Imagine her surprise when, upon entering the school yard, she saw Bud Wax with the larger boys, pitching rocks at a stump.
“I—I didn’t think he’d come back,” she whispered to Marion.
“Neither did I.”
“Is Ballard coming back?”
“Yes.”
“Will they fight again?” Florence’s heart was in her throat. She felt that another day such as yesterday would prove her undoing.
“Ballard said he’d do his best. Bud had been teasing him for a long time. He called him a name that no mountain man or boy will allow himself to be called. Then Ballard struck him in the face.”
For a time Florence pondered the problem of further punishment for Bud. In the end she concluded that any punishment after the destruction of his pistol would be anticlimax.
“We’ll let bygones be bygones,” she told Marion. “But keep your eyes open for further trouble. Why did he come back anyway?”
“Who knows?”