"How?" inquired McCalloway, and the boy responded gravely:
"He lay up on ther hillside an' shot his uncle ter death as they was takin' him from the jail-house ter ther gallows."
Truly, reflected the soldier, he was modelling with grim and stiff clay, but he only said:
"Promise me that, as to Saul, you will wait--until you are twenty-one."
Boone did not reply for five full minutes, but at the end of that time he nodded his head. "I kain't deny ye nothin', atter what ye've done fer me," he assented briefly.
Then McCalloway read from the paper his scrap of encouragement. The Court of Appeals had granted the Secretary of State a rehearing.
"But thet hain't Asa," objected the boy. "I don't keer nothin' erbout thet feller."
"It's a similar case, tried by the same court, and involving the same principles. It indicates that Asa will have a new trial, too."
"Ef he comes cl'ar," announced Boone, with the suddenly rocketing spirits of boyhood, "I reckon Asa kin handle his own affairs."
McCalloway had set himself to preparing Boone within a year from that fall for entrance into the state university. There was but a faint background of prior attainment against which to paint many things, but there was an avidly acquisitive pupil, a tireless teacher, and an intensive plan of education.
Gregory was still in the Louisville jail--where, indeed, a half dozen other years were yet to find him. The Secretary of State had come through his second trial with a second conviction, and had once more been granted a rehearing.
Saul Fulton, the star witness in Asa's trial, had disappeared, and report had it that he had gone to South America--but the record of his former testimony remained fixed in the stenographer's notes and was fully available for later use--so that his going lifted no shadow from Asa's future.
"I reckon they squshed ther indictment ergin him," Boone commented bitterly to McCalloway, "an' paid him off with some of thet thar blood money."
He paused and then went on, holding his finger between the pages of the book he was studying. "He's done fared a long way off--but, some day he'll fare back again. I stands full pledged--twell I comes of age, an' I aims ter keep my word. Atter thet, I hain't makin' no brash promises. Ther hate in my heart, hit don't seem ter slacken none. I mistrusts hit won't--never."