“It’s a wonder Mr. Reynolds would not tell me about that!” Scott exclaimed indignantly.
“You would not need to know it if you had followed his plan,” Jarred remarked ironically.
“Then I have one last question. Would the people here interfere with an outsider if he brought his own crew in here?”
“I would not,” Jarred replied promptly, “and I don’t think any of our people would. I can’t answer for the others.”
Scott rose to go. “I certainly appreciate your help, Mr. Morgan, and I feel that I can rely on what you say.”
“Don’t leave a man much chance to do anything,” Jarred said sympathetically.
“Not much,” Scott admitted, “but I am going to get that stuff logged if I have to do it myself.”
“Maybe you won’t always have this trouble,” Jarred said with a twinkle in his cold gray eye and a wink toward the child. “When I’m gone the rest of them will all let the feud drop.”
The child straightened suddenly and the blood rushed to her cheeks, but she caught sight of the twinkle and subsided again with exactly the same twinkle in her own.
Scott took his leave and when he rounded the turn in the road that shut off the view of the Morgan cabin the old man was still standing at the gate with his arm around the girl’s shoulders. To Scott they represented the last link which was holding the old feud together.