"Road-tax?" repeated McCloud, with a sneer. "I guess not. If the roads
are good enough for cattle like you, pay for them yourselves! I use the
woods and I pay no road-tax."

"If you didn't have that there rifle--" began Byram, sullenly.

"It's quite empty; look for yourself!" said McCloud, jerking back the
lever.

The mortified game-warden picked himself out of the nettle-choked ditch
where he had been painfully squatting and started towards Foxville.

"I'll ketch you at it yet!" he called back; "I'll fix you an' your
ice-box!"

McCloud laughed.

"Gimme that two dollars," demanded Byram, sullenly, "or do your day's
stint on them there public roads."

McCloud dropped his hands into the pockets of his ragged
shooting-jacket.

"You'd better leave or I'll settle you as I settled Billy Delany."

"You hit him with a axe; that's hommycide assault; he'll fix you, see if
he don't!" said Byram.

"No," said McCloud, slowly; "I did not hit him with an axe. I had a ring
on my finger when I hit him. I'm sorry it cut him."

"Oh, you'll be sorrier yet," cried Byram, turning away towards the road,
where the game-warden was anxiously waiting for him.

"We'll run you outer town!" called back the warden, waddling down the
road.

"Try it," replied McCloud, yawning.

II

McCloud spent the afternoon lolling on the grass under the lilacs,
listlessly watching the woodpeckers on the dead pines. Chewing a sprig
of mint, he lay there sprawling, hands clasping the back of his
well-shaped head, soothed by the cadence of the chirring locusts. When
at length he had drifted pleasantly close to the verge of slumber a
voice from the road below aroused him.

He listened lazily; again came the timid call; he arose, brushing his
shabby coat mechanically.

Down the bramble-choked path he slouched, shouldering his wood-axe as a
precaution. Passing around the rear of his house, he peered over the
messed tangle of sweetbrier which supported the remains of a rotting
fence, and he saw, down in the road below, a young girl and a collie
dog, both regarding him intently.

"Were you calling me?" he asked.

"It's only about your road-tax," began the girl, looking up at him with
pleasant gray eyes.

"What about my road-tax?"

"It's due, isn't it?" replied the girl, with a faint smile.

"Is it?" he retorted, staring at her insolently. "Well, don't let it
worry you, young woman."

The smile died out in her eyes.

"It does worry me," sh