An hour later the fiery-tempered fellow, still smarting because his advice had been spurned yesterday, straightened up from the place outside his stable door where he was mending a saddle girth and listened while the envoy from Bas Rowlett preached patience.
But it was Bas himself who had coached Sam Opdyke with the incitement and inflammatory counsel which he had voiced the day before. Now the man had taken fire from the flames of his own kindling—and that fire was not easy to quench. He had been, at first, a disciple but he had converted himself and had been contemptuously treated into the bargain. The grievance he paraded had become his own, and the nature Bas had picked for such a purpose was not an April spirit to smile in sunlight twenty-four hours after it had fulminated in storm.
Opdyke gazed glumly at his visitor, as he listened, then he lied fluently in response.
"All right. I had my say yestidday an' now I'm done. Next time ther circuit-rider holds big meetin' I'm comin' through ter ther mourners' bench an' howl out sanctimony so loud I'll bust everybody's eardrums," and the big man laughed sneeringly.
Yet an hour later Opdyke was greasing and loading his squirrel gun.
* * *
When the supper dishes had been cleared away that night, Old Jim and Parish Thornton sat for a long while in the front room, and because it was a sultry night and peace had been pledged, both door and window stood open.
Dorothy sat listening while they talked, and the theme which occupied them was the joint effort that must be made on either side the old feud line for the firm enforcement of the new treaty. They discussed plans for catching in time and throttling by joint action any sporadic insurgencies by which the experimentally minded might endeavour to test their strength of leadership.
"Now thet we stands in accord," mused Old Jim, "jestice kin come back ter ther cote-house ergin—an' ther jedge won't be terrified ter dispense hit, with me sittin' on one side of him an' you on t'other. Men hev mistrusted ther law so long es one crowd held all hits power."
Outside along the roadside margin of deep shadow crept the figure of a man with a rifle in his hand. It was a starlit night with a sickle of new moon, neither bright nor yet densely dark, so that shapes were opaquely visible but not clear-cut or shadow-casting.