The note was set down in crudely printed characters, as though to evade the identifying quality of handwriting, and this was its truculent message: No trespassin'. The gal ain't fer _you_. Once more of goin' over yon and they'll find you stretched dead in a creek bed. This is writ with God in Heaven bearin' witness that it's true. CHAPTER VI Cal Maggard sat gazing into the blaze that leaped and eddied fitfully under the blackened chimney. In one hand drooped the sheet of paper that he had found fastened to his door and in the other the pipe which had been forgotten and had died. He looked over his shoulder at the door which he had left ajar. Through its slit he could see a moonlit strip of sky, and rising slowly he circled the room, holding the protection of the shadowy walls until he reached and barred it. That much was his concession to the danger of the threat, and it was the only concession he meant to make. Into this place he had come unknown and under this roof he had slept only one night. He had injured no man, offended no woman or child, yet the malevolent spirit of circumstance that had made a refugee of him in Virginia seemed to have pursued him and found him out. Perhaps Rowlett had been right. The Harper girl was, among other mountain women, like a moon among stars. Her local admirers might hate and threaten one another, but against an intruder from elsewhere they would unite as allies. Such a prize would be fought for, murdered for if need be--but one ray of encouragement played among the clouds. Any lover who felt confidence in his own success would not have found such tactics needful--and if she herself were not committed, she was not yet won by any rival. In that conclusion lay solace. The next morning found Maggard busied about his dooryard, albeit with his rifle standing ready to hand, and to-day he wore his shirt with the arm-pit pistol holster under its cover. His vigilance, too, was quietly alert, and when a mule came in sight along the trail which looped over the ridge a half mile distant and was promptly swallowed again by the woods, his ears followed its approach by little sounds that would have been silent to a less sensitively trained hearing. It was a smallish, mouse-coloured mule that emerged at length to view and it looked even smaller than it was because the man who straddled it dwarfed it with his own ponderous stature and a girth which was almost an anomaly in a country of raw-boned gauntness. The big man slid down, and his thick neck and round face were red and sweat-damp though the day was young and cool. "I made a soon start this mornin'," he enlightened: "ter git me some gryste ground, an' I didn't eat me no vittles save only a few peanuts. I'm sich a fool 'bout them things thet most folks round hyar calls me by ther name of 'Peanuts.'" "I reckon I kin convenience ye with some sort of snack," Maggard assured him. "Ef so be ye're hungry--an' kin enjoy what I've got."