Part 10 (2/2)

”That's school election day. All Laurel Branch will be there!”

”Let them come!” said Florence, a gleam of fire in her eye. ”I haven't done anything to be ashamed of! They want a fight. We'll give them one-a battle royal! They've already lost one point; they must give me a jury.

We'll make them lose some more. I shouldn't wonder if the tide would turn and the power that is higher than I would turn this bit of meanness and trickery to our advantage.”

The forenoon of that day pa.s.sed much as had the earlier hours of other days-study and lessons, recess, then again the droning of voices blended with the lazy buzzing of flies and the distant songs of birds.

In spite of the quiet smoothness of the pa.s.sing hours, there was in the air that ominous tenseness which one feels but cannot explain.

This was heightened fourfold by a strange occurrence. Just as Florence was about to ring the bell after the noon hour, Marion drew her to a gaping window that looked out on the upper landscape and pointed with a trembling finger to a solitary figure perched atop a giant sandstone rock that lay in the center of a deserted clearing a few hundred yards above the schoolhouse.

The figure was that of a mountaineer. At that distance it would have been difficult to have told whether he was young or old. Something about the way he sat slouching over the rifle that lay across his lap reminded Florence of Black Blevens. An involuntary shudder shook her.

”On Lookout Rock!” she breathed.

The story of that rock they knew too well. In earlier days, when a deadly feud was raging up and down the creek, this rock had been the lookout for Black Blevens' clan. There, on top of the rock, with rifle at his side, a clansman would watch the movements of his enemy. Smoke curling from a distant chimney, a woman hoeing corn in the field, the distant boom of a rifle, all were signs that he read and pa.s.sed on by signals to his distant clansmen.

”There hasn't been a watcher on that rock for years, they say,” said Florence. Her teeth were fairly chattering.

”See! He's looking this way. Seems that he must be expecting something to happen.”

”Wha-what could it be?”

Florence stood trembling, all unnerved for one instant. Then, having shaken herself as one will to awaken from an unpleasant dream, she became her brave self again.

It was well she regained her courage. Fifteen minutes later, while Marion was outside beneath a great beech tree, hearing a lesson, Florence sat watching over a study hour. On hearing a sound of commotion she looked up quickly to see her fifty children running for doors and windows. In the back of the room Bud Wax and Ballard Skidmore stood glaring at each other and reaching for their hip pockets.

One instant the teacher's head whirled. The next that dread rumor sped through her brain: ”Bud has been carrying his pistol gun to school.”

Then, like a powerful mechanical thing, she went into action. One instant she had leaped from the platform; the next found her half way down the aisle. Before the slow muscles of Bud's arm had carried a hand to his pocket, he felt both wrists held in a vice-like grip and a voice that was strange, even to the speaker herself, said:

”Ballard Skidmore, leave the room. All the rest of you take your seats.”

Had Bud Wax possessed the will power to struggle, he would have found himself powerless in this girl's grasp. Nature had endowed her with a magnificent physique. She had neither neglected it nor abused it. Gym, when there was gym, hiking, climbing, rowing, riding, had served to keep her fit for this moment.

As Bud sank weakly to his seat he felt something slide from his pocket.

”My pistol gun,” his paralized mind registered weakly. The next moment he saw the teacher gripping the b.u.t.t of that magnificent thing of black rubber and blue steel and marching toward the front of the room.

”James Jordon,” she said as she tried to still the wild beating of her heart, ”go bring me two sandstones as large as your head.”

”Yes, mam.” James went out trembling.

Florence calmly tilted out the cylinder of the gun and allowed the cartridges to fall out. After that she stood with the weapon dangling in her hand.

When the rocks had been placed on her desk she laid the pistol on the flattest one, then lifted the other for a blow.

She did not look at Bud. She dared not. When a small child she had possessed a doll that was all her own. A ruthless hand had broken the doll's head. No doll ever meant more to a girl than his first gun meant to a mountain boy.

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