"Thar's yo' bed." Again Hale's eyes fell on the big Winchester.

"I reckon thar hain't more'n two others like it in all these
mountains."

"What's the calibre?"

"Biggest made," was the answer, "a 50 x 75."

"Centre fire?"

"Rim," said the Red Fox.

"Gracious," laughed Hale, "what do you want such a big one for?"

"Man cannot live by bread alone--in these mountains," said the Red
Fox grimly.

When Hale lay down he could hear the old man quavering out a hymn
or two on the porch outside: and when, worn out with the day, he
went to sleep, the Red Fox was reading his Bible by the light of a
tallow dip. It is fatefully strange when people, whose lives
tragically intersect, look back to their first meetings with one
another, and Hale never forgot that night in the cabin of the Red
Fox. For had Bad Rufe Tolliver, while he whispered at the gate,
known the part the quiet young man silently seated in the porch
would play in his life, he would have shot him where he sat: and
could the Red Fox have known the part his sleeping guest was to
play in his, the old man would have knifed him where he lay.