Colonel Mason rose and faced Old Buck Wolfe squarely.
"You could be a mighty good man," said he, "if you would. I know you've got plenty of chances to be bad; still, that's a very fine reason why you shouldn't be. I tell you, sir, there's nothing much coming to the fellow who is good simply because he hasn't any chance to be bad—and don't you ever forget that. Come, now! Help your son instead of hindering him. Be what you ought to be to him. You owe him your——"
"I don't owe nobody nothin'!" cut in the man who kept his word, told the truth, and paid his debts; who bent his knees only to a woodchuck's den, a ginseng root, or the furnace of a moonshine still; and who believed in nothing that he couldn't see with his temporal eyes.
Old Kirby Mason drew himself up straight, as straight as he had stood at Chickamauga when a general had complimented him to his face. But he was pale now, instead of flushed.
"By George, sir!" he bellowed.
With that he sprang to the head of the new black mound, tore away the slab of sandstone, lifted it in both hands and brought it down hard against the stump of a tree, breaking it into half a dozen pieces. The mountaineer went toward him, his rifle ready. The colonel looked into the barrel of the weapon without flinching.
"You ort to be hung as high as Haman or higher, Buck Wolfe!" the old woman cried. "You go home! Some says a old fool is the biggest fool on earth, and some says a young fool is the biggest; but me, I say you settle the question forever. Now you go on home!"
"Nobody hain't axed you fo' none o' yore edvice," growled her son.
"By gyar," Granny Wolfe retorted witheringly, "you need edvice, as shore as the Old Scratch hain't a jaybird."
Colonel Mason turned to his waiting horse, and swung himself into the saddle with the agility of a cavalryman. Tot seemed only half-conscious, only half-alive, and it was with some difficulty that the colonel and Granny Wolfe lifted her to the saddlefront. The grizzled mountain man stood and watched it with a face like a mask of stone.