For a little space the two men looked at each other, the Deacon to outward seeming with the casual interest of a chance meeting, and the boy with a lowering truculence which augured trouble.

The little mud-butterflies alighted again at the edge of the puddle, and the squirrel whisked himself away.

Back on the hillsides the white elder blossoms and pink-hearted laurel cups nodded in the sleepy languor of a summer afternoon. In the overhead blue a buzzard drifted on tilting wings.

"You're right far off your beat, ain't you, son?" suggested Black Pete at length.

The sullen visage did not alter or brighten.

"I hain't none too fur off," was the surly response. "I reckon I knows what I'm a-doin'."

The Deacon nodded. He had been thankful for the momentary silence which had afforded him an interval for fast and very necessary thinking, and he had made use of the opportunity. Straight as a crow flies, Newt Spooner was making his way across crest and cove and gulch to the house of the man he had "marked down." He had been home three weeks now, and his lungs had drunk in the splendid mountain air and the elixir had begun to heal the soreness of his chest. The pallor had left his face and the native brown had come again to his skin. Newt Spooner was tough-fibered, and his recovery, as any eye could see, would now be speedy and complete. Also, he had practised with his rifle until he no longer doubted his ability to handle it, and he was going on this tuneful and gracious day at the end of June to carry out his unalterable purpose. All this the Deacon read from his eyes and from the circumstances of the meeting. The Deacon had gone to the Falkins house unarmed, as his pose of peace-advocate required, and the boy standing in the road before him had shifted the rifle with a rather marked emphasis of gesture, so that now it was cradled on his elbow, and his right hand was almost caressingly toying with the lock. This time he could command the situation, and his face said that he meant to do it.

"I reckon I know what you are aimin' to do, son," suggested the older man as he swung one leg over the pommel, and sat sidewise, looking down.

The boy's eyes flashed.

"Hit hain't whut I'm aimin' ter do," he declared. "Hit's whut I'm dead shore a-goin' ter do."

"It comes to the same thing," agreed Pete imperturbably. "When a feller like you an' me has got his mind made up to a thing, there ain't much difference between aimin' an' doin'."

Suddenly it occurred to the boy that the presence of the Deacon over here was in itself worthy of explanation.

"Whut air ye a-doin' hyar?" he snapped out.

"I've just been over to Old Mack's house," replied the other frankly, and he saw the boy's attitude stiffen from head to foot at the name. His shoulders grew rigid and his eyes snapped. The rifle came half-way up, and the rifle-bearer came a step forward.

"Ye didn't carry no warnin' over thar, did ye?" The question was a snarling whisper.

Black Pete laughed. It was a thing so rare for him to laugh that the boy was surprised, but at once he grew thoughtfully, even sadly grave again.

"Son," he reproached, "when we told you down in Winchester what we aimed to do, an' you turned us down, did I act like I was afraid of your warnin' anybody? Moreover, didn't I promise you that I'd help you in this business?"

"I don't need no holpin'," declared the boy vehemently; "all I asts is ter be let alone."

"All right." The Deacon swung his dangling foot back to the stirrup. "I was just goin' to name it to you that Henry Falkins ain't there. If you're set on walkin' these three miles more for nothin' and then walkin' 'em back again, go right ahead. There'll be half-a-dozen Falkinses to see you and spread the news that you've been skulkin' round the place. You'll give the whole business away without findin' your man. If that's the way you want to play your game, go ahead."

The boy gazed at his informant with disappointed eyes, and the Deacon gazed back steadily.

"Air ye plumb shore thet he hain't thar? He was thar day before yestiddy. I knows thet fer shore." The boy spoke eagerly, but the more wily schemer shook his head with positiveness.

"He left this mornin' for Winchester. Seems he's got a girl in Winchester. Ef you're inclined, you can get up behind me, an' I'll give you a lift as far as I go."

Newt believed this story, but it only fired his wrath, and his voice was sour, as he put his next question:

"Whut in hell wus you a-doin' over thar at McAllister Falkins' house?"

It was naturally no part of the Deacon's program to tell that. His mind was even now working rapidly in the effort to devise some permanent means of curbing Newt's sinister activities. The present device of falsification was merely a play for time and would serve a very transitory purpose.

