wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to his
crippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally of
this one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled when
he practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim had
become as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; for
this he had been schooled still more when he rode, armed and watchful,
to church or court or election. Its coming found him ready.

Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his chance. The Tranthams were
hard to find. They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds, well
guarded in anticipation of expected reprisals, and prepared in due
season to come forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two dozen if so
many should be needed to establish the alibi, that they had no hand in
the massacre of the Dugmores.

But two days and nights of still-hunting, of patiently lying in wait
behind brush fences, of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likely
places, brought the survivor of the decimated Dugmores his chance. He
caught Pegleg Trantham riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule. Pegleg
was only a distant connection of the main strain of the enemy. It was
probable that he had no part in the latest murdering; perhaps doubtful
that he had any prior knowledge of the plot. But by his name and his
blood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough.

A writer of the Western school would have found little in this encounter
that was really worth while to write about. Above the place of the
meeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantily
clothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed through
like the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rains
and ran bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg came cantering
along with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule,
for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for a
mountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short arms
encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with
a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband
together at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showing
his naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its worn
brass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled down
straight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and a
soiled white-