"I knows thet whilst ye war away in Virginny he went over an' sought ter make love ter yore wife ... an' she come nigh killin' him fer hit ... but she feared fer bloodshed ef she bore thet tale ter _you_." The old man paused, and Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters. "I kain't prove none of them things in law," went on Hump, and his eyes travelled back to the hideous fascination of the sheeted body, "yit I knows, in my heart, every one of 'em's true--an' thet's enough fer me. Now I'm goin' ter be my own law!" The cripple turned and walked unsteadily to the corner of the room, and from its place behind a calico curtain he took out a repeating rifle. "Thar's my co'te of jestice," he declared, and his voice trembled as with hunger and thirst. But Parish Thornton had thrown back his head and unaccountably he laughed as he laid on the other's arm fingers that closed slowly into a grip of steel and rawhide. "Hump," he said, "hit would be a turrible pity fer us ter quarrel--but I don't aim ter be robbed, even by _you_! Thet man belongs ter _me_ ... an' I aims ter claim him now. When my blood war bi'lin' like a mortal fever ... right hyar in this room ... didn't ye fo'ce me ter lay aside my grudge till sich day es ye give me license ter take hit up ergin?... an' hain't thet day come now?... From thet time till this I've kep' my word ... but hell hitself couldn't hold me back no longer.... Ye kain't hev him, Hump. He's _mine_!" He paused, then with something like a sob he repeated in a dazed voice, "An' ye says he aimed ter fo'ce Dorothy with his love-makin'. God!" Hump Doane was still clinging to the rifle upon which Thornton had laid his hands, and they stood there, two claimants, neither of whom was willing to surrender his title to a disputed prize--the prize of Bas Rowlett's life. But at length the older fingers loosened their hold and the older man took a stumbling step and knelt by his dead. Then the younger, with the gun cradled in his elbow, and a light of release in his eyes--a light that seemed almost one of contentment--went out through the door and crossed the yard to the fence where his mount was hitched. CHAPTER XXXII Sim, standing at the barn door, had watched Parish Thornton ride away that morning with a troubled heart, as he wondered what sequel these events would bring for himself. Then he went to the house and called softly to Dorothy. She was crooning a lullaby, behind the closed door of her room, to the small mite of humanity that had come, in healthy pinkness, to the comparatively mature age of one month. "Thar hain't nuthin' ter be done right now," the hired man told her, "an' I've got ter fare over ter my own place fer a spell. A man's comin' ter haggle with me over a cattle deal." But Sim was not going to his own house. He was acting under standing orders which might in no wise be disobeyed.