nning its blind wasteful
course.

Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad
Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of
the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of
hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was
appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been
tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of
his capture.

The boast of the Boones was that they never forgot an injury. They might
wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts.
Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he
was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas
eve a brother of the murdered man--Captain Tom, as his old troopers still
called him--met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed.
From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried
out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.

The Boones took their time. Another decade passed. Old Richard Bellamy,
father of the young man, was shot through the uncurtained window of his
living rooms while reading the paper one night. Though related to the
Yarnells, he had never taken any part in the feud beyond that of
expressing his opinion freely. The general opinion was that he had been
killed by Dunc Boone, but there was no conclusive evidence to back it.
Three weeks later another one of the same faction met his fate. Captain
Tom was ambushed while riding from his plantation to town and left dead on
the road. Dunc Boone had been seen lurking near the spot, and immediately
after the killing he was met by two hunters as he was slipping through the
underbrush for the swamps. There was no direct evidence against the young
man, but Captain Tom had been the most popular man in the county. Reckless
though he was, Duncan Boone had been forced to leave the country by the
intensity of the popular feeling against him.

Again the feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the
Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained
on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken
ne'er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty
threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling
loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced in