"Well," said the old man on a falling note, and his voice sounded hollowly from the cleft, "well, I reckon this does settle it—whether Blatch is hurt or no. How many of ye was a-workin' in the still to-night?"

"I was," quavered Jim Cal; "me and Taylor Stribling and Buck Shalliday. Blatch had left a run o' whiskey that had to be worked off, and when he didn't come I turned in to 'tend to it—why, Pap?"

"Ef Bonbright wanted to find out about the still he shore made it, that's all," answered Jephthah. "Ye can see right into it from whar he went. Ef you-all boys wants to stay out o' the penitentiary I reckon Creed Bonbright's got to leave the Turkey Tracks mighty sudden," and he swung himself heavily to the level of the cliff.

"That's what I say," whispered Jim Cal, pasty pale and quivering. "We've got it to do."

Old Jephthah looked darkly upon his sons.

"Well, settle it amongst ye, how an' when. I'll neither meddle nor make in this business. I don't know how all o' this come about, nor what you-all an' Blatch Turrentine air up to. You've made an outsider o' me, an' an outsider I'll stay. Ef ye won't tell me the truth, don't tell me no lies. Come on, gals."

He strode into the homeward trail, the four girls falling in behind his tall figure. Judith was sick with misery and uncertainty; the Lusk girls looked back timidly at Andy and Jeff; even Huldah was mute.



Chapter XI

The Warning

Five o'clock Friday morning found Creed, pale, hollow-eyed, a strip of Nancy's home-made sticking plaster over the cut on brow and cheek, but otherwise composed and as usual, at the pine table in his little shack, working over the references which applied to the case he was to try that morning. But an hour later brought old Keziah Provine to the door to borrow the threading of a needle with white thread.

"I hearn they had an interruption," she began, pushing in past Nancy and the two children, "but thar—you kin hear anything these days and times. They most gen'ally does find trouble at these here play-parties, that's why I'm sot agin 'em."

Poor old soul, it was not on account of her rheumatic legs, her toothless jaws, nor her half-blind eyes that she objected to play-parties, of course.

"I got no use for 'em," she pursued truthfully, "specially when they're started up too close to a blockade still. They named it to me that Creed had done killed one of the Turrentine boys—is that so?"

"No," returned Nancy stoutly. "By the best of what I kin git out o' Creed, him and Blatch was walkin' along, an' Blatch missed his footin' and fell off o' Foeman's Bluff. Creed tried to he'p him, an' fell an' got scratched some. I reckon the Turrentines'll tell it different, but that's what I make out from what Creed says."

"Lord, how folks will lie!" admired Keziah, piously. "Now they tell that Blatch was not only killed up, but that some one—Creed, or some o' them that follers him—tuck the body away befo' they could git to it. They say they was blood all over the bushes, an' a great drug place whar Blatch had been toted off. One feller named a half-dug hole sorter like a grave; but thar! I never went over to see for myse'f, an' ye cain't believe the half o' what ye hear."

"Well, I'd say not," snapped Nancy. "Not ef hit was sech a pack o' lies as that."

Thread in hand old Keziah lingered till Arley Kittridge came with his mother's baking-pan and request for a little risin'. Arley it seemed had been commissioned to find out what he could on behalf of the Kittridge family. And so it went till breakfast-time.

How these things travel in a neighbourhood where there is no telephone, postman, milkman, nor morning paper, and where the distances are considerable, is one of the mysteries of the mountains—yet travel they do, and when time came for court to open Creed found that he had a crowd which would at any other juncture have been highly gratifying.

Every man that came in glanced first at the cut on his cheek, swiftly noted the pale face, sunken, purple-rimmed eyes, the scratched hands, then looked hastily away. Several made proffers of an alliance with him, being at outs with the Turrentines. All reiterated the story of the missing body.

"You done exactly right," old Tubal Kittridge told him. "With a man like Blatchley Turrentine, hit's hit first or git hit. I wonder he ever let ye git as far as Foeman's Bluff; but if you made good use o' yo' time, I reckon you found out what you aimed to," and he winked laboriously at poor Creed's crimsoning countenance.

"I wasn't trying to find out anything, Mr. Kittridge. Blatch forced the quarrel upon me. I was on my way home at the time."

"Well, a lee-tle out of yo' way, wasn't ye?" objected Kittridge, slightly offended at not being offered Bonbright's confidence.

The case on the docket, one that had interested Creed deeply, being the curious matter of a mountain creek which in the spring storms had changed its direction, scoured off a good field and flung it to the opposite side of the road, thus giving it to a new owner, dragged wearily. Who cared about the question of a few rods of mountain land, even if it had raised good tobacco, when the slayer of one of the bullies of the neighbourhood sat before them—a man who had not only killed his victim but had, within fifteen minutes, hidden all traces of the body—and the opening of a new feud was taking place before their eyes?

At noon Creed, in despair, adjourned his court, setting a new date for trial, explaining that this Turrentine matter ought to be looked into, and he believed it was not a proper day for him to be otherwise engaged. Then he sought old Tubal Kittridge.

"There's something I want you to do for me," he said.

"Shore—shore; anything in the world," Kittridge agreed eagerly.

"Aunt Nancy won't hear of my going over to the Turrentines'," hesitated Creed. "I looked for them to be here—some of them—long before this."

"Huh-uh; ah, Law, no—they won't come in the daytime," smiled Kittridge.

Creed looked annoyed.

"They will be welcome, whenever they come," he asserted. "What I want you to do is to go to Jephthah Turrentine and say to him that I thought I ought to go over, and that I'll do so now if he wants me to—or I'll meet him here at the office, or anywhere he says."

"Huh-uh—uh!" Old Tubal shook his head, his eyes closed in quite an ecstasy of negation. "You cain't git Jep Turrentine in the trap as easy as all that," he said half contemptuously. "Why, he'd know what you was at a leetle too quick."

Bonbright looked helpless indignation for a moment, then thought better of it and repeated:

"I want you to go and tell him that I'm right here, ready to answer for anything I've done, and that I would like to talk to him about it. Will you do it?"

"Oh,—all right," agreed Kittridge in an offended tone. "There's plenty would stand by ye; there's plenty that would like to see the Turrentines run out of the country; but if ye want to fix it some new-fangled way I reckon you'll have to." And to himself he muttered as he took the road homeward, "I say go to the Turrentines with sech word at that! That boy must think I'm as big a fool as he is."

* * * * *

At the Turrentine home life dragged on strangely. Jephthah in his own cabin, busied himself overhauling some harness. The boys had been across at the old place, presumably making a thorough inspection of the scene of the trouble. Judith went mechanically about her tasks, cooking and serving the meals, setting the house in order. Only once did she rouse somewhat, and that was when Huldah Spiller flounced in and flung herself tempestuously down in a chair.

"How you come on, Judy?" inquired the red-haired damsel.

"About as usual," returned Judith coldly, and would fain have added, "none the better for seeing you."

"I jest had to run over and see how you was standin' it," Huldah pursued vivaciously. "I cried all night—didn't you?"

"What for?" inquired Judith angrily.

"Oh—I don't know. I'm jest thataway. Git me started an' thar's no stoppin' me. But then I've knowed Creed so mighty long—him an' me was powerful good friends, and my feelin's is more tenderer than some folks's anyhow."

"Huldy," said Judith in a tone so rigidly controlled that it made the other jump, "ef you'll jest walk yo'self out of here I'll be obliged to you. I've stood all I can. I don't want to say anything plumb bad to you, but ef you set thar an' talk to me like that for another minute I will."

"Oh, you po' thing!" cried Huldah, jumping to her feet. "I declare to goodness I forgot all about you an' Blatch. Here I've been carryin' on over Creed Bonbright—and you mighty near a widder. You po' thing!"

Judith faced around with such blazing eyes from the biscuits she was moulding that Huldah beat a hasty retreat, dodged out of the door, and ran up the slope. At Jim Cal's cabin she paused and looked about her uncertainly. Iley had the toothache, and for various reasons was proving a poor audience for her younger sister's conversation. The day had been a trying one to Huldah's excited nerves, a sad anti-climax after the explosions of the night before. It was five o'clock. The men were all over at the old place. If she but had an excuse to follow them, now. Why, the whole top of the Bald above Foeman's Bluff, and the broad shelf below it, were covered with huckleberry bushes! She put her head in at the door. Iley looked up from the hot brick which she was wrapping in a wet cloth with ten drops of turpentine on it preparatory to applying the same to her cheek above the swollen tooth.

"Ef you say 'Creed Bonbright'—or 'kill'—or 'Blatch Turrentine,'—to me, I vow I'll hit ye," she warned shrilly. "I ain't never raised hand on ye yet sence ye was a woman grown, but do it I will!"

"I wasn't goin' to say nothin' about nothin'," asserted Huldah sweepingly. "I was jest goin' to ax did ye want any huckleberries, and git a pail to pick some."

She sought out a small tin lard bucket as she spoke, and Iley's silence presumably assenting, within twenty minutes was picking away eagerly on the Bald above the bluff.

Below her stretched meadows drunk with sun—breathless. A rain crow called from time to time "C-c-c-cow! cow! cow!" The air was still heavy with faint noon-day smells, the sky tarnished with heat.

"I wonder where in all creation them boys has got theirselves to," she ruminated as she peered about, dragging green berries and leaves into her bucket, for which Mrs. Jim Cal would afterward no doubt scold her soundly. "'Pears to me like I hearn somebody talkin' somewhars."

She pushed cautiously down to the edge of the rocks where the bushes grew scatteringly, pretending to herself that she wanted a bit of wild geranium that flourished in a crevice far below the top. Setting down her pail she threw herself on her face, her arms over the edge, and reached. But the fingers hung suspended, opened in air, her mouth open too, and she listened greedily to faint sounds of men's voices.

"I'll bet it's old Ab Foeman's hideout that nobody but him and the Cherokees knowed of," she muttered to herself. "Some one's found it and—Lord, look at that!"

From the bushes below her, coming apparently out of the living rock itself, crept Andy, and then Jeff Turrentine. Now she could see the narrow, door-like opening of the cave which had given them up, and realised how, from below, it passed for a mere depression in the rock.

