"I do feel hard over my father's death," he went on moodily. "Who wouldn't? If God meant me to forget it, why did he put this mark on my face, Jeff? I did talk pretty strong to Nan about it on Music Mountain. She accused me then of being a gunman. It made me hot to be set down for a gunman by her. I guess I did give it back to her too strong. That's the trouble--my bark is worse than my bite--I'm always putting things too strong. I didn't know when I was talking to her then that Sandusky and Logan were dead. Of course, she thought I was a butcher. But how could I help it? "I did feel, for a long time, I'd like to kill with my own hands the man that murdered my father, Jeff. My mother must have realized that her babe, if a man-child, was doomed to a life of bloodshed. I've been trying to think most of the night what she'd want me to do now. I don't know what I _can_ do, or can't do, when I set eyes on that old scoundrel. He's got to tell the truth--that's all I say now. If he lies, after what he made my mother suffer, he ought to die like a dog--no matter who he is. "I don't want to break Nan's heart. What can I do? Hanging him here in Sleepy Cat, if I could do it, wouldn't help her feelings a whole lot. If I could see the fellow--" de Spain's hands, spread before him on the table, drew up tight, "if I could get my fingers on his throat, for a minute, and talk to him, tell him what I think of him--I might know what I would want to do--Nan might be there to see and judge between us. I'd be almost willing to leave things to her to settle herself. I only want what's right. But," the oath that recorded his closing threat was collected and pitiless, "if any harm comes to that girl now from this wild trip back among those wolves--God pity the men that put it over. I'll wipe out the whole accursed clan, if I have to swing for it right here in Sleepy Cat!" John Lefever, Jeffries, Scott in turn took him in hand to hold him during three days, to restrain the fury of his resentment, and keep him from riding to the Gap in a temper that each of them knew would mean only a tragedy worse than what had gone before. Mountain-men who happened in and out of Sleepy Cat during those three days remember how it seemed for that time as if the attention of every man and woman in the whole country was fixed on the new situation that balked de Spain. They knew only that Nan had gone back to her people, not why she had gone back; but the air was eager with surmise and rumor as to what had happened, and in this complete overturning of all de Spain's hopes, what would happen before the story ended. Even three days of tactful representation and patient admonition from cool-headed counsellors did not accomplish all they hoped for in de Spain's attitude. His rage subsided, but only to be followed by a settled gloom that they knew might burst into uncontrollable anger at any moment.