Hale answered so shortly that the girl thought there was going to
be a fight, and she was on the point of slipping from the mule.
"Sit still," said Hale, quietly. "There's not going to be a fight
so long as you are here."
"Thar hain't!" said one of the men. "Well"--then he looked sharply
at the girl and turned his horse--"Come on, Bill--that's ole Dave
Tolliver's gal." The girl's face was on fire.
"Them mean Falins!" she said contemptuously, and somehow the mere
fact that Hale had been even for the moment antagonistic to the
other faction seemed to put him in the girl's mind at once on her
side, and straightway she talked freely of the feud. Devil Judd
had taken no active part in it for a long time, she said, except
to keep it down--especially since he and her father had had a
"fallin' out" and the two families did not visit much--though she
and her cousin June sometimes spent the night with each other.
"You won't be able to git over thar till long atter dark," she
said, and she caught her breath so suddenly and so sharply that
Hale turned to see what the matter was. She searched his face with
her black eyes, which were like June's without the depths of
June's.
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