most
stifled by the volcanic rage that daily grew within him as the toils
daily tightened about Rufe Tolliver.

Every happening the old man learned through the Red Fox, who, with his
huge pistols, was one of the men who escorted Rufe to and from Court
House and jail--a volunteer, Hale supposed, because he hated Rufe;
and, as the Tollivers supposed, so that he could keep them advised of
everything that went on, which he did with secrecy and his own peculiar
faith. And steadily and to the growing uneasiness of the Tollivers, the
law went its way. Rufe had proven that he was at the Gap all day and had
taken no part in the trouble. He produced a witness--the mountain lout
whom Hale remembered--who admitted that he had blown the whistle, given
the yell, and fired the pistol shot. When asked his reason, the witness,
who was stupid, had none ready, looked helplessly at Rufe and finally
mumbled--"fer fun." But it was plain from the questions that Rufe
had put to Hale only a few minutes before the shooting, and from the
hesitation of the witness, that Rufe had used him for a tool. So the
testimony of the latter that Mockaby without even summoning Rufe to
surrender had fired first, carried no conviction. And yet Rufe had
no trouble making it almost sure that he had never seen the dead man
before--so what was his motive? It was then that word reached the ear
of the prosecuting attorney of the only testimony that could establish a
motive and make the crime a hanging offence, and Court was adjourned for
a day, while he sent for the witness who could give it. That afternoon
one of the Falins, who had grown bolder, and in twos and threes were
always at the trial, shot at a Tolliver on the edge of town and there
was an immediate turmoil between the factions that the Red Fox had been
waiting for and that suited his dark purposes well.

That very night, with his big rifle, he slipped through the woods to a
turn of the road, over which old Dave Tolliver was to pass next morning,
and built a "blind" behind some rocks and lay there smoking peacefully
and dreaming his Swedenborgian dreams. And when a wagon came round the
turn, driven by a boy, and with the gaunt frame of old Dave Tolliver
lying on straw in the bed of it, his big rifle thundered and the
frightened horses dashed on with the Red Fox's last enemy, lifeless.
Coolly he slipped back to the woods, threw the shell from his gun,
tirelessly he went by short cuts through the hills, and