Huldah drew back silently, inch by inch, and instinctively pulled her black calico sunbonnet over her red curls as she crouched down among the huckleberry bushes. When she looked again Andy and Jeff had disappeared, but she could see the head and shoulders of a man who still lay at the cave's mouth—and that man was Blatch Turrentine!

At first she shuddered, thinking that she had come upon the dead body; then she noted a tiny trail of smoke, and, by craning a little farther around, saw that Blatchley lay at ease with a pipe in his mouth, smoking.

"The triflin', low-down, lyin' hound!" she muttered to herself. "I'm a-goin' this very minute and tell Creed Bonbright."

She hesitated, glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the Turrentine cabin, then bent dubiously and set up her overturned bucket. Not a berry had spilled from it, yet the sight of its mishap gave her an idea. Quietly slipping through the bushes till she was far enough away to dare run, she hurried home to the cabin.

"Iley," she gasped, as soon as she put her head in at the door, "I upsot my berry pail and lost most of the fruit. Can you make out with that?" and she set the little bucket on the table.

"I reckon I'll have to, ef you've got so work-brickle ye won't pick any more," returned Iley.

"I would—I'd git ye all ye need," protested Huldah with unexpected meekness, "but I'm jest obliged to go over to—" she had all but said Creed Bonbright's, but she caught herself in time and concluded lamely. "I jest have obliged to run down to Clianthy Lusk's and see can she let me have her crochet needle for to finish up my shawl."

She delayed for no criticism or demur on Iley's part, but was off with the last word, and once out of sight of Jim Cal's cabin she took a short cut through the woods and ran; but in spite of her best efforts darkness began to gather before she won to the high road, for the evening had closed in early, thick and threatening; a mountain thunder-storm was brewing. Opposite a tempestuous, magnificent sunset, there had reared in the eastern sky a tremendous thunder-head, a palace of a thousand snowy domes, turning to gold, and then flushing from base to crown like a gigantic many-petalled rose. It swept steadily up and over, hiding the sky, and leaving the earth in almost complete darkness. There were low rolls of thunder, at first mellow and almost musical, crashing always louder and stronger as they came nearer. The wind thrashed and yelled through the tossing forest; and as she approached the Card cabin she heard the banging of barn shutters, the whipping of tree boughs against the windows. There were the first spears of rain flung at roof and door; and it was in the torrent itself which followed fast that Huldah beat upon that closed door, giving her name and demanding entrance. Within, Creed Bonbright sprang up from where he sat with a book in his hand, his eyes fixed on vacancy, and would have answered her, but Old Nancy put a hasty palm over his lips.

"Hush—for God's sake," she whispered.

They stood in the lighted cabin, all on foot by this time, and listened intently, tall Creed, the little grey-haired woman clinging to him and restraining him, Doss with his light eyes goggling, and Little Buck and Beezy hand in hand, studying their grandmother's face, not their father's.

"Who is it?" quavered Nancy. "I'm all alone in here, and I'm scared to let wayfarers in."

"It's me—Huldy Spiller—Aunt Nancy," called back the voice in the rain.

"Well, I vow! You know how things air, Huldy—what do ye want, chile?"

"I want Creed Bonbright. I've got something to tell him."

"Thar—ye see now," breathed the old woman, turning toward Creed. Then she raised her voice.

"He ain't here, honey," she lied unhesitatingly.

"Why don't ye go to his office—that's whar he stays at."

"Oh, for the Lord's sake—Aunt Nancy!" came back the girl's shrill, terrified tones. "I've done been to the office; I know in reason Creed ain't there, or he'd a-answered me. Please let me in; I'm scared some of the Turrentines'll come an' ketch me."

At this Creed strode to the door, Nancy dragging back on his arm and Buck and Beezy seconding her with all their small might, while Provine spluttered ineffectually in the background.

"Hit's a lie," hissed Nancy. "She's a decoy. Ef you open that thar do' with the light on ye, they'll shoot ye over her shoulders. Hit was did to my man thataway in feud times. Don't you open the do' Creed."

"Why, Aunt Nancy," remonstrated Creed, almost smiling, "this isn't like you. There's nothing but a girl there in the rain. Keep out of range if you're scared. I'm sure going to open that door."



As he made ready to do so Nancy flew back to the table and blew out the light, and the next minute Huldah Spiller, dripping like a mermaid, was standing in the middle of the darkened room, and Doss Provine, breathing short, was barring the door behind her.

"Who's here?" gasped the girl peering about the gloom. "What air you-all a-goin' to do to me?"

Nancy relighted the lamp and set it on the table, and Huldah discovered with a long-drawn sobbing sigh of relief that there was no one save the immediate family present.

"I came quick as I could," she began in the middle of her story, grasping Creed by the arm and shaking him in the violence of her emotion and insistence. "Blatch Turrentine's alive. Andy and Jeff have got him hid out. I seed him myse'f with my own eyes, in a hideout thar below Foeman's Bluff, not more'n a hour ago. I'll bet he aims to layway you, ef he cain't git ye hung for murderin' of him. You got to git out o' here. It was as much as my life was worth to come over and tell ye. I'm afraid to go back. I'm goin' right on down to Hepzibah and stay thar."

"Come up closeter to the fire," commanded Nancy, who had watched the girl keenly throughout her recital. "Doss, put some sticks on and git a little blaze so she can dry herself. Huldy, you're a good girl to come over and warn Creed—when was you aimin' to go to Hepzibah?" She looked up from the hearth where she knelt with the frankest inquiring gaze.

"To-night—right now," half whimpered Huldah. "I'm scared to go back. I'm scared to be here on the mountain at all."

"And did ye aim to have Creed go along of ye?" old Nancy questioned mildly.

"Yes—yes—he'd better," agreed Huldah hysterically. "Hit's the onliest way for him now."

Nancy caught Creed's eye above the girl's drenched head, and shook her own warningly. Leaving Doss to look after the newcomer, she drew the young justice into the kitchen.

"Whatever ye do," she warned him hastily, "don't you put out with that red-headed gal in the dark. Things may be adzackly as she says—looks to me like she thinks she's a-speakin' the truth; but then agin the Turrentines might a' sent her for to draw you out. They wouldn't like to shoot ye in my cabin, 'caze they know me and my kinfolks would be apt to raise a fuss; but halfway down the mountain with this sweetheart of Wade's—huh-uh, boy; I reckon they could tell their own tale then, of how you come by yo' death. Don't you go with her."

"I wasn't aiming to, Aunt Nancy," said Creed quietly. "As soon as I heard that Blatch Turrentine was alive, I intended to go right over and have a talk with old Jephthah. He's a fair-minded man, and if he is informed that his nephew is living I think he and I can come to terms."

"Fa'r-minded man!" echoed Nancy contemptuously. "Jephthah Turrentine a fa'r-minded man! Well, Creed, ef I hadn't no better eye for a fat chicken than you have for a fa'r-minded man, you wouldn't enjoy yo' dinner at my table as well as you do. I say fa'r-minded! This thing has got into a feud, boy, and in a feud you cain't trust nobody—nobody!"

Creed went back into the room, and Nancy reluctantly followed him. Huldah was getting dry and warm, and that fluent tongue of hers was impatiently silent. As soon as she saw the returning pair she began to repeat again the details of her information—how she had glimpsed the hidden man through the bushes, how she knew in reason he could be none other than Blatch. Nancy exchanged a glance of intelligence with Creed.

"Ye see!" she murmured, aside. "Ef she ain't a decoy they've sont, she don't know nothin' for sartin."

"I'm scared of all the Turrentines," Huldah declared. "They're awful folks. From the old man down to Jude, they scare me. I reckon Jude's had a big hand in this," she went on excitedly. "Her and Blatch is goin' to wed shortly, and she'd be shore to know any meanness he was into. I'll be glad to git shet of sech. When you're ready to be a-steppin' Creed, I am."

She looked up at the young fellow with a sort of unwilling worship.

"I don't aim to go with you, Huldah," he said gently. "You love Wade Turrentine, and Wade loves you; you was to be wedded this fall. I don't aim for any affairs of mine to part you two."

The girl hung her head, painfully flushed, her eyes full of tears.

"I don't care nothin' about Wade," she choked. "Him and me has——"

"I reckon you've quarrelled" said Creed, sympathetically. "That needn't come to anything. I'm going over and talk to Jephthah Turrentine to-morrow morning, and I want you to come with me!"

"No," said Huldah getting to her feet and looking strangely at him. "The rain's about done now; the moon'll be comin' up in half a hour—I'm a-goin' on down to Hepzibah, like I said I was. Ef Wade Turrentine wants me, he knows whar to come for me. Ef he thinks of me as he said he did the last time we had speech together—w'y, I never want to put eyes on his face again. Oh—Creed, I wish't you'd come with me!"

"But it was me you quarrelled about," remonstrated Bonbright with that sudden clear vision which ultra-spiritual natures often show, and that startling forthrightness of speech which amazes and daunts the mountaineer. "I'm the last man you ought to leave the mountain with, Huldah, if you want to make up with Wade."

"How—how did you know?" whispered the girl, staring at him. "Well, anyhow, I ain't never a-goin' back thar."

She could not be prevailed on to go to bed with Aunt Nancy, when Doss Provine and the children were asleep, and Creed had gone to his quarters in the little office building, but sat by the fire all night staring into the embers, occasionally stirring them or putting on a stick of wood. At the earliest grey of dawn she waked Nancy, bidding the elder woman fasten the door after her. Declining in strangely subdued fashion her hostess's offer of hot coffee, she stepped noiselessly out and, with a swift look about, dived into the steep short-cut trail which led almost straight down the face of Big Turkey Track, from turn to turn of the main road.

A cloud clung to the Side; the foliage of only the foremost trees emerged from its blur, and these were dimmed and flatted as though a soft white veil were tangled among their leaves. Into this white mystery of dawn the girl had vanished.

Nancy looked curiously after her a moment, then glanced swiftly about as Huldah had done, her eyes dwelling long on Creed's little shack, standing peaceful in the morning mists. Softly she turned back, and closed and barred the door.



