7; if I was in your place I’d shoot the man that killed Clint, if it took ten years. I’d have his heart’s blood—all of it. Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I’d have him—plumb.”

Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of cruelty. “Clint right or wrong? There ain’t no question of that. My boy wasn’t the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was right? If Clint was in the wrong I’d 65 kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy robbed him of all the years that was before him—only a sapling he was, an’ all his growin’ to do, all his branches to widen an’ his roots to spread. But that don’t enter in it, his bein’ in the wrong. It was a quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards, an’ Greevy was drunk, an’ followed Clint out into the prairie in the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn’t no chance, an’ he jest lay there on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An’ Clint told Ricketts who it was.”

“Why didn’t Ricketts tell it right out at once?” asked Sinnet.

“Greevy was his own cousin—it was in the family, an’ he kept thinkin’ of Greevy’s gal, Em’ly. Her—what’ll it matter to her? She’ll get married, an she’ll forgit. I know her, a gal that’s got no deep feelin’ like Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn’t speak for a year. Then he couldn’t stand it any longer, an’ he told me—seein’ how I suffered, an’ everybody hidin’ their suspicions from me, an’ me up here out o’ the way, an’ no account. That was the feelin’ among ̵