“Yes,” said he, “I know about the feuds, of course.  But you—­”

It did not seem possible to him, even after her frank statements, that this bright and joyous creature could in any way be joined to such a bloody history as he knew the histories of some of these long feuds to be.

“It’s been thirty years an’ better,” said the girl, “since the Brierlys and Lindsays had some trouble about a claybank filly an’ took to shootin’ one another—­shootin’ straight an’ shootin’ often an’ to kill.  For years th’ fight went on.  They fired on sight, an’ sometimes ’twas a Lindsay went an’ sometimes ’twas a Brierly.  Bimeby there was just two men left—­my pappy an’ Lem Lindsay.

“One day Lem sent word to my pappy to meet him without no weepons an’ shake han’s an’ make it up.”

Her face took on a look of bitterness and hate which almost made her hearer shiver, so foreign was it to the fresh, young brightness he had watched till now.

“My daddy come, at th’ ap’inted time,” she went on slowly, “but dad—­he knowed Lem Lindsay, an’ never for a minute trusted him.  He ast a friend of his, Ben Lorey, to be a hidden witness.  Ben hid behind a rock to watch.  ’Twas right near here—­just over thar.”  She pointed.

“Soon Lem, he come along, a-smilin’ like a Judast, an’, after some fine speakin’, as daddy offered him his hand, Lem whipped out a knife, an’—­an’ struck it into my daddy’s heart.”

The girl’s recital had been tense, dramatic, not because she had tried or thought to make it so—­she had never learned not to be genuine—­but because of the real and tragic drama in the tale she told, the matter-of-course way in which she told it.

It made Layson shudder.  What sort of people were these mountaineers who went armed to friendly meetings and struck down the men whose hands they offered to clasp?  Where was the other man while his friend’s enemy was at this dreadful work?

“But Lorey,” said her fascinated listener, “the man who was in hiding as a witness, made him pay for his outrageous act!”

“No,” said the girl, with drooping head.  “He stepped out from behind the rock where he was hidin’, an’ he pulled the trigger of his rifle.  But luck was dead against us that day.  Wet powder—­somethin’—­nobody knows what.  The gun did not go off.  Before he got it well down from his shoulder so’s to find out what it was that ailed it, Lem Lindsay was upon him like a mountain lion—­an’ he laid him thar beside my daddy.  He didn’t mean that there should be no witnesses.”

She paused so long that Layson was about to speak, feeling the silence troublesome and painful, but before he had decided what to say in comment on a tale so dreadful, she went on: 

“He didn’t mean there should be no witnesses, Lem Lindsay didn’t, but as it happened there was two.  My mother, me clasped in her arms, had stole after my daddy, fearin’ that somethin’ wicked would come out o’ that there meetin’ with his old-time enemy.  She spoke up sudden, an’ surprised th’ murderer, standin’ there by th’ two poor men he’d killed.  At first it scared him.  I can’t remember everythin’ about that awful day, but I can see Lem Lindsay’s face as she screamed at him, just as plain this minute as I seed it then.  I’ll never forget that look if I live a thousand years!