other with unruffled calmness. "He's a feller thet nobody wouldn't hardly suspect; him bein' peaceable an' mostly sober. But he shoots his squirrels through the head every time he throws up his rifle-gun. Thet war ther kind of man they wanted."

Milt McBriar shifted his position a little. He seemed bored.

66 Who war this feller?"

The bearer of tidings was reserving his climax and refused to be hurried.

"I reckon ye'll be right-smart astonished when I names his name, but thar hain't no chanst of bein' mistook. I've done run ther thing down."

"I hain't nuver astonished," retorted McBriar. "Who war he?"

Very cautiously the second man looked around and then bent over and whispered a name. If Milt McBriar did not show surprise at its mention it was because he made a conscious effort. At last he laughed unpleasantly and commented, "Thet war like Anse Havey. He's kind of fond of doin' things thet ye wouldn't hardly 'low he would do." After a short pause the chief added, "Wall, I reckon I don't need ter tell yer what ter do now?"

"I reckon I knows," confessed Luke with a somewhat surly expression. "Why don't ye foller Anse's lead an' use a new man oncet in a while?"

"Oh, I reckon ye'll do, Luke, an' atter ye does hit, ye'd better leave ther mountings fer a spell."

The surliness deepened. "Hell!" muttered the henchman. But Milt McBriar was paying no attention. His face was darkening. "I wish I could af

ford ter git ther real man,” he exclaimed abruptly, "I wish I durst hev Anse Havey kilt."

"Wall" this time it was the underling who spoke casually "I reckon I mout as well die fer a sheep as a lamb. Shell I kill Anse Havey fer ye?"

The chieftain looked at him during a long pause, then slowly shook his head.

"No, Luke," he said quietly, "I hain't quite ready ter die myself yit. I reckon if I hed ye ter kill Bad Anse thet's 'bout what'd happen. Jest git ther lamb this trip an' let ther old ram live a spell.”

So one unspeakably sultry morning a few days after that informal session, Good Anse Talbott appeared at the door of the Widow Everson's house. As Juanita Holland appeared in the door to greet him he came to the point without persiflage.

"Fletch McNash hes done been kilt," he said. "'Bout twilight last night es he war a-comin' in from ther barn somebody shot one shoot from ther laʼrel. I reckon hit'd be right-smart comfort ter his woman an' little Dawn ef ye could ride over thar an' help 'tend ter ther buryin'. Kin ye start now?"

CHAPTER XIII

O! Juanita would go if it were necessary to run gantlet

Go of all the combined forces of the Haveys

and McBriars. Her heart ached for the widow and the boys, but for Dawn the ache was as deeply poignant as it could have been for a little sister of her own. The child had brought to her her one truly personal association in the mountains. Their intimacy had been to Juanita a solace and a substitute for all the things she had put behind, things that left emptiness and ache in her heart. To-day her little protégée was a child. To-morrow she would be a woman and the day afterthe girl shuddered as she reflected on the Calloway woman who had a few years ago been the "purtiest gal on Meetin' House Fork." Dawn and girls like her were the stake for which she had come here to fight. It was such lives she meant to redeem. Now across the lot of this joyous little creature had fallen the shadow of the seemingly inevitable of the grim, sullen home-breaking thing that brooded here, feeding on human life. So it was with set face and hot indignation of heart that she mounted for the journey.

Yet in the rancor of her unreasoning anger it was not upon the actual assassin that her censure chiefly burned. She chose rather to go back of all that and think of Anse Havey as the human incarnation; the head and front of the whole wretched, blood-drenched

régime. He seemed even more responsible than Milt McBriar because his lawless fame had gone more picturesquely abroad.

As they rode the hills were full of midsummer languor. The trees were unstirring in the hushed heat. Only the minnows in the little pools and the geese that waddled down to the cool waters seemed free of torpidness and lethargy. The locusts and grasshoppers sang from dry roadside stalks and flew rattling away from the ironweeds and thistles as they passed.

The horses kicked up clouds of choking dust and along the edges of the shrunken streams little clusters of white and pale-yellow butterflies fluttered wearily.

The houses, where a roof broke through the timber, were sullen, too, and closed of door, despite the heat, but Juanita no longer thought of them as hovels where men and women closely akin to the dumb beasts lived as in dens. Love and hate and hope and despair, she had learned, burn as fiercely there as elsewhere and though more nakedly, perhaps more honestly. The poverty which it had, at first, seemed must strangle to death everything but animal instinct, was robbed of its abjectness. Its self-denial was a compromise only with necessity, never with self-respect. The same Spartan spirit had animated Kenton and Boone when they discarded every non-essential from their pioneer packs. She herself was in effect as poor as they, because her possessions lay beyond ramparts of granite and sandstone. So much had the girl Juanita grown under the teachings of those she had come to teach.

At last they reached the McNash cabin and found gathered about it a score of figures with sullen and

scowling faces. As she crossed the yard the crowd opened for her and gazed after her respectfully. Even the missionary did not cross the threshold with her, but let her enter alone on her errand of comforting the

66

99 women folks who were in there with their dead. From the barn came the screech of saw and rat-tat of hammer, where those whose knack ran to carpentry were fashioning the box which was to serve in lieu of a casket.

There was no fire now and the cabin was very dark. In a deeply shadowed corner lay Fletch McNash, made visible by the white sheet that covered him. That sheet had been borrowed from a neighbor who "made it a p'int ter hev things handy fer buryin's." It had served the same purpose before and would again.

Juanita had come in silently and for a moment thought that no one else was there, and that she was alone with death. The younger children had been sent away and the neighbors remained outside with rough sense of consideration. Among them was no excitement; they smoked stoically and talked of indifferent topics. Death was a neighbor near whom they had always lived, and this case was like many others.

Then as Juanita stood just inside the lintel, she heard a low moan and crossed the room.

There in a squat chair near the dead hearth sat Mrs. McNash, with her back turned to the room. She was leaning forward and gazing ahead with unseeing eyes. Dawn was kneeling at her side with both arms about her mother's drooping shoulders. It was from Dawn, whose tear-stained face was wan and white, that the groan had come. The elder woman had uttered no