attorney took a step forward, his own cheeks grown livid with anger, so
that the two men stood close and eye-to-eye.

"In this fashion I permit no man to address me," said the prosecutor,
with his voice hard-schooled to evenness. "You have come to my house to
insult me, and I order you to leave it."

For a moment Boone remained motionless. Between him and the man across
from him swam spots of red; then words came with a coldly affronting yet
quiet ferocity:

"I am not surprised, but I've done what decency demanded. I ... gave you
your chance ... and you repudiated it ... like the charlatan you are.
This man shall die ... but it was your duty and your right ... to know
first."

He turned on his heel and opened the door, and the man in the smoking
jacket gazed after him in amazement. Evidently, the truculent visitor
was not himself, and there was no virtue in quarrelling with a temporary
madman. Boone knew only that he had invoked the law and the law had
rebuffed him. He could not see that his reception, however just his
mission, was inevitable since he had invited it with insult.

Back at his room he found another guest awaiting him. It was Joe
Gregory, who had also come from the hills. Boone had reached that point
at which surprise ends, and to this man, who was a kinsman and a deputy
sheriff in Marlin County, he gave as cursory a greeting as though he had
come only from the next street.

But Joe's grave face, in which character and sense spoke from every
strongly drawn lineament, was disturbed, and he went without preamble to
his point. Down there in the hills trouble was brewing, and among both
Gregories and Carrs a restive feeling stirred. Fellows walked with chips
on their shoulders as though each side were seeking to invite from the
other some overt act of truce-breaking. Joe had sought to analyze the
causes of this seemingly chance rebirth of long-quiet animosities. He
had learned of Saul's return, but Saul was lying low and most men did
not know of his presence. It must be, then, that from his hiding place
that intriguer was inciting a spirit of truculence in the Carrs to which
the Gregories were automatically responding. If that went on it meant
the breaking out of the "war" afresh--and a renewal of bloodshed. The
bearer of tidings ended his narrative with an appeal based on strong
trust.

"Boone, thar's jest one man kin quiet our boys down and stop 'em short
of mortal mischief, I reckon. They all trus