THE MEN STOOD ABOUT. BEHIND THEM TWO MEN SAT ON
THEIR HORSES, THEIR ELBOWS STRAPPED TO THEIR BODIES"]

This was the scene when I caught it first. But a moment later, when my
uncle rode into it, the thing burst into furious life. Men sprang up,
caught his horse by the bit and covered him with weapons. Some one
called for the sentinel who rode behind me, and he galloped up. For a
moment there was confusion. Then the big man who had smoked with such
deliberation called out my uncle's name, others repeated it, and the
panic was gone. But a ring of stern, determined faces were around him
and before his horse, and with the passing of the flash of action there
passed no whit of the grim purpose upon which these men were set.

My uncle looked about him.

"Lemuel Arnold," he said; "Nicholas Vance, Hiram Ward, you here!"

As my uncle named these men I knew them. They were cattle grazers. Ward
was the big man with the pipe. The men with them were their renters and
drovers.

Their lands lay nearest to the mountains. The geographical position made
for feudal customs and a certain independence of action. They were on
the border, they were accustomed to say, and had to take care of
themselves. And it ought to be written that they did take care of
themselves, with courage and decision, and on occasion they also took
care of Virginia.

Their fathers had pushed the frontier of the dominion northward and
westward and had held the land. They had fought the savage single-handed
and desperately, by his own methods and with his own weapons. Ruthless
and merciless, eye for eye and tooth for tooth, they returned what they
were given.

They did not send to Virginia for militia when the savage came; they
fought him at their doors, and followed him through the forest, and took
their toll of death. They were hardier than he was, and their hands were
heavier and bloodier, until the old men in the tribes of the Ohio Valley
forbade these raids because they cost too much, and turned the war
parties south into Kentucky.

Certain historians have written severely of these men and their ruthless
methods, and prattled of humane warfare; but they wrote nursing their
soft spines in the security of a civilization which these men's hands
had builded, and their words are hollow.

"Abner," said Ward, "let me speak plainly. We have got an account to
settle with a couple of cattle thieves and we are not going to be
interfered with. Cattle stealing and mu