"Well, if I tol' you anything about them to-day, don't you know
I'd be tellin' them something about you to-morrow?"

Old Aaron scratched his head.

"By Gawd, boys--that's so. Let him pass!"

Thus it was that only Arch Hawn could have brought about an
agreement that was the ninth wonder of the mountain world, and was
no less than a temporary truce in the feud between old Aaron
Honeycutt and old Jason Hawn until the land deal in which both
leaders shared a heavy interest could come to a consummation. Arch
had interested Colonel Pendleton in his "wild lands" at a horse
sale in the Blue-grass. The mountaineer's shrewd knowledge of
horses had caught the attention of the colonel, his drawling
speech, odd phrasing, and quaint humor had amused the Blue-grass
man, and his exposition of the wealth of the hills and the vast
holdings that he had in the hollow of his hand, through options
far and wide, had done the rest--for the matter was timely to the
colonel's needs and to his accidental hour of opportunity. Only a
short while before old Morton Sanders, an Eastern capitalist of
Kentucky birth, had been making inquiry of him that the
mountaineer's talk answered precisely, and soon the colonel found
himself an intermediary between buried coal and open millions, and
such a quick unlooked-for chance of exchange made Arch Hawn's
brain reel. Only a few days before the colonel started for the
mountains, Babe Honeycutt had broken the truce by shooting Shade
Hawn, but as Shade was going to get well, Arch's oily tongue had
licked the wound to the pride of every Honeycutt except Shade, and
he calculated that the latter would be so long in bed that his