his thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead--
dead."

The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table,
while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It
was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved
tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and
hatred which were strangling him.

"Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table
quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a
thought, he peered out of the doorway towards Juniper Bend. "That hawk
seen him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb."
He had the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller.

The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it
almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed,
Sinnet. It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when
the minute comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of
Clint, an' missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on
myself, an' got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy
wouldn't take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his
hand as though to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with
the emotion which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head
angrily.

"It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak
to in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me
cuttin' and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son."