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"It wasn't cards the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the quarrel." A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door again. "But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear "
Just so had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along these mountains; but this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with none of the joy of the sport which had been his since a lad; only the malice of the avenger. The lust of a mountain feud was on him; he was pursuing the price of blood. At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail.
Sinnet's face was toward the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He took the pipe from his mouth slowly. "I can hear it now," he answered, slowly. "I hear it often, Buck."
"It wasn't cards the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the quarrel." A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door again.
Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster snatch at a great clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a grip like a vice. "Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone mad, and did not grasp the meaning of the words.
At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and an instant after the knife went home. Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "Greevy didn't kill him; I killed him!"
It's broke her heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't stand it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone you hear me, let up!" He stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the mountaineer was to take aim. There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face.
His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back into the room. "What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of that gal. What's she to me?" "Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her." The mountaineer stood like one petrified. "What's that what's that you say? It's a damn lie!"
For a half mile they hastened on, and now and then Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked up the valley, to keep Greevy and his bois brulees in his eye.
Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes South to spend the winter with his girl Em'ly."
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