xclaimed Murrell hoarsely, his mouth hot
and dry with a sense of defeat.

"Can't you see she'd rather be alone?" said Carrington.

"Let go!" roared Murrell, and a murderous light shot from his eyes.

"I don't know but I should pull you out of that saddle and twist your
neck!" said Carrington hotly. Murrell's face underwent a swift change.

"You're a bold fellow to force your way into a lover's quarrel," he said
quietly. Carrington's arm dropped at his side. Perhaps, after all,
it was that. Murrell thrust his hand into his pocket. "I always give
something to the boy who holds my horse," he said, and tossed a coin in
Carrington's direction. "There--take that for your pains!" he added. He
pulled his horse about and rode back toward the cross-roads at an easy
canter.

Carrington, with an angry flush on his sunburnt cheeks, stood staring
down at the coin that glinted in the dusty road, but he was seeing the
face of the girl, indignant, beautiful--then he glanced after Murrell.

"I reckon I ought to have twisted his neck," he said with a deep breath.

CHAPTER VI. BETTY SETS OUT FOR TENNESSEE

Bruce Carrington came of a westward-looking race. From the low coast
where they had first settled, those of his name had followed the rivers
to their headwaters. The headwaters had sent them forth toward the
foot-hills, where they made their, clearings and built their cabins in
the shadow of the blue wall that for a time marked the furthest goal of
their desires. But only for a time. Crossing the mountains they found
the headwaters once more, and following the streams out of the hills saw
the roaring torrents become great placid rivers.

Carrington's father had put the mountains at his back thirty years
before. The Watauga settlements had furnished him a wife, and some
four years later Bruce was born on the banks of the Ohio. The senior
Carrington had appeared on horseback as a wooer, but had walked on foot
as a married man, each shift of residence he made having represented
a descent to a lower social level. On the death of his wife he had
embarked in the river trade with all that enthusiasm and hope he had
brought to half-a-dozen other occupations, for he was a gentleman of
prodigious energy.

Bruce's first memories had to do with long nights when he perched beside
his father on the cabin roof of their keel-boat and watched the stars,
or the blurred line of the shore where it lay against the sky, or the
lights on oth