"'Course Flent could hang on and make you a little trouble—but he ain't a-goin' to," she said sturdily. "I reckon he's called off his dogs in that writin'. Hit's to Dan Beason."
With the words she wheeled her horse and would have gone, but Callista, at the imminent risk of dropping Ajax, caught at Cindy's bridle rein.
"I've got a heap to thank you for, Ola Derf," she said in a voice shaken with deep feeling.
"You ain't got a thing in the world to thank me for, Callista Gentry," declared the little brown girl, and drew her black brows at Lance's wife. But Callista's whole nature melted into grateful love.
"Where you goin' now?" she asked wistfully. "Looks like you and me ought to be better friends than we ever have been."
Ola considered the proposition, and shook her head.
"I reckon not," she said finally. "I'm a-goin' down to Nashville right soon. Charlie will want me to be right thar when he gits out. He's not the worst man in the world, ef he ain't—"
She turned a sudden swimming look on the pair with their child.
"Good-by," she ended abruptly, and signaling Cindy with her heel, loped off down the road.
The hounds at the Kimbro Cleaverage place were evidently away on 394 hunting enterprises of their own. Lance and his wife rode to the gate without challenge, dismounted, tethered the animals, and omitting the customary halloo, opened the door upon the family seated at a late breakfast.