ere
calling her to prompt and hazardous action. She fell to her knees and
clasped her hands in a clutch of desperation. "God, give me strength
right now ter ack like a man," she prayed. "Hit seems like ther fust
time I'm called on, I'm turnin' plum woman-weak."

Then she rose and pressed her pounding temples. It was not the fear of
a runaway river that held her in a tormenting suspense of indecision,
but the hard choice between leaving her father or fulfilling a duty to
which he had assigned her in his stead.

When she opened the door of the house again she saw an agitated figure
kneeling beside the bed. For all its breadth of shoulder and six feet
of height; for all its inherited stoicism that had stood through
generations, it was shaking with sobs.

As Alexander came into the room her brother rose from his knees with
pallid cheeks and woebegone eyes.

"Who shot him?" he demanded in a tense voice. "These hyar folks won't
tell me nuthin'."

The girl repressed an impulse of satirical laughter. She knew that Joe
McGivins would storm and swear vengeance upon the hand that had been
raised to strike his father down and that beyond hysterical vehemence
his indignation would come to nothing. He would believe himself
sincere and in the end his resolution would waste away into
procrastination and specious excuses.

"Whoever shot him, Joe," she replied, maintaining the complimentary
fiction that she must temporize with his just wrath, "Paw he's done
exacted a pledge thet neither of us won't seek ter avenge ther deed.
Hit's a pledge thet binds us both."

Even while his temples were still hot with his first wave of passionate
indignation, Joe McGivins felt that a bitter cup had passed from him.

"Joe," said the girl in a low voice, "I wants thet ye heeds me clost.
Ef we fails ter save this timber hit'll jest erbout kill Paw. Ef ther
dam busts loose, somebody's got ter ride them rafts."

The boy's face paled abruptly. He was a handsome youth, outwardly cut
to as fine a pattern of physical fitness as his sister exemplified, but
in his eyes one found none of her dauntlessness of spirit. Hurriedly
Alexander swept on.

"I aims ter go back over thar right now. He's got ter be kept quiet
an' so I dastn't tell him what I seeks ter do. I hain't fearsome of
leavin' ye ter watch after him. I knows ye kin gentle him an' comfort
him even better'n I could do hit myself."

She thrust out her hand, boy fashion, and her