“Yes,” said Judge Priest, “that's true as Gospel Writ. After all, boys,” he added, “I reckin the bravest man that lives is the coward that wants to run and yit don't do it. And anyway, when all's said and done, the bravest fighters in every war have always been the women and not the men. I know 'twas so in that war of ours--the men could go and git what joy there was out of the fightin'; it was the women that stayed behind and suffered and waited and prayed. Boys, if you've all got a taste of your toddies left, s'posen we drink to our women before Jeff brings you your fresh glasses.” They drank with those little clucking sipping sounds that old men make when they drink, and for a bit there was a silence. The shifting shuttle play of the lightning made stage effects in yellow and black against the back-drop of the sky. From the shadows of the dishrag vine where he sat in a hickory arm chair, his pipe bowl making a glowing red smudge in the darkness, old Cap'n Jasper Lawson spoke. “Speaking of under dogs and things, I reckon none of you young fellows”--he chuckled a little down in his throat--“can remember when this wasn't a gun-toting country down here? But I do. “It was before your day, but I remember it. First off, there was the time when my daddy and the granddaddies of some of you gentlemen came out over the Wilderness trail with a squirrel rifle in one hand and an ax in the other, swapping shots with the Indians every step of the way. And that was the beginning of everything here. Then, years later on, the feuds started, up in the mountains--although I'm not denying but we had our share of them down here too--and some broken down aristocrats moved out from Virginia and Maryland and brought the Code and a few pairs of those old long barreled dueling pistols along with them, which was really the only baggage some of them had; and awhile after that the Big War came on; and so what with one thing and another, men took to toting guns regularly--a mighty bad habit too, and one which we've never been entirely cured of yet, as Billy's next court docket will show, eh, Billy?” Judge Priest made an inarticulate sound of regretful assent and Squire Buckley spat out into the darkness with a long-drawn syrupy swish. “But in between, back in the twenties and the thirties, there was a period when gun toting wasn't so highly popular. Maybe it was because pistols hadn't got common yet and squirrel rifles were too heavy to tote around, and maybe it was because people were just tired of trouble. I won't pretend to say exactly what the cause of it was, but so it was--men settled their differences with their fists and their feet--with their teeth too, sometimes. And if there were more gouged eyes and more teeth knocked out, there were fewer widows and not so many orphans either.