In business matters they had been co-workers, intimate on the level of partnership, with the grandfather asking for and obeying the suggestions the grandson made. On a sudden Harlan felt that he hardly knew this old man, who had shown himself contemptuous, harsh, and domineering. And then he thought of the girl who had been so grievously insulted in his presence, and he rode to find her.

His way took him across the long bridge that spanned the river. The river marked the boundary-line of his country. After that day's taste of the politics of his native land he felt a queer sense of relief when he found himself on foreign soil.

Beyond the little church and its burying-ground, with the tall cross in its centre, the road led up the river hill to the edge of the forest.

Here was set Dennis Kavanagh's house, its back to the black growth, staring sullenly with its little windows out across the cleared farms of the river valley.

To one who knew Kavanagh it seemed to typify his att.i.tude toward the world. He had seen other men clutching and grabbing. He had clutched and grabbed with the best of them. When one deals with squatter claims, tax t.i.tles, forgotten land grants and other complications that tie up the public domain, it often happens that the man who waits for the right to prevail finds the more unscrupulous and impetuous rival in possession, and claiming rather more than the allowed nine points at that. So Dennis Kavanagh had played the game as the others had played it. When one looked up at the house, with its back against the woods, staring with its surly window-eyes, one saw the resoluteness of the intrenched Kavanagh put into visible form.

The dogs came racing to meet Harlan. They knew him as their mistress's friend.

She was sitting on the broad porch-rail when he rode up, and he swung his horse close and patted her cheek as one greets a child. She smiled wistfully at him.

"Am I impudent, and all the things your grandfather said? I've been thinking it all over, Big Boy, as I was riding home."

"You're only a little girl, and he talked to you as he'd talk to one of our lumber-jacks," he burst out, angrily. "It was shameful, Clare. I never saw my grandfather as he was to-day. He has used me just as shamefully."

"I suppose I haven't had the bringing up a girl ought to have," she confessed. "I haven't thought much about it before. There was nothing ever happened to make me think about it. I was just Dennis Kavanagh's girl, without any mother to tell me better. I suppose it has been wrong for me to ride about with you. But you didn't have any mother and I didn't have any mother, and it--it sort of seemed to make us--I don't know how to say it, Big Boy! But it seemed to make us related--just as though I had a brother to keep me company. I suppose it has been wrong when you look at it the way girls have to look at such things."

He gazed on her compa.s.sionately. A few ruthless words had broken the spell of childhood.

There was shame in her eyes as she gazed up at him. He had seen the flush of youth and joy in her cheeks before--he had seen the happy color come and go as they had met and parted. But this hue that crept up over cheeks and brow made pity grow in him.

"He said--but you know what he said! And it isn't true. You know it isn't true. He shamed and insulted me because I'm a girl--and can't a girl have a friend that's tender and good to her?"

"A girl can," he said, gravely, "because I'm that friend, Clare. Perhaps my grandfather cannot understand. But I'll see that he does. We are to have some very serious talk together, he and I. I'm here to tell you, little girl, that I'm grateful because you sent that message into the woods to me. I'm not going to allow myself to be made a fool of in any such fashion; I'm not going to be sent to the legislature."

"Oh, I've been thinking--thinking how it sounded--all that I said," she mourned. "It all came to me as I was riding home--after what your grandfather said. I didn't realize what kind of a girl I must seem to folks that didn't know. But you know. It sounded as though I was claiming you for myself, when I didn't want you to go away. I'm ashamed--ashamed!" She averted her eyes from him. The crimson in her cheeks was deeper. It was a vandal hand that had wrecked the little shrine of her childhood. His indignation against Thelismer Thornton blazed higher.

But Dennis Kavanagh knew how to be even more brutal, for that was Dennis Kavanagh's style of attack. He came out upon the porch, a broad, stocky chunk of a man, with eyebrows sticking up like the horns on a snail, and the eyes beneath them keen with humor of the grim and pitiless sort.

"And how do you do to-day, Harlan Thornton?" he asked. "And how is that old gorilla of a grandfather of yours? Though you needn't tell me, for I don't want to know--not unless you can lighten me up a bit by telling me that he's enjoying his last sickness. But right now while I think of it, I have something to say to you, young Thornton, sir."

The young man stared hard at him. It was an unwonted tone for Kavanagh to employ. Clare's father, till now, had not included Harlan in his feud with the grandfather. He had always treated him with a brusqueness that had a sort of good-humor beneath it. His discourse with the young man had been curt and satiric and infrequent, and consisted usually in mock messages of defiance which he asked to have delivered by word of mouth to the grandfather. But his tone now was crisp and it had a straight business ring.

"My girl will be sixteen to-morrow. She is done with childhood to-day.

Children may ride c.o.c.k-horse and play ring-around-a-rosy. I haven't drawn any particular line on playfellows up to now. But there isn't going to be any playing at love, sir."

"I never have played at love with your daughter!" cried Harlan, shocked and indignant at this sudden attack.

"Well, I'm fixing it so you won't. We won't argue about what has happened, nor we won't discuss what might happen. All is, I don't propose to have any grandson of old Thornton mixed up in my family. I don't like the breed. You take that word back to him. I hear he's been making talk. He made some talk to-day. You needn't look at Clare, young man. She didn't tell me. But it came across to me mighty sudden. Others heard, too. What I ought to do is go over there and stripe his old Yankee hide with a horsewhip. But you tell him for me that that would be taking too much stock in anything that a politician in your politics-ridden States could say. That's all. You've got it, blunt and straight. And, by-the-way, I understand he's making a politician out of you, too, to-day? I'm taking this thing just in time!"

