“Well, I don’t know that, neither.” “Where one is, the other is,” cried the woman. “She’s stole that girl, that’s what she’s done.” “She’d have hard work a-stealing her,” objected Pa McBirney, “when she don’t belong to no one.” “You’ll find out whether she belongs to anyone or not,” Sisson cried, shaking his fist at pa. “You can’t come it over us that way. We told you that you couldn’t have the girl and we mean it.” “Well,” said pa in his most reasonable voice, “I hain’t took the girl.” “Your wife has, and that’s the same thing. And you’ll have to give her up or there’ll be trouble.” “What my wife does and what I do are two different things,” pa went on teasingly. “I’m telling you the truth when I say I don’t know where them women folks has gone.” Sisson strode into the room at that, trembling with rage, and as he did so, in at the rear door of the room lounged William Sabin, one of the mountaineers, and behind him Tom Williams and after him Dick Bab. Jim thought he saw other forms looming up in the darkness without. “See here, sonny,” whispered Jim’s father to him, “you just kind o’ slip out of that there window above the bench till we get this little affair settled one way or t’other.” And Jim, seeing that his father meant to be obeyed, jumped on the wooden bench, loosed the catch of the board shutter, and crawled out onto the pile of saplings that was stacked against the outer wall. He could hear his heart beating, and he tried not to think what might happen in the next few minutes. He had heard of quarrels in mountain cabins that ended in a terrible way. He wished in the bottom of his heart that those show people had never come near them, and that his mother had never seen that girl. He could hear his father’s voice going on in its pleasant singsong way. “These here friends of mine,” he was saying, “thought to do a little shooting to-night. We’ve been put about by some spit cats hollering at night, and we thought to get after ’em. But you mustn’t hurry away on that account. There’s lots of time—all the time there is—and we’ll see you down the mountain a piece if you like.” Jim heard Betty Bowen call: “Come along, boys. It ain’t worth it,” and then he saw Sisson and the others backing out of the room. They got on their wagons, grumbling and swearing among themselves, while the mountaineers came out and stood watching them, the fire gleaming through the door upon the guns they had brought to hunt the “spit cats.” “Did I understand you to say that you’d like our company for a piece?” drawled Pa McBirney as the show people swung their lanterns beside their wagons and called to their horses to move on. “You think you’re mighty smart,” yelled Sisson. “But you wait! Just you wait!” “Kidnapper!” sneered one of the women. “And your woman—looked too good to believe, she did.”