Letitia's face was aflame. "Thar's been too much o' takin' down rifles a'ready. Leave that ter Adelaide."
Baker, still in his humble posture, turned his eyes toward her, a clumsy sneer upon his blunt features. "Ef ye 'low Mis' Yates done sech ez that, I wonder ye air willin' ter bide with her. Whyn't ye go home?"
Once more her eyes, with their jewelled effect, so crystalline a blue they were, shone upon him, fiery and fierce. "I'll bide with that thar rifle. I'll watch it by day, an' I'll guard it by night. 'Twon't send a ball agin soon ter scorch his head. I saw his hair all whar 'twar singed. An'"—she turned suddenly upon Adelaide, who was quaking beneath the storm her ill-considered words had raised—"ef ye tell me he don't think nuthin' of me, I tell you-uns I could think o' him a thousand years without a 'thanky.'"
She sat erect in her chair, flushed and defiant. She suddenly drooped back into her former, half-recumbent posture, and again burst into tears.
Adelaide, her nerves all strained and jarring, feeling at fault to have elicited this outburst in the presence of Baker Anderson, who was something of a gossip, and with the false accusations and reproaches, the danger and the trouble of her own position still pressing heavily on her, could but fall a-weeping too.
"I 'ain't got but one friend in the worl'," she said, clasping her child. "An' hyar he is."
"Yes, an' he'll be yer frien' ez long ez he needs ye, an' no longer," said the tactless Baker, who had no talent for woe, and who hardly entered into the emotions of either woman, except to grasp the division of their friendship.
He thought them dreary company that evening, and that they were much given to silent tears, which were troublesome, cowardly things for which Baker Anderson had never found any use.
XII.
Felix Guthrie rode far and fast that afternoon. The pillage of his herds fired his blood, and his anger lent motive power to his sloth. Many a mile his search led him through the tangled mountain woods, and in devious ways along the craggy ledges, the sun sinking low in the sky, the reeking horse flecked with foam, before the slaughtered beef was at last found, far astray—according to the old herder's report. Long before he reached the spot the circling flight of the strong-winged mountain vultures, high in the air, served to verify the story. Others rose gibbering from their quarry as his panting horse galloped up the slope. He paused to assure himself how plain his brand was marked upon the creature's hide. It had been killed, then, in defiance of the name of Felix Guthrie, and the idea brought the hot blood into his cheek. Killed for spite or for a purpose? And what purpose? The choicest cuts only were taken, and the great carcass left to waste and for the buzzards. He pondered vaguely as he once more put his foot into the stirrup.