The young man and the girl looked at each other. It was a pitiful, appealing glance that they exchanged. Shame surged in both of them. In that gaze, also, was mutual apology for the ruthless ones who had dealt such insult that day in their hearing; there was hopelessness that any words from them to each other, just then, could help the situation. And in that gaze, too, there was proud denial, from one to the other, that anything except friendship, the true, honest comradeship of youth, had drawn them together.

Kavanagh eyed them with grim relish. The thought that he was harrying one of the Thorntons overbore any consideration he felt for his daughter, even if he stopped to think that her affection was anything except the silliness of childhood.

"Politics seems to be a good side-line for the Thornton family,"

Kavanagh remarked, maliciously. "If you can start where your grandfather is leaving off, you ought to be something big over in your country before you die!"

"I'm not interested in politics, Mr. Kavanagh, nor in my grandfather's quarrels with you."

"I am, though! Interested enough to advise you to keep to your own side of that river!"

"I'll admit that you have the right to advise your daughter about the friends she makes. But I don't grant you the privilege of insulting me before her face and eyes by putting wrong constructions on our friendship."

"Meaning that you're going to keep up this dilly-dally business whether I allow you to or not?"

It was a cruel question at that moment. The girl was looking at him with her heart in her eyes. He had understood her pledge of loyalty given a moment before. Youth is not philosophic. She would misunderstand anything except loyalty in return.

"Going to court my daughter, are you, according to the Thornton style of grabbing anything in sight that they want?"

"Say, look here, Mr. Kavanagh," declared the young man, hotly, "I'm not going to answer any such questions. But I'm going to tell you something, and I'm going to tell it to you straight and right here where your daughter can hear me. I'm not the kind that goes around making love to any father's daughter behind his back. I've never made love to your daughter. Why, man she's only a child! And don't you give me any more sneers about it. That's man to man--understand? And I'm not going to let you nor my grandfather or any one else break up the innocent friendship between my little playmate here and myself. Now I hope you'll take that in the way I mean it. If you don't, it's your fault." He had spoken to answer the appeal in her eyes.

He had backed his horse away so that he could face Kavanagh on the steps of the porch. The girl leaped down from the rail, her face alight, and ran to him and patted his hand.

"By Saint Mike, do you think you'll tell me how to run my house?"

demanded Kavanagh. He came down the steps. "I'll build a coffin for you and a cage for her before that!"

"You stay where you are, father!" She faced him with spirit. "You have insulted me worse than you've insulted Harlan. You needn't worry about my going behind your back to make love to any one. But you shall not break up the dearest friendship I ever had."

This was the Clare Kavanagh who had bearded even Thelismer Thornton that day--the imperious young beauty that the country-side knew. Her father had often tested that spirit before, and had allowed her to dominate, secretly proud that she was truly his own in violence of temper and in determination to have her own way. But just now he was lacking that tolerantly humorous mood which usually gave in to her.

"To the devil with your fiddle-de-dee friendship!" he shouted. "You're sixteen, you young Jezebel; and you--you're old enough to know better, Thornton. I know what it's leading to, and it ain't going further. I'll not stand here and argue with you. But if you come meddling in my family after what I've said, you'll get hurt, young man."

"That's right--we won't argue the question," Thornton retorted. "There's nothing to argue. You know where I stand in the matter, little girl.

That's all there is to it, so far as we're concerned. I'm going now. I think I'm ready for that talk with my grandfather."

He took leave of her with a frank handclasp. Kavanagh glowered, but did not comment.

When Harlan whirled his horse he saw the conflagration on the Jo Quacca hills.

He gasped something like an oath. "There goes the slash on our operation!" he said, aloud.

"Your grandfather must have got you into politics in good shape by this time," observed Kavanagh, sarcastically. "At any rate, he seems to be celebrating with a good big bonfire."

At that moment the three of them beheld the farm buildings burst into flame.

"Offering up sacrifices, too!" commented the satirist. "Seems to me, Thornton, you ought to be there. They'll be calling for three cheers and a speech!"

In one heartsick moment Thornton realized that this raging fire had something to do with the political affairs of that day. He had seen "Whispering" Urban Cobb at "The Barracks" in the forenoon, and knew that he had led away a crowd of woodsmen for some purpose of his own. Just what a dangerous conflagration on the Jo Quacca hills could accomplish in relation to that caucus, Harlan did not stop to ponder. He could see that a fire was rioting over his lands, and destroying the property of others. His horse had already begun to leap for the highway, but the girl cried after him so beseechingly that he reined the animal back.

"Just one moment, Harlan! A little instant! I haven't unsaddled Zero yet. Wait!" She whistled, and the horse came cantering. The hounds, seeing him, leaped and gave tongue understandingly. "I'm going with you," she declared, swinging to her saddle.

Her father came down off the steps, running at her. "No, you're not, you wild banshee. What did I just tell you?"

"You told me that children may ride c.o.c.k-horse--and I'm not sixteen till to-morrow!" she cried, jumping her horse just as her father's clutching fingers touched his bridle. She was out in the road before Harlan's horse had picked up his heels. She swung her little whip above her head.

"Come on, Big Boy!" she urged at the top of her voice, crying above the clamor of the racing dogs. "We're playfellows to-day, and I can't fall in love till to-morrow!" The last words she lilted mockingly, flashing a look backward at Dennis Kavanagh.

The old man did not shift his att.i.tude, fingers curved to clutch, arms extended, until he heard the tattoo of their horses' hoofs on the long bridge.