"But if anything does. You'll not hate me--you'll remember I allus
thought a heap of you, Jimmie?" she insisted.

"Doggone it, if you're still thinkin' of that scalawag Dave Roush--" He
broke off, moved by some touch of prescient tragedy in her young face.
"'Course I ain't ever a-goin' to forgit you none, sis. Hit ain't likely,
is it?"

It was a comfort to him afterward to recall that he submitted to her
impulsive caress without any visible irritability.

'Lindy busied herself preparing supper for her father and brother. Ever
since her mother died when the child was eleven she had been the family
housekeeper.

At dusk Clay Clanton came in and stood his rifle in a corner of the room.
His daughter recognized ill-humor in the grim eyes of the old man. He was
of a tall, gaunt figure, strongly built, a notable fighter with his fists
in the brawling days before he "got religion" at a camp meeting. Now his
Calvinism was of the sternest. Dancing he held to be of the devil.
Card-playing was a sin. If he still drank freely, his drinking was within
bounds. But he did not let his piety interfere with the feud. Within the
year, pillar of the church though he was, he had been carried home
riddled with bullets. Of the four men who had waylaid him two had been
buried next day and a third had kept his bed for months.

He ate for a time in dour silence before he turned harshly on 'Lindy.

"You ain't havin' no truck with Dave Roush are you? Not meetin' up with
him on the sly?" he demanded, his deep-set eyes full of menace under the