Читать книгу: «The Code of the Mountains», страница 10

"Ye tried ter see me – in ther jail-house? What fer did ye do thet?"

"I wanted to tell you, I was sorry – and to beg you to give up – your idea. I didn't know until that day that you were nursing a grudge – against Mr. Falkins."

For a while, Newt stood silent. Finally, he said curtly:

"I'm obleeged ter ye."

"But that isn't all, Newt." Minerva's hands were clasped in her lap, and the fingers twined themselves nervously and tightened as she went on. "I've got to tell you all of it. I heard that morning – what you aimed to do – and I went to Jackson – to warn him."

The mountaineer drew back, and over his pale face passed a paroxysm of bitterness, which at first left him wordless. His posture grew rigid, and, if Minerva Rawlins had been capable of physical fear, she would have felt it then, because she was looking into eyes burning with the fire of mono-mania. But, at last, he spoke in the same dead voice, and only to ask a question:

"How did ye know? Who betrayed me?"

"I can't tell you that. I knew that, if you succeeded, you would ruin your life – as well as end his. You are bound to see sometime that all this idea of a man's being his own judge and jury and executioner is wicked, and then – if you had succeeded – " She raised her hands in a despairing gesture, and broke off.

Once more the boy had become stiff in his attitude, and his face seemed a gargoyle of hatred.

"Ef I'm goin' ter be so plumb miserable erbout hit," he said slowly, "I mout as well suffer fer a couple as fer one. Who war hit thet betrayed me?"

Minerva shook her head.

"You think of Henry Falkins as your bitter enemy. He isn't, Newt. He's not any man's enemy. Only he has lived in the civilized world as well as here, and he knows that a system that's built on murder is wrong. You know only the Henry Falkins that you've imagined. I know how terrible it must have been down there – at Frankfort… I know that you had little else to think about… But just for that very reason you can't trust the ideas that came to you down there. The real Henry Falkins isn't the man you think."

Newt Spooner took two slow steps, and stood before her. As he half-turned, the fire fell on one side of his face, gleaming yellow and vermilion on the gaunt angle of his jaw and chin, and kindling the other and more baleful fire in his pupils. He talked in a monotone, and, as he talked, the girl seemed to see a spirit dying in darkness and confinement, as a potted plant might die in a cellar.

"Ye says I didn't hev nothin' ter do down thar in ther peniten'shery but ter study over false notions. Mebby ye're right, but I've done studied hit all out – an' I've got 'em settled. I reckon ye hain't got no proper idee of what a feller gits down thar in them damned stone walls, with stripes on his clothes an' no decent air ter breathe an' no water ter drink outen a runnin' spring-branch. Hev ye ever tried ter raise a young hawk in a bird-cage, an' watched hit sicken an' die? They aims ter reform fellers down thar. Well, jest watch an' see how good they've reformed me." It was the longest speech she had ever heard him make, but he was not through yet, and she did not interrupt. "Who sent me thar? This Henry Falkins thet ye're braggin' about. Why did he do hit? Out of the sneekin' meanness of his heart. War I ther fust feller hyar-abouts thet ever kilt anybody? Why didn't ther rest of 'em go down thar? Hit war because I war a kid thet didn't know no better then ter do what I war bid, an' because them what bid me didn't stand behind me." He paused and wiped his forehead on his coat-sleeve. "I didn't 'low thet thar war anybody in ther world a feller could trust. Then I came back hyar. I found my pappy dead, an' my ma married ergin, an' my rifle-gun sold… Then – " His words ended in a sort of wretched gasp.

"Then you came hyar. I reckon I'd ought to hev knowed better by this time then ter be beguiled, but I 'lowed I could trust you. Ye war ther one body in ther world I'd 'a' swore by … an' ye rid over thar an' warned him, an' hed me throwed inter ther jail-house."

He drew his shoulders back and turned slowly, starting toward the door; but, with his hand on the latch, he paused, and added with cold bitterness:

"Ye've done succeeded in a-balkin' me oncet, M'nervy; but ye've done 'complished another thing besides thet. I only aimed ter kill Henry Falkins oncet, but atter what ye've told me, ef thar war a way under God's sun ter do hit – I'd kill him twicet."

The girl rose and came over, and her hands fell on the boy's arm.

"Newty," she pleaded with tears of desperation in her eyes. "Newty, you must try to understand me. It was for you as much as for him. It would have ruined your life. Besides, you misunderstand him – "

The young man shook her hands roughly away.

