“You must be kin to everybody around here?”
“Most everybody,” she said simply.
By and by they came to a creek.
“I have to turn up here,” said Hale.
“So do I,” she said, smiling now directly at him.
“Good!” he said, and they went on—Hale asking more questions. She was going to school at the county seat the coming winter and she was fifteen years old.
“That's right. The trouble in the mountains is that you girls marry so early that you don't have time to get an education.” She wasn't going to marry early, she said, but Hale learned now that she had a sweetheart who had been in town that day and apparently the two had had a quarrel. Who it was, she would not tell, and Hale would have been amazed had he known the sweetheart was none other than young Buck Falin and that the quarrel between the lovers had sprung from the opening quarrel that day between the clans. Once again she came near going off the mule, and Hale observed that she was holding to the cantel of his saddle.
“Look here,” he said suddenly, “hadn't you better catch hold of me?” She shook her head vigorously and made two not-to-be-rendered sounds that meant:
“No, indeed.”
“Well, if this were your sweetheart you'd take hold of him, wouldn't you?”