Chapter XII

In the Lion's Den

At seven o'clock, despite entreaties and warnings, Creed mounted his mule and set out for the Turrentine place.

"Don't you trust nothin' nor nobody over thar," Nancy followed him out to the gate to reiterate. "Old Jephthah Turrentine's as big a rascal as they' is unhung. No—I wouldn't trust Judith neither (hush now, Little Buck; you don't know what granny's a-talkin' about); she's apt to git some fool gal's notion o' being jealous o' Huldy, or something like that, and see you killed as cheerful as I'd wring a chicken's neck. (For the Lord's sake, Doss, take these chil'en down to the spring branch; they mighty nigh run me crazy with they' fussin' an' cryin'!) Don't you trust none on 'em, boy."

"Why, Aunt Nancy, I trust everybody on that whole place, excepting Blatchley Turrentine," said Creed sturdily. "Even Andy and Jeff, if I had a chance to talk to them, could be got to see reason. They're not the bloodthirsty crew you make them out. They're good folks."

She looked at him in exasperation, yet with a sort of reluctant approval and admiration.

"Well," she sighed, as she saw him mount and start, "mebbe yo' safer goin' right smack into the lion's den, like Dan'el, than you would be to sneak up."

Summer was at full tide, and the world had been new washed last night. Scents of mint and pennyroyal rose up under his mule's slow pacing feet. The meadow that stretched beyond Nancy's cabin was a green sea, with flower foam of white weed and dog-fennel; and the fence row was a long breaker with surf of elder blossom, the garden a tangle of bean-vine arbours. The corn patch rustled valiantly; the pastures were streaked with pale yellow primroses; and Bob Whites ran through the young crops, calling.

Creed rode forward. A gay wind was abroad under the blue sky. Every tiniest leaf that danced and flirted on its slender stem sent back gleams of the morning sunlight from its wet, glistening surface. The woods were full of bird songs, and the myriad other lesser voices of a midsummer morning sounded clear and distinct upon the vast, enfolding silence of the mountains.

It seemed beyond reason out in that gay July sunshine that anything dark or tragic could happen to one. But after all man cannot be so different from Nature which produces him, and the night before had given them a passionate, brief, destructive thunder-storm. Creed noted the ravages of it here and there; the broken boughs, the levelled or uprooted herbage, the washed and riven soil, as his mule moved soberly along.

At the Turrentine cabin all was quiet. The young men of the house had been out the entire night before guarding the trails that Creed Bonbright should not leave the mountains secretly. A good deal of moonshine whiskey went to this night guarding, particularly when there was the excuse of a shower to call for it, and the watchers of the trails now lay in their beds making up arrears of sleep. Jephthah stood looking out of his own cabin door when, about fifteen minutes ahead of Creed, Taylor Stribling tethered his half-broken little filly in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, and ran across the grassy side yard.

"Bonbright's out an' a-headin' this way!" he volleyed in a hoarse whisper as he approached the head of the clan.

"Who's with him?" asked Jephthah, turning methodically back into the room for the squirrel gun over the door.

"Nobody. He ain't got no rifle. I reckon he's packin' a pistol, though, of course. Nancy Cyard bawled an' took on considerable when he started. Shall I call the boys?"

"No," returned Jephthah briefly, replacing the clean brown rifle on its fir pegs. "No, I don't need nobody, and I don't need Old Sister. I reckon I can deal with one young feller alone."

He walked unhurriedly toward the main house. Stribling stood looking after him a moment, uncertainly. The spy's errand was performed. He had now his dismissal; it would not do to be seen about the place at this time. He went reluctantly back to the waiting filly, mounted and turned her head toward a high point that commanded the big road for some distance. A little later Jephthah Turrentine sat in the open threshing-floor porch of the main house smoking, Judith within was busy looking over and washing a mess of Indian lettuce and sissles in a piggin, when Creed rode into the yard.

The ancient hound thumped twice with a languid tail on the floor; Judith, back in her kitchen, stayed her hand, and stared out at the newcomer with parted lips which the blood forsook; Jephthah's inscrutable black eyes rose to Creed's face and rested there; nothing but that aspect, pale, desolate, ravaged, the strip of plaster running from brow to cheek, marked the difference between this visit and any other.

Yet the old house seemed to crouch close, to regard him askance from under lowering eyes, as though through all its timbers ran the message that the enemy was here.

"Good morning," he hailed.

"Howdy. 'Light—'light and come in," Jephthah adjured him, without rising, "I'm proud to see ye."

His own countenance was worn and haggard with sleeplessness and anxiety, but with the mountaineer's dignified reticence he passively ignored the fact, assuming a detached manner of mild jocularity.

Creed, under inspection from six pairs of eyes, though there was only one individual visible to him, got from his mule, tethered the animal, and came and seated himself on the porch edge.

"Aunt Nancy didn't want me to come over this morning," he began with that directness which always amazed his Turkey Track neighbours and put them all astray as to the man, his real meaning and intentions.

"Well, now—didn't she?" inquired the other innocently. "Hit was a fine mornin' for a ride, too, and I 'low ye' had yo' reasons for comin' in this direction—not but what we're proud to see ye on business or on pleasure."

"Are any of the boys about?" asked Creed, suddenly looking up.

"I don't know adzackly whar the boys is at," compromised Jephthah, soothing his conscience with the fiction that one might be lying in one bed and another in some place to him unknown. "Was there any particular one you wanted to see?"

"I was looking for Wade," said Creed briefly, and a silent shock went through one of the men kneeling on the bed inside the log wall, peering through a chink at the visitor.

Judith could bear the strain no longer. Torn by diverse emotions, she snatched up a bucket, ran out of the back door and down to the spring. Returning with it, and her composure somewhat repaired, she dipped a cool and dripping gourdful, walked swiftly through the front room and stood abruptly before Creed, presenting it with almost no word of greeting, only the customary, "Would ye have a fresh drink?"

"Thank you," said Creed taking the gourd from her hand and lifting his eyes to her face. He needed no prompting now; his own heart spoke very clearly; he knew as he looked at her that she was all the world to him—and that he was utterly lost and cut off from her.

Jephthah, on the porch, and those unseen eyes within, watched the two curiously, while Creed drank from the gourd, emptied out what water remained, and returned it to Judith, and she all the while regarded him with a burning gaze, finally bursting out:

"What do you want to see Wade about? Is it—is it Huldy?"

"Yes, Miss Judith, it's Huldah," Creed assented quietly.

"I don't know as its worth while talkin' to Wade about that thar gal," put in Jephthah meditatively. "She sorter sidled off last night and left the place, and I think he feels kinder pestered and mad like. My boys is all mighty peaceful in their dispositions, but it ain't the best to talk to any man when he's had that which riles him."

"Whar is Huldy Spiller?" demanded Judith standing straight and tall before the visitor, disdaining the indirection of her uncle's methods. "Is she over at you-all's?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to Wade about," returned Creed evasively. "Huldah's a good girl, and I'm sorry if he thinks—I'd hate to be the one that——"

For a moment Judith stared at him with incredulous anger, then she wheeled sharply, went into the house and shut the door. Creed turned appealingly to the older man. He had great faith in Jephthah Turrentine's good sense and cool judgment. But the young justice showed in many ways less comprehension of these, his own people, than an outsider born and bred. Jephthah Turrentine was no longer to be reckoned with as a man—he was the head of a tribe, and that tribe was at war.

"I don't know as that thar gal is worth namin' at this time," he vouchsafed, almost plaintively. "Ef she had taken Jim Cal's Iley 'long with her, I could fergive the both of 'em and wish ye joy. As it is, she's neither here nor thar. Ef you had nothin' better to name to my son Wade, mebbe we'd as well talk of the craps, and about Steve Massengale settin' out to run for the Legislature."

Creed stood up, and in so doing let the little packet of papers he held in his hand drop unnoted to the grass. He scorned to make an appeal for himself, yet it seemed worth while to let his adversaries know that he was aware what they would be at.

"Who found Blatch Turrentine's body and removed it?" he asked abruptly.

Blatch's body,—unknown to his uncle and Judith—at that moment reposing comfortably upon a bed in the loft room adjoining the porch, heaved with noiseless chuckles.

Old Jephthah's eyes narrowed. "We 'low that ye might answer that question for yo'self," he said coolly. "Word goes that you've done hid the body, so murder couldn't be proved."

The visitor sighed. He was disappointed. He had hoped the old man might have admitted—to him—that Blatch had not been killed.

"Mr. Turrentine," he began desperately, "I know what you people believe about me—but it isn't true; I'm not a spy. When I came upon that still, I was running for my life. I never wanted to know anything about blockaded stills."

"Ye talked sort o' like ye did, here earlier in the evenin'," said the old man, rearing himself erect in his chair, and glaring upon the fool who spoke out in broad daylight concerning such matters.

"I didn't mean that personally," protested Creed. "I wish to the Lord I didn't know anything about it. I'm sorry it chanced that I looked in the cave there and saw your son——"

"You needn't go into no particulars about whar you looked in, nor what you seed, nor call out no names of them you seed," cut in the old man's voice, low and menacing; and around the corner of the house Jim Cal, where he had stolen up to listen, trembled through all the soft bulk of his body like a jelly; and into his white face the angry blood rushed.

"Wish ye didn't know nothin? Yes, and you'll wish't it wuss'n that befo' yo're done with it," he muttered under his breath.

"I don't intend to use that or any other information against a neighbour and a friend," Creed went on doggedly. "But they can't make me leave the Turkey Tracks. I'm here to stay. I came with a work to do, and I mean to do it or die trying."

The old man's head was sunk a bit on his breast, so that the great black beard rose up of itself and shadowed his lower face. "Mighty fine—mighty fine," he murmured in its voluminous folds. "Ef they is one thing finer than doin' what you set out to do, hit's to die a-tryin'. The sort of sentiments you have on hand now is the kind I l'arned myself out of the blue-backed speller when I was a boy. I mind writin' em out big an' plain after the teacher's copy."

Creed looked about him for Judith. He had failed with the old man, but she would understand—she would know. His hungry heart counselled him that she was his best friend, and he glanced wistfully at the door through which she had vanished; but it remained obstinately closed as he made his farewells, got dispiritedly to his mule and away.

