Page:Post--Dwellers in the hills.djvu/57

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Concerning Hawk Rufe
41

"Old Granny Lanum," he said, "her that's buried back on the Dolan Knob, used to say that God saw for the little pup when it was blind, but after that it was the little pup's business. An' I reckon she knowed what she said."

Wiser heads than mine have pondered that problem since the world began its swinging,—but with greater elegance, but scarcely more clearly than Ump had put it. Old Liza used to tell me when I was very little that if I fought with those who were smaller than myself, I was fighting the wards of the Father in heaven, and it was a lot better to get a broken head from some sturdy urchin who was big enough to look out for himself. And I have always thought that old Liza was about as close to the Ruler of Events as any one of us is likely to get. Anyway I doubted not that if the good God rode in the Hills, He was far from stirrup by stirrup with Woodford.

Red Mike was beginning to shiver in his wet coat, and Jourdan gathered up his reins.

"Mr. Ward," he said, "told me to tell you to stay with old Simon Betts to-night, an'