But Scott neither turned back nor answered him.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE END OF THE FEUD
Scott walked rapidly up the road toward the store. He felt a shiver run up his back as he passed the woodpile where Foster was hiding, but he held his course steadily and looked neither to the right nor the left.
Astonishment and wonder held the men on both sides motionless. It seemed to Scott as though he were walking all alone through a great desert with a row of mines on either side of him. He could almost hear the sputtering of the fuses. He had never felt so lonely in all his life.
He heard a voice on the Morgan side shouting to him to keep back, and he recognized it as Hopwood’s.
Only when he came to a spot squarely between the two stores did he stop. There he held his hand solemnly up over his head and called out in a voice that all could hear.
“I have a message for all of you and I call upon you all as men to come out here and listen to it.”
He called in a loud voice, but so tense was the stillness that a whisper could have been heard as well. And the silence continued after he had spoken. He did not repeat it but stood there with hand uplifted. The suspense was nerve racking. At last it was broken.
“Say what you have to say and get out of the road,” called a sullen voice from the Morgan store.
“Very well,” Scott agreed solemnly, “if it must be that way, listen.”