The Roof Tree

by Charles Neville Buck

* * *

An agency for disturbing the precarious balance of peace was at work, and the mainspring of its operation was the intriguing mind of Bas Rowlett.

Bas had had nothing to gain and everything to lose by weakening the pacific power of old Caleb, whose granddaughter he sought to wed, but with a successful rival, whom he must kill or be killed by, usurping the authority to which he had himself expected to succeed, his interests were reversed. If he could not rule, he could wreck, and the promiscuous succession of tragedies that would follow in the wake of such an avalanche had no terrors to give Bas pause. Many volunteers would arise to strike down his enemy and leave him safe on the outskirts of the conflict. He could stand apart unctuously crying out for peace and washing his hands after the fashion of Pontius Pilate.

Manifestly the provocation must seem to come from the Harper-Thornton faction in order that their Doane-Rowlett adversaries might righteously take the path of reprisal.

The device upon which the intriguer decided was one requiring such delicate handling in both strategy and marksmanship that he dared not trust it to either young Pete Doane or the faithful Sim Squires.

Indeed, he could trust no one but himself, and so one evening he lay in the laurel back of the house where dwelt his universally respected kinsman, old Jim Rowlett.

Bas had no intention of harming the old man who sat placidly smoking, yet he was bent on making it seem evident and certain that someone had sought to assassinate him, and so it was not at the breast that he aimed his rifle but at the peak of the tall-crowned slouch hat.

The sights of his rifle showed clean as the rustless barrel rested on a log. Bas himself lay stretched full-length in that position which gives the greatest surety of marksmanship.

His temples were moist with nervous sweat, and once he took the rifle down from his shoulder and flexed his muscles in rest. Then he aimed again and pressed the trigger.

He could not tarry now, but he paused long enough to see the punctured hat spin downward from the aged head and the old man rise, bewildered but unhurt, with a dazed hand experimentally rubbing his white crown. Then Bas grinned, and edging backward through the brush as a woman rushed screaming out, he made his way to the house of Parish Thornton. The first gun had been fixed in the new Harper-Doane war.