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"Te-he!" chuckled Simeon Cantrell the elder, pursing his lips around the stem of his corn-cob pipe; "looks like Tom-Jeff was goin' to house-keepin' right late in the evenin'." "By gol, I wonder what's doin'?" said another. "Reckon he's done tuk up with Nan Bryerson, afte' all's been said an' done?"
"Sho, now, Tom-Jeff; don't you git so servigrous over nothin'. I didn't see nothin' but a couple o' young fly-aways playin' 'possum in a hole in the big rock. And I'll leave it to you if I didn't call Cæsar off and go my ways, jes' like I'd like to be done by." "Yes," snarled Tom, dog-mad and furious in this second submergence of the wave of wrath.
"You allow it ain't fittin' for me to be out alone after night?" she said, with a hard little laugh. "I reckon it ain't goin' to hurt me none; anyways, I had to come. Paw's been red-eyed for a week, and he's huntin' for you, Tom-Jeff." Then Tom recalled Japheth's word of the morning. "Hunting for me?
"I cayn't tell; he'd shore kill me. He's always allowed he'd do hit if I let on." "Tell me his name, and I'll kill him before he ever gets a chance at you," was the savage rejoinder. "D'ye reckon you'd do that, Tom-Jeff for me?" The light of the old allurement was glowing in the dark eyes when she said it, but there was no answering thrill of passion in his blood.
By shifting a little to the right he could see the spring. A girl of about his own age, barefooted, and with only her tangled mat of dark hair for a head covering, was filling her bucket in the pool. He broke a dry twig from the nearest cedar and dropped it on her. "You better quit that, Tom-Jeff Gordon. I taken sight o' you up there," said the girl, ignoring him otherwise.
"Still a-harpin' on that old string, are ye? Say, Tom-Jeff, I been erbout the best friend you've had, barrin' your daddy, for a right smart spell o' years. Don't you keep on tryin' to th'ow dust in my eyes." "Call it what you please; I don't care what you think or say. But when you find a man hanging around Nan " "They's one right now," said the horse-trader casually.
A fair half of the time you have me cornered; and the other half I'm wondering if you are just ordinary, canting hypocrite, like the majority of 'the brethren." "Now see here, Tom-Jeff, you know a heap better'n that! First and fo'most, the majority ain't the majority, not by three sights and a horn-blow.
"Yes; and then you came straight down here and told my uncle!" The hand he had been holding behind him came to the front, clutching a stone snatched up from the metaling of the pike as he ran. "If I should break your face in with this, Japhe Pettigrass, it wouldn't be any more than you've earned!" "By gravy! I tell Brother Silas on you, Tom-Jeff?
A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down and broken wing-filaments. The glow in the dark eyes of the woman had died down again, and her voice was hard and lifeless when she said: "But not for me, Tom-Jeff; you ain't wantin' to kill him like my brother would, if I had one."
Now ther's Tom-Jeff, braggin' how he'll be the one to kill the pappy o' Nan's chillern: he's a-ridin' a mighty shore-footed hawss, but hit do look like he'd be skeered the Lord might take him at his word and make that hawss stumble. Hit do, for a fact!"
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