ifully
ignorant of the dangers their loved ones run, but a specific issue that
involves death to those loved ones has a special and poignant terror of
its own. June knew her father's plan, the precise time the fight would
take place, and the especial danger that was Hale's, for she knew that
young Dave Tolliver had marked him with the first shot fired. Dry-eyed
and white and dumb, she watched them make ready for the start that
morning while it was yet dark; dully she heard the horses snorting from
the cold, the low curt orders of her father, and the exciting mutterings
of Bub and young Dave; dully she watched the saddles thrown on, the
pistols buckled, the Winchesters caught up, and dully she watched them
file out the gate and ride away, single file, into the cold, damp mist
like ghostly figures in a dream. Once only did she open her lips and
that was to plead with her father to leave Bub at home, but her father
gave her no answer and Bub snorted his indignation--he was a man now,
and his now was the privilege of a man. For a while she stood listening
to the ring of metal against stone that came to her more and more
faintly out of the mist, and she wondered if it was really June Tolliver
standing there, while father and brother and cousin were on their way to
fight the law--how differently she saw these things now--for a man who
deserved death, and to fight a man who was ready to die for his duty to
that law--the law that guarded them and her and might not perhaps guard
him: the man who had planted for her the dew-drenched garden that was
waiting for the sun, and had built the little room behind her for
her comfort and seclusion; who had sent her to school, had never been
anything but kind and just to her and to everybody--who had taught her
life and, thank God, love. Was she really the June Tolliver who had gone
out into the world and had held her place there; who had conquered birth
and speech and customs and environment so that none could tell what
they all once were; who had become the lady, the woman of the world, in
manner, dress, and education: who had a gift of music and a voice that
might enrich her life beyond any dream that had ever sprung from her own
brain or any that she had ever caught from Hale's? Was she June Tolliver
who had been and done all that, and now had come back and was slowly
sinking back into the narrow grave from which Hale had lifted her? It
was all too strange and bitter, but if she wanted p