"Oh," he said casually, "I don't mind tellin' you, but I wouldn't like it to get round much, son. I was pullin' the wool over their eyes, an' tryin' to help out those boys that shot Jake Falerin."

But, if Black Pete Spooner could have looked far enough into the future, he would have allowed his lawless cousin to go his way and satisfy his vengeance, and would have taken his own chance on escape.

The two rode on together, up steep ascents and down into fragrant gorges where the waters whispered and the dampness of fern and moss lay between dripping bowlders. They went through densely tangled trails where the incense of the elder and catalpa was heavy to the nostrils, and climbed over steep and precipitous heights, and to neither came a throb of enthusiasm for the profligate beauty of the vistas.

"Clem's gal" had gone back to school some time ago, and it was only on vacations and Saturdays that she returned to the cabin on Troublesome.

But this afternoon, when Newt trudged in from his futile expedition across the hills, he saw her crossing the yard in the gathering twilight, and this time the boy did not growl in his throat like a quarrelsome dog at the sight of her. He would not admit to himself that he liked her, but he disliked her less than the others. She was too much like a "furriner" to please him, and too quiet. There was no element in his creed of intolerance, which could understand her gentleness. It was sheer weakness, yet in that very weakness was an appeal to something in himself, which he did not seek to analyze. At all events, "Clem's gal" in a way interested him. She was young and lithe and strong; stronger than the women whom she permitted to badger her with incessant shrewishness. Also, she must be "smarter" than they, for she had been away to school. This fondness for "larnin'" in itself indicated a reprehensible spirit of acceptance for the "stuck-up" ideas of the outer world. But for that she had some excuse. Her shiftless father, for whom the boy entertained a deep contempt, had humored his daughter's ambitions so that she might in the end secure her teacher's certificate and contribute to his support. It was not an unselfish motive, but the girl, eager for education, had not questioned motives.

When Lucinda Merton had taken Newt in her buggy on the outskirts of Winchester, a vague sense of sunshine had struck through the fog of his friendlessness, and he had, for the first time, a conception of feminine graciousness. In his brief talks with Minerva the same incomprehensible thing occurred. Some unaccountable glow of sympathy awoke in him, and he felt that he need not be on the defensive, alert for treachery and enmity.

When she went away, a sort of dull loneliness settled over him, and when she came back, an unacknowledged pleasure stole into his heart.

After the supper things were put away Newt went sulkily out of the cabin and took himself to the quiet of the creek-bank, some distance away. There was no moon, and in the starlight the mountains loomed very dark and somber against the steely night sky. The trees were unstirring and no wind moved even in their uppermost fronds. The boy sat hunched at the top of the bank with his face in his two hands and his elbows on his knees. At last, he reached into his pocket for his pipe and a few crumbs of tobacco. In the spurt of the match, his features were for an instant lighted, and Minerva, who also had slipped out of the crowded cabin for the peace of the open air and the stars, saw in the momentary illumination that it was a face very black and brooding and unhappy. She, too, was unhappy. She was thinking how at this hour back there in the school, the little family of teachers and such pupils as had not had to come away would be sitting on the latticed porch, looking off over the campus. Later on, in the comfortable library, the man who guided the institution with a sure and sympathetic wisdom would be reading to them under the shaded lamp, giving them wonderful glimpses of another world through the windows of books. Reflecting on these things, the girl had strayed farther away from the house than she had expected, and had come upon Newt, brooding in solitary wretchedness over the day's failure.

"Newt," she said shyly, when she came up to him, "ye looks like as ef somethin' was a-botherin' ye. Is anything wrong?"

The boy turned his head slowly, then shook it in silence.

"Nothin' to tell a gal," he answered.

In the darkness he was a black silhouette except that as he drew deep puffs the pipe-bowl reddened and gave momentary outline to his tight jaws and scowling mouth.

They sat together without talk for a time. Once a small owl flapped to a branch overhead and sent its mournful quaver out across the night. After awhile the boy groped around for a stick, and, rising with a sudden angry oath, hurled it viciously at the bird.

"Damn thet owl," he complained. "Hit worrits me."

