The corn patch rustled valiantly; the pastures were streaked
with pale yellow primroses; and Bob Whites ran through the young crops,
calling.

Creed rode forward. A gay wind was abroad under the blue sky. Every
tiniest leaf that danced and flirted on its slender stem sent back gleams
of the morning sunlight from its wet, glistening surface. The woods were
full of bird songs, and the myriad other lesser voices of a midsummer
morning sounded clear and distinct upon the vast, enfolding silence of
the mountains.

It seemed beyond reason out in that gay July sunshine that anything dark
or tragic could happen to one. But after all man cannot be so different
from Nature which produces him, and the night before had given them a
passionate, brief, destructive thunder-storm. Creed noted the ravages of
it here and there; the broken boughs, the levelled or uprooted herbage,
the washed and riven soil, as his mule moved soberly along.

At the Turrentine cabin all was quiet. The young men of the house had
been out the entire night before guarding the trails that Creed Bonbright
should not leave the mountains secretly. A good deal of moonshine whiskey
went to this night guarding, particularly when there was the excuse of a
shower to call for it, and the watchers of the trails now lay in their
beds making up arrears of sleep. Jephthah stood looking out of his own
cabin door when, about fifteen minutes ahead of Creed, Taylor Stribling
tethered his half-broken little filly in the bushes at the edge of the
clearing, and ran across the grassy side yard.

"Bonbright's out an' a-headin' this way!" he volleyed in a hoarse whisper
as he approached the head of the clan.

"Who's with him?" asked Jephthah, turning methodically back into the room
for the squirrel gun over the door.

"Nobody. He ain't got no rifle. I reckon he's packin' a pistol, though,
of course. Nancy Cyard bawled an' took on considerable when he started.
Shall I call the boys?"

"No," returned Jephthah briefly, replacing the clean brown rifle on its
fir pegs. "No, I don't need nobody, and I don't need Old Sister. I reckon
I can deal with one young feller alone."

He walked unhurriedly toward the main house. Stribling stood looking
after him a moment, uncertainly. The spy's errand was performed. He had
now his dismissal; it would not do to be seen about the place at this
time. He went reluctantly back to the waiting filly, mounted and turned
her head toward a high point