The Deacon drew his horse to a standstill with an amicable nod.
"Howdy, Newt?" he greeted. The boy made no response, and shifted his weight from foot to foot, while his eyes kindled with growing fury. About a little roadside puddle fluttered a small flock of white and lemon butterflies, disturbed by human invasion, and on a branch overhead a squirrel ran out and stopped cautiously.
"There's a squirrel, Newt," suggested the Deacon casually. "I reckon you're squirrel-huntin', ain't you?"
But the boy did not answer, and the Deacon knew why. He was thirteen miles from home, and was stalking bigger game than squirrels.
For a little space the two men looked at each other, the Deacon to outward seeming with the casual interest of a chance meeting, and the boy with a lowering truculence which augured trouble.
The little mud-butterflies alighted again at the edge of the puddle, and the squirrel whisked himself away.
Back on the hillsides the white elder blossoms and pink-hearted laurel cups nodded in the sleepy languor of a summer afternoon. In the overhead blue a buzzard drifted on tilting wings.
"You're right far off your beat, ain't you, son?" suggested Black Pete at length.
The sullen visage did not alter or brighten.
"I hain't none too fur off," was the surly response. "I reckon I knows what I'm a-doin'."
The Deacon nodded. He had been thankful for the momentary silence which had afforded him an interval for fast and very necessary thinking, and he had made use of the opportunity. Straight as a crow flies, Newt Spooner was making his way across crest and cove and gulch to the house of the man he had "marked down." He had been home three weeks now, and his lungs had drunk in the splendid mountain air and the elixir had begun to heal the soreness of his chest. The pallor had left his face and the native brown had come again to his skin. Newt Spooner was tough-fibered, and his recovery, as any eye could see, would now be speedy and complete. Also, he had practised with his rifle until he no longer doubted his ability to handle it, and he was going on this tuneful and gracious day at the end of June to carry out his unalterable purpose. All this the Deacon read from his eyes and from the circumstances of the meeting. The Deacon had gone to the Falkins house unarmed, as his pose of peace-advocate required, and the boy standing in the road before him had shifted the rifle with a rather marked emphasis of gesture, so that now it was cradled on his elbow, and his right hand was almost caressingly toying with the lock. This time he could command the situation, and his face said that he meant to do it.