Newt Spooner gazed back at her sullenly and defiantly. The dog that has only been kicked distrusts the hand thrust out in kindness. It is unknown to his experience.

"Naw," he declined, with as surly an utterance as possible.

The girl flushed and her lips tightened. She flung back her head with a gesture that set truant curls tantalizingly astir and flapped the reins on the horse's back, but in quick afterthought she drew him down again.

This boy's rudeness did not alter the fact that he was sick. He looked like a mountaineer and could hardly be expected to measure up to the bluegra.s.s requirements of courtesy.

"You're about as polite as--as a mud-turtle," she calmly informed the traveler, holding his eyes with an unflinching gaze, before which they shamefacedly drooped; "but that doesn't make any difference. I'm going into Winchester, and you don't look very well. Hadn't you better get in and ride to town?"

The boy from Troublesome stared his incredulity. She seemed to him a marvelous sort of being. Her simple dress was to his eyes extravagantly elegant and her patrician delicacy of feature belonged to an order which neither the drudgery of the hills nor that of the state prison had given him opportunity to study.

"I reckon," he said slowly and diffidently, but no longer with a note of bitterness, "hit hain't wuth while to pester ye."

"That's all right," she commanded. "Climb in." Slowly he rose and obeyed, the whiskey-flask protruding from his coat-pocket, and when they had gone a quarter of a mile, Newt made his sole voluntary contribution to the conversation.

"I'm obleeged ter ye," he said.

She did not question him unduly, nor ply him with conversation, but she smiled, and in some subtle fashion there broke through the storm-wrack of the boy's bitterness a thin ray of light and glow of graciousness.

She let him out at the court-house square, where buggies stood in rows and traders jostled and the auctioneer's shout resounded, and there he lost himself in the crowd; but first he stood looking after her until her buggy turned a corner, and then he remembered that she had nodded with a friendly smile of farewell. It was rather wonderful to be treated like a human being.

Newt Spooner wanted food and he wanted it to be cheap, so he foraged up and down Main Street until he came upon that lower section where several shabby eating-houses were sandwiched between equally shabby saloons.

And while he stood on the pavement undecided which way to turn, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and he wheeled, startled, to find himself gazing into the face of his kinsman, Red Newton.

"Come hyar," commanded the older man. "I done heered thet ye was pardoned out, an' I sorter 'lowed ye'd be making tracks fer ther mountings. I wants ter have talk with ye afore ye goes back."

"I aims ter git a snack ter eat," demurred Newt. "I hain't a-goin' ter talk ter no man afore I eats."

The other nodded.

"I knows a place whar we kin eat an' talk, too. Fult Cawsler hes done moved hyar from over on Squabble Creek, an' opened a resteraw. All our folks eats thar."

The youth, who had three days before been Number 813, permitted himself to be led through an uninviting doorway around which stood several gaunt men in mud-spattered clothes. But Red Newton did not suffer him to halt at any of those tables, covered with red oil-cloth, where several taciturn pilgrims from the hills were feeding themselves from the blades of their knives. Instead he whispered something to Fult Cawsler himself, and was permitted to climb a narrow stairway at the back. At its head they traversed a narrow hall and came into a separate room where around a private table were seated a group of men whom the boy knew. Old Jason Dode was, as usual, tipsy and, even as the new-comers entered, was tilting the bottle of "red licker" which he unwillingly subst.i.tuted for the white and sweetish moonshine of his native stills. But the important thing was that Black Pete Spooner stood gazing out of the open window, though he stood back far enough to escape the eyes of pa.s.sers-by below. His hands were thrust deep in his pockets and on his face was the same expression that always sat there. Few people pa.s.sed Black Pete by without turning to look again. He stood somewhat upward of six feet and his broad shoulders tapered to a gauntness of waist and leg which gave him the suggestion of a timber wedge. He was as tough as that lumberman's implement and wedgelike, too, in his power of disrupting the dividing elements which, but for him, might have hung together in harmony.

His dark head he carried high-flung with a swing of independence, and that head, even more than the physique, caught and challenged attention.

Black Pete's face was rather narrow and rather long, but its brow was high, its nose strong and regular, and its chin had that square-blocked declaration of resoluteness which commands respect. Under brows black and bushy gazed out eyes that were the dominating feature. They were as clear and penetrating as crystal lenses, and in them dwelt a sober, almost sad contemplativeness as though the brain behind them were habitually gazing off beyond horizons that limited other visions. They were eyes that seemed able to pierce the opaque things of life. The hair curled crisply in glistening black, about the forehead and neck, and over the firm mouth a black mustache fell drooping in long ends. It was a face that hinted at no violence, though at great strength and determination. Rather was it suggestive of melancholy thought, and it had won for him the satiric t.i.tle of the "Deacon."

As Red Newton and Newt Spooner came into the room, Black Pete turned his glance for a moment upon them, then wheeled again to the window with no apparent interest in their presence or existence. His face remained as wistfully distracted as though he were a minister preparing a discourse, on a text which lay very near his heart. But Newt, having seen him, continued to stare. His eyes narrowed. He knew that several years ago, before he had himself become a felon, the Deacon had gone West--where he did not know. But he did know that only so long as this man remained away from the county could there be hope of even comparative peace between the Spooners and the Falkinses. So dreaded was the quiet-visaged intriguer, so unalterably given to violence and the taking of lives, that his exile had been the condition precedent to all negotiations for truces and peace. Now Black Pete was back. Obviously, the meeting in Cawsler's "resteraw," seventy miles from home, held some portent beyond the casual.

