merate mass into two sharply defined groups.

"Hain't ye a'ready done bust thet truce--jest now?" demanded Tom, and
Boone shook his head.

Again there was a purposeful ring in his voice.

"No, by God--I handled a liar--like he ought to be handled--and if there
are any Gregories out there that wouldn't do the same--I hope they'll
line up with _you_!"

CHAPTER XXIV

Slowly and grudgingly Tom sheathed his weapon. He knew that to fire on
an unarmed man in the tensely overwrought gathering would mean wholesale
blood-letting. Black looks told of a tempest brewing; so, with a surly
nod, he stepped back and helped Jim Blair to his place again. Blair,
dust covered and bruised, with a dribble of blood still trickling from
his mashed lip, made an effort to complete his speech which ended in
anticlimax. To Boone he said nothing more, and to the interrupted
subject he gave no further mention.

That episode had rather strengthened than hurt Wellver's prospects, and
he would have gone away somewhat appeased of temper had he not met Cyrus
Spradling face-to-face in the court house yard, and halted, with a
mistaken impulse of courtesy, to speak to him.

But the old friend, who had become the new enemy, looked him balefully
in the eye and to the words of civil greeting gave back a bitter
response: "I don't want ye ter speak ter me--never ergin," he declared.
"But I'm glad I met up with ye this oncet, though. I promised ye my vote
one day--an' I'm not a man thet breaks a pledge. I kain't vote fer ye,
now, with a clean conscience, though, and I wants ye ter give me back
thet promise."

Boone knew without delusion that this public repudiation of him by the
neighbour who had expected to be his father-in-law had sealed his doom.
He knew that all men would reason, as he had done, that Cyrus would give
no corroboration to belittling gossip concerning his daughter, unless
the wound were deep beyond healing and the resentment righteous beyond
concealment.

"Of course," responded the young candidate gravely, "I give back your
promise. I don't want any vote that isn't a willing one." But he mounted
his horse with a sickened heart, and it was no surprise to him, when the
results of the primaries were tallied, to find that he was not only a
beaten man but so badly beaten that, as one commiserating friend
mournfully observed to him, "Ye mout jest as well hev run on ther
demmycrat ticket."

Boone went back to McCalloway's house that