ther
stumbled; Rufe Stetson, climbing the fence, caught at his breast with
an oath, and fell back. Rome and Steve dropped for safety to the ground.
Every other Stetson turned in a panic, and every Lewallen in the gully
leaped from it, and ran under the Lewallen fire for shelter in the
woods. The escape was over.

"That was a purty neat trick," said Steve, wiping a red streak from his
cheek. "Nex' time she tries that, she'll git herself into trouble."

At nightfall the wounded leader and the dead one were carried up the
mountain, each to his home; and there was mourning far into the night
on one bank of the Cumberland, and, serious though Rufe Stetson's wound
was, exultation on the other. But in it Rome could take but little part.
There had been no fault to find with him in the fight. But a reaction
had set in when he saw the girl flash in the moonlight past the sights
of his Winchester, and her face that day had again loosed within him a
flood of feeling that drove the lust for revenge from his veins. Even
now, while he sat in his own cabin, his thoughts were across the river
where Martha, broken at last, sat at her death vigils. He knew what her
daring ride that day had cost her, with old Jasper dead out there in the
woods; and as she passed him he had grown suddenly humbled, shamed. He
grew heart-sick now as he thought of it all; and the sight of his mother
on her bed in the corner, close to death as she was, filled him with
bitterness. There was no help for him. He was alone now, pitted against
young Jasper alone. On one bed lay his uncle-nigh to death. There
was the grim figure in the corner, the implacable spirit of hate and
revenge. His rifle was against the wall. If there was any joy for him in
old Jasper's death, it was that his hand had not caused it, and yet--God
help him!--there was the other cross, the other oath.

XII

THE star and the crescent were swinging above Wolf's Head, and in the
dark hour that breaks into dawn a cavalcade of Lewallens forded the
Cumberland, and galloped along the Stetson shore. At the head rode young
Jasper, and Crump the spy.

Swift changes had followed the court-house fight. In spite of the death
of Rufe Stetson from his wound, and several other Stetsons from ambush,
the Lewallens had lost ground. Old Jasper's store had fallen into
the hands of creditors--"furriners"--for debts, and it was said his
homestead must follow. In a private war a leader must be more than
lea