The low sun came through the door between piles of calico, heaps of ax-handles, and glinted on Adene’s yellow head. Suddenly Beath felt the light for a moment obscured. He glanced up to see a woman’s figure, black against the glow, yet unmistakable in its slim alertness, and clothed, as his eye accustomed to fabrics told him, in the white muslin he had believed to be selected for a wedding-dress. Neither old Jabe nor his customer appeared to mark as Vesta Turrentine slipped like a shadow through the doorway and stole to the corner where her father’s rifle stood. Sam watched as she lifted the weapon in practised fingers. His mouth was open, but he did not cry out.
Ross unclosed his eyes lazily, raised his thumb to his cheek, close by the ear, very near indeed to the great veins and arteries Beath had looked to see the razor sever.
“Ain’t they a rough place right thar?” he inquired with a half-smile.
The ultimate spark of daring was in the eyes that gazed up into those of the man Ross had chosen for a father-in-law. Old Jabe, with a portentously solemn face, muttered an assent, dabbed the lather on, and made a pass with his razor.
“U-m-m—looks like they was a little more to do in that direction. Maybe I ain’t quite finished ye up yit,” the old man’s voice had a lilt of laughter in it, and it seemed that the end had surely arrived. Turrentine’s devil was always a laughing fiend. He worked with the air of a man who has come at last to some decision, turned to reach for the towel—and looked into the muzzle of his own gun, with his daughter’s resolute eyes behind it.
There was no start, no outcry; the old fellow only stood, scowling, formidable, checked midway in some spectacular vengeance, Beath was sure. The clerk crept, stooping behind the piles of merchandise, toward Vesta.
“Put down that thar razor.”
The girl’s tone had a ring of old Jabe’s own power.
“Ye say,” drawled Jabe, making a jest of a necessity, as he laid the blade on the counter. “What else?”
“You let him walk out o’ that door with me, same as he walked in,” Vesta’s air was resolute, her aim steady.