“I reckon Bladen will have the law on his side, Bob!”
“The law be damned—I got what's fair on mine, I don't wish fo' better than that,” exclaimed Yancy, over his shoulder. He strode from the store and started down the sandy road at a brisk run. Miserable forebodings of an impending tragedy leaped up within him, and the miles were many that lay between him and the Hill.
“He'll just naturally bust the face off the fellow Bladen sends!” thought Crenshaw, staring after his friend.
That run of Bob Yancy's was destined to become a classic in the annals of the neighborhood. Ordinarily a man walking briskly might cover the distance between the Cross Roads and the Hill in two hours. He accomplished it in less than an hour, and before he reached the branch that flowed a full quarter of a mile from his cabin he was shouting Hannibal's name as he ran. Then as he breasted the slope he came within sight of a little group in his own dooryard. Saving only Uncle Sammy Bellamy, the group resolved itself into the women and children of the Hill, but there was one small figure he missed, and the color faded from his cheeks while his heart stood still. The patriarch hurried toward him, leaning on his cane, while his grandson clung to the skirts of his coat, weeping bitterly.
“They've took your nevvy, Bob!” he cried, in a high, thin voice.
“Who's took him?” asked Yancy hoarsely. He paused and glanced from one to another of the little group.
“Hit were Dave Blount. Get your gun, Bob, and go after him—kill the miserable sneaking cuss!” cried Uncle Sammy, who believed in settling all difficulties by bloodshed as befitted a veteran of the first war with England, he having risen to the respectable rank of sergeant in a company of Morgan's riflemen; while at sixty-odd in '12, when there was recruiting at the Cross Roads, his son had only been able to prevent his tendering his services to his country by hiding his trousers. “Fetch his rifle, some of you fool women!” cried Uncle Sammy. “By the Fayetteville Road, Bob, not ten minutes ago—you can cut him off at Ox Road forks!”
Yancy breathed a sigh of relief. The situation was not entirely desperate, for, as Uncle Sammy said, he could reach the Ox Road forks before Blount possibly could, by going as the crow flies through the pine woods.
“Hit wouldn't have happened if there'd been a man on the Hill, but there was nothing but a passel of women about the place. I heard the boys crying when Dave Blount lifted your nevvy into the buggy,” said Uncle Sammy; “all I could do was to cuss him across two fields. I hope you blow his hide full of holes!” for a rifle had been placed in Yancy's hands.
“Thank you-all kindly,” said Yancy, and turning away he struck off through the pine woods. A brisk walk of twenty minutes brought him to the Ox Road forks, as it was called, where he could plainly distinguish the wheel and hoof marks left by the buggy and team as it went to Scratch Hill, but there was only the single track.