I was afraid to ask Abner questions when he looked like that, but my curiosity overcame me.
"What did you do with the gun, Uncle Abner?"
"I put it back where it was," he said.
"Do you know who the owner is?"
"I do not know who he is," replied Abner without looking in my direction, "but I know what he is—he is a coward!"
The afternoon drew on. The sun moved towards the far-off chain of mountains. Silence lay on the world. Only the tiny creatures of the air moved with the hum of a distant spinner, and the companies of yellow butterflies swarmed on the road. The cattle rested in the shade of the oak trees and we waited. Abner's chestnut stood like a horse of bronze and I dozed in the saddle.
Shadows were entering the world through the gaps and passes of the mountains when I heard a horse. I stood up in my stirrups and looked.
The horse was traveling the path running through the wood below us. I could see the rider through the trees. He was a grazer whose lands lay westward beyond the wood. In the deep, utter silence I could hear the creak of his saddle-leather. Then suddenly as he rode there was the roar of a gun, and a cloud of powder smoke blotted him out of sight.
In that portentous instant of time I realized the meaning of the things that I had seen there in the thicket. It was an ambush to kill this man! The
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