They brought the newest prodigal food, and, while he devoured it, bolting it with wolfish hunger, he also picked up the loose ends of talk and began to understand the situation. There had been an election down in his section since Newt's conviction--an election and some other things, which Red Newton briefly summarized as "merry h.e.l.l." The "penitentiarying" of Newt himself had been only the inaugural of more sweeping and hateful innovations. Three times the old blood-feud had broken into sporadic outbursts, and three men had been shot. But what most galled was the fact that the commonwealth's attorney had shown a hound-like nose for evidence and that all of the accused clansmen had been viciously prosecuted.

A truce had been patched, by the terms of which Jake Falerin, a cousin of McAllister Falkins and the leader of the militant Falkinses, had agreed to leave the hills and remove the menace of his disturbing influence. He had gone only as far as Winchester, and, from councils held there with visiting Falkinses, was as dangerous as though he had remained at home, even while his own life was safer. The Spooners had decided that this half-compliance was a practical breach of the truce, and in accordance with that theory the Deacon had come home. At least, he had come this far. In the meanwhile, the Honorable Cale Floyd, commonwealth's attorney, had reaped the grat.i.tude of his const.i.tuency.

Because he had waged relentless war on lawlessness and had begun to show incipient symptoms of victory, he was defeated for reelection. Sick of the futility of such endeavor, he had closed the bare law-office before which his shingle had swung in Jackson, and had come to Winchester, where the field was larger and where men were more appreciative of the qualities and principles for which he stood. He was the man who had put stripes on Newt, and who, had he remained in office long enough, would have made the pattern a family apparel for other Spooners.

"That's how things stands, Newt," summarized Red, turning to the new arrival, "an' that's what I 'lowed ye'd better know about afore ye went back home."

"An' them d.a.m.ned fellers, Jake Falerin an' Cale Floyd, is a settin' over thar somewhars in this-hyar town right now, a-brewin' of more deviltry,"

enlightened old Jason Dode in a hiccupy voice, "an' because they hain't in the mountings, they 'lows they kin go right on with hit. We don't 'low they kin."

The "Deacon" turned from the window, and strolled toward the table.

Newt, having appeased his hunger, was wiping his mouth on the spotted tablecloth. The dark giant fixed him with thoughtful eyes. When he spoke, his voice was in contrast with those of his fellows, for his life in the West had almost freed it from drawl and vernacular, and he spoke with a quiet graveness.

"Son, this Cale Floyd is the same lawyer that sent you to prison."

Newt's eyes flashed.

"I reckon I hain't fergot thet," he said shortly.

Black Pete nodded sympathetically, and went on with the same grave intonation.

"I reckon you wouldn't mind much if he got his dues?"

"He's ergwine ter git his'n," a.s.serted old Jason, his bloodshot eyes wickedly aflare. "He's ergwine ter git his'n this day afore sundown.

An' Jake Falerin's ergwine ter git his'n, too. Them two fellers'll be in h.e.l.l ternight."

"Shut the old fool up," suggested the Deacon pa.s.sively; "he'll be shouting that out in the street after one more swig of liquor." Then he turned to Newt again.

"If Floyd isn't taken care of, son, the next commonwealth's attorney will follow right after him. We've got to give a lesson an' a warning.

Do you understand?"

"I reckon I do," replied the ex-convict, but he spoke without ardor.

"This evenin' about half-past four o'clock," proceeded Black Pete, "Mister Lawyer Floyd is going to make a speech in front of the court-house. There'll be a crowd, and we figure that Falerin will be there, too. Our boys will get up close. Some of them will start a fight amongst themselves, and I reckon they'll pull guns. Mr. Floyd an' Mr.

Falerin are apt to get accidentally shot."

Newt Spooner rose, and stretched his arms. His food and rest had refreshed him, and the red spots had gone out of his cheeks.

"What for," he inquired coolly, "air ye a-tellin' me all this-hyar business?"

The Deacon's grave eyes clouded, but otherwise his expression did not change.

"We figured you'd be interested, son. You were the first Spooner they ever put behind penitentiary bars. This man did it. We figured that when we came to punish these fellers--" He broke off with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Ye 'lowed ye mout git me ter kill 'em?" Newt spoke with absolutely no betrayal of interest.

"Jest the lawyer, Newt," interpolated Red Newton ingratiatingly. "He's your'n. Hit's yore right ter punish him."

The late convict wheeled on the speaker, and his face blackened and lowered.

"The h.e.l.l hit is!" he screamed. "I hain't aholden nothin' 'g'inst ther lawyer. He didn't do nothin' but what he had a license ter do. I knows who I'm atter. You folks wants two men killed, an' you wants me ter be ther feller ter go ter the penitentiary fer doin' hit. What the h.e.l.l did any of ye do fer me last time? What the h.e.l.l do I owe any of ye, wuth goin' back thar fer?"

For a moment, a general silence of dazed astonishment followed the outburst. It was the Deacon who broke it at last.

"All right, son," he said almost gently. "Every man accordin' to his lights. I reckon you ain't goin' to tell anybody what you've heard?"

Newt snorted contemptuously.

"I reckon ye knows thar hain't no danger of _thet_." "Hit 'pears like,"

interposed Red Newton with an apologetic shrug to the others, "hit 'pears like the penitenshery hes done broke ther boy's sperit. Some folks is thet-away, but hit don't hardly seem like no Spooner."