"I mought hev, Buddy,--but I wus powerful busy arguing with Orlick--yo' sho' they got Sap?"
"Sho," reassured Buddy. "He air a layin' up on th' road yonder now--I got t' rack out an' git yo' away from heah now."
"An' I got ole Hank--Gawd'll Moughty!--hain't we'uns in luck?"
Hatfield's voice sunk now to a thin, lingering whisper.
"Buddy," he muttered wearily, "'fore yo' go--kin yo' fetch me a speck o' water--jest a mouthful o' water somehow----"
The boy hurried behind the old shack in quest of something that would hold water. He found an old tomato can, but there was a rent in its bottom. Presently, he caught sight of a rusty tin bucket hanging by a wire, against a rotting porch post. He dumped the earth and dried roots out of this and held the bucket up to the moon. Then he ran toward the river. When he returned a few minutes later with the water, he was trailing Hatfield's piebald mare after him. The wounded man gulped the water greedily and Buddy unknotted the handkerchief about his neck and bathed his head.
"I air goin' now, Johnse," said Buddy. "Yo' jest lay easy like, an' I'll be back with somebuddy 'fore a goat kin wig his tail."
Whereupon, Buddy mounted the mare and galloped toward the courthouse, unafraid. In less than half an hour, Buddy galloped back, accompanied by six horsemen. They lifted the maimed, unconscious Hatfield and bore him away. As the cortège moved slowly up the moonlit road bearing their wounded leader, little Buddy turned the mare back, and cantered down toward the river to the spot where he had seen Sap McGill tumble out of the saddle when the Lutts' had fired upon him. But the boy was acutely disappointed. McGill was gone. And three bony, starved dogs with ravenous, wolfish eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, wore licking at a pool of blood in the road.
The immeasurable canopy above the hills was clear and pearly, save a narrow reef of low clouds that anchored over the serried peaks of Southpaw. Clouds frowning against the sun, grim and somber and splotched with a sable film that seemingly reflected a stratum of despair and gloom that tides of time could not erase.
Down upon the Moon mountain range, the sun smiled with an affiliating mellowness that found grateful response in the hearts of the denizens, despite the fact that the coves were scarred with new-made mounds, and their cabins were not without the wounded.