The tramp of heavy boots started across the puncheon floor and
porch again. Isom could hear Steve's orders outside; the laughs
and jeers and curses of the men as they mounted their horses; he
heard the cavalcade pass through the gate, the old man's cackling
good-by; then the horses' hoofs going down the mountain, and
Daddy Marcum's hobbling step on the porch again. He was
standing in the middle of the floor, full in the firelight, when the
old man reached the threshold-standing in a trance, with a
cartridge-belt in his hand.

"Good fer you, Isom

The cry was apologetic, and stopped short.

The critter's fersakcn," he quavered, and cowed by the boy's
strange look, the old man shrank away from him along the wall.
But Isom seemed neither to see nor hear. He caught up his rifle,
and, wavering an instant, tossed it with the belt on the bed and ran
out the door. The old man followed, dumb with amazement.

Isom! " he called, getting his wits and his tongue at last. "Hyeh's
yer gun! Come back, I tell ye! You've fergot yer gun! Isom! Isom!

The voice piped shrilly out into the darkness, and piped back
without answer.

A steep path, dangerous even by day, ran snakelike from the cabin
down to the water's edge. It was called Isom's path after that tragic
night. No mountaineer went down it thereafter without a firm