"I reckon my life's done been ruint a'ready," he declared. Then, with an up-leaping voice, he demanded as he fiercely caught her fore-arms in an iron grasp: "Ye says I don't understand Henry Falkins. What does ye know about him beyond what I knows?" The jealousy that rang through the question was the only declaration of love he had ever made to her, and his fingers unconsciously bit into her arms until they ached.

"He came down to the school," she said faintly, "and he gave me this medal because I had – I had tried to study hard."

She had succeeded in withdrawing her hands, and groped at her throat for the small metal disc, which she held out to him. But he drew back, his eyes gleaming venomously.

"I'd ruther tech a rattle-snake," he declared in a voice which she hardly recognized, "then ter lay hands on anything thet damned dog hed teched." She stood dazed, and he went on in the high-timbered shrillness of excitement: "Some day I'm a-goin' to have a reckonin' with thet feller, an', when I gits through, he won't go roun' givin' medals to no other gals." He wheeled and stamped out of the room, and the girl did not know that for hours he tramped the snowy woods of the mountainsides, cursing under his breath, and redoubling his oath of reprisal.

News from the outside world percolates slowly into the quarantine of the beleaguered hills. A fever that rushes hotly through the arteries of the nation from sea to sea, is hardly a flush to the country that leads its own isolated life. From Washington to 'Frisco, men were gathering at bulletin boards and clinging with hot excitement to the latest word of tidings. In city armories, militiamen were inspecting kits and drilling overtime. The Maine had been blown up in Havana harbor. The war fever was burning thousands into fitful patriotism, but back there in the Cumberland mountains, where men scarcely knew who was President of the United States, life was going more placidly than usual. The war which this country knew most about had waned into a two-years' truce. Less than for two decades was there thought of fighting and blood-letting. One day, Newt met a trader riding a spent mule through the mired roads with a newspaper protruding from his splattered saddle-bags.

"I reckon you soldiers'll get a chance ter sashay out an' show what's in ye now," said the trader with a grin, as though he found the idea highly humorous.

"What does ye mean?" demanded the boy, resting on his grounded rifle and fixing the other with steady, incurious eyes. "Hes the Falkinses busted the truce?"

The trader laughed.

"Wuss then thet. This country's a-goin' ter declare war on Spain." He made the announcement with the superior air of one in touch with large and distant affairs.

"Who's Spain?" Newt Spooner put the question gravely and with no sense of betraying untoward ignorance. In the log school-house years ago he might have been told the answer to that question, but such matters had since then escaped his attention.

"Spain," enlightened the trader, whose geographical ideas had also until recently been vague, "is a country in ther other world – you has to go acrost the ocean ter git thar."

"Who lives thar?" inquired the lad.

"Hit's a country of outlanders."

Newt stood for a moment gazing across the dreary wastes of broken ridges.

"Well," he said calmly, "I reckon we kin go over thar an' lick 'em, ef need be."

But, if the fever came slowly to the hills, it infected the men of the two new companies thoroughly enough when it did come. So far, each organization was drilling in its own territory, and, when the boy thought of Henry Falkins, it was not in connection with the war with Spain, but as the principal enemy in another war. On the lintel of the cabin door was a series of notches cut by his pocket-knife. Each month he added a fresh one at the end of the line. When he had cut twelve, he would have complied with his promise to the Deacon, and would once more tramp across the mountains on the mission which had been too often thwarted. Already there were seven of these cryptic reminders, and in a few days more the eighth would be added.

Minerva came and went, and Newt at first spoke to her as little as possible; but, when the other women of the family nagged her, he rose fiercely to her defense. The girl sought by gentleness and diplomacy to win him back to open friendship, but he held sullenly aloof.

At last, she said:

"Newty, can't we be friends again? Even if you can't understand what I did, can't you believe me when I say I did it as much for you as for him?"

He stood twisting his brogan toe in the hard-tramped dirt of the cabin yard. His face was expressionless. He looked at her, and turned away his face, while over it went a spasm of pain.

"I reckons what ye did appeared right ter ye, M'nervy," he generously acceded. "I reckon I've got more quarrel with them new-fangled notions they l'arns ye down thar at ther college then what I hev with you. They aimed ter l'arn me them same things at ther penitenshery – but I wasn't ter be corrupted. But all I kin see is thet ye warned my enemy, an' thet ye made common cause with him ergin me."

On the fourth of next July, Newt was going to have a celebration all his own. In his "marked-down" enemy, Newt saw a man whom he had never injured and who had, with smug hypocrisy, attacked him in a cowardly manner and made a felon of him. In his diseased imagination he pictured Falkins gloating over this triumph. That score he meant to settle. It was simple and immutable.

Then came the day when once more the company from Troublesome hiked across the hills to Jackson. Once more the college students were drawn up at the palings to see them pass. Again they marched raggedly, but their faces, instead of being good-humored and full of frolic, were serious now. They were leaving the only country they had ever known. They were going to cross the ocean, and invade a land as foreign to their conceptions and ken as a continent on Mars.

Minerva Rawlins was leaning across the fence, and, as Newt passed her, he caught once more the flutter of her handkerchief. There was no leave-taking, and she did not know that, as he left the cabin that morning, his last words had been a warning to his mother and sister, that, if they "pestered Clem's gal" while he was away, he would hold them strictly to account on his return.

At the railroad station in Jackson, the outfit was joined by the other company; but, as Newt stood on the platform, his eyes somberly searching the space where the men were gathered, he sought vainly for the figure of Henry Falkins. At last, a corporal told him that the first lieutenant was in command, and Newt made no audible comment. But to himself he said:

"I reckon the damn' coward was skeered ter come along. He kain't fight Spain in no witness-cheer."

CHAPTER XVI

When the two companies from the hills entrained that raw morning they had no idea where they were going or what prospects lay ahead, but they conceived days of action, and fell upon months of dull routine. The mountaineer is restive under discipline and passionate in his insistence on personal liberty. He bristles at a curt command. It irks his soul to raise the right hand in salute when he passes another whose leggings are of leather instead of canvas and whose shoulders are decorated with certain insignia. To say "sir" in addressing a superior, or to admit any form of superiority, is a harder thing than to march on short rations, for a voice within is always making declaration, "I'm jest as good as any man."

So, the mountain companies did not at once fall into ordered and frictionless assimilation in the big military machine – did not at once become anonymous units. Yet even in the feud, men acknowledged the necessity, when need arose, of sinking the personal grievance in obedience to the clan requirement. With officers who failed to understand them and who had not been willing to make haste slowly, they would have become a mob of constant mutineers. But they were a part of a regiment whose peace-footing was two battalions, and whose colonel, though a bluegrass Kentuckian, understood and loved highland and lowland alike. The two Breathitt county companies with another that had marched forty-five miles from over near the Virginia line to entrain, made up one battalion, while the other was from the edge of the bluegrass. When he joined his bearded barbarians at Chickamauga, Colonel Burford smiled happily. To him they were big-boned children, but he nursed them along and taught them that the swift, military obedience asked of them was not a concession to individuals, but to abstract efficiency, and that this efficiency was their own chief interest. So, they came with astounding haste into a full acceptance of the necessity. They were still raw and looked like half-barbaric allies from the hinterland – as they were. They wore their shirt-tails out like Chinamen on the long and dusty hikes, and their service hats tilted at a dozen disreputable angles. They still bantered each other in quaint Elizabethan English drawled in nasal tones, but also they watched with keen, unblinking eyes the machine-like evenness of the regulars, which it became their care, with swift absorption, to imitate. They were the Second battalion of the Fifth Kentucky, but they were better known as the "Shirt-tail battalion," and their far-seeing colonel seemed, on the whole, contented with them.

When other commands complained and sulked in the Georgia climate, and crowded the hospitals, these mountaineers throve and said nothing. To them the army ration was an improvement over their accustomed fare. On kitchen detail they scowled, but served with stoicism – though "sich-like was women's work" – and, when they went out as provost guardsmen to round up the recalcitrant, they brought back their prisoners with business-like despatch. Though they were seeing a new life, every detail of which was wonderful to them, no sign or exclamation of surprise escaped their bearded lips. The Kentucky mountaineer might walk through the Champs Elysées of Paris, battered, threadbare and ignorant, but he would carry his head high and gaze straight at every man, eye to eye, giving no indication that any sight was new or unaccustomed.

Out on the target-range a detachment was at work one day mastering the problems of long-range fire with sadly inefficient rifles. It was shortly after their arrival at Chickamauga, and Newt Spooner had just fallen back, his Springfield still smoking with the black powder of its discharge. He had scored a "bull," and his thin lips were gravely pleased. Over the sultry area of the mobilization camp went the roar and activity of war-preparation. Newly commissioned staff officers galloped importantly from headquarters to headquarters. Mule trains and commissariat-wagons rumbled noisily under yellow clouds of following dust. Lines upon lines of company streets stretched away in a spread of canvas with the locales of commands marked by brigade and regimental colors; brazen mingling of shouts and bugles set to it its accompaniment of sound.

As Newt Spooner walked back, throwing open the breach of his piece, his eyes fell on a new figure, which wore its uniform with as soldierly a jauntiness as though it had never been accustomed to "cits." The face was already bronzed, and the gauntleted hands rested on the saber-belt. The man was Henry Falkins, and on his shoulder-straps and collar-ornaments were not the twin bars of a captain, but the oak leaves of a major.

Newt, falling back toward the little group of his fellows who sat cross-legged in the meager shadow of a tent-flap, halted suddenly and stood for a moment transfixed. Then his hand stole to his ammunition-belt, and toyed there with a cartridge. His face paled and hardened. So, after all, his enemy had not stayed at home.

Falkins looked up, and saw the soldier. He saw the attitude, and the venomous hatred of the narrowed eyes, and the itching twitch of the fingers at the cartridge-belt, and he knew then that his most dangerous enemy would not be always at his front. But he nodded to the boy, and said casually:

"Spooner, that last shot was a neat one."

The private did not answer. He did not salute, he did not move. He only stood and glared. Henry Falkins turned his back on the potential assassin, and strolled deliberately away. But the Deacon, now "top-Sergeant" of B Company came over to the boy – who had taken one step as if to follow Falkins – and stepped between.

"Son," he said in a low voice, while his eyes were very steady and quieting in their hypnotic quality, "your year ain't up yet – not by several months. I reckon until the fourth of next July, you'd better not let your face give you away like that. It's bad business in the army."

The boy fell suddenly trembling with the reaction of his temptation. For an instant, forgetful of his pledge, he had fully meant to shoot. Now, he turned and walked back toward the group of seated comrades. After a while, he inquired in a normal voice:

"What's Henry Falkins a-doin' with them major's leaves on his shoulder-straps? He hain't nothin' but captain of A Company. I thought he'd done stayed at home."

"He got here yesterday," enlightened the first sergeant. "He was sent away about something, an' he wears a major's straps because he's commandin' this battalion."

"Ye mean" – Newt leaned passionately forward, and, in his bared fore-arms, the muscles stood out corded – "ye mean thet Henry Falkins is a-bossin' us?"

The Deacon nodded. Then he added, in a carefully lowered voice:

"Bide your time, son. It'll keep, an' we've got Spain on our hands first."

But the weeks passed, and the Shirt-tail battalion was no nearer Cuba, though it was much nearer efficiency for the field. Other commands left for Tampa and the front. Seemingly forgotten, regiments and brigades drilled and waited and fretted at Chickamauga until disgust came in the stead of ardor and hope of active service languished, and the mountaineers alone remained patient.

The Deacon was cut out for handling men, and was winning the name of an unusually efficient top-sergeant. With his experience in the outside world, he seemed a wise and capable shepherd going in and out among his sheep.

At last came orders. The command was to move, but instead of moving toward Tampa and Cuba, where the fighting had been, it was to take train across the continent, and join other waiting thousands at San Francisco, remote from the theater of war. The bluegrass troops grumbled afresh, but the men from the mountains kept their peace. They had not enlisted for any particular type of service. The President of the United States had called for men – and they had answered. It was up to the President.

That journey across the continent, across endless prairies and flat plains and into strange surroundings was also a revelation to Newt and his fellows, but they gazed out of the car windows with as little outward evidence of interest as cattle being shipped in box-cars.

And from early June until late in October they sat down and waited at Camp Meritt and the Presidio, drilling and being whipped into shape until it seemed to them that military life was the only life they had known. And between June and October falls the month of July, and in the month of July comes the fourth.

Over Private Newt Spooner's cot in his tent hung a calendar. Each day he carefully marked off a number, and, as he kept track of the time, a strange sort of contentment appeared to descend upon his soul. He studied his drill-manual, threw himself into the life of soldiering, and presented to the world a face less grim and lowering. He was pointed out as a smart, well set-up file.

But beside Private Job Wedgesley, his bunkie, another man in the company had an eye on Private Spooner. At times, when the soldier did not know of it, the top-sergeant of the outfit strolled in and noted the calendar on which the passing of each day was so faithfully recorded, and the brain of the top-sergeant dedicated itself to cogitation. On the night of the third, Sergeant Peter Spooner asked and was given permission to speak privately with his major.

The tall grave figure with the thoughtful eyes and the chevroned sleeve was a picture of soldierly deportment, and, as he came into the tent of Major Henry Falkins and stood respectfully at attention, the battalion commander looked up, with a pleased smile.

"I have the captain's permission to speak to the major, sir," announced the infantry-man.

Falkins nodded.

"To-morrow is the Fourth of July, sir."

"Yes, there is to be a parade in town. Have your men tuck their shirt-tails in." The major smiled at his little pleasantry. The mountaineers had long since abandoned their more exaggerated idiosyncracies.

"It is concerning Private Newton Spooner, sir, that I want to speak."

"What about him?"

The Deacon told his story. He was shrewd enough to tell it with seeming frankness, even to the point of admitting that on that other day, now a year ago, he had bound Newt over for twelve months of truce. That period ended to-morrow. He spoke of the calendar in the private's tent, and Falkins' face darkened thoughtfully.

"Don't you imagine he has forgotten that grudge?" questioned the officer. On the table before him lay an unfinished letter to a girl in Winchester. He had boasted in a paragraph of which the ink was still damp that his militia experiment had succeeded.

"He has not forgotten it, sir. He has not changed it." The Deacon shook his head with conviction as he spoke. "You're a mountain man yourself, sir. Did you ever know a mountain hatred to die while the man himself lived to harbor it? Did you ever make a pet of a rattle-snake?"

The major was sitting at his camp table, littered with papers and paraphernalia. A swinging lantern cast its yellow flare on the canvas flies and his side arms, lying with his discarded blouse on his cot. Just inside the opening stood the sergeant, seeming rather gigantic against the black background of the night sky through the triangle of the raised tent flap.

"I don't like to admit that." Falkins picked up the pen, and toyed with it absently. "I'm rather eager to see this boy make good. You are a mountain man, too. Your record for feud-hatred and homicide was once a rather full one, yet you came back to the hills, declaring for peace. Isn't the change in yourself permanent, sergeant?"

Falkins had made the personal application as an illustration and he made it smilingly; but the Deacon's face wore for a moment an expression of deep pain.

"I hope, sir," he replied respectfully, "that my record speaks for itself. But I had been living in the outside world. He has known only the mountains – and prison."

"And now he knows the army!" The officer spoke eagerly. "The service is stronger than the individual. It will grip him. If we can arouse his ambition – "

"It won't help to make mistakes, sir. To-morrow Private Newton Spooner becomes a menace to your life. Until midnight to-night you are safe."

For a while there was silence, then Major Falkins took up his pen again.

"Sergeant," he said, "to-morrow morning after inspection send Private Spooner to my tent."

"Yes, sir." The Deacon saluted, turned with the precision of an automaton and left the place.

Immediately after inspection on the next morning, a private appeared at the fly on Major Falkins' tent. The private was of course unarmed. His top-sergeant had seen to that, even though the soldier had surreptitiously sought to slip a revolver inside his army shirt.

As Newt Spooner presented himself, Henry Falkins was sitting on the edge of his cot. He was already in dress-uniform for the parade, and wore side arms. He glanced up, and nothing in the demeanor of the private escaped him.

For Newt stood at the tent-opening, as white as a ghost, and, despite his lately learned military bearing, there was the hint of a tremor through his entire body. It was evident that last night had brought little sleep to the eyes of this man. His hands were tight-clenched at his trouser seams, and deep back in his eyes burned a fire that was hardly sane. Yet Major Falkins was in part right. The sinew of the service is stronger than its atoms, and, as Private Spooner of B Company waited with clenched teeth, his hand rose automatically, though rigidly, in the prescribed salute.

"The first sergeant ordered me to report to ye," he announced in a queerly strained voice. At the "sir" he balked, but the officer was not inclined to quarrel over such details. He knew that however insane and morbid was the fixed idea in the soldier's mind, it was to himself a thing of ghastly reality.

"Spooner," said the officer quietly, "for the next ten minutes I waive all matter of rank. I sent for you to talk to you, not as Private Spooner of B Company, but as Newt Spooner of Troublesome Creek. To-day is the Fourth of July."

The boy took a step forward and his lips showed the teeth under them.

"I reckon I hain't a-forgettin' thet," he snarled in a half-whisper. "I reckon thar hain't been a day I hain't a-counted."

Falkins nodded with disconcerting calmness.

"Now, Newt," he said shortly, "I am told you have taken a blood-oath against me. Is that true?"

"Ef thar's a God in heaven he knows hit's true, an' I warns ye" – the boy's cheeks flamed with a wild rush of blood to the temples – "I warns ye that I'm a-goin' ter keep hit. I've done been stopped three times. Next time all hell hain't a-goin' ter stop me."

"What's the idea? What's the reason?"

"I reckon ye knows thet well enough."

"I know that I testified to facts – true facts, not perjury. I should have had to do the same thing if it had been my own brother who was on trial."

"Like hell ye would!" In the boy's exclamation was supreme scorn and repudiation of a lying excuse.

"I'm not going to argue with you and I'm not going to have traitors in my command. If you remain in my battalion from this point on, it's because I permit you to do it. I can have you transferred or bob-tailed. I don't want to do either. You have made a good soldier. I don't want to ruin you for a personal reason."

"Do ye reckon," the private's voice broke out like an explosion, "thet ye kin buy me off with fair talk thet-a-way? Ye couldn't do hit ef ye made me a major-general."

Falkins smiled grimly.

"Why should I buy you off?" he inquired. "Do you imagine I am afraid of you?"

He rose abruptly from the cot, and, as his enemy stood twitching frenziedly in every feature and muscle, unbuckled his belt and tossed it with its saber and revolver to the table half-way between them.

"There," curtly announced the commissioned officer, "you are as close to that gun as I am. Why don't you pick it up?"

With a snarl like an unleashed wild-cat and a swift noiseless movement, Private Newt Spooner leaped forward. His eyes were still burning into the face of his superior and his right hand crept out slowly until its fingers had caressingly touched and closed around the grip of the service pistol.

Then, in a forward-leaning and strained attitude, he paused and stood statuesquely holding the pose.

Falkins had put his arms at his back and stepped forward until the two were directly across the table, then the officer suggested quietly,

"You'd better hurry. We'll be interrupted."

For a moment, neither moved nor spoke. The private's breath came and went in gasps.

Slowly Newt Spooner shook his head and withdrew his hand from his weapon. The joy had gone out of his enterprise. His victim had not suffered any terror or sense of defeat. It was not as he had pictured it. Whether he shot or did not shoot, Major Henry Falkins would be the victor of that encounter. He straightened up again, and spoke slowly and in bitterness:

"You penitentiaried me – an' ye thought ye had me thar fer life. Now, when ye've got things fixed jest ter suit ye, ye makes a big play when ye knows I hain't a-goin' ter take ye up. I hates ye wuss then pizen – an' I'm a-goin' ter kill ye, but I'm a-goin' ter pick my own time an' place. Damn ye ter hell! I hain't give up my notion. I'm goin' ter git ye – but not now."

"All right." Falkins again buckled on his belt. "When this war is over, we can settle our affairs. As long as you are in my command, your military duties come first. Is that agreed?"

"I hain't makin' no promises. I may git ye in a year. I may git ye in a month. I'd ruther hev ye jest study erbout thet."

"Spooner, you are a fool." The officer spoke rather contemptuously. "You have sworn to two oaths. One is personal; the other is national. You swore, when you were mustered in, to fight the battles of your country. Now you are either going to keep that oath, or leave the service. Which is it to be?"

"Hit 'pears like thar hain't a-goin' ter be no battles ter fight."

"All right. Give me your hand that until we are mustered out, or reach the front, I need not watch you."

For a long while, the boy from Troublesome stood breathing heavily. To have his regiment sail away without him, to lose both revenge and participation in the service which had filled his life with a new interest, were intolerable. Again he seemed thwarted.

"Henry Falkins, I'm a-goin' ter git ye. Ye kain't never make no peace with me – but es long as we stays hyar in camp I gives ye my hand on a truce. An' ef we gits fightin', maybe I'll wait tell ther war's over." Into his tone crept the death-note of finality. "But some day I'm a-goin' ter git ye."