He turned and looked at me. His whole expression had changed—his brow was somber, his eyes brooding, his lips drawn back from his teeth in an odd, unconscious snarl. Quite naturally he took it for granted that I knew of him and his feud.
"Sam Tyrrell, he'd—" he hesitated, then added under his breath, as he glanced at the old woman moving toward the cupboard with her dishes—"he'd even shoot at gran ef he ketched 'er on the trail."
I rose and put on my hat. Before my eyes my mountain demigod had suddenly been transformed into a young beast, lusting for blood. I felt that I must get away from the oppression of the place. He made no comment, but picked up his hat and went for my horse. When he returned he was leading Jef'son Davis and riding his own horse, a rough-coated mountain animal which, powerful though it was, seemed hardly up to the huge bulk astride it. With a jerk of his head, he checked my protest and the little cry that broke from his grandmother's lips.
"I'm jes' gwine ter th' bend," he told her, "t' p'int aout th' trail t' Clapham's. She's gwine t' stay all night thar. Look fo' me home 'fore sundown."
The grandmother cast a quick glance at me, then dropped her eyes. The fire seemed to have flickered and died out. Her steps dragged. In an instant she had become a feeble, apprehensive old woman.
"Don't you take Shep no furder 'n th' bend," she quavered. "Will yuh?"
I met her look squarely. "You may be sure I will not," I promised, and we rode away.
Young Moran's horse proved better than he looked. With the greatest ease and lightness he carried his rider along the trail, a little in advance of me where it was narrow, and close beside me when it widened out. As we rode, the young man became all boy again. He knew every mountain tree and shrub, every late plant that had raised a brave head above the pall of autumn leaves, every bird whose note sounded near us or which winged its flight above us. He pointed out the bright yellow blossoms of the evening primrose, the bursting pods of the milkweed, the "purty look" of asters, gentian, and white everlasting against the somber background of the hills. He was delighted when we flushed a covey of quail, and at one point he stopped abruptly to show me the old swimming-hole which he and his brother had used, and on the banks of which, he added grimly, his brother had been killed by Tyrrell's eldest son. At this memory the shadow fell upon him again, and it was while we were riding on in a silence broken only by the padded hoof-beats of the horses that we heard a shot. Something from the underbrush at our right went humming past me, clipped a leaf from an overhanging bough above my companion's head, and sped onward to its harmless finish. Moran's horse, jerked back on its haunches by the rider's powerful grip on the bridle, stopped, trembling. Jef'son Davis shied violently, only to be caught and steadied by the instantaneous grasp of Moran's right hand. In the same second the young man himself was transformed from the simple, gentle nature-lover of the trail to a half-human spirit of hatred and revenge.
"The polecat!" he hissed. "I know whar he is. I'll git him this time!" With a quick swing he turned his horse. "Thar's your trail," he called back over his shoulder. "Straight on tuh th' bend—then go left."
He put his horse at a low but sharp incline on the right, and the animal scrambled up it with straining muscles and tearing hoofs that sent back a shower of stones and earth. In another moment horse and rider were out of sight.