"Put 'em in yo' pockets."
They did.
"Drap!" All dropped and, with those two, all put up their guns--
each man, however, watching now the man who had just been covering
him. It is not wise for the stranger to show too much interest in
the personal affairs of mountain men, and Hale left the judge
berating them and went to the hotel to get ready for the Gap,
little dreaming how fixed the faces of some of those men were in
his brain and how, later, they were to rise in his memory again.
His horse was lame--but he must go on: so he hired a "yaller" mule
from the landlord, and when the beast was brought around, he
overheard two men talking at the end of the porch.
"You don't mean to say they've made peace?"
"Yes, Rufe's going away agin and they shuk hands--all of 'em." The
other laughed.
"Rufe ain't gone yit!"
The Cumberland River was rain-swollen. The home-going people were
helping each other across it and, as Hale approached the ford of a
creek half a mile beyond the river, a black-haired girl was
standing on a boulder looking helplessly at the yellow water, and
two boys were on the ground below her.
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