"JohnFoxJr-ACumberlandVendetta" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fox John)

three years no word was heard of him, but the hatred burned in the
heart of Rome's mother, and was traced deep in her grim old face
while she patiently waited the day of retribution. It smouldered,
too, in the hearts of the women of both clans who had lost
husbands or sons or lovers; and the friends and kin of each had
little to do with one another, and met and passed with watchful
eyes. Indeed, it would take so little to turn peace to war that the
wonder was that peace had lived so long. Now trouble was at hand.
Rufe Stetson had come back at last, a few months since, and had
quietly opened store at the county-seat, Hazlan-a little town five
miles up the river, where Troubled Fork runs seething into the
Cumberland-a point of neutrality for the factions, and
consequently a battIe-ground. Old Jasper's store was at the other
end of the town, and the old man had never been known to brook
competition. He had driven three men from Hazlan during the last
term of peace for this offence, and everybody knew that the fourth
must leave or fight. Already Rufe Stetson had been warned not to
appear outside his door after dusk. Once or twice his wife had seen
skulking shadows under the trees across the road, and a tremor of
anticipation ran along both banks of the Cumberland.

III

A FORTNIGHT later, court came. Rome was going to Hazlan, and
the feeble old Stetson mother limped across the porch from the
kitchen, trailing a Winchester behind her. Usually he went
unarmed, but he took the gun now, as she gave it, in silence.

The boy Isom was not well, and Rome had told him to ride the
horse. But the lad had gone on afoot to his duties at old Gabe
Bunch's mill, and Rome himself rode down Thunderstruck Knob
through the mist and dew of the early morning. The sun was
coming up over Virginia, and through a dip in Black Mountain the
foot-hills beyond washed in blue waves against its white disk. A
little way down the mountain, the rays shot through the gap upon
him, and, lancing the mist into tatters, and lighting the dew-drops,
set the birds singing. Rome rode, heedless of it all, under primeval
oak and poplar, and along rain-clear brooks and happy waterfalls,
shut in by laurel and rhododendron, and singing past mossy stones
and lacelike ferns that brushed his stirrup. On the brow of every
cliff he would stop to look over the trees and the river to the other
shore, where the gray line of a path ran aslant Wolf's Head, and
was lost in woods above and below.

At the river he rode up-stream, looking still across it. Old Gabe
Bunch halloed to him from the doorway of the mill, as he splashed
through the creek, and Isom's thin face peered through a breach in
the logs. At the ford beyond, he checked his horse with a short
oath of pleased surprise. Across the water, a scarlet dress was
moving slowly past a brown field of corn. The figure was