-with facts.

"I know mor'n that," he called out.

"Git--you measly pup," said Seth savagely.

"I know Theriff Briggth, he rid over the boundary with a lot o' men and
horthes," said Johnny, with that hurried delivery with which he was able
to estop interruption. "Theed 'em go by. Maur Harrithon theth his dad's
goin' to chuck out ole McKinthtry. Hooray!"

Mrs. McKinstry turned her dark face sharply on Seth. "What's that he
sez?"

"Nothin' but children's gassin'," he answered, meeting her eyes with an
evil consciousness half loutish, half defiant, "and ef it war true, it
would only sarve Hiram McKinstry right."

She laid her hand upon his shoulder with swift suspicion. "Out o' my
way, Seth Davis," she said suddenly, pushing him aside. "Ef this ez any
underhanded work of yours, you'll pay for it."

She strode past him in the direction of Johnny, but at the approach
of the tall woman with the angry eyes, the boy flew. She hesitated a
moment, turned again with a threatening wave of the hand to Seth, and
started off rapidly in the direction of the boundary.

She had not placed so much faith in the boy's story as in the vague
revelation of evil in Davis's manner. If there was any "cussedness"
afoot, Seth, convinced of Cressy's unfaithfulness, and with no further
hope of any mediation from the parents, would know it. Unless Hiram had
been warned, he was still lulled in his fatuous dream of civilization.
At that time he and his men were in the tules with the stock; to be
satisfied, she herself must go to the boundary.

She reached the ridge of the cottonwoods and sycamores, and a few
hundred yards further brought her to the edge of that gentle southern
slope which at last sank into the broad meadow of the debatable ground.
In spite of Stacey's invidious criticism of its intrinsic value, this
theatre of savage dissension, violence, and bloodshed was by some irony
of nature a pastoral landscape of singular and peaceful repose. The soft
glacis stretching before her was in spring cerulean with lupins, and
later starred with mariposas. The meadow was transversely crossed by a
curving line of alders that indicated a rare water-course, of which in
the dry season only a single pool remained to flash back the unvarying
sky. There had been no attempt at cultivation of this broad expanse;
wild oats, mustard, and rank grasses left it a tossing sea of turbulent
and variegated color whose waves rode high enough to engulf horse and