tortuous way into the Cumberland.




II

On the other side, too, a similar branch ran down into another
creek which looped around the long slanting side of the spur and
emptied, too, into the Cumberland. At the mouth of each creek the
river made a great bend, and in the sweep of each were rich bottom
lands. A century before, a Hawn had settled in one bottom, the
lower one, and a Honeycutt in the other. As each family
multiplied, more land was cleared up each creek by sons and
grandsons until in each cove a clan was formed. No one knew when
and for what reason an individual Hawn and a Honeycutt had first
clashed, but the clash was of course inevitable. Equally
inevitable was it, too, that the two clans should take the quarrel
up, and for half a century the two families had, with intermittent
times of truce, been traditional enemies. The boy's father, Jason
Hawn, had married a Honeycutt in a time of peace, and, when the
war opened again, was regarded as a deserter, and had been forced
to move over the spur to the Honeycutt side. The girl's father,
Steve Hawn, a ne'erdo-well and the son of a ne'er-do-well, had for
his inheritance wild lands, steep, supposedly worthless, and near
the head of the Honeycutt cove. Little Jason's father, when he
quarrelled with his kin, could afford to buy only cheap land on
the Honeycutt side, and thus the homes of the two were close to
the high heart of the mountain, and separated only by the
bristling crest of the spur. In time the boy's father was slain