“I suppose I am to go with you,” said Harry.

“Why, yes,” said Chad, startled; “how did you know?”

“I didn’t know.  How far is Dillon’s hiding-place from where Morgan is?”

“Across the mountains.”  Chad understood suddenly.  “You won’t have to go,” he said, quickly.

“I’ll go where I am ordered,” said Harry Dean.

CