"No, he ain't," was the prompt retort. "A rattle-snake gives warnin', Newt don't. I'm havin' him watched pretty close. I don't want him hurt, but he mustn't kill Henry. Don't tell him I've been here, but if he starts over towards the Falkins place, send word to Jim Spooner's cabin. Jim will go up to the ridge an' blow his fox horn, an' they'll pass it along. Try to keep him home from Jackson Saturday, but if he does go, send word to Jim when he's started, and we'll take care of him when he gets there." The Deacon turned and disappeared through the door. He had several other houses to visit, and he had selected the night because in its darkness he could give his movements a highly beneficial secrecy. But, on the following day, Newt met an acquaintance on a hill-trail, who stopped him for conversation and planted seeds of suspicion in his mind. He spoke of a rumor traveling from cabin to cabin to the effect that the Deacon had returned to the hills to act as a pacificator, instead of a leader of war. Newt said nothing and contented himself with listening, but deep in his suspicious nature uneasy doubts began to stir. A peace might be welcomed by his people, but to him it threatened the paralyzing of his trigger-finger. Possibly the wily Deacon had lied to him and turned him back for some deeper reason than merely to save him the remainder of a profitless journey. So Newton Spooner, as soon as he had the opportunity, began strolling from cabin to cabin along the way toward the Falkins house once more. He heard, but did not know the significance of the fox horns that carried clearly from ridge to ridge, and when he had reached the wayside store of Sam Hoover, standing on a sandy stretch in the crotch of two creeks, he instituted active inquiries. CHAPTER XII Sam Hoover he thought he could trust. Sam, at least, had come to him when they were taking him to prison, and had denounced the lethargy with which his kinsmen were standing idle while he went into bondage. The store was a frame shack, presenting at its front a barrel-littered porch and a hitching-rack. Beyond one of the creek branches stood a dilapidated "meeting house" in a flat, gravel-strewn area. Sam Hoover himself sat at his door; a slouching giant in store clothes, coatless and open of vest, collarless and soiled of linen. His movements were ponderous, and his eyes were sunk in pouched sockets. As Newt slouched up to the porch in the forenoon, the waves of heat were playing over the earth, and the mountains were torpid with mid-day stillness. This was a point about half-way between the two clan centers, and the man who trafficked here presented to each faction in turn the guise of friendship and to each played the tale-bearer under his smug semblance of neutrality. But the place was a point from which branched the road that Henry Falkins must travel to Jackson, and the store-keeper would know when he had last passed that way.