and
the tone was of appeal, not anger. The black look passed from his face,
and he caught her by the shoulders with rough tenderness; but she pushed
him away, and without a word he sprang from the road and let himself
noiselessly down the cliff. The hoof-beats thundered above his head, and
Young Jasper's voice hailed Martha.
"This hyeh's the bigges' meal I ever straddled. Why d'n't ye git the
grist ground?"
For a moment the girl did not answer, and Rome waited, breathless.
"Wasn't the mill runnin'? Whyn't ye go on 'cross the river?
"That's whut I did," said the girl, quietly. "Uncle Gabe wasn't thar, 'n'
Rome Stetson was. I wouldn't 'low him to grin' the co 'n, 'n' so I toted
hit back."
"Rome Stetson!" The voice was lost in a volley of oaths.
The two passed out of hearing, and Rome went plunging down the mountain,
swinging recklessly from one little tree to another, and wrenching limbs
from their sockets out of pure physical ecstasy. When he reached his
horse he sat down, breathing heavily, on a bed of moss, with a strange
new yearning in his heart. If peace should come! Why not peace, if Rufe
should not come back? He would be the leader then, and without him there
could be no war. Old Jasper had killed his father. He was too young at
the time to feel poignant sorrow now, and somehow he could look even at
that death in a fairer way. His father had killed old Jasper's brother.
So it went back: a Lewallen killed a Stetson; that Stetson had killed a
Lewallen, until one end of the chain of deaths was lost, and the first
fault could not be placed, though each clan put it on the other. In
every generation there had been compromises--periods of peace; why not
now? Old Gabe would gladly help him. He might make friends with young
Jasper; he might even end the feud. And then-he and Martha-why not? He
closed his eyes, and for one radiant moment t all seemed possible. And
then a gaunt image rose in the dream, and only the image was left.
It was the figure of his mother, stern and silent through the years,
opening her grim lips rarely without some curse against the Lewallen
race. He remembered she had smiled for the first time when she heard of
the new trouble-the flight of his uncle and the hope of conflict. She
had turned to him with her eyes on fire and her old hands clinched. She
had said nothing, but he understood her look. And now-Good God! what
would she think and say if she could know what he had done? His whole
f
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