Judith watched his departure from an upper window, smitten to the heart by the drooping lines of the figure, the bend of the yellow head. Inexorably drawn she came down the steep stairs, checking, halting at every step, her breast heaving with the swift alternations of her mood. The door of the boys' room swung wide; her swift glance descried Wade's figure just vanishing into the grove at the edge of the clearing.

The tall, gaunt old man brooded in his chair, his black eyes fixed on vacancy, the pipe in his relaxed fingers dropped to his knee. Up toward the Jim Cal cabin Iley, one baby on her hip and two others clinging to her skirts, dodged behind a convenient smoke-house, and peered out anxiously.

Judith stepped noiselessly into the porch; the old man did not turn his head. Her quick eye noted the paper Creed had dropped. She stooped and picked it up unobserved, slipped into the kitchen, studying its lines of figures which meant nothing to her, caught up her sunbonnet and, glancing warily about, made an exit through the back door. She ran through a long grape-arbour where great wreathing arms of Virgin's Bower aided to shut the green tunnel in from sight, then took a path where tall bushes screened her, making for the short cut which she guessed Creed would take.

Down the little dell through which she herself had ridden that first day with what wonderful thoughts of him in her heart, she got sight of him, going slowly, the lagging gait of the old mule seeming to speak his own depression. The trees were all vigorous young second growth here, and curtained the slopes with billows of green. The drying ground sent up a spicy mingling of odours—decaying pine needles, heart leaf, wintergreen berries, and the very soil itself.

Bumblebees shouldered each other clumsily about the heads of milk-weed blossoms. Cicada droned in long, loud crescendo and diminuendo under the hot sun of mid forenoon. A sensitive plant, or as Judith herself would have said, a "shame briar," caught at her skirts as she hastened. Dipping deeper into the hollow, the man ahead, riding with his gaze upon the ground, became aware of the sound of running feet behind him, and then a voice which made his pulses leap called his name in suppressed, cautious tones. He looked back to see Judith hurrying after him, her cheeks aflame from running, the sunbonnet carried in her hand, and her dark locks freeing themselves in little moist tendrils about her brow where the tiny beads of perspiration gathered.

"You dropped this," she panted, offering the paper when she came abreast of him.

For a moment she stood by the old mule's shoulder looking up into the eyes of his rider. It was the reversal of that first day when Creed had stood so looking up at her. Some memory of it struggled in her, and appealed for his life, anyhow, from that fierce primitive jealousy which would have sacrificed the lover of the other woman.

"I—I knowed the paper wasn't likely anything you needed," she told him. "I jest had to have speech with you alone. I want to warn you. The boys is out after you. They ain't no hope, ef the Turrentines gits after you. Likely we're both watched right now. You'll have to leave the mountains."

Creed got quickly from the mule and stood facing her, a little pale and very stern.

"Do you hold with them?" he asked. "I had no intention of killing Blatch. The quarrel was forced on me, as they would say if they told the truth."

"Well, they won't tell the truth," said Judith impatiently. "What differ does it make how come it? They're bound to run ye out. Hit's a question of yo' life ef ye don't go. I—I don't know what makes me come an' warn ye—but you and Huldy had better git to the settlement as soon as ye can."

Creed saw absolutely nothing in her coupling of his name with Huldah Spiller's, but the fact that both were under the displeasure of the Turrentines. She searched his face with hungry gaze for some sign of denial of that which she imputed. Instead, she met a look of swift distress.

"I've got to see Wade about Huldah," Creed asserted doggedly. "I promised her—I told her——"

Judith drew back.

"Well, see Wade then!" she choked. "There he is," and she pointed to the wall of greenery behind which her quicker eyes had detected a man who stole, rifle on shoulder, through the bushes toward a point by the path-side.

"What do I care?" she flung at him. "What is it to me?—you and your Huldy, and your grand plans, and your killin' up folks and a-gittin' run out o' the Turkey Tracks! Settle it as best ye may—I've said my last word!"

Her breast heaved convulsively. Bitter, corroding tears burned in her flashing eyes; rage, jealousy, thwarted passion, tenderness denied, and utter terror of the outcome—the time after—all these tore her like wild wolves, as she turned and fled swiftly up the path she had come.

The pale young fellow with the marred, stricken face, standing by the mule, looked after her heavily. Those flying feet were carrying away from him, out of his life, all that made that life beautiful and blest. Yet Creed set his jaw resolutely, and facing about once more, addressed himself to the situation as it was.

"Wade—Wade Turrentine!" he called. "Come out of there. I see you. Come out and talk to me."

With all the composure in life Wade slouched into the opening of the path.

"You've got good eyes," was his sole comment. Then, as the other seemed slow to begin, "What might you want speech with me about?" he inquired.

"It's about Huldah," Creed opened the question volubly now. "You love her, and she loves you. She came over to warn me because we are old acquaintances and friends, and I guess she don't want you to get into trouble. Is it true that her life is not safe if she stays here on the mountain?"

Wade's pleasant hazel eyes narrowed and hardened.

"You're a mighty busy somebody about things that don't consarn ye," he remarked finally.

"But this does concern me," Creed insisted. "I can't be the cause of breaking up a match between you and Huldah——"

He would have gone further, but Wade interrupted shaking his head.

"No—I reckon you cain't. Hit'd take more than you to break up any match I was suited with. Mebbe I don't want no woman that's liable to hike out and give me away whenever she takes the notion."

"Oh, come now, Wade," said Bonbright, with good-natured entreaty in his voice. "You know she wouldn't give you away. She didn't mean any harm to you. I'll bet you've done plenty of things twice as bad, if Huldah had the knowing of them."

"Mebbe I have," agreed Wade, temperately, and suddenly one saw the resemblance to his father. "Mebbe I have—but ye see I ain't the one that's bein' met up with right now. I ain't carin' which nor whether about Huldy Spiller; but you've got to walk yo'self from the Turkey Tracks—and walk sudden and walk straight, Mr. Creed Bonbright—or you'll come to more trouble with the Turrentines. I tell ye this in pure good will."



Chapter XIII

In the Night

In dark silence Judith made ready a late breakfast for the boys, leaving her coffee-pot as of custom on its bed of coals in the ashes, hot bread in the Dutch oven, and a platter of meat on the table. Jeff and Andy straggled in and ate, helping themselves mutely, with sidelong glances at her stormy face.

During the entire forenoon Wade was off the place, but the twins put in their time at the pasture over the breaking of a colt to harness. Old Jephthah was in his room with the door shut. Jim Cal, almost immediately on Creed's departure, had retired to the shelter of his own four walls, and, sick and trembling, taken to his bed, after his usual custom when the skies of life darkened.

Dinner was got ready with the same fury of mechanical energy. During its preparation Iley stole to the door and looked in. The only women on the place, held outside the councils of the men, she longed to make some unformulated appeal to Judith, to have at least such help and comfort as might come from talking over the situation with her. But when the desolate dark eyes looked full into hers, and uttered as plainly as words the question that the sister dreaded, Jim Cal's wife turned and fled.

"She might as well 'a' said 'Huldy,'" whimpered the vixen, plucking at her lip and hurrying back, head down, to her own cabin.

The day dragged its slow length. The sun in the doorway had crept to the noon-mark, and away again. Flies buzzed. A cicada droned without. The old hound padded in to lie down under the bed.

After dinner Jephthah went away somewhere, and the boys gathered in their room, whence Judith could hear the clink and snap which advised her that the guns were having a thorough overhauling, cleaning, and oiling. She looked helplessly at the door. What could she do? Follow Creed as Huldah had done? At the thought, all her bitterness surged back upon her. What had she been able to accomplish when she stood face to face alone with him on the woods-path? Nothing. She turned and addressed herself once more savagely to her tasks. That was what women were for—women and mules. Men had the say-so in this world. She—she the owner of this house, its real mistress—was to cook three meals a day for the men folks, and see nothing and say nothing.

Supper was the only meal at which the entire family gathered that day. It was eaten in an almost unbroken silence, the younger boys plainly hesitating to speak to either Judith or their father. Save for elliptical requests for food, the only conversation was when Wade offered the opinion that it looked like it might rain before morning, and his father replied that he did not think it would. Leaving the table without further word, Jephthah returned to his own quarters; the boys drifted away one by one giving no destination.

The light that used to wink out in friendly fashion from the smaller cabin across the slope was darkened. Jim Cal had crawled out of bed after a somewhat prolonged conversation with Wade. A little later he had sullenly harnessed up a mule of Blatch's and, with Iley and the children, started for old Jesse Spiller's, out at Big Buck Gap, the sister maintaining to the last that Huldah must certainly have gone out to pap's, and would be found waiting for them at the old home.

There was nobody left on the place but Judith and her uncle. The girl went automatically about her Saturday evening duties, working doggedly, trying to tire herself out so that she might sleep when the time came that there was nothing to do but go to bed. As she passed from her storeroom, which she had got Wade to build in the back end of the threshing-floor porch, to the great open fireplace where a kettle hung with white beans boiling that would be served with dumplings for the Sunday dinner, as she took down and sorted over towels and cloths that were not needed, but which made a pretext for activity, her mind ground steadily upon the happenings of the past days. She could see Creed's face before her as he had looked the night of the play-party. What coarse, crude animals the other men were beside him! She could hear his voice as it spoke to her in the dark yard at the Bonbright place, and her breath caught in her throat.

She must be up and away; she must go to him and warn him, protect him against these her fierce kindred.

Then suddenly came the vision of Creed's laughing mouth as he bent to claim the forfeited kiss when Huldah Spiller had openly pushed herself across the line "and mighty nigh into his arms." Huldah had run hot-foot to warn him. Arley Kittridge brought word of having seen her dodge into the Card orchard on her way to the house on the evening before, and nobody had had sight of her since.

Judith's was a nature swayed by impulse, more capable than she herself was aware of noble action, but capable also of sudden, irrational cruelty. Just now her soul was at war with itself, embittered by rage, by what she had done, by what she had left undone, by her helplessness, by what she desired to do. Finally, despairing of any weariness bringing sleep—she had tried that the night before and failed—she put by her work and went up to her room, undressed and lay down in the dark.

For a long time she interrogated the blackness about her with wide open eyes. The house was strangely still. She could hear the movement and squawk of a chicken in one of the trees in the side yard when some fellow lodger disturbed it, or a sudden breeze shook the limb upon which it roosted. She wondered if the boys had come back yet and slipped in quietly. Had she slept at all? About eleven o'clock there arose an unquiet, gusty, yet persistent wind, that moved the cedar tree against the edge of the porch roof and set it complaining. For a time it moaned and protested like a man under the knife. Then its deep baritone voice began to cry out as though it were calling upon her. The tree had long ceased to mean anything other than Creed to Judith, and now its outcry aroused her to an absolute terror. Again and again as the wind the tree, so those tones shook her heart with their pain and love and anguish of entreaty.

Finally she arose in a kind of torture, slipped on her clothes and went through all the rooms. They were silent and empty. Not a bed had been disturbed. She breathed loud and short in irrepressible excitement.

"They're all over at the still," she whispered, clutching at the breast of her dress, and shivering. But the old man never went near the still, she knew that. For a while she struggled with herself, and then she said, "I'll just go and listen outside of Uncle Jep's door. That won't do any harm. Ef so be he's thar, then the boys is shore at the still. Ef he ain't——"

She left her mentally formed sentence unfinished and, on feet that fear winged, stole through the side yard, across the long, lush, uncut grass to her uncle's door.

The old man must have been a light sleeper, or perhaps he was awake before she approached, for he called out while she yet stood irresolute, her hand stretched toward the big wooden latch.

"Who's thar?"

Startled, abashed, she replied in a choked, hesitating tone.

"It's only me—Jude. I reckon I'm a fool, Uncle Jep. I know in reason there ain't nothin' the matter. But I jest couldn't sleep, and I got up and looked through the house, and the boys is all gone, and I got sorter scared."

He was with her almost instantly.

"I reckon they're all over 'crost the gulch," he said in his usual unexcited fashion, though she noted that he did not go back into his room, but joined her where she lingered in the dark outside.

"Of course they air," she reassured herself and him. "Whar else could they be?"

"Now I'm up, I reckon I mought go over yon myself," the old man said finally. "My foot hurts me this evening; I believe I'll ride Pete. I took notice the boys had all the critters up for an early start in the mornin'."

Both knew that this was a device for investigating the stables, and together they hurried to the huddle of low log buildings which served to house forage and animals on the Turrentine place. Not a hoof of anything to ride had been left. The boys would not have taken mules or horse to go to the still—so much was certain. In the light of the lantern which Jephthah lit the two stood and looked at each other with a sort of consternation. Then the old man fetched a long breath.

"Go back to the house, Jude," he said not unkindly, putting the lantern into her hand; and without another word he set off down the road running hard.



Chapter XIV

The Raid

Earlier that same Saturday evening, while Judith Barrier was fighting out her battle, and trying to tire down the restless spirit that wrung and punished her, Nancy Card, mindful of earlier experiences in feud times, was getting her cabin in a state of defence.

"You know in reason them thar Turrentines ain't a-goin' to hold off long," she told Creed. "They're pizen fighters, and they allus aim to hit fust. No, you don't stay out in that thar office," as Creed made this proffer, stating that it would leave her and her family safer. "I say stay in the office! Why, them Turrentines would ask no better than one feller for the lot of 'em to jump on—they could make their brags about it the longest day they live of how they done him up."

So it came to pass that Creed was sitting in the big kitchen of the Nancy Card cabin while Judith wrought at her fruitless labours in her own home. Despite the time of year, Nancy insisted on shutting the doors and closing the battened shutters at the windows.

"A body gets a lot of good air by the chimney drawin' up when ye have a bit of fire smokin'," she said. "I'd ruther be smothered as to be shot, anyhow."

Little Buck and Beezy, infected by the excitement of their elders, refused peremptorily to go to bed. "Let me take the baby," said Creed holding out his arms. "She's always good with me. She can go to sleep in my lap."

"Beezy won't go to sleep in nobody's lap," that young lady announced with great finality. "Beezy never go to sleep no time—nowhere."

"All right," agreed the young fellow easily, cutting short a futile argument upon the grandmother's part. "You needn't go to sleep if you can stay awake, honey. You sit right here in Creed's lap and stay awake till morning and keep him good company, won't you?"

The red head nodded till its flying frazzles quivered like tongues of flame. Then it snuggled down on the broad breast, that moved rhythmically under it, and very soon the long lashes drooped to the flushed cheeks and Beezy was asleep.

Aunt Nancy had picked up Little Buck, but that young man had the limitations of his virtues. Being silent by nature he had not so much to keep him awake as the loquacious Beezy, and by the time his father on the other side of the hearth had dropped asleep and nearly fallen into the fire a couple of times, been sternly admonished by the grandmother, and gone to fling himself face down upon a bed in the corner, Little Buck was sounder asleep than his sister.

The old woman got up and carried her grandson to the bed, laid him down upon it and, taking basin and towel, proceeded to wipe the dusty small feet before she took off his minimum of clothing and pushed him in between the sheets.

"Minds me of a foot-washin' at Little Shiloh," she ruminated. "Here's me jest like the preacher and here's Little Buck gettin' all the sins of the day washed off at once."

She completed her task, and was taking Beezy from Creed's arms to lay her beside her brother on the bed, when a tap—tap—tapping, apparently upon the window shutter, brought them both to their feet, staring at each other with pale faces.

"What's that?" breathed Nancy. "Hush—hit'll come again. Don't you answer for your life, Creed. Ef anybody speaks, let it be me."

Again the measured rap—rap—rap!

"You let my Nick in," murmured Beezy sleepily, and Creed laughed out in sudden relief. It was the wooden-legged rooster, coming across the little side porch and making his plea for admission as he stepped.

Something in the incident brought the situation of affairs home to Creed Bonbright as it had not been before.

"Aunt Nancy," he said resolutely, "I'm going to leave right now and walk down to the settlement. I've got no business to be here putting you and the children in danger. It's a case of fool pride. They told me down at Hepzibah that I'd be run out of the Turkey Tracks inside of three months if I tried to set up a justice's office here. I felt sort of ashamed to go back and face them and own up that they were right—that I had been run out. I ought to have been too much of a man to feel that way. It makes no difference what they say—the only thing that counts is that I have failed."

"You let me catch you openin' that do' or steppin' yo' foot on the road to-night!" snorted Nancy belligerently. "Why, you fool boy, don't you know all the roads has been guarded by the Turrentines ever since they fell out with ye? They 'lowed ye would run of course, and they aimed to layway ye as ye went. I could have told 'em ye wasn't the runnin' kind; but thar, what do they know about——"

She broke off suddenly, her mouth open, and stood staring with fear-dilated eyes at Creed.

"Hello!" came the hail from outside.

Nancy let the baby slip from her arms to the floor, and the little thing stood whimpering and rubbing her eyes, clinging to her grandmother's skirts.

"Hush—hush!" cautioned the old woman, barely above her breath.

"Hello! Hello in thar! You better answer—we see yo' light. Hello in thar!"

"Whose—voice—is that?" breathed old Nancy.

"It sounded like Blatch Turrentine's," Creed whispered back as softly.

"Hit do," she agreed with conviction.

Suddenly a shot rang out, and Doss Provine sat up on the edge of the bed with a gurgle of terror. Little Buck wakened at the same instant, and ran to his grandmother.

"I ain't scared, Granny," he asseverated, "I kin fight fer ye."

"Hush—hush!" cautioned Nancy, bending to gather in the sun-burned tow head at her knee.

Another shot followed, and after it a voice crying,

"You've got Creed Bonbright in thar. You let him come out and talk to us, or we'll batter yo' do' in."

"You Andy—you Jeff!" shouted the old woman in sudden rage. "Ef you want Creed Bonbright you know whar to find him. You go away and let my do' alone."

"You quit callin' out names, Nancy Cyard," responded the first, menacing voice out of the darkness. "We know Bonbright's in thar, and we aim to have him out—or burn yo' house—accordin' to yo' ruthers."

Creed had parted his lips to answer them, when old Nancy sprang at him and set her hand over his open mouth.

"You hush—and keep hushed!" she whispered urgently.

"I just wanted to call to the boys and tell them I'm here," Creed whispered to her. "Aunt Nancy, I'm bound to go out there and talk to them fellows. I cain't stay in here and let you and the children suffer for it."

"Aw, big-mouthed, big-talkin' brood—what do I keer for them?" demanded Nancy, tossing her head with a characteristic motion to get the grey curls away from her fearless blue eyes; whereupon the tucking comb slipped down and had to be replaced, "You ain't a-goin' out thar," she whispered vehemently from under her raised arm, as she redded back the straying locks with it. Nancy had the reckless, dare-devil courage those blue eyes bespoke. Presuming a bit, perhaps, on her age and sex, she yet ran risks that many men would have shunned without deeming themselves cowards. "You ain't a-goin' out thar, I tell ye," she reiterated. "I wouldn't let ye ef they burnt the house down over our heads. Pony'll be along pretty shortly from Hepzibah, and when he sees 'em I reckon he's got sense enough to git behind a bush and fire at 'em—that'll scatter 'em."

As if inspired to destroy this one slender hope, the voice outside spoke again, tauntingly.

"Nancy Cyard, we've got yo' son Pony here—picked him up on the road—an' ef yo'r a mind to trade Creed Bonbright for him, we'll trade even. Better dicker with us. Somepin' bad might happen this young 'un."

At the words, Creed wheeled and made for the door, Nancy gripping him frantically but mutely.

"Creed—boy—honey!"—she breathed at last, "they's mo' than one kind o' courage. This is jest fool courage—to go an' git yo'se'f killed up. Them Turrentines won't hurt Pone. But you—oh, my Lord!"

"I reckon ye better let him go, maw," Doss Provine chattered from the bed's edge where he still crouched. "Hit's best that it should be one, ruther than all of us."

Old Nancy flung him a glance of wordless contempt. Beezy ran and tangled herself in the tall young fellow's legs, halting him.

"Creed," the old woman urged, still below her breath, holding to his arm. "Creed, honey, as soon as you open that do' and stand in the light, yo'r no better than a dead man. Listen!"

