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And so the two factions went armed, watchful and wary especially the Falins, who were lying low and waiting to fulfil a deadly purpose of their own. They well knew that old Judd would not open hostilities on them until Rufe Tolliver was dead or at liberty.
"An' he kept the Falins from killin' you," she said, quivering with indignation at the shame of him, but Dave went on unheeding: "You pore little fool! Do ye reckon as how he's EVER goin' to axe ye to marry him? Whut's he sendin' you away fer? Because you hain't good enough fer him! Whar's yo' pride? You hain't good enough fer him," he repeated scathingly. June had grown calm now.
"Well, they hain't closed all the trades yit," he said, "an' they mought not go mebbe afore spring. The Falins say they air done now. Uncle Judd don't believe 'em, but I do, an' I'm thinkin' I won't go. I've got a leetle money, an' I want to know if I can't buy back Uncle Judd's house an' a leetle ground around it.
That afternoon one of the Falins, who had grown bolder, and in twos and threes were always at the trial, shot at a Tolliver on the edge of town and there was an immediate turmoil between the factions that the Red Fox had been waiting for and that suited his dark purposes well.
He saw it and he let it lie. Meanwhile, rumours were brought in that the Falins were coming over from Kentucky to wipe out the Guard, and so straight were they sometimes that the Guard was kept perpetually on watch. Once while the members were at target practice, the shout arose: "The Kentuckians are coming! The Kentuckians are coming!"
I saw him talking to one of the Falins in town to-day, behind the barn, when I went to get my horse." "You seed him a-talkin' to a Falin AFORE the trouble come up?" the girl asked slowly and with such significance that Hale turned to look at her. He felt straightway that he ought not to have said that, and the day was to come when he would remember it to his cost.
There was a movement among the Falins and Devil Judd caught up his other pistol and with a grim smile got ready. Young Buck had turned to his crowd: "Men," he said, "you know I never back down" Devil Judd knew that, too, and he was amazed by the words that followed-"an' if you say so, we'll have him or die; but we ain't in our own state now.
For a moment old Judd's eyes swept the windows and port-holes of the Court House, the windows of the jailer's house, the line of guards about the jail, and then they dropped to the line of Falins and glared with contemptuous hate into the leaping blue eyes of old Buck Falin, and for that moment there was silence.
The big gate opened just then and out came Hale and the sergeant, and between them young Dave his eyes blinking in the sunlight. "Damn ye," he heard Dave say to Hale. "I'll get even with you fer this some day" and then the prisoner's eyes caught the horses and shotguns and turned to the group of Falins and he shrank back utterly dazed.
His lips kept closed and his bright black eyes were studying the situation; the little squad of youngsters, back to back, with their repeating shot-guns, the line of Falins along the wall toward whom protruded six shining barrels, the huddled crowd of Tollivers toward whom protruded six more old Judd towering in front with young Dave on one side, tense as a leopard about to spring, and on the other Bub, with tears streaming down his face.
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