A Cumberland Vendetta | Page 5

hatred supplanted its dead issues, and with them the war went on. The
Stetsons had a good strain of Anglo-Saxon blood, and owned
valley-lands; the Lewallens kept store and made "moonshine"; so
kindred and debtors and kindred and tenants were arrayed with one or
the other leader, and gradually the retainers of both settled on one or
the other side of the river. In time of hostility the Cumberland came to
be the boundary between life and death for the dwellers on each shore.
It was feudalism born again.
Above one of the spurs each family had its home; the Stetsons, under
the seared face of Thunderstruck Knob; the Lewallens, just beneath the
wooded rim of Wolf's Head. The eaves and chimney of each cabin
were faintly visible from the porch of the other. The first light touched
the house of the Stetsons; the last, the Lewallen cabin. So there were
times when the one could not turn to the sunrise nor the other to the
sunset but with a curse in his heart, for his eye must fall on the home of
his enemy.
For years there had been peace. The death of Rome Stetson's father
from ambush, and the fight in the court-house square, had forced it.
After that fight only four were left-old Jasper Lewallen and young
Jasper, the boy Rome and his uncle, Rufe Stetson. Then Rufe fled to
the West, and the Stetsons were helpless. For three years no word was
heard of him, but the hatred burned in the heart of Rome's mother, and
was traced deep in her grim old face while she patiently waited the day
of retribution. It smouldered, too, in the hearts of the women of both
clans who had lost husbands or sons or lovers; and the friends and kin

of each had little to do with one another, and met and passed with
watchful eyes. Indeed, it would take so little to turn peace to war that
the wonder was that peace had lived so long. Now trouble was at hand.
Rufe Stetson had come back at last, a few months since, and had
quietly opened store at the county-seat, Hazlan-a little town five miles
up the river, where Troubled Fork runs seething into the Cumberland-a
point of neutrality for the factions, and consequently a battIe-ground.
Old Jasper's store was at the other end of the town, and the old man had
never been known to brook competition. He had driven three men from
Hazlan during the last term of peace for this offence, and everybody
knew that the fourth must leave or fight. Already Rufe Stetson had
been warned not to appear outside his door after dusk. Once or twice
his wife had seen skulking shadows under the trees across the road, and
a tremor of anticipation ran along both banks of the Cumberland.
III
A FORTNIGHT later, court came. Rome was going to Hazlan, and the
feeble old Stetson mother limped across the porch from the kitchen,
trailing a Winchester behind her. Usually he went unarmed, but he took
the gun now, as she gave it, in silence.
The boy Isom was not well, and Rome had told him to ride the horse.
But the lad had gone on afoot to his duties at old Gabe Bunch's mill,
and Rome himself rode down Thunderstruck Knob through the mist
and dew of the early morning. The sun was coming up over Virginia,
and through a dip in Black Mountain the foot-hills beyond washed in
blue waves against its white disk. A little way down the mountain, the
rays shot through the gap upon him, and, lancing the mist into tatters,
and lighting the dew-drops, set the birds singing. Rome rode, heedless
of it all, under primeval oak and poplar, and along rain-clear brooks
and happy waterfalls, shut in by laurel and rhododendron, and singing
past mossy stones and lacelike ferns that brushed his stirrup. On the
brow of every cliff he would stop to look over the trees and the river to
the other shore, where the gray line of a path ran aslant Wolf's Head,
and was lost in woods above and below.
At the river he rode up-stream, looking still across it. Old Gabe Bunch

halloed to him from the doorway of the mill, as he splashed through the
creek, and Isom's thin face peered through a breach in the logs. At the
ford beyond, he checked his horse with a short oath of pleased surprise.
Across the water, a scarlet dress was moving slowly past a brown field
of corn. The figure was bonneted, but he knew the girl's walk and the
poise of her head that far away. Just who she was, however, he did not
know, and he sat irresolute. He had seen her