All caution had been thrown aside by the besiegers. Hoarse voices questioned and answered outside, sounds of stumbling footsteps surrounded the house.

"Boys," called Creed in that clear, ringing voice of his that held neither fear nor great excitement, "I'm coming out to talk to you. Aunt Nancy, take the children away. You've got it to do."

"Well, come on," replied the voice without. "Talk—that's all we want. You'll be as safe outside as in—and a damn' sight safer."

Nancy gathered up her youngsters, flung them in a heap into their father's lap, and, overturning and putting out the candle as she went, sprang to the hearth to quench a small flame which had risen among the embers there.

"Ye might have some sense!" she panted angrily. "The idea of walkin' yo'se'f into a lighted doorway for them fellers to shoot at! For God's sake don't open that do' till I get the lights out!"

But Creed was not listening. He had pulled the big pine bar that held the battened door in place, and now flung it wide, stepping to the threshold and beginning again,

"Boys——"

He uttered no further word. A rifle spoke, a bullet sang, passed through the cabin and buried itself in the old-fashioned chimneypiece. Creed fell where he stood. As he went down across the threshold, Nancy whirling around to the door, bent over his prostrate form.

Outside, the ruddy, shaken shine from a couple of lightwood torches which stood alone, where they had been thrust deep into the garden mould made strange gouts and blotches of colour on Nancy's flower beds. A group of men halted, drawn together, muttering, just beyond the palings. Each had a handkerchief tied across the lower part of his face, a simple but effectual disguise.

Her groping hand came away from the prostrate man, red with blood; she dashed it across her brow to clear her eyes of blowing hair. At the moment a figure burst through the grove of saplings by the roadside, a tall old man whose long black beard blew across his mighty chest that laboured as he ran. His hat was off in his hand, his face raised; he had no weapon. With a gasp of relief Nancy recognised him, yet rage mounted in her, too.

"Yes—come a-runnin'," she muttered fiercely. "Come look at what you and yo'rn have done!"

As he leaped into the clearing the old man's great black eyes, full of sombre fire, swept the scene. They took in the prone figure across the threshold, the blood upon the doorstone, and on Nancy's brow and hair.

"Air ye hurt? Nancy, air ye hurt?" he cried, in such a tone as none there had ever heard from him.

"Am I hurt?—No!" choked the old woman, trying to get a hold on Creed's broad shoulders and drag him back into the room. "I ain't hurt, but it's no credit to them wolves that you call sons of yo'rn. They've got Pone out thar, ef they hain't shot him yit. And they've killed the best man that ever come on this here mountain. Oh, Creed—my pore boy! You Doss Provine! Come here an' he'p me lift him." She reared herself on her knees and glared at the group by the gate. "He had no better sense than to take ye for men—to trust the word ye give, that he was safe when he opened the do'. Don't you come a step nearer, Jep Turrentine," she railed out at him suddenly, as the old man drew toward the gate. "I've had a plenty o' you an' yo' sons this night. They're jest about good enough to shoot me while I'm a-tryin' to git this po' dead boy drug in the house, an' then burn the roof down over me an' my baby chil'en. You Doss Provine, walk yo'se'f here an' he'p me."

Doss, who found the presence of Jephthah Turrentine reassuring, whatever his mother-in-law might say, slouched forward, and between them they lifted the limp figure.

"God knows I don't blame ye, Nancy," muttered the old man in his beard, as the heavy door was dragged shut, and the bar dropped into place. Then he advanced upon the men at the palings.

At Jephthah's first appearance the tallest of these had dropped swiftly back into the shadows on the other side of the road and was gone. Unsupported, the four or five who were left shuffled uneasily, beneath the old man's fierce eye.

"Where's Pone Cyard?" he demanded.

"We hain't tetched him, pap. We never seed him. We said that to draw 'em."

"Huh!" ejaculated Jephthah, as though further comment were beyond him. "Git yo' ridin' critters," he gave the short, sharp order. "Fetch Pete to me." And he whirled his back, and stalked out into the main road.

A hundred yards or so up, there was a sound of hoofs and tearing bushes, as the boys came through the greenery with their mules. Pete was led up and the bridle-rein presented in meek silence. By the dim, presaging light of the little waning moon, delaying somewhere down below the shoulder of Big Turkey Track, old Jephthah took it, set foot in stirrup, and made ready to swing to saddle. Then he slowly withdrew the foot and turned back.

"Take them cussed rags off o' yo' faces!" he burst out in a fury of contempt. "Now. Who laid out this night's work? Well, speak up—how come it?"

Dead silence answered. Of the three who faced him not one—lacking the leader who had skulked away at Jephthah's approach—could have explained just why he was there. And none of them would betray the man who had led them there and left them to answer as best they might for their actions to the head of the tribe.

"Uh-huh, I thort so," nodded the old man bitterly, as they yet stood mute. "Ain't got a word to say for yo'selves. No, and they ain't a word to be said. Yo' sons in my house. I was thar—I was standin' with ye about this business. Why couldn't this be named to me? What call had ye to sneak around me—to make a fool o' me, an' shame me?"

He waited. Receiving no response, he concluded as he got to the mule's back,

"You do me thisaway once mo'—jest once mo'—and hit will be a plenty."

With that he gave Pete the rein, and the mule's receding heels flung dust in the dismayed countenances he left behind him.



Chapter XV

Council of War

The Turrentine clan was gathering for consultation, Judith knew that. It was Sunday, and much of this unwonted activity passed as the ordinary Sabbath day coming and going. But there was a steady tendency of tall, soft-stepping, slow-spoken, keen-eyed males toward old Jephthah's quarters, and Judith had got dinner for the two long-limbed, black-avised Turrentine brothers, Hawk and Chantry, from over in Rainy Gap; and old Turrentine Broyles, a man of Jephthah's age, had ridden in from Broyles's Mill that morning.

With the natural freedom of movement that Sunday offers, information from the Card neighbourhood came in easily. Inevitably Judith learned all the details of last night's raid; and everybody on the place knew that Creed Bonbright was alive, and that he was not even seriously wounded. He had been observed through the open door of Nancy's cabin moving about the rooms inside. Arley Kittridge declared that he had seen Bonbright, in the grey of early morning, his head bound up and his left arm in a sling, cross from Nancy's house to his office and back again, alone.

Sunday brought the Jim Cals home, too. Iley, humiliated and savage, bearing in her breast galling secret recollections of Pap Spiller's animadversions on her management of Huldah, raged all day with the toothache, and a pariah dog might have pitied the lot of the fat man.

All day, as Judith cooked, and washed her dishes, and entertained her visitors, the events of last night's raid were present with her. When at the table one of the boys stretched a hand to receive the food she had prepared, she looked at it with an inward shuddering, wondering, was this the hand that fired the shot?

All day as she talked to her women visitors of patchwork patterns, or the making of lye soap, as she admired their babies and sympathised with their ailments, her mind was busy with the inquiry what part she should take in the final inevitable crisis. She remembered with a remorse that was almost shame how, at their last interview, she had plucked back from Creed her rescuing hand in jealous anger. That big mother kindness that there was in her spoke for him, pleaded loud for his life, when her hot passionate heart would have had revenge for his slight.

Yes, she had to save Creed Bonbright if she could, and to be of any use to him she must know what was planned against him. It was dark by the time the women-folk had gone their ways and the men remaining had assembled definitely in old Jephthah's separate cabin. No gleam of light shone from its one window. Judith watched for some time, then taking a bucket as a pretext walked down the path to the cow-lot, which led her close in to the cabin. She could hear as she approached the murmur of masculine voices. Secure from observation in the darkness, she crept to the window and listened, her head leaned against the wooden shutter. Old Jephthah was speaking, and she realised from his words that she had chanced upon the close of their council.

The big voice came out to her in carefully lowered tones.

"Well, Broyles, yo' the oldest, an that's yo' opinion. Hawk an' Chantry says the same. Now as far as I'm concerned—" the commanding accents faltered a little—"I'm obliged to agree with you. The matter has got where we cain't do no other than run him out. I admit it. I'll say yes to that."

Judith trembled, for she knew they spoke of Creed.

"Well, Jep, you better not put too many things in the way," came accents she recognised as Turrentine Broyles's, "or looks like these-here boys is liable to find theirselves behind bars befo' snow flies."

"Huh-uh," agreed the old man's voice. "I know whar I'm at. I ain't lived this long and got through without disgrace or jailin' to take up with it at my age; but they don't raid no more cabins. I freed my mind on that last night; I made myself cl'ar; an' that's the one pledge I ax for. Toll him away from the place and layway him, if you must, to run him out. But they's to be no killin', an' no mo' shootin' up houses whar they is women and chil'en. This ain't no feud."

"All right—we've got yo' word for it, have we?" inquired Buck Shalliday eagerly. "You'll stand by us?"

Suddenly a brand on the hearth flamed up, and Judith peering through a crack of the board shutter had sight of her uncle standing, his height exaggerated by the flickering illumination, tall and black on the hearthstone. About him the faint light fell on a circle of eager, drawn faces, all set toward him. As she looked he raised his hand above his head and shook the clenched fist.

"I've got obliged to," he groaned. "God knows I had nothing against Creed Bonbright. And I can't say as I've got anything against him yit. But I've got a-plenty against rottin' in jail. I'd ruther die."

"Will ye come with us, pap?" Jim Cal instantly put the question, and as he spoke the light went suddenly out.

"No," returned old Jephthah doggedly. "I won't make nor meddle. I've give you my best advice; I sont for Hawk an' Chantry, here, an' for Turn Broyles, to do the same. We've talked it over fa'r an' squar', aimin' to have ye do this thing right—" He broke off, and then amended sombrely, "—As near right as sech a thing can be did. But you-all boys run into this here agin' my ruthers, an' you'll jest have to git out yo'selves. All I say is, no killin', and no raidin' of folks' homes."

"No mo' killin', ye mean,—don't ye?" asked Jim Cal. The fat man, goaded beyond reason, was ready to turn and fight at last.

