The Boy with the U.S. Census | Page 8

a cowardly trick!"
"It was ol' Isaac Howkle," nodded his uncle, "an' I s'pose he reckoned this was a chance to get even on the ol' grudge. But I rolled over on the grass jes' out o' reach o' his stroke, an' he missed. I grabbed my rifle an' blazed at him as soon as I could get on my feet, but he had reached the shelter of the trees again an' I missed him."
"That's about the meanest thing I ever heard," said the boy.
"So I thought," the Kentuckian answered, "an' so the poor lad seemed to think too. I saw he was tryin' to speak, an' I put my ear close to his lips, thinkin' he might have some message he wanted to give. But, tryin' to look in the direction where Howkle had gone, he whispered, 'Don't blame the Union.' He was thinkin' more o' the credit o' his side than of his own sufferin's."
"That was grit," said Hamilton approvingly. "Did he die, Uncle Eli?"
"Not a bit of it. We got him back into our lines an' he was exchanged, I believe. Anyway, I know he was livin' after the war, fo' I saw his name once on a list o' veterans. But most o' the boys were like that--mostly young, too--an' men o' the stripe of Isaac Howkle were very few."
"But you got him in the end, didn't you?"
The old mountaineer looked intently at the boy's excited face.
"I didn't," he said, "an' I don' rightly know that it's good for yo' to be hearin' all these things. Yo' might hold it against Jake Howkle."
"That I wouldn't," protested Hamilton. "Jake isn't to blame for his father's meanness."
"That's the right way to talk," the old soldier agreed. "Wa'al, if yo' feel that way about it, I reckon thar's no harm in my tellin' yo' the rest of it, now that I've got started. When the war was all over an' I got back hyeh, I remembered what had happened, an' I sent word to Isaac Howkle that I didn' trust him, an' after what he had done I was reckonin' that he was waitin' his chance to get me, an' that he'd better keep his own side o' the mountain."
"But, Uncle Eli," said the boy, "that didn't make a feud surely; that was only a warning."
"I wasn't reckonin' to start a feud at all," said the old man thoughtfully, "an' it really never was one. It was jes' a personal difference between Isaac Howkle an' me. Thar was lots o' times that I could have picked off either o' his two brothers, but I was jes' guardin' myself against Isaac."
"But you said he got there first!" said the boy. "Did he shoot some one in your family?"
"Wa'al, yes, he did," the mountaineer admitted "Yo' never knew the one. He was my brother-in-law,--Ab's younges' sister's first husband. He had been married jes' two months, an' was only a hundred yards from this house when Isaac shot him."
"How did you know for sure that it was Howkle who had done the shooting?" asked Hamilton.
"We didn't know for sure, at first. A week or two after, a boy from the Wilshes' place come up with a message sayin' that Isaac Howkle had tol' him to say that he'd get the ol' man nex' time."
"I shouldn't have thought a boy would have had the nerve to bring such a message," said Hamilton thoughtfully. "Wouldn't bringing word like that look like taking sides, and wouldn't it bring his own family into the trouble!"
The old man shook his head in instant denial.
"Po' white trash from the gullies," he said, "no, they don't count one way or the other."
"What happened after you got that message?" asked the boy.
"Nothin' much, for a while, though I was snoopin' aroun' the mount'ns consid'rable. I met the brothers sev'ral times, an' I know they could have had me. But I had nothin' against them, nor they me, an' so it was jes' left to Isaac an' me. Once I found him over near our pasture, but he saw me an' got into cover. At last I found him in the open near our house again, an' in easy range."
"Did you fire right away?" asked Hamilton excitedly.
"I didn't shoot. I got a lead on him, sure, but I jes' couldn't shoot without warnin' him. It seemed kind o' mean to shoot him unawares, an' as I didn't want to take an unfair advantage, I shouted to him. It was pretty far off to be heard, but I could see that he recognized me. I was only waitin' long enough to let him get his gun to his shoulder when some one fired jes' behin' me. Howkle's bullet went through my arm, but he dropped in his tracks. He thought I had shot