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So the stream became a Rubicon to him, and on the other side he would leave behind him the name of Kenneth Thornton and take up the less damning one of Cal Maggard. He had the heels of his pursuers and, once across the state line, he would be beyond their grasp until the Sheriff's huntsmen had whistled in their pack and gone grumbling back to conform with the law's intricate requirements.
I sees thet ye led me inter ambush ... thet ye planted them peanut hulls.... Thet ye writ thet letter ... an' jest now ye stole hit outen my pocket." "Thet's a lie, too. I reckon yore head's done been crazed. I toted ye in hyar an' keered fer ye." "Ye aimed ter finish out yore alibi," persisted Maggard, disdainfully.
"Repeat these hyar words atter me ... 'I swa'rs, in ther sight an' hearin' of God Almighty...." and from there the words ran double, low voiced from two throats, "'thet till sich time as Cal Maggard kin walk abroad, full rekivered ... I won't make no effort ter harm ner discomfort him ... no wise, guise ner fashion.... Ef I breaks this pledge I prays God ter punish me ... with ruin an' death an' damnation in hell hyaratter!"
I misdoubts I wouldn't ... anyhow ... right from ther outset on you didn't hev ter be friendly ter me ... but ye was." "I loves fa'r mindedness," came the sanctimonious response. A brief pause ensued while Maggard rested. He had yet some way to go, and the last part of the conversation would be the hardest.
"I aims ter pin this hyar answer on ther door whar I found ther letter at," replied Maggard, crisply, "An' ef hit comes ter gun-battlin' in ther bresh I don't seek ter brag none but ye seed me shoot yestiddy." Rowlett took and slowly read the defiant response which the other had pencilled and a grim smile of approval came to his face: To whoever it consarns.
Maggard had hardly reached the house when, with all the passionate violence of the hills, the tempest broke. Safe inside, he talked and smoked with the patriarch and his thoughts wandered, as he sat there by the hearth, back to the room from which now and then drifted a fragment of plaintively crooning song.
Through the narrow slits of eyes that dissembled sleep Maggard watched, while Rowlett opened and recognized the threatening letter that had been nailed to the door. The purloiner nodded, and his lips twisted into a smile of triumph, as he thrust the sheet of paper into his own pocket.
Then as the crowd scattered along its several ways a handful of men delayed their departure, and when the place had otherwise emptied itself they led Cal Maggard to his front door where, without realization that they were selecting a spot of special significance, they halted under the nobly spread shade of the tree.
That night Maggard walked home with a chest rounded to the deep draughts of night air which he was drinking, and a heady elation in the currents of his veins. She had slipped in and out of the room as he had talked with the patriarch, after supper, flitting like some illusive shadow of shyness. He had had hardly a score of words with her, but the future would plentifully mend that famine.
With Caleb dead an' gone, no man kin handily foretell what ther Thorntons aims ter do an' without we knows we kain't breathe free." "Why does ye come ter me?" "Because folks tells hit thet ther old man named ye ter stand in his stead an' ef ye does thet we hev need ter put some questions up ter ye." "I hain't said I sought no leadership but speak right out fer yoreselves," invited Maggard.
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