“So long, Mel!” Pole smiled and waved his hand. He made a fair pretense at getting ready to mount as Mel galloped away in a cloud of dust. The horseman was scarcely out of sight when a pair of fine black horses drawing a buggy came into view. The vehicle contained Captain Duncan and his daughter Evelyn. She was a delicate, rather pretty girl of nineteen or twenty, and she nodded pleasantly to Pole as her father stopped his horses. “You are sure that thing’s off, are you, Baker?” the planter said, with a genial smile. “Oh, yes, Captain.” Pole had his eyes on the young lady and had taken off his hat, and stood awkwardly swinging it against the baggy knees of his rough trousers. “Well, I’m very glad,” Duncan said. “I know you told some of the crowd back at the store that it had been settled, but I didn’t know whether it was reliable or not.” Pole’s glance shifted between plain truth and Evelyn Duncan’s refined face for a moment, and then he nodded. “Oh, yes, it was all a mistake, Captain. Reports get out, you know; and nothin’ hain’t as bad as gossip is after it’s crawled through a hundred mouths an’ over a hundred wigglin’ tongues.” “Well, I’m glad, as I say,” the planter said as he jerked his reins and spoke to his horses. As he whirled away Pole growled. “Damned ef I hain’t a-makin’ a regular signpost out o’ myself,” he mused, “an’ lyin’ to beat the Dutch. Ef that dern fool don’t come on purty soon he’ll—but thar he is now, comin’ on with a swoop—looks like his hoss is about to run from under ’im, his dern legs is so long. Now, looky here, Pole Baker, Esquire, hog-thief an’ liar, you are up agin about the most serious proposition you ever tackled, an’ ef you don’t mind what you are about you’ll have cold feet inside o’ ten minutes by the clock. You’ve set in to carry this thing through or die in the attempt, an’ time’s precious. The fust thing is to stop the blamed whelp; you cayn’t reason with a man that’s flyin’ through the air like he’s shot out of a gun, an’ Jeff Wade’s a-goin’ to be the devil to halt. He’s got the smell o’ blood, an’ that works on a mad man jest like it does on a bloodhound—he’s a-goin’ to run down some’n. The only thing in God’s world that’ll stop a man o’ that sort is to insult ’im, an’ I reckon I’ll have that to do in this case.” Jeff Wade was riding rapidly. Just before he reached Pole he drew out his big silver open-faced watch and looked at it. He wore no coat and had on a gray flannel shirt open at the neck. Round his waist he wore a wide leather belt, from which, on his right side, protruded the glittering butt of a revolver of unusual size and length of barrel. Suddenly Pole led his own horse round, until the animal stood directly across the narrow road, rendering it impossible for the approaching rider to pass at the speed he was going. “Hold on thar, Jeff!” Pole held up his hand. “Whar away? The mail hack hain’t in yet. I’ve jest left town.”