A splutter of oaths was his reply, and an even greater effort to throw the white man off.

But the effort was unavailing. Then Kate saw something happen. The big white man changed his tactics. He desisted quite suddenly from belaboring his victim. He made no attempt to defend himself. He reached out his disengaged hand and added a second grip upon the man's revolver arm. Then, with a terrific jolt, he flung himself backwards, so that he was left in a kneeling position upon the other's middle.

Then, in a second, with an agility absolutely staggering, he was on his feet. The next moment the other was jerked to his feet with his revolver arm twisted behind his back and nearly dislocated.

With a frantic yell of agony the half-breed's hand relaxed its grip upon his revolver, and the weapon fell to the ground. The fight was over. With a mighty throw Pete Clancy was hurled headlong, and fell sprawling upon the ground at the foot of the barn wall, and his impact was like the result of a shot from a catapult.

"Lie there, you dirty dog!" cried Big Brother Bill, in a fury of breathless indignation. "That'll maybe learn you a lesson not to get drinking rot gut, and, if you do, not to insult a white girl. You d.a.m.nation n.i.g.g.e.r, for two beans I'd kick the life out of you where you lay."

The man was scrambling to his feet, glaring an eternity of hatred at his white victor.

"Did he insult--Helen?"

Bill swung around with almost ludicrous abruptness. He had been utterly unaware of Kate's presence.

He stared. Then, with a rush of pa.s.sionate anger----

"Yes; but by G.o.d, he'll think some before he does it again."

Kate's eyes were coldly commanding.

"Go around to Helen, and--take that gun," she said authoritatively.

"Leave Pete to me."

"Leave him----?" Bill's protest remained uncompleted.

"Do as I tell you--please."

"But he'll----"

Again Kate cut him short.

"Please!" She pointed in the direction of the house.

Bill was left with no alternative but to obey. He moved away, but his movements were grudging, and he looked back as he went, ready to hurl himself to Kate's succor at the slightest sign.

Ten minutes later Kate entered the sitting room. Her handsome face was pale, and her eyes were shining. The spirit of the woman was stirred.

There was no fear in her--only a sort of hard resentment that left her expression one of cold determination.

Helen ran to her at once. But, for perhaps the first time in her life, she encountered something in the nature of a rebuff. Kate looked straight into her sister's eyes as she flung herself into a chair, and laid her loaded revolver upon the table.

"Tell me about it. Just the plain facts," she said, and waited.

Bill started up from his place in the rocker, but Kate signed him to be silent.

"Helen can tell me," she said coldly.

Helen, leaning against the table, glanced across at Bill. Her sister's att.i.tude troubled her. She felt the resentment underlying it. She was at a loss to understand it. After a moment's hesitation she began to explain. Nor could she quite keep the sharp edge of feeling out of her tone.

"It was my fault," she began. "At least, I s'pose it was. I s'pose I was doing a fool thing interfering, but I didn't just think you'd mind, seeing you'd ordered him to do work he hadn't done. You see, he hadn't touched those potatoes you'd told him to dig. He's been drinking instead."

Suddenly her sense of humor got the better of her resentful feelings, and she began to laugh.

"Well, I had to go and be severe with him. I tried to bully him, and stamped my foot at him, and--and called him a drunken brute. I took a chance. Being drunk, he might have proposed to me. Well, he didn't this time. It was far worse. He told me to go--to h.e.l.l, first of all.

But, as I didn't show signs of obeying him, he got sort of funny and tried to kiss me."

"The swine!" muttered Bill, but was silenced by a look from Helen's humorous eyes.

"That's what I thought--first," she said. Then, her eyes widening: "But he meant doing it, and I got scared to death. Oh, dear, I was frightened. Being a coward, I shouted for help. And Bill responded like--like a great angry steer. Then I got worse scared, for, directly Pete saw Bill coming, he pulled a gun, and there surely was murder in his eye."

She breathed a deep sigh, and her eyes had changed their expression to one of delight and pride.

"But he hadn't a dog's chance of putting Bill's lights out. He hadn't, true. Say, Kate, Bill was just like--like a whirlwind. Same as Charlie said. He was so quick I hardly know how it happened. Bill dropped Pete like a--a sack of wheat. He--he was on him like a tiger. Then I was just worse scared than ever, and--and began to cry."

The girl's mouth drooped, but her eyes were laughing. Then, as Kate still remained quiet, she inquired:

"Wasn't I a fool?"

Kate suddenly looked up from the brown study into which she had fallen. Her big eyes looked straight across at Bill, and she ignored Helen's final remark.

"Thanks, Bill," she said quietly. And her last suggestion of displeasure seemed to pa.s.s with her expression of grat.i.tude. "I'm glad you were here, and"--she smiled--"you can fight. You nearly killed him." Then, after a pause: "It's been a lesson to me. I--shan't forget it."

"What have you--done to him?" cried Helen suddenly.

But Kate shook her head.

"Let's talk of something else. There's things far more important than--him. Anyway, he won't do _that_ again."

She rose from her seat and moved to the window, where she stood looking out. But she had no interest in what she beheld. She was thinking moodily of other things.

Bill stirred in his chair. He was glad enough to put the episode behind him.

"Yes," he said, taking up Kate's remark at once. "There certainly are troubles enough to go around." He was thinking of his scene of the previous day with his brother. "But--but what's gone wrong with you, Kate? What are the more important things?"

"You haven't fallen out with Mrs. Day?" Helen put in quickly.

Kate shook her head.

"No one falls out with Mrs. Day," she said quietly. "Mrs. Day does the falling out. It isn't only Mrs. Day, it's--it's everybody. I think the whole village is--is mad." She turned back from the window and returned to her seat. But she did not sit down. She stood resting her folded arms on its back and leaned upon it. "They're all mad.

Everybody. I'm mad." She glanced from one to the other, smiling in the sanest fashion, but behind her smile was obvious anxiety and trouble.

"They've practically decided to cut down the old pine."

Bill sat up. He laughed at the tone of her announcement.

But Helen gasped.

"The old pine?" She had caught some of her sister's alarm.

Kate nodded.