the hunted face with its white
+appeal. Then a sudden spasm caught her throat, and left her body
+rigid, her hands shut, and her eyes dry and hard-she knew him. A
+slow pallor drove the flush of surprise from her face, and her lips
+moved once, but there was not even a whisper from them.  Rome
+raised one hand before his face, as though to ward off something. "
+Don't look at mc that way, Marthy-my God, don't! I didn't kill him. 
+I sw'ar it!  I give him a chance fer his life. I know, I know-Steve
+says he didn't. Thar was only us two.  Hit looks ag'in' me; but I
+hain't killed one nur t'other. I let 'em both go. Y'u don't believe me?
+" He went swiftly toward her, his gun outstretched. Hyeh, gal!  I
+heerd ye swore ag' in' me out thar in the gyarden-'lowin' that you
+was goin' to hunt me down yerself if the soldiers didn't. Hyeh's yer
+chance!
+
+The girl shrank away from him, too startled to take the weapon;
+and he leaned it against her, and stood away, with his hands behind
+him.
+
+Kill me ef ye think I'm a-lyin' to ye," he said. "Y'u kin git even with
+me now. But I want to tell ye fust "-the girl had caught the muzzle
+of the gun convulsively, and was bending over it, her eyes burning,
+her face inscrutable-hit was a fa'r fight betwixt us, 'n' I whooped
+him. He got his gun then, 'n' would 'a' killed me ag'in' his oath ef he
+hadn't been shot fust Hit's so, too, 'bout the crosses.  I made 'em;
+they're right thar on that gun; but whut could I do with mam
+a-standin' right thar with the gun 'n' Uncle Rufe a-tellin' 'bout my
+own dad layin' in his blood, 'n' Isom 'n' the boys lookin' on! But I
+went ag'in' my oath; I gave him his life when I had the right to take
+it.  I could 'a' killed yer dad once, 'n' I had the right to kill him, too,
+fer killin' mine; but I let him go, 'n' I reckon I done that fer ye, too. 
+'Pears like I hain't done nothin' sence I seed ye over thar in the mill
+that day that wasn't done fer ye. Somehow ye put me dead ag'in'
+my own kin, 'n' tuk away all my hate ag'in' yourn.  I couldn't fight
+fer thinkin' I was fightin' you, 'n' when I seed ye comm' through the
+bushes jes now, so white 'n' sickly-like, I couldn't hardly git breath,
+a-thinkin' I was the cause of all yer misery. That's all!"  He
+stretched out his arms. Shoot, gal, ef ye don't believe me.  I'd jes as
+lieve die, ef ye thinks I'm lyin' to ye, 'n' ef ye hates me fer whut I
+hain't done."
+
+The gun had fallen to the earth. The girl, trembling at the knees,
+sank to her seat on the porch, and, folding her arms against the
+pillar, pressed her forehead against them, her face unseen.  Rome
+stooped to pick up the weapon.
+
+"I'm goin' 'way now," he went on, slowly, after a little pause, "but I
+couldn't leave hyeh without seem' you.  I wanted ye to know the
+truth, 'n' I 'lowed y'u'd believe me ef I tol' ye myself.  I've been
+a-waitin' thar in the lorrel fer ye sence mornin'. Uncle Gabe tol' me
+ye come hyeh ever' day. He says I've got to go. I've been hopin' I
+mought come out o' the bushes some day.  But Uncle Gabe says
+ever'body's ag'in' me more' n ever, 'n' that the soldiers mean to
+ketch me. The gov'ner out thar in the settlements says as how he'll
+give five hundred dollars fer me, livin' or dead. He'll nuver git me
+livin'-I've swore that-'n' as I hev done nothin' sech as folks on both
+sides hev done who air walkin' roun' free, I hain't goin' to give up.
+Hit's purty hard to leave these mount'ins. Reckon I'll nuver see 'em
+ag'in. Been livin' like a catamount over thar on the knob.  I could
+jes see you over hyeh, 'n' I reckon I hain't done much 'cept lay over
+thar on a rock 'n' watch ye movin' round.  Hit's mighty good to feel
+that ye believe me, 'n' I want ye to know that I been stayin' over
+thar fer nothin' on earth but jes to see you ag'in; 'n' I want ye to
+know that I was a-sorrowin' fer ye when y'u was sick, 'n' a-pinin' to
+see ye, 'n' a-hopin' some day y'u mought kinder git over yer hate fer
+me." He had been talking with low tenderness, half to himself, and
+with his face to the river, and he did not see the girl's tears falling
+to the porch. Her sorrow gave way in a great sob now, and he
+turned with sharp remorse, and stood quite near her.
+
+"Don't cry, Marthy," he said. "God knows hit's hard to think I've
+brought all this on ye when I'd give all these mount 'ins to save ye
+from it. Whut d' ye say? Don't cry."
+
+The girl was trying to speak at last, and Rome bent over to catch
+the words.
+
+"I hain't cryin' fer myself," she said, faintly, and then she said no
+more; but the first smile that had passed over Rome's face for
+many a day passed then, and he put out one big hand, and let it rest
+on the heap of lustrous hair.
+
+"Marthy, I hate to go 'way, leavin' ye hyeh with nobody to take
+keer o' ye. You're all alone hyeh in the mount'ins; I'm all alone; 'n' I
+reckon I'll be all alone wharever I go, ef you stay hyeh. I got a boat
+down thar on the river, 'n' I'm goin' out West whar Uncle Rufe use
+to live.  I know I hain't good fer nothin' much "-he spoke almost
+huskily; he could scarcely get the words to his lips-" but I want ye
+to go with me. Won't ye?"
+
+The girl did not answer, but her sobbing ceased slowly, while
+Rome stroked her hair; and at last she lifted her face, and for a
+moment looked to the other shore. Then she rose. There is a
+strange pride in the Kentucky mountaineer.
+
+"As you say, Rome, thar's nobody left but you, 'n' nobody but me;
+but they burned you out, we hain't even-yit."  Her eyes were on
+Thunderstruck Knob, where the last sunlight used to touch the
+Stetson cabin.
+
+"Hyeh, Rome!" He knew what she meant, and he kneeled at the
+pile of kindling-wood near the kitchen door.  Then they stood back
+and waited.  The sun dipped below a gap in the mountains, the sky
+darkened, and the flames rose to the shingled porch, and leaped
+into the gathering dusk. On the outer edge of the quivering light,
+where it touched the blossomed laurel, the two stood till the blaze
+caught the eaves of the cabin; and then they turned their faces
+where, burning to ashes in the west, was another fire, whose light
+blended in the eyes of each with a light older and more lasting than
+its own-the light eternal.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of A Cumberland Vendetta, by John Fox Jr.
+
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