onsort peaceful with
mankind," he had been drawn into an enmity with a fatal termination.
Cyrus had on that occasion been warned that he was to be "lay-wayed"
and, as he had taken down his rifle from the wall, his eyes had held
just the same hard and obdurate glint that lingered in them now. The
woman, remembering that time long gone, when her husband had refused to
turn a step aside from his contemplated journey, shuddered a little. She
could not forget how he had been shot out of his saddle and how he had,
while lying wounded in the creek-bed road, punished his assailant with
death. He was wounded now, though not with a bullet this time, and his
scowl said that he would hit back.

"What air hit, Paw?" she demanded, and his reply came in slow but
implacable evenness:

"I've done set a heap of store by Boone Wellver. I've done thought of
him like a son of my own--but ef he's broke my gal's heart--an's she's
got ther look of hit in her eyes--him an' me kain't both go on dwellin'
along ther same creek." He paused a moment there, and in his final words
sounded an even more inflexible ring: "We kain't both go on livin'
hyar--an' I don't aim ter move."

"Paw"--the plea came solicitously from a fear-burdened heart--"we've
just got ter wait an' see."

"I don't aim ter be over-hasty," he reassured her, with a rude sort of
gentleness, "but nuther does I aim ter endure hit--ef so be hit's true."

But that evening at twilight when Boone crossed the stile, if the nod
which greeted him was less cordial than custom had led him to expect, at
least Cyrus spoke no hostile word. The old man was "biding his time,"
and as he rose and knocked the nub of ash out of his pipe-bowl, he
announced curtly, "I'll tell Happy ye're hyar."

CHAPTER XXIII

Boone had stood for a moment in the lighted door, and in that interval
the shrewd old eyes of Cyrus Spradling had told him that the boy too had
known sleeplessness and that the clear-chiselled features bore
unaccustomed lines of misery.

If they had both suffered equally, reasoned the rude philosopher, it
augured a quarrel not wholly or guiltily one-sided.

So a few minutes later he watched them walking away together toward the
creek bed, where the voice of the water trickled and the moonlight lay
in a dreamy lake of silver.

"I reckon," he reassured himself, "they'll fix matters up ternight.
Hit's a right happy moon for lovers ter mend th'ar quarrels by."

"Happy," began Boone,