And Old Buck roared back this, "No, sirree! I've done promised I'd never start another fight wi' the Singletons!" Then a great silence fell over everything. The Singletons were saving ammunition, and waiting patiently for a man inside the puny barricade to show his head. Wolfe knew they wouldn't wait long. He knew they would become impatient, and rush the barricade. He looked around at the groveling negroes. Their lives were in his keeping; he was responsible for their safety. For their sake, he decided that he would humiliate himself in the eyes of both the Singletons and the Wolfes. He drew from his pocket a white handkerchief, ever the emblem of rank cowardice to the mountaineer, and began to knot a corner of it to a sourwood switch. But it was not necessary that he suffer the humiliation of being looked upon as a coward. A big, square-chested man came running up the track; he bellowed two words that were as magic--"_Go home!_" The attacking party turned unhesitatingly to obey! Wolfe leaped over the barricade to meet the newcomer. Wolfe was altogether himself now. The spirit of civilization was again in the ascendency. "Alex Singleton, by the grace of God!" he cried dramatically. XIII Five minutes after the coming of the old chief of the Singletons, the Unaka Lumber Company's general manager was the one man left in the immediate vicinity of the piles of ties. Alex Singleton had driven his kinsmen homeward, telling them in no uncertain language as they went just what he thought of them for the grievous mistake they had made. His brother Eli turned upon him angrily, and so did his son Lon; he quite promptly knocked them both down. Weaver had been sent with the negro laborers to Johnsville, where he was to do the paying off. The Wolfes had disappeared silently from the eastern side of the Gate. [Illustration] The one man left on the scene of the recent fight did not ponder the situation for long. He took up an ax and went to cut the deadline tree twice and remove the piece. He had not struck half a dozen blows when he saw coming toward him from the basin, as fast as she could possibly walk, his grandmother; the old woman carried her sourwood staff horizontally, and the bowl of her clay pipe was turned carelessly downward. When she saw her grandson alive, she stopped, threw up her hands, and let her pipe fall to the grass at her feet. She appeared to be unable to believe that he was really safe. "Little Buck, honey," she called fearsomely, "is 'at shore enough you a-choppin' that 'ar tree the same as ef--as ef ye wasn't hurt none? Or does I see a sperit?" "I'm all right, grandmother," he answered cheerily; then he asked solicitously concerning her rheumatism.