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"Ride by thar, men, and git yo' guns; an' I reckon," he suggested casually but convincingly, "when you pick 'em up you better not EVEN LOOK BACK NARY ONE O' YE." "Can you beat it?" murmured the quiet man, while the other snarled helplessly. "An' when you git down to town you can tell the sheriff. He's a Honeycutt, an' he won't come atter me, but I'll go down thar to him an' pay my leetle fine."
"And, after all, one man's bane is another man's bread, you know. Now I've told you my tale, let's have yours. You saw Honeycutt; could you get anything out of him?" "Only this, that you are dead right about his knowing or thinking that he knows. He is feebler than he was last fall, a great deal feebler both in body and mind.
Honeycutt all the time was whining like a feeble spirit in pain, his utterances like the final dwindlings of a mean-spirited dog. King had never heard him whine like that; Honeycutt was more given to chucklings and clackings of defiance and derision. Perhaps Brodie as the ultimate argument had manhandled him. King threw open the door.
Not even for a shotgun at his head!" "Brodie hasn't gone far. He'll come back. You have your last chance to talk business with me, Honeycutt. Brodie will get it next time." "Ho! Will he? Not where I'm goin' to hide it, Mark King. I got another place; a better place; a place the old hell-sarpint himself couldn't find." King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box.
On the other side, too, a similar branch ran down into another creek which looped around the long slanting side of the spur and emptied, too, into the Cumberland. At the mouth of each creek the river made a great bend, and in the sweep of each were rich bottom lands. A century before, a Hawn had settled in one bottom, the lower one, and a Honeycutt in the other.
He had worked as teamster and had bought and sold anything to anybody right and left. Resolutely he had kept himself from all part in the feud his kinship with the Hawns protecting him on one side and the many trades with old Aaron Honeycutt in cattle and lands saving him from trouble on the other.
Honeycutt cackled and rubbed his hands at the admission. "But I'm going to find out. So, probably, is Brodie. Now, look here, Honeycutt; I haven't come to browbeat you as Brodie did. I am for making you a straight business proposition. If you know anything, I stand ready to buy your knowledge. In cold, hard cash." "No man ain't got the money not enough not any Morgan or Rock'feller "
It seemed, as he learned a few minutes later, that both factions were in town for the meeting between Aaron and him, and later still he learned that young Honeycutt loped into town after Jason had started up the river and was much badgered about his late arrival.
When they entered town there were Hawns in front of one store and one hotel on one side of the street. There were Honeycutts in front of one store and one hotel on the other side, and Jason saw the lowering face of little Aaron, and towering in one group the huge frame of Babe Honeycutt.
"If you mean anything by that," shouted Brodie threateningly, "put a name to it." "If it's a fight you want," said King sharply, "I'm ready to take you on, any time, and without a lot of palaver." Old Honeycutt began sidling off toward the back door, neither of his two visitors noticing him now as their eyes clashed. "What I come for I'm going to have," announced Brodie.
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