"And this," she told herself, "is the way the missing peddler and the one-armed fiddler have gone. Being wanderers by profession, they have gone through this pa.s.s and never been seen again by the people at the mouth of Laurel Branch.

"And that," she exclaimed, quite overcome by the thought, "that means that these people at the head of Laurel Branch are honest folks. They are not robbers and murderers. I had hoped it might be so. It did not seem possible that old Job could sit there by the fire, spelling out the words of his Bible, then lay the grand old Book aside to go out robbing and killing."

Then the girl did a strange thing. Relighting her candle, she picked her way over the rocks back to the entrance to the tunnel, then slowly, with thoughtful mind and careful tread, began ascending the stone stairway.

She was going back.

In the meantime, down at the mouth of Laurel Branch, in the heart of the laurel thicket, the low murmur of voices increased in volume. They were coming-the clan was gathering. Gaunt old men with white beards were there, men who had fought in the Civil War; middle-aged men who had packed a gun in the Anson-Rankin feud of twenty years before; and beardless boys who had never fired a shot except at squirrel or possum.

One name was on every tongue, that of Florence Ormsby.

As for Florence, while the night shadows darkened she was making her way down the mountain trail, back to the cabin of old Job, the one-armed giant.

Once there, she threw off her hat and coat and drew up a chair to the fire.

"Et?" the giant asked from his corner.

The girl shook her head.

"Want a snack?"

Another shake, then again silence.

For a long while the nickel alarm clock above the mantel raced against time and its constant tick-tick was the only sound that disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness.

At last the aged giant cleared his throat with surprising difficulty, then spoke:

"I reckon it peers plumb quare to you all that we all stay up here in these here mountains this away?"

Florence did not answer. She merely bent forward with an air of great expectancy on her face.

"Hit might be quare. Then again it mightn't. Listen, Miss, hit's like this."

Then for fifteen minutes, in his inimitable mountain dialect and drawl, the old man poured into her eager ears a story of such bitter battling for life, such a tale of feud fighting, as she had never before dreamed of hearing from human lips.

There were tales of stalwart men shot down on their very doorsteps, of battles in the night, of men carried from their homes to be seen no more.

All this had happened somewhere in the mountains, back of Big Black Mountain, beyond Poor Fork, over Pine Mountain, then back and still back.

When there remained but a remnant of what had once been a powerful family, the old giant, having heard of this vacant land at the head of Laurel Branch, had at last persuaded his followers to come here to live.

And that there might be no more battles and bloodshed, they had shut themselves completely out from other people of the mountains. Only by a secret pa.s.sage had they come and gone, to trade and barter in the valley below.

How strange life is! Even as this old man was telling of their long search for peace and how at last they had found it, forty men and boys, grim, determined mountain folks with rifles in hand, were marching upon the stone gateway which had heretofore held them back. It was Ransom Turner's clan.

"And what's this I hearn tell about?" the old giant exclaimed in a rumbling tone of anger. "What about them sorry people at the mouth of the crick takin' you up fer gun totin'?"

Florence started. So intense had been her interest in the story that she had quite forgotten her own troubles.

"They-they're to try me to-morrow," she faltered.

"Fer gun totin'?"

"Yes."

"A woman? Fer gun totin'!" he mused. "Mounting folks have come tew that!

"And this 'lection, this school 'lection," he rumbled with a sudden change of subject. "How do you reckon about that?"

"That is to-morrow, too, and it's lost."

"So I hearn tell," the old man mused. "So I hearn tell. But you can't always reckon right about these here things, kin you?"

There was almost jocular freedom in the old man's tones, something quite different from his Moses-like dignity of other times.

Again his tone changed. It was tender now.

"You've been mighty nice and a right smart help to us with little Hallie.

I reckon she's might nigh well now. I reckon as how you might-"

The old man paused as if reluctant to say the words that had forced their way to his lips. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he fumbled about in the corner for a poker. Having found it, he gave the fire such a jabbing as sent the sparks dancing by thousands up the chimney.

There were watchers who saw those sparks soaring skyward and wondered at them-forty watchers, the men of Ransom Turner's clan.

At that very moment, too, the guard behind the stone gateway, catching the shuffle of feet behind the thicket of paw-paws that grew just outside the gate, caught his breath hard and, shifting his rifle to the other arm, dropped back into the deeper shadows.

"As I was about to remark," the old man turned to Florence with a look of resolution on his face, "'t'ain't no mite o' sense in keepin' you here, not narry 'nother minute. There's little Hallie, she's might nigh well.

There's that sorry trial to-morrow, an' that 'lection. They'll be ailing fer you down there at the mouth of the creek, plumb ailin', so it's fittin' that you'd go. You tell Zeb Howard down thar by the gate that I sent you, and I reckon he'll let you by."

Florence caught her breath. She had heard the old man's story. She was free. She might go. For a moment, as a wild bird, made captive for a day and then set free hesitates before his first free flight, she sat there in silence. Then, as if impelled by the sense of impending peril and a great need, she rose and hurried away.

Need enough there was, too. Her fleet feet could not cover that distance too quickly, for at that moment hot words were pa.s.sing thick and fast before the stone gateway.

As she paused in her sudden flight she caught the sound of these angry voices. At first indistinct, then growing louder as she rounded a curve, she caught fragments of sentences:

"Narry a step."-"Hit are!"-"Hit are not!"-"Drop down the barrel of that ar gun!"-"Hit's plumb unnatural!"

Then, having caught a hint of the meaning of it all, she paused to strain her ears to catch the lowest word. At that moment there came the ominous click of a cartridge being thrown into its place in a rifle barrel. This sound came from within the gate.

"The guard," she whispered.

"I tell you all plain," there came from the same spot a second later, "we all don't mean you all narry bit of harm. You all go on back down that crick. The land down thar belongs to you all. Up here it's ourn. Don't let's have any trouble."

"'An' I'm tellin' you, stranger," came in an equally insistent voice, "we all are goin' through. You are got someone up that we want and are goin'

to git!"

"Hain't narry one up yonder that's not aimin' to stay."

"Come on, boys!" Florence caught these words spoken in low tones by a voice that sounded familiar. The voice was terrifying in its seriousness.