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Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and continued: “As I say, maybe he didn’t remember everything; he had been drinkin’ a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn’t used to liquor, and couldn’t stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he first comes south to spend the winter with his girl Em’ly.” He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly. “Greevy was proud of her–couldn’t even bear her being crossed in any way; and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy quarrelled too.”

“I don’t want to know anything about her,” broke in Buckmaster, roughly. “She isn’t in this thing. I’m goin’ to get Greevy. I bin waitin’ for him, an’ I’ll git him.”

“You’re going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but I’m telling my story in my own way. You told Rickett’s story; I’ll tell what I’ve heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is that anybody else knows–or suspicions about it.”

“I know enough. Greevy done it, an’ I’m here.”

With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice was not so even as before. “Em’ly was a girl that wasn’t twice alike. She was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn’t seem to be able to fix her mind. But that didn’t prevent her leadin’ men on. She wasn’t changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for her father.”

“I tell y’ I don’t want to hear about her,” said Buckmaster, getting to his feet and setting his jaws. “You needn’t talk to me about her. She’ll git over it. I’ll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint–jest twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do.”

He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.

The morning was sparkling with life–the life and vigor which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for him–the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the woodpecker’s beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen ran past–a waiting, virgin world.

Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His eyes and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the wilderness.

As Buckmaster’s figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. “Wait–you wait, Buck. You’ve got to hear all. You haven’t heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you.”

His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back into the room.

“What’s the use of my hearin’? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of that gal. What’s she to me?”

“Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her.”

The mountaineer stood like one petrified.

“What’s that–what’s that you say? It’s a damn lie!”

“It wasn’t cards–the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the quarrel.”

A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. “Then she’ll not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me.” He turned to the door again.