"You David," he
said, "I want you to stop along here with your mother. It ain't fit for
her to be left alone with Allen, and there's a mess of little things
for doing. I want those cows milked dry, and catch in those little
Dominicker chickens before that old gander eats them up."
David was about to protest, to sob out a passionate refusal, when a
glimpse of his father's expression silenced him. He realized that the
slightest argument would be worse than futile. There wasn't a particle
of familiar feeling in the elder's voice; suddenly David was afraid of
him. Hunter Kinemon slipped a number of heavily greased cartridges into
the rifle's magazine. Then he rose and said:
"Well, Mattie?"
His wife laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Hunter," she told him, "you've been a mighty sweet and good husband."
He drew his hand slowly and lovingly across her cheek.
"I'm sorry about this, Mattie," he replied; "I've been powerful happy
along with you and all of us. David, be a likely boy." He walked out of
the room, across the grass to the stable shed.
"He's going to drive to Elbow Barren," David muttered; "and he hadn't
ought to have left me to tend the cows and chickens. That's for a woman
to do. I ought to be right along with him facing down those Hatburns. I
can shoot, and my hand is steady as his."
He stood in the doorway, waiting for the reappearance of his father
with the roan horse to hitch to their old buggy. It didn't occur to
David to wonder at the fact that the other was going alone to confront
four men.
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