Into the furtive eyes of the visitor came a shallow flash of bravado.
"Who's to hinder me, Tom?"
"Young Boone Wellver's got ter be a right huge power in these parts here of late. He don't love ye none lavish, ef what folks norrates be true."
Saul seated himself, with a shrug of the shoulders. "I've had run-ins with worse men than him," he declared, "and I'm still on the hoof."
"On the hoof an' fattenin', I should say," graciously acceded the leader of the Carrs. "Ye've got a corn-fed look about ye, Saul."
"I stayed away from home," continued Fulton, "so long as it was to my profit to be elsewheres. Now it suits me to come back, and there isn't room enough here for both me an' him."
The elderly feudist surveyed his visitor with a cool shrewdness, and after a long pause he remarked drily: "Ef so be, Boone Wellver was called ter his reward, Saul, I wouldn't hardly buy me no mournin' clothes, but for my own self I don't dast break ther truce. Howsomever, when a feller hits at a snake he had ought ter git hit. Thet feller thet ye hired ter lay-way him hyar of late didn't seem ter enjoy no master luck."
"All he needed was a little overseein'," retorted Saul blandly. "That's why I'm here now. I've got to lay low for a while because there's still the little matter of an indictment outstandin' but the same man stands in your light and mine—we ought to be able to do some business together."
"Things have changed a mighty heap," demurred Tom uneasily, but Saul laughed.
"Let's change them back, then," he responded.