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He could follow the path round to the back; but, he told himself, he David Kinemon wouldn't walk to the Hatburns' kitchen door. They should meet him at the front. He beat again on the scarred wood, waited; and then, in an irrepressible flare of temper, kicked the door open. He was conscious of a slight gasping surprise at the dark moldy- smelling hall open before him.
Simmons' brother went and asked them what was it about; and one of the Hatburns that's their name said he'd busted the loony just because!" "What did Simmons answer back?" Hunter Kinemon demanded, his coffee cup suspended. "Nothing much; he'd law them, or something like that. The Simmonses are right spindling; they don't belong in Greenstream either."
"How can I let those skunks set their hell on us?" he demanded passionately. "Why, all Greenstream will think I'm afraid, that I let the Hatburns bust Allen and kill my father. I couldn't stand up in Priest's store; I couldn't bear to look at anybody. Don't you understand how men are about those things?" She nodded.
"I'm sorry about this, Mattie," he replied; "I've been powerful happy along with you and all of us. David, be a likely boy." He walked out of the room, across the grass to the stable shed. "He's going to drive to Elbow Barren," David muttered; "and he hadn't ought to have left me to tend the cows and chickens. That's for a woman to do. I ought to be right along with him facing down those Hatburns.
He saw the Hatburns' house, a rectangular bleak structure crowning a gray prominence, with the tender green of young pole beans on one hand and a disorderly barn on the other, and a blue plume of smoke rising from an unsteady stone chimney against an end of the dwelling. No one was visible. Hot tears filled his eyes as the stage rolled along past the moldy ditch into which Allen had fallen.
Now, however, it was over; and only his great duty remained, filling the entire threshold of his existence. He had no plan; only a necessity to perform. It was possible that he would fail there were four Hatburns; and that chance depressed him. If he were killed there was no one else, for Allen could never take another step. That had been disclosed by the most casual examination of his injury.
He was without definite plan or knowledge of what must occur; but he told himself that any decision of Hunter Kinemon's must not exclude him. There were four Hatburns; but two Kinemons were better; and he meant his father and himself, for he knew instinctively that Allen was badly hurt. Soon there would be no Hatburns at all. And then the law could do as it pleased.
It was only a chance that he would be killed; there were four Hatburns though. His heart, he thought, would burst with misery; every instinct fought for the expression, the upholding of the family prestige, honor. A hatred for the Hatburns was like a strangling hand at his throat. "I got to!" he said; but his voice was wavering; the dull conviction seized him that his mother was right.
"I'm carrying the mail," David repeated, his hand on the bag. "You've got no call on this or on me." He added the last with tremendous effort. It seemed unspeakable that he should be there, the Hatburns before him, and merely depart. "What do you think of putting the stage under a soft little strawberry like that?" the other inquired.
There was no sign in the men he passed that they held him in contempt for neglecting to kill the Hatburns; and his mother wisely avoided the subject. She wondered a little at Priest's considering him, even temporarily, for the stage; but confined her wonder to a species of compliment.
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