an' that
a man had put a bullet in him, an'--"

Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and
continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had
been drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and
couldn't stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with
rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes South to spend the winter
with his girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more
quickly. "Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed
in any way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with
anybody Greevy quarrelled too."

"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster roughly.
"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to git Greevy. I bin waitin' for
him, an' I'll git him."

"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck;
but I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Ricketts's story; I'll
tell what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all
there is that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."

"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here." With no apparent
coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice was not so
even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She was
changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem
to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on.
She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what
your boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up
for her father."

"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to
his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her.
She'll git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to
Clint--jest twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."

He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and
turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.

The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigour which a touch
of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles
to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and
buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a
new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made
ready for him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk
of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the perempto