The Raid
Earlier that same Saturday evening, while Judith Barrier was fighting out her battle, and trying to tire down the restless spirit that wrung and punished her, Nancy Card, mindful of earlier experiences in feud times, was getting her cabin in a state of defence.
“You know in reason them thar Turrentines ain’t a-goin’ to hold off long,” she told Creed. “They’re pizen fighters, and they allus aim to hit fust. No, you don’t stay out in that thar office,” as Creed made this proffer, stating that it would leave her and her family safer. “I say stay in the office! Why, them Turrentines would ask no better than one feller for the lot of ’em to jump on—they could make their brags about it the longest day they live of how they done him up.”
So it came to pass that Creed was sitting in the big kitchen of the Nancy Card cabin while Judith wrought at her fruitless labours in her own home. Despite the time of year, Nancy insisted on shutting the doors and closing the battened shutters at the windows.
“A body gets a lot of good air by the chimney drawin’ up when ye have a bit of fire smokin’,” she said. “I’d ruther be smothered as to be shot, anyhow.”
Little Buck and Beezy, infected by the excitement of their elders, refused peremptorily to go to bed. “Let me take the baby,” said Creed holding out his arms. “She’s always good with me. She can go to sleep in my lap.”
“Beezy won’t go to sleep in nobody’s lap,” that young lady announced with great finality. “Beezy never go to sleep no time—nowhere.”
“All right,” agreed the young fellow easily, cutting short a futile argument upon the grandmother’s part. “You needn’t go to sleep if you can stay awake, honey. You sit right here in Creed’s lap and stay awake till morning and keep him good company, won’t you?”
The red head nodded till its flying frazzles quivered like tongues of flame. Then it snuggled down on the broad breast, that moved rhythmically under it, and very soon the long lashes drooped to the flushed cheeks and Beezy was asleep.
Aunt Nancy had picked up Little Buck, but that young man had the limitations of his virtues. Being silent by nature he had not so much to keep him awake as the loquacious Beezy, and by the time his father on the other side of the hearth had dropped asleep and nearly fallen into the fire a couple of times, been sternly admonished by the grandmother, and gone to fling himself face down upon a bed in the corner, Little Buck was sounder asleep than his sister.