“You—Sinnet—you, you done it! Why, he’d have fought for you. You—done it—to him—to Clint!” Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great change came over the mountaineer. He had done his work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone. Greevy he had hated, but this man had been with him in many a winter’s hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the tragedy—it had all been too sudden.
Suddenly he stooped down. “Sinnet,” he said, “ef there was a woman in it, that makes all the difference. Sinnet, of—”
But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and his girl were below.
“When there’s a woman in it—!” he said, in a voice of helplessness and misery, and watched Em’ly till she disappeared from view. Then he turned, and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the deeper woods.
TO-MORROW
“My, nothing’s the matter with the world to-day! It’s so good it almost hurts.”
She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the heights, the air that braced the nerves—it all seemed to be part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in her.
After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up, turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eyeing it with critical pleasure.
“To-morrow!” she said, nodding at it. “You won’t be seen, I suppose, but I’ll know you’re nice enough for a queen—and that’s enough to know.”