"Well, whut you goin' to do about it?"

"Nothing--at least not now."

"All right--whenever you git ready. You ain't ready now?"

"No," said Hale, "not now." The fellow laughed.

"Hit's a damned good thing for you that you ain't."

Hale looked long after the three as they galloped down the road.
"When I start to build this town," he thought gravely and without
humour, "I'll put a stop to all that."




VIII


On a spur of Black Mountain, beyond the Kentucky line, a lean
horse was tied to a sassafras bush, and in a clump of rhododendron
ten yards away, a lean black-haired boy sat with a Winchester
between his stomach and thighs--waiting for the dusk to drop. His
chin was in both hands, the brim of his slouch hat was curved
crescent-wise over his forehead, and his eyes were on the sweeping
bend of the river below him. That was the "Bad Bend" down there,
peopled with ancestral enemies and the head-quarters of their
leader for the last ten years. Though they had been at peace for
some time now, it had been Saturday in the county town ten miles