ee simple to June--her heirs and
assigns forever; but the girl must not know until, Hale said, "her
father dies, or I die, or she marries." When he came out the sergeant
was passing the door.

"Ain't no use fightin' with one o' them fellers thataway," he said,
shaking his head. "If he whoops you, he'll crow over you as long as
he lives, and if you whoop him, he'll kill ye the fust chance he gets.
You'll have to watch that feller as long as you live--'specially when
he's drinking. He'll remember that lickin' and want revenge fer it till
the grave. One of you has got to die some day--shore."

And the sergeant was right. Dave was going through the Gap at that
moment, cursing, swaying like a drunken man, firing his pistol and
shouting his revenge to the echoing gray walls that took up his cries
and sent them shrieking on the wind up every dark ravine. All the way up
the mountain he was cursing. Under the gentle voice of the big Pine
he was cursing still, and when his lips stopped, his heart was beating
curses as he dropped down the other side of the mountain.

When he reached the river, he got off his horse and bathed his mouth and
his eyes again, and he cursed afresh when the blood started afresh at
his lips again. For a while he sat there in his black mood, undecided
whether he should go to his uncle's cabin or go on home. But he had seen
a woman's figure in the garden as he came down the spur, and the thought
of June drew him to the cabin in spite of his shame and the questions
that were sure to be asked. When he passed around the clump of
rhododendrons at the creek, June was in the garden still. She was
pruning a rose-bush with Bub's penknife, and when she heard him coming
she wheeled, quivering. She had been waiting for him all day, and, like
an angry goddess, she swept fiercely toward him. Dave pretended not to
see her, but when he swung from his horse and lifted his sullen eyes,
he shrank as though she had lashed him across them with a whip. Her eyes
blazed with murderous fire from her white face, the penknife in her hand
was clenched as though for a deadly purpose, and on her trembling lips
was the same question that she had asked him at the mill:

"Have you done it this time?" she whispered, and then she saw his
swollen mouth and his battered eye. Her fingers relaxed about the handle
of the knife, the fire in her eyes went swiftly down, and with a smile
that was half pity, half contempt, she turned away. She cou