"We've passed out word to the boys and we won't hev need ter delay now ter git 'em gathered together," came a deep-chested voice at whose raising the others fell silent. "They're gathered right now in leetle clumps an' hovers hyar an' thar, whar they kin rally straightway when ye gives ther signal." The bass fell silent, then supplemented in reassurance to the leader: "Thar hain't a timorous ner a disable feller in ther lot."
"I'm obliged to you, Luther," Boone spoke as one in deep contemplation. "Then I reckon we're fixed to go over there and take Saul away from the Carrs, aren't we?"
Anne Masters pressed her hands agitatedly to her breast as a chorus of yapping assent gave answer. Had he so soon, under the pressure of their crowd influence, repudiated his decision to play the hard rôle of restraint?
"Maybe, though, boys," the representative's voice continued reflectively when he had succeeded in quieting them, "we'd better wait for the other men before we start on any grave errand. I hear some of them out there now."
For an hour the talk ran in a hot freshet, while newcomers augmented the handful, and with the increase of numbers came a fuller-throated mounting of passion. Would Boone be able to curb their ferocities? Could any man do it? Did he even mean to try?
As she listened to the feud disciples coming in from creek beds and cove pockets, it appeared to her entirely possible that they were capable of turning on and rending the leader who ventured to cross their strongly fixed purposes.
Saul Fulton's treachery to Asa, Tom Carr's giving sanctuary to the Judas, the affront to the clan; these things made up the inflamed burden of their growing and deepening wrath, and as yet they had not been told of the man who lay dead, a victim freshly justifying their hunger for reprisal!
Anne missed the voice of Joe Gregory who, after a brief consultation with Boone, had gone out again. In Joe's presence she would have felt strong reassurance, but Joe was carrying sorry tidings to the house of the boy who lay dead.
Boone knew his people, and he was adroitly playing a most difficult rôle, but to her ears came no proof of that. Until the clansmen had opened and aired the festering sores of their grievances there lay in them no hope of amenability. After that—perhaps—but the issue must await its moment, neither anticipating nor procrastinating by the part of a minute.
At last Boone's glance measured the crowd and recognized that there was no longer any one for whom to wait. Ahead lay a disclosure, but before its making he must throw his dice and let circumstances ordain with what faces upward they would roll.