“Yes.”
“A woman? Fer gun totin’!” he mused. “Mounting folks have come tew that!
“And this ’lection, this school ’lection,” he rumbled with a sudden change of subject. “How do you reckon about that?”
“That is to-morrow, too, and it’s lost.”
“So I hearn tell,” the old man mused. “So I hearn tell. But you can’t always reckon right about these here things, kin you?”
There was almost jocular freedom in the old man’s tones, something quite different from his Moses-like dignity of other times.
Again his tone changed. It was tender now.
“You’ve been mighty nice and a right smart help to us with little Hallie. I reckon she’s might nigh well now. I reckon as how you might—”
The old man paused as if reluctant to say the words that had forced their way to his lips. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he fumbled about in the corner for a poker. Having found it, he gave the fire such a jabbing as sent the sparks dancing by thousands up the chimney.
There were watchers who saw those sparks soaring skyward and wondered at them—forty watchers, the men of Ransom Turner’s clan.