st to me queried.

"Round the bend below the gorge the Arickaree runs over a little strip
of gravel with a ripple that sounds just like the Neosho above the Deep
Hole. I'll stake him out there where he can hear it and think of home
until he dies. And before I leave him I've got a letter to read to him.
It'll help to keep Springvale in his mind if the water fails. I've
promised him what to expect when he comes into my country."

"Do it," the smallest of the three spoke up. "Do it. It'll pay him for
setting Bud Anderson on me and nearly killing me in the alley back of
the courthouse the night we were going to burn up Springvale. I was
making for the courthouse to get the papers to burn sure. I'd got the
key and could have got them easy--and there's some needed burning
specially--when that lispin' tow-head caught my arm and gave my head
such a cut that I'll always carry the scar, and twisted my wrist so I've
never been able to lift anything heavier than an artillery bugle since.
Nobody ever knew it back there but Mapleson and Conlow and Judson. Funny
nobody ever guessed Judson's part in that thing except his wife, and she
kept it to herself and broke her heart and died. Everybody else said he
was water-bound away from home. He wasn't twenty feet from his own house
when the Whately girl come out. He was helpin' Jean then. Thought her
mother'd be killed, and Whately'd never get home alive--as he
didn't--and he'd get the whole store; greediest man on earth for money.
He's got the store anyhow, now, and he's going to marry the girl he was
helpin' Jean to take out of his way. That store never would have been
burnt that night. I wish Jean had got her, though. Then I'd turned
things against Tell Mapleson and run him out of town instead of his
driving me from Springvale. Tell played a double game damned well. I'm
outlawed and he's gettin' richer every day at home."

So spoke the Rev. Mr. Dodd, pastor of the Methodist Church South. It
may be I needed the discipline of that day's fighting to hold me
motionless and silent in the clump of grass beside these three men.

"Well, let's get up there and watch the fool women cry for their men."
It was none other than Father Le Claire's form before me, but this man's
voice was never that soft French tone of the good man's--low and
musical, matching his kindly eyes and sweet smile. As the three slipped
away I did the only foolish act of mine in the whole campaign: I rose
from my hiding pla