“My people, my people!” softly exclaimed Todd, as he moved after them. “Kentuckians all, Americans all, this day you give the lie to the slander put upon your mountain race. My people, my noble people!”
Dry-eyed women, shading their brows with toil-scarred hands, lingered at their cabin doors, their children clustered about them, and watched their men go by. Occasionally one of them waved, and an answering salute came from among the irregular ranks.
Beyond the western ridges the sun dropped into a saffron sky, crowning with a halo of gold the reborn feudland, touching with mellow light the crags and peaks that stood out proudly in the dusk. High above the misty valleys a bald eagle circled, forward, backward, forward, backward, over the country of warrior clans; while through the distant gap marched mountain men, men of soul and heart and brawn.
Religion, said the mining man, sometimes puts me in mind of one of those new blasting powders; there’s no just telling when it’ll go off or whom it’ll blow up.
I was thinking then of Radway and Billsky: “Bad” Radway, him that beat up Ellis at Borromeo and shot Fargue O’Leary. You will have heard of him. Every one was hearing of him at one time, and then all the talk kind of faded out. By and by Radway himself faded out. It was Billsky that faded him.
Billsky was a little, serious, hairy fellow, not much higher than Radway’s elbow; a good little fellow, that never gave any trouble to any one. He always seemed, in a meek sort of way, puzzled over existence in general and his own share in it in particular. Men liked him. He was awful kindhearted, but he’d the same sense of humor as an Apache. Primitive, that’s what he was. He was part Russian, and he’d a primitive sort of name that no one ever tried to pronounce. Billsky came near enough.
He scarcely ever came in Rad’s way, though he moved with the same crowd. Rad was in the center, you see, Billsky just wanderin’ on the outskirts. They got mixed up pretty close, though, later.
It began with a girl, of course, a girl at Borromeo. No need for names. She was a nice girl, and a nice-lookin’ girl, just one of many, thank God. No one so much as guessed Billsky was sweet on her till she went away suddenly and was seen no more, and her folks moved away. It was put down to Rad, and he didn’t deny it; sort o’ smiled and looked knowin’. You know the kind. Then Billsky heard of it. He was working up at the Joyeux then, for that was before the irrigation was put through, and it was all cattle. He sent a message through to Radway. “I’m coming down to kill you,” said the message, “soon as I can get my time. Don’t go away.”