"Newt—" the girl's voice was softly reproachful—"why did you drive it away? It wasn't hurtin' anything."

"Hit warn't a-fotchin' joy ter nobody," he sullenly rejoined. "I hain't a-feelin' in no fit humor ter be pestered."

Once more she inquired:

"Is anything the matter?"

He rose, and his voice broke out passionately.

"Every man's hand is sot ergin me—but hit hain't no use. I 'lows ter accomplish my task, ef I has ter go through hell on hossback ter do hit!"

She did not know, or vaguely suspect, that the thing he "'lowed" to do was to kill the man whom she had set high on the pedestal of her hero-worship; that his avowal was the avowal of the vendetta's lust for blood. She saw only his isolation and need of friendliness. She did not know that in letting himself out in even that small measure of confidence, he was paying tribute to her increasing importance in his life. She knew only that her sympathy was stirred and that an affection such as she might have felt for some unlovely dog, starving for affection, made her want to befriend him.

"My hand ain't against you," she assured him, and, as the pipe glowed with a long, half-fierce inhalation, she saw his eyes on her face with a dumb, half-worshiping expression, for which his lips found no utterance. But all the man said was:

"I'm obleeged ter ye," and after that they sat for an hour in silences rarely broken with a disconnected conversation. It was the conversation of two very lonely people groping for companionship, but one was very shy and the other was fettered with a taciturnity too strong to break, so the groping brought little more than an incoherent sympathy.

Neither of them heard the footfalls of a horse on the sandy road above them, and neither of them knew that Black Pete Spooner went into the cabin and spent a half-hour there. His coming was at once a surprise and an event, for the people in that house had not heard that he had reappeared in the hills, and they knew that where he went trouble went with him.

"Where's little Newt?" he inquired, peering about the dark corners of the room.

"He's done went out somewhars," replied his mother. "When did ye git hyar, Pete? I heered tell that ye had gone off to some place the other side of the world."

"Didn't Newt tell you I was back?"

"Newt don't never tell us nothin'," complained Clem.

The Deacon nodded. Then he drew Clem aside.

"Do you know what little Newt aims to do?" he accusingly demanded.

Clem shook his head, and his bearded face mirrored anxiety.

"I done told ye he don't never tell us nothin'."

"Well, he's aimin' to kill Henry Falkins, an' if he does it, there's goin' ter be merry hell to pay in these mountains. You've got to keep an eye on him."

"My God!" exclaimed the step-father in genuine fright and perplexity. "What kin I do? He don't pay no mind to me—none whatsoever. Thet boy's a rattle-snake in human form."

The Deacon looked the other contemptuously up and down.

"No, he ain't," was the prompt retort. "A rattle-snake gives warnin', Newt don't. I'm havin' him watched pretty close. I don't want him hurt, but he mustn't kill Henry. Don't tell him I've been here, but if he starts over towards the Falkins place, send word to Jim Spooner's cabin. Jim will go up to the ridge an' blow his fox horn, an' they'll pass it along. Try to keep him home from Jackson Saturday, but if he does go, send word to Jim when he's started, and we'll take care of him when he gets there." The Deacon turned and disappeared through the door. He had several other houses to visit, and he had selected the night because in its darkness he could give his movements a highly beneficial secrecy.

But, on the following day, Newt met an acquaintance on a hill-trail, who stopped him for conversation and planted seeds of suspicion in his mind. He spoke of a rumor traveling from cabin to cabin to the effect that the Deacon had returned to the hills to act as a pacificator, instead of a leader of war.

Newt said nothing and contented himself with listening, but deep in his suspicious nature uneasy doubts began to stir. A peace might be welcomed by his people, but to him it threatened the paralyzing of his trigger-finger. Possibly the wily Deacon had lied to him and turned him back for some deeper reason than merely to save him the remainder of a profitless journey.

So Newton Spooner, as soon as he had the opportunity, began strolling from cabin to cabin along the way toward the Falkins house once more. He heard, but did not know the significance of the fox horns that carried clearly from ridge to ridge, and when he had reached the wayside store of Sam Hoover, standing on a sandy stretch in the crotch of two creeks, he instituted active inquiries.