ow if
what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd
ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble
about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for
Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm
feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed
Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it.
Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him--_plumb_."

Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of
cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy
wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was
right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy
robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he was,
an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots to
spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a
quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards,
an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in the night
and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest lay there
on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An'
Clint told Ricketts who it was."

"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.

"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of
Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her? She'll get married, an
she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint had
for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he
couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an'
everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way,
an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em: What was the good of
making things worse? They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster,
his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her trouble."

Sinnet's face was turned toward Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as
it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable
look.

"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it
had a suggestive note.

"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."

There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke,
and in a tone of cu