"'YES, SIR, TER KILL HIM EF HE WAR TER INTERFERE WITH ME!'"
"What!" said Shattuck, uneasily feigning. "Do you want to go to the Legislature too?"
"Legislatur' be damned!" said the other, in a deep husky tone, and with a meeting of the straight heavy eyebrows above his intent eyes. "I ain't keerin' a minit's breath 'bout'n the kentry an' sech. But ef he interferes with me 'bout—'bout Letishy Pettingill, his life ain't wuth much purchase—not," he shook his head with a formidable look in his eye, "much purchase."
Shattuck was roused to a sense of danger. He had already interfered too much, and with disastrous results, in his friend's interests; but here was a peril so patent, so immediate, that it was a most obvious duty to seek to diminish the menace. "You mus'n't be disposed to lay too much blame on Rhodes," he said. "She mightn't like either one of you, but somebody else."
"Who's he?" demanded Guthrie, breathlessly, with an evident instantaneous transference of the intention of vengeance and the pangs of anxiety to this myth.
"I don't know. Do you suppose she told me? Women don't tell these things; that's one of their little ways."
Guthrie drew a long sigh. "An' a mighty mean way too," he commented.