again. He would make Isom stay at home, if need
be, and he would take the boy's place at the mill. If she came there no
more, he would cross the river again. Come peace or war, be she friend
or enemy, he would see her. His thirst was fierce again, and, with this
half-drunken determination in his heart, he stooped once more to drink
from the cheerful little stream. As he rose, a loud curse smote the air.
The river, pressed between two projecting cliffs, was narrow at that
point, and the oath came across the water. An instant later a man led a
lamed horse from behind a bowlder, and stooped to examine its leg. The
dusk was thickening, but Rome knew the huge frame and gray beard of old
Jasper Lewallen. The blood beat in a sudden tide at his temples, and,
half by instinct, he knelt behind a rock, and, thrusting his rifle
through a crevice, cocked it softly.
Again the curse of impatience came over the still water, and old Jasper
rose and turned toward him. The glistening sight caught in the centre of
his beard. That would take him in the throat; it might miss, and he let
the sight fall till the bullet would cut the fringe of gray hair into
the heart. Old Jasper, so people said, had killed his father in just
this way; he had driven his uncle from the mountains; he was trying
now to revive the feud. He was the father of young Jasper, who had
threatened his life, and the father of the girl whose contempt had cut
him to the quick twice that day. Again her taunt leaped through his
heated brain, and his boast to the old miller followed it. His finger
trembled at the trigger.
"No; by ----, no!" he breathed between his teeth; and old Jasper passed on,
unharmed.
VII
NEXT day the news of Rufe Stetson's flight went down the river on the
wind, and before nightfall the spirit of murder was loosed on both
shores of the Cumberland. The more cautious warned old Jasper. The
Stetsons were gaining strength again, they said; so were their feudsmen,
the Marcums, enemies of the Braytons, old Jasper's kinspeople. Keeping
store, Rufe had made money in the West, and money and friends right
and left through the mountains. With all his good-nature, he was a
persistent hater, and he was shrewd. He had waited the chance to put
himself on the side of the law, and now the law was with him. But old
Jasper laughed contemptuously. Rufe Stetson was gone again, he said, as
he had gone before, and this time for good. Rufe had tried to do
what nobo
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