"Thar hain't nothin' ter talk over," stormed Aaron. "Ye're jest tryin' ter kill time till the boys gits hyar, and then I reckon ye 'lows ter have me kilt like yer've had me kill them others. Hit hain't no use. I've done sent 'em away. When they gits back hyar, either you'll be in hell, or I'll be on my way outen the mountings." Samson stood rigid. Here was the confession of one murderer, with no denial from the other. The truce was of. Why should he wait? Cataracts seemed to thunder in his brain, and yet he stood there, his hand in his coat-pocket, clutching the grip of a magazine pistol. Samson South the old, and Samson South the new, were writhing in the life-and-death grapple of two codes. Then, before decision came, he heard a sharp report inside, and the heavy fall of a body to the floor. A wildly excited figure came plunging through the door, and Samson's left hand swept out, and seized its shoulder in a sudden vise grip. "Do you know me?" he inquired, as the mountaineer pulled away and crouched back with startled surprise and vicious frenzy. "No, damn ye! Git outen my road!" Aaron thrust his cocked rifle close against the stranger's face. From its muzzle came the acrid stench of freshly burned powder. "Git outen my road afore I kills ye!" "My name is Samson South." Before the astounded finger on the rifle trigger could be crooked, Samson's pistol spoke from the pocket, and, as though in echo, the rifle blazed, a little too late and a shade too high, over his head, as the dead man's arms went up. CHAPTER XXVI Except for those two reports there was no sound. Samson stood still, anticipating an uproar of alarm. Now, he should doubtless have to pay with his life for both the deaths which would inevitably and logically be attributed to his agency. But, strangely enough, no clamor arose. The shot inside had been muffled, and those outside, broken by the intervening store, did not arouse the house. Purvy's bodyguard had been sent away by Hollis on a false alarm. Only the "womenfolks" and children remained indoors, and they were drowning with a piano any sounds that might have come from without. That piano was the chief emblem of Purvy's wealth. It represented the acme of "having things hung up"; that ancient and expressive phrase, which had come down from days when the pioneers' worldly condition was gauged by the hams hanging in the smokehouse and the peppers, tobacco and herbs strung high against the rafters.