“But I most forgot the store. You see old Tom Wait had a store in the village before the trouble began, and it was all that was needed, maybe a little more, but of course after the trouble no Morgan would deal there. Been shot if he’d tried it. So Jarred’s boys had to start a store on the other side. That’s where the two stores come from. Buy anything from one of them, and you have all the other side of the mountain down on you. Now maybe you can see why I warned you.”
Scott sat in silence for a moment while the old man watched him curiously. He was dazed by what seemed to him an impossible situation. How could such a horrible state of affairs exist in the heart of a civilized country?
“Isn’t there any way of bringing the two families together and stopping this senseless fight?” Scott asked earnestly. “Surely they must see how it is hurting them both. Has any one ever tried to stop it?”
The old man shook his head sadly. “The Morgan boys might quit if they could find any way to do it. They know it is only a question of time till they will be killed. Three Morgans can’t hold out forever against a dozen Waits, and that is what it means because their kin folk are not going to stick by them much longer.”
“It would not be possible to persuade this man Jarred to give up the feud?” Scott asked.
The old man smiled sadly. “It’s clear you ain’t seen him, stranger. Old Jarred would give away anything he’s got except his pride, but it takes only one look at him to see that he’d never give up to an enemy.”
Scott sat for some minutes pondering this extraordinary situation, and the old man continued to watch him rather wistfully. Would he try to make peace between these warring factions, or would he ignore them, and be run out of the country as the other two had been?
When Scott looked up he smiled at the old man gratefully. “I don’t know what I can do to stop this thing. It is pitiful to think of that old man eaten up by his hatred, and holding out in his pride against the world. Maybe I cannot do anything to stop it, but I certainly do not want to do anything to stir it up. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you have told me. To whom am I indebted for this information and advice?”
“My name is Sanders. ‘Old man’ Sanders they call me.”
“And I take it that you are not mixed up in this feud on either side. Who else is not in it?”