ontract, and he had the right to do it,
but it was like Woodford. Ward, helpless in his bed, had sent Jourdan on
Red Mike to find us somewhere over the Gauley and bid us bring up the
cattle if we could. And so the old man had ridden as though the devil
were after him.

The proportions of Woodford's plan outlined slowly, and with it came a
sense of tremendous responsibility. If we carried out the contract to
the letter,--and to the letter it must be with this man,--I knew that
Woodford would meet the loss, if it stripped the coat off of his
shoulders,--meet it with a smile and some swaggering comment. And I knew
as well that, if by any hook or crook he could prevent the contract from
being carried out, he would do it with the devil's cleverness.

Only, I knew that the hand of Woodford would never rise against us in
the open. We might be balked by sudden providences of God, planned
shrewdly like those which a great churchman ruling France sometimes
called to his elbow.

For such gentle business, not old Richelieu was better fitted with a set
of arrant scoundrels. There was the cunning right hand of Hawk Rufe, the
slick, villainous intriguer, Lem Marks. No diplomatic imp, serving his
master in the kingdoms of the world, moved with more unscrupulous
smoothness. There was Malan with his clubfoot, owned by the devil, the
drovers said, and leased to Woodford for a lifetime. And there was
Parson Peppers, singing the hymns of the Lord up the Stone Coal and down
the Stone Coal. As stout a bunch of rogues as ever went trooping to the
eternal bonfire, handy gentlemen to his worship Woodford.

It was preposterous overmatching for a child. Hawk Rufe had laughed well
when I had heard him laughing last. If Ward were only back in the saddle
of the Black Abbot! But he was stretched out over yonder with the night
shining through his window, and there was on the turning world no one
but me to strip to this duel.

Still, I had better horses, and perhaps better men than Woodford. Jud
was one of the strongest men in the Hills, afraid of the dead, as I have
written, but not afraid of any living thing on the face of the earth.
They knew this over the Stone Coal; the club-footed giant Malan had a
lot of scars under his shirt that were not born on him. And there was
Ump, a crooked thing of a man truly, but a crooked thing of a man that
would hobnob with the king of all the fiends, banter for banter, and in
whose breast cowardice was as dead