"No, I don't," answered his father. "When I mean a thing I can find the words to say it without any advice. As for Blatch bein' killed—you boys think yo' mighty smart, but you'd show yo' sense to tote fair with me and tell me all that's goin' on. I wasn't born yesterday. I've seen interruptions and killin's befo' I seen any of you. An' I'll say right here in front o' yo' kinfolks that's come to he'p you out with their counsels—an' could do a sight better ef you'd tell 'em the truth—that I never did think it was likely that Creed Bonbright made away with a body inside of fifteen minutes. That tale's too big for me—but I'm askin' no questions. Settle it your own way—but for God's sake settle it. Him knowin' what he does an' havin' been did the way you boys have done him, he's got to go. Run him out—an' run him out quick. Don't you dare tell me how, nor when, nor what!"

Judith started back as the sounds within told her that the men were groping their way to the door. As she stood concealed by darkness, they issued, made their quiet adieux, and went over to the fence where she could hear the stamping of the tethered animals. Cut off from the house, she retreated swiftly down the path toward the stable and would have entered, but some instinct warned her back. As she paused uncertain, hearing footsteps approaching from behind, indefinably sure that there was danger in front, there sounded a cautious low whistle. Those who came from the cabin answered it. She drew back beneath one of the peach-trees by the milking-pen—the very one from which Creed had broken the blossoming switch, with which she reproached him. Flat against its trunk she crouched, as six men went past her in the gloom.

"Who's here?" demanded a voice like Blatch Turrentine's, and at the sound she began suddenly to shudder from head to foot. Then she pulled herself together. This was no ghost talking. It was the man himself.

"Me," answered Jim Cal's unmistakable tones, "an' Wade, an' Jeff, an' Andy. Buck and Taylor's both with us—and that's all."

The man within opened the grain-room door, and the six newcomers entered.

"Whar's old man Broyles, an' Hawk an' Chantry?" questioned Blatch.

"They rid off home," said Shalliday.

"Well, what does Unc' Jep say?" demanded Blatch, plainly not without some anxiety.

Before anyone could answer,

"Hark ye!" came Jim Cal's tones tremulously. "Didn't I hear somebody outside? Thar—what was that?"

In her excitement and interest Judith had moved nearer with some noise.

"I vow, podner," came Blatch's rich, rasping tones. "Ef I didn't know it was you I'd be liable to think they was a shiverin' squinch-owl in here with us. Buck, step out and scout, will ye? Git back as soon as ye can, 'caze we're goin' to have a drink."

She heard the rattle of a tin cup against the jug. As she moved carefully down the way toward the spring, Blatch's voice followed her, saying unctuously:

"Had to go through hell to get this stuff—spies a-follerin' ye about, an' U.S. marshals a-threatenin' ye with jail—might as well enjoy it."

She dipped her bucket in the spring branch, and bore it dripping up the path a short way. If Buck Shalliday met her, she had an errand and an excuse for her presence which might deceive him. When she came within sight of the stables once more she set down her bucket and stood listening long. Something moved outside the logs. They had posted their sentry then. She groaned as she realised that what she had heard was inadequate and insufficient. The knowledge was there to be had for a little daring, a little cunning.

Just as she had become almost desperate enough to walk up to the place and make pretence of being one with them, a stamp from the figure outside the corner told her that it was a tethered mule instead of a man. Emboldened she stole nearer, and found a spot where she could crouch by the wall so hidden among some disused implements that she might even have dared to let them emerge from their hiding-place and pass her. Again Blatch was speaking.

Blatchley Turrentine had come to his uncle's house, a youth of seventeen—a man, as mountain society reckons things. At that time Andy and Jeff were seven-year-olds, Wade a big boy of thirteen; and even Jim Cal, of the same years but less adventurous in nature, had been so thoroughly dominated by the newcomer that the leadership then established had never been relinquished. And now the artfully introduced whiskey had done its work; these boys were quite other than those who had gone in sober and grave less than half an hour before, their father's admonitions and the counsels of old man Broyles and their Turrentine kindred lying strongly upon them.

Judith heard no demur as Blatch detailed their plans.

"They's no use to go to Unc' Jep with what I've been a-tellin' ye," the voice of natural authority proclaimed. "I tell ye Polk Sayles says he's seen Bonbright meet Dan Haley about half way down the Side—thar whar Big Rock Creek crosses the corner of the Sayles place—mo' than once sense he's been on the mountain. Now with what that man knows, and with the grudges he's got, you let him live to meet Dan Haley once mo' and even Unc' Jep is liable to the penitentiary—but tell it to Unc' Jep an' he won't believe ye. He's got a sort of likin' for the feller."

"That's what I say," Jim Cal seconded in a voice which had become pot-valiant. "Pap is a old man, and we-all that air younger have obliged to take care on him."

At any other time these pious sentiments would have brought a volley of laughter from Blatchley, but this evening Judith judged from the sounds that he clapped the fat man on the shoulder as he said heartily:

"Mighty right you air, James Calhoun. Unc' Jep is one of the finest men that ever ate bread, but his day is pretty well over. Ef we went by him and old man Broyles and Hawk and Chantry, we'd find ourselves in trouble mighty shortly. They's but one way to toll Bonbright out to whar we want him. We've got to send word that Unc' Jep will meet him at moonrise and talk to him. The fool is plumb crazy about talkin' to folks, and looks like he cain't get it through his head that Unc' Jep ain't his best friend. It'll fetch him whar nothin' else will."

"And we've got to hunt up something else for you to ride, Blatch, ef Jim Cal an' me takes the mules," Jeff remarked. "Jude mighty nigh tore up the ground when she found we'd had Selim last night. She give it out to each and every that nobody is to lay a hand on him day or night from this on."

The girl outside heard Blatch's hateful laugh, and knew with a great throb of rage who had ridden her horse the night before.

There was a stir among the men seated, Judith conjectured, on the grain-room floor, and a little clinking, as the jug of corn whiskey was once more brought into play by Blatch. Presently,

"All right," said Buck Shalliday. "I'll bring Lige's mule. And I'll have a message got to Bonbright that Jephthah Turrentine wants to see and talk with him out at Todd's corner at moonrise a-Monday night. Will that suit ye?"

"Hit'll answer," returned Blatch. "Let's see," he calculated; "that'll be about two o'clock. Ef he comes up to the scratch we'll git Mr. Man as he goes by the big rock in the holler acrosst from the spring. That rock and the bushes by it gives plenty of cover. They's bound to be light enough to see him by, with the moon jest coming up, and I want to hear from every man present that he'll shoot at the word. I don't want any feller in the crowd that'll say he didn't pull trigger on Bonbright. Ef we all aim and shoot, nary a one of us can say who killed him—and killed he's got to be."

The listening girl hoped for some demur, but Blatch Turrentine and his potent counsellor, the jug, dominated the assembly, and there came a striking of hands on this, a hoarse murmuring growl of agreement. She doubled low to avoid being seen against the sky and hurried back toward the cabin as she heard the men preparing to leave the grain-room.

Brave as any one of them there, enterprising and full of the spirit of leadership, Judith addressed herself promptly to saving Creed Bonbright. She went straight to her uncle's cabin. No mountaineer ever raps on a door. Judith shook the latch, at first gently, then, getting no response, more and more imperatively, at length opening and walking in, with a questioning, "Uncle Jep?"

There was no answer, no sound or movement. With hasty fingers she raked together the brands of the fire; they flickered up and showed her an untenanted room. The bed was untouched, the old man's hat and coat were gone. The pegs above the door where Old Sister always rested were empty.

Instantly there flashed upon Judith the intuition that her uncle, heartsick and ill-affected toward the quarrel, had silently withdrawn until it should have been settled one way or another. Well, she must work alone.



Chapter XVI

A Message

When Judith stole noiselessly into the house and up to her room, she could hear the boys preparing for bed in their own quarters, with unwonted jesting and laughter, and even some occasional stamping about which suggested horse-play; and her lip curled angrily as she recalled Blatch's jug of corn whiskey.

She lay thinking, thinking; and at length there evolved itself in her mind a plan for getting Creed safely out of the mountains by way of an ancient Cherokee trail that ran down the gulch through a distant corner of the old Turrentine place. By this route they would reach the railroad town of Garyville, quite around the flank of Big Turkey Track from Hepzibah. She could do that. She knew every step of the way. The trail was a disused, forgotten route of travel, long fenced across in several places, and scoured out of existence at certain points by mountain streams; but she had known every foot of it in years past; she could travel it the darkest night; and Selim was her own horse; she need ask nobody.

When she got so far, came the pressing question of how to send word to Creed. She must see and warn him before the men put their plan into practice. But she was well aware that she herself was under fairly close espionage, and that her first move in the direction of Nancy Card's cabin would bring the vague suspicions of her household to a certainty. Where to find a messenger? How to so word a message that Creed would answer it? These were the questions that drove sleep from her pillow till almost morning.

She rose and faced the dawn with haggard eyes. Unless she could do something this was the last day of Creed's life. In a tremor of apprehension she got through her morning duties, cooking and serving a breakfast to the three boys, who made no comment on their father's absence, and whose curious looks she was aware of upon her averted face, her down-dropped eyelids. She felt alone indeed, with her uncle gone, and the boys who had been as brothers to her almost since babyhood suddenly become strangers, their interests and hers hostile, destructive to each other.

Woman will go to woman in a pinch like this, and in spite of her repugnance at the thought of Huldah, Judith late in the afternoon made her way over to the Jim Cal cabin and asked concerning its mistress' toothache.

"Hit's better," said Iley briefly. Her head was tied up in a medley of cloths and smelled loud of turpentine, camphor, and a lingering bouquet of assafoetida. She was not a hopeful individual to enlist in a chivalrous enterprise.

"Huldy git back yet?" Judith asked finally.

"No, an' she needn't never git back," snapped Iley. "Her and Creed Bonbright kin make out best they may. I don't know as I mind her bein' broke off with Wade. One Turrentine in the fambly's enough fer me."

"Air her and Creed Bonbright goin' to be wedded?" inquired Judith scarcely above her breath.

"Air they?" echoed Xantippe, settling her hands on her hips and surveying Judith with an angry stare, the dignity of which was sadly impaired by a yellow flannel cloth-end which persisted in dabbling in her eye. "Well, I should hope so! I don't know what gals is comin' to in this day an' time—follerin' 'round after the young men like you do. Ef I'd a' done so when I was a gal my mammy'd have took a hickory to me. That's what she would. Here's Jim Cal be'n rarin' around here like a chicken with its head off 'caze Huldy run away with Creed Bonbright, and here you air askin' me do I think Creed and Huldy is apt to marry. What kind of women do ye 'low the Spiller gals is, anyhow?"

Judith turned away from so unpromising an ally. She was accused of running after Creed Bonbright. When he got her message it would be with Huldah Spiller beside him to help him read it. The thought was bitter. It gave that passionate heart of hers a deadly qualm; but she put it down and rose above it. Huldah or no Huldah, she could not let him die and make no effort.

Leaving Jim Cal's cabin she walked out into the woods, and only as she turned at the edge of the clearing and looked back to find Iley furtively peering after her from the corner of the house did she realise that the woman's words had been dictated because she had been taken into the confidence of the men and set to keep an eye on Judith.

At the conviction a feeling of terror began to gain ground. She was like a creature enmeshed in a net weak in its cordage, but many-stranded and hampering; turn whichever way she would some petty restriction met her. She moved aimlessly forward, reasonably sure that she was not followed or observed, since she was going away from rather than toward the Card place. About a mile from the cabin of old Hannah Updegrove, a weaver of rag carpet, she suddenly came upon two little creatures sitting at a tree-foot playing about one of those druidical-looking structures that the childhood of the man and the childhood of the race alike produce. It was Little Buck and Beezy come to spend the day with old Hannah who, on their father's side, was kin of theirs, and making rock play-houses in the tree-roots to put over the time. Judith ran to the children, gathered them close, and hugged them to her with whispered endearments in which some tears mingled.

Then for half an hour followed the schooling of Little Buck for the message which he was to carry, and which Beezy must be so diverted that she would not even hear.

Judith plaited grass bracelets for the fat little wrists, fashioned bonnets of oak leaves, pinning them together with grass stems, and then sending Beezy far afield to gather flowers for their trimming. On long journeys the little feet trudged, to where the beautiful, frail, white meadow lilies rose in clumps from the lush grass of the lowlands. She fetched cardinal flowers from the mud and shallow water beyond them, or brought black-eyed Susans from the sun of open spaces. And during these expeditions Judith's catechism of the boy went on.

"How you goin' to git home, Little Buck?"

"Pappy's a-comin' by to fetch us."

"When?"

"A little befo' sundown?"

"You goin' straight home?"

"Yes, Jude, we' goin' straight home to Granny, why?"

"Never mind, honey. Is Creed there at yo' house?"

A silent nod.

"Is—honey, tell Jude the truth—is it true that he ain't bad hurt? Could he ride a nag?"

Little Buck looked all around him, drew close to his big sweetheart, and pulled her down that he might whisper in her ear.

"I know somethin' that Granny and Creed don't know I know, but I mus'n't tell it to anybody—only thest you. Creed—no, he ain't so awful bad hurt—he walks everywheres most—he's a-goin' to take the old nag and go over to Todd's corner to see yo' Unc' Jep, about moonrise to-night. They said that—Granny an' Creed. An' they fussed. Granny, she don't want him to go; but Creed, he thest will—he's bull-headed, Creed is."

Judith caught her breath. They had got the message to him then, and he was going. Well, her appointment with him must be first.

"Little Buck, honey, ef you love me don't you forget one word I say to you now," she whispered chokingly, holding the child by both hands.

He rounded eyes of solemn adoration and acquiescence upon her.

"You say to Creed Bonbright that Judith Barrier says he must come to her at the foot of Foeman's Bluff—on yon side—as soon after dark as he can git there. Tell him to come straight through by the short cut; hit'll be safe; nobody'll ever study about him comin' in this direction. As soon after hit's plumb dark as he can git there—will ye say that? Will ye shore tell Creed an' never tell nobody but Creed?"

"But he won't go," said Little Buck wisely. "Granny's scared to have him go to talk to yo' Unc' Jep, but she'd be a heap scareder to have him come to you, 'caze you' one o' the Turrentines too—ain't ye, Judith?"

Judith's face whitened at the weakness of her position.

"I would come, Judith, becaze I love you an' you love me—but Creed, he won't," said the boy.

"You tell him Little Buck," she whispered huskily, terror and shame warring in her face, "tell him that I do love him. Tell him I said for God's sake to come—if he loves me."

The child's eyes slowly filled. He dropped them and stood staring at the ground, saying nothing because of the blur. Finally:

"I'll tell him that—ef you say I must," he whispered. And loving, tender Judith, in her desperate preoccupation, never noted what she had done to her little sweetheart.



Chapter XVII

The Old Cherokee Trail

"The supper's all ready for you boys," Judith called in to Wade whose whistle sounded from his own room. "Hit's a settin', kivered, on the hearth; the coffee-pot's on the coals. Would you-all mind to wait on yo'selves, an' would you put the saddle on Selim for me? I'm goin' over to Lusks'. I'll eat supper there; I may stay all night; but I'll be home in the mornin' soon to git you-all's breakfast."

"Why—why, pap 'lowed——"

"Well, Uncle Jep ain't here. Ef you don't want to——"

"Oh, that's all right Judith. Of course it's all right. But you say you're goin' to ride to Lusks'?—to ride?" hesitated Wade uneasily. Judith flung up her head and stared straight at him with angry eyes.

"Yes," she said finally, "when I leave this place for over night I'd ruther know whar my hoss is at. I'll take him along."

"Oh,—all right," her cousin hastened to agree; "I never meant to make you mad, Jude. Of course I'd jest as soon saddle up for you. I don't wonder you feel thataway. I never like to have anybody use my ridin' critter."

Judith had made her point. She let it pass, and went sombrely on with her preparation for departure. Wade still hesitated uneasily. Finally he said deprecatingly,

"Ef ye don't mind waitin' a minute I'll eat my supper, an' ride over with ye—I was a-goin' after supper anyhow; I want to see Lacey Rountree ef he's not gone back home yit."

"I'll be glad to have ye," answered Judith quietly. "I don't mind waitin'." And Wade, plainly relieved, hurried out to the stables.

They rode along quietly in the late summer afternoon; the taciturn habit of the mountain people made the silence between them seem nothing strange. Arrived at the Lusks', both girls came running out to welcome their visitor. She saw Wade's sidelong glance take note of the fact that Grandpap Lusk led away Selim to the log stable. Lacey Rountree was gone home to the Far Cove, and Wade lingered in talk with Grandpap Lusk a while at the horse-block, then got on his mule and, with florid good-byes, rode back home, evidently at rest as to Judith.

The evening meal was over. Judith helped Cliantha and Pendrilla prepare a bit of supper for herself, aided in the clearing away and dish-washing, and after they had sat for a while with Granny Lusk and the old man in the porch, listening to the whippoorwills calling to each other, and all the iterant insect voices of a July night, went to their own room.

"Girls," said Judith softly, drawing the two colourless little creatures to the bed, and sitting down with one on each side of her, "girls," and her voice deepened and shook with the strain under which she laboured, "I want you to let me slip out the back door here, put my saddle on Selim, and go home, quiet, without tellin' the old folks. I was goin' home by daylight in the mornin' anyhow, to get the boys' breakfast," as the girls stared at her in wordless surprise. "I've got a reason why I'd ruther go now—and I'd ruther the old folks didn't know. Will ye do this for me?"

The sisters looked at each other across their guest's dark eager face, and fluttered visibly. They would have been incapable of deceit to serve any purpose of their own; they were too timid to have initiated any actions not in strict accordance with household laws; but the same gentle timidity which made them subservient to the rules of their world, made them also abject worshippers at the shrine of Judith's beauty and force and fire.

"Shore, shore," they both whispered in a breath.

"I hate to have ye go Jude—" began Cliantha; but Pendrilla interrupted her.

"An' yit ef Jude would ruther go—and wants to slip out unbeknownst, why we wouldn't say nothin' about it, and jest tell granny and grandpap in the mornin' that she left soon to git the boys' breakfast."

They watched her pass quietly out the back door and toward the log stable, their big blue eyes wide with childish wonder and interest. Judith with her many suitors, moving in an atmosphere of romance, was to them a figure like none other, and she was now in the midst of tragic doings; the glamour that had always been upon her image was heightened by the last week's occurrences. They turned back whispering and shut the door.

Thus it was that Judith found herself on Selim, moving, free from suspicion or espionage, toward the point below Foeman's Bluff where she had sent word to Creed to meet her.

The big oaks shouldered themselves in black umbels against the horizon; pointed conifers shot up inky spires between them. The sky was only greyish black, lit by many stars, and Judith trembled to note that their dim illumination might almost permit one to recognise an individual at a few paces distance. Without misadventure she came to the spot designated, urged Selim in under the shadow of a tree, dismounted, and stood beside him waiting. Would Creed come? Would Huldah persuade him that the message was only a decoy? Would he come too late? Would some of the boys intercept him, so that he should never come at all?

At the last thought she started and leaned out recklessly to search the dark path with desperate eyes. Perhaps she had better venture forward and meet him. Perhaps after all it would be possible for her to get closer to Nancy Card's. Then in the midst of her apprehensions came the sound of shod hoofs.

She had chosen this point for two reasons: first the old trail she meant to follow down the mountain passed in close to the spot; and second it was the last place they would expect Bonbright to approach; his way to it would never be guarded. But of course she ran the risk of Blatch himself or some of his friends and followers appearing. And now she held her breath in intense anxiety as the trampling came nearer.

There appeared out of the dense shadow of the bluff a man walking and leading a mule by its bridle. She knew the mule, because she got the silhouette of it against the sky, and directly after she saw that the man who led it was tall, with a bandaged head, which he carried in a manner unmistakable, and one shoulder gleaming white—she guessed that that was because his coat was off where the bandages lay under his white shirt and over the wound in his shoulder. It was Creed. With a throb of unspeakable thankfulness she realised that she had till now dreaded that if he came at all Huldah would be with him. She moved out from the dense shadow.