child though she was, she, too, understood it. The difference
between her and the "furriner"--difference in age, condition, way
of life, education--meant nothing to him, and as his suspicion
deepened, his hands dropped and gripped his Winchester, and
through his gritting teeth came vaguely:

"By God, if he does--if he just does!"

Away down at the lower end of the river's curving sweep, the dirt
road was visible for a hundred yards or more, and even while he
was cursing to himself, a group of horsemen rode into sight. All
seemed to be carrying something across their saddle bows, and as
the boy's eyes caught them, he sank sidewise out of sight and
stood upright, peering through a bush of rhododendron. Something
had happened in town that day--for the horsemen carried
Winchesters, and every foreign thought in his brain passed like
breath from a window pane, while his dark, thin face whitened a
little with anxiety and wonder. Swiftly he stepped backward,
keeping the bushes between him and his far-away enemies. Another
knot he gave the reins around the sassafras bush and then,
Winchester in hand, he dropped noiseless as an Indian, from rock
to rock, tree to tree, down the sheer spur on the other side.
Twenty minutes later, he lay behind a bush that was sheltered by
the top boulder of the rocky point under which the road ran. His
enemies were in their own country; they would probably be talking
over the happenings in town that day, and from them he would learn
what was going on.

So long he lay that he got tired and out of patience, and he was
about to creep around the boulder, when the clink of a horseshoe