“I kin see it’s a mighty neat contraption,” he admitted, at length. “But I’d rether ride quietlike behind a good bit o’ hoss flesh. You can’t make me believe that thet machine has got the strength o’ seven hosses in it, nohow. It ain’t reasonable.”
Bert saw that he might argue for a week, and still fail to shake the obstinacy of his host, so he wisely forbore to make the attempt. Instead he guided the conversation around to the conditions and pursuits of the surrounding country, and here the Kentuckian was on firm ground. He discoursed on local politics with considerable shrewdness and good sense, and proved himself well up on such topics.
They talked on this subject quite a while, and then the conversation in some way shifted to the feuds a few years back that had aroused such widespread criticism. “Although I haven’t seen any sign of them since I’ve been in Kentucky,” confessed Bert, with a smile.
“No,” said his host, with a ruminative look in his eyes, “they’re dyin’ out, an’ a good thing it is fer the country, too. They never did do the least mite o’ good, an’ they often did a sight o’ harm.
“Why, it warn’t such a long time back that the Judsons an’ the Berkeleys were at it hammer an’ tongs, right in this country roundabout. One was layin’ fer ’tother all the time, an’ the folks thet wasn’t in the fracas was afraid to go huntin’ even, fer fear o’ bein’ picked off by mistake. They wasn’t none too particular about makin’ sure o’ their man, neither, before they pulled trigger. They’d shoot fust, an’ ef they found they’d bagged the wrong man they might be peeved, but thet’s all. More’n once I’ve had a close shave myself.”
“But what started the feud in the first place?” asked Bert. “It must have been a pretty big thing to have set people to shooting each other up like that, I should think.”
“Not so’s you could notice it,” was the answer. “Blamed ef I rightly remember just what it was. Seems to me, now I come to think of it, that ole Seth Judson an’ Adam Berkeley got mixed up in the fust place over cuttin’ down a tree thet was smack on the line ’atween their farms. Ole Seth he swore he’d cut thet tree down, an’ Adam he ’lowed as how it would be a mighty unhealthy thing fer any man as how even took a chip out of it.
“Wall, a couple o’ days later Adam went to town on one errand or another, and when he got back the cussed ole tree had been cut down an’ carted away. When Adam saw nothin’ but the stump left, he never said a word, good or bad, but turned around and went back to his house an’ got his gun. He tracks over to Seth Judson’s house an’ calls him by name. Seth, he walks out large as life, an’ Adam pumps a bullet clean through his heart. Them two men had been friends off an’ on fer over thirty year, an’ I allow thet ef Adam hed took time to think an’ cool off a little, he’d never a’ done what he did.
“Howsomever, there’s no bringin’ the dead back to life, an’ Adam tromps off home, leavin’ Seth lyin’ there on his front porch.
“’Twasn’t more’n a week later, I reckon, when we all heard thet Seth’s son, Jed, had up an’ killed Adam, shootin’ at him from behind a fence.