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Updated: June 27, 2025
Augusta had dropped her apron and chips, and stood with folded arms across her breast, her face wearing an expression of exasperated expectancy. The Grinnell boys were humbled and abashed. The wicked scion of the Purdee house, joying to note how true his shaft had sped, was again fitting his bow. "An' ez bald-headed ez the mounting."
And because of the charge Purdee was the richer by a huge slice of mountain land how large he could not say, as he ruefully followed the line of survey. But for this discovery the interest of processioning Purdee's land would have subsided with the determination of the ownership of the limited environment of the stone tables of the Law.
There was no figure in sight; no faint foot-fall was audible, no rustle of the sere leaves; only the voice of the mountain torrent, far below, challenged the stillness with its insistent cry. He looked back for a moment, with a vague, strange doubt if he had seen aught, heard aught, in the scene just past. "Hain't Purdee been hyar?" he asked, passing his hand across his eyes.
The little girl accepted it humbly; it was a good baby doubtless of its sort, but it was not alive, which could not be denied of the Grinnell baby, Grinnell though it was. "An' Job Grinnell he kem down ter the fence, an' 'lowed he'd slit our ears, an' named us shoats," continued her brother. Purdee lifted his head. "An' sent a word ter dad," said the boy, tremulously.
The two enemies were perceptibly conscious of each other. Grinnell's broad face and small eyes laden with fat lids were persistently averted. Purdee often glanced toward him gloweringly, his head held, nevertheless, a little askance, as if he rejected the very sight. There was the fire of a desperate intention in his eyes.
Purdee found it possible to survive the destruction of illusions. Most of us do. It wrought in him, however, the saturnine changes natural upon the relinquishment of a dear and dead fantasy. This ethereal entity is a more essential component of happiness than one might imagine from the extreme tenuity of the conditions of its existence.
And although the rigors of the winter were in abeyance, and the late purple aster called the Christmas-flower bloomed in the sheltered grass at the door, the forge fire, flaring or dully glowing, overhung with its dusky hood, was a friendly thing to see, and in its vague illumination the rude interior of the shanty the walls, the implements of the trade, the bearded faces grouped about, the shadowy figures seated on whatever might serve, a block of wood, the shoeing-stool, a plough, or perched on the anvil became visible to Roger Purdee from far down the road as he approached.
Thus they often promoted an increased cordiality of the domestic relations and an accession of self-esteem. Augusta, however, was tired; the boiling sorghum and the September sun were debilitating in their effects. There was something in the scene with the youthful Purdee that grated upon her half-developed sensibilities. The baby was whimpering outright, and the cow was lowing at the bars.
Camp had been made by the boy ranchers and their friends in a little glade, amid rocks and stunted brush, a natural fortification as it were, with only one side open. And it was from this one side that the shots from the ambushers were pouring in. Though Yellin' Kid and Snake Purdee had said nothing to the boys about it, the place had been purposely selected with an eye to its possible defense.
Above all, her mind went back to the enigmatical message, and she wondered that she could have been so forgetful as to fail to urge him to forbear angering Purdee, for this would have a cumulative effect upon all the rancors of the old quarrels, and inaugurate perhaps a new series of reprisals. "I ain't afeard o' no Purdee ez ever stepped," she said to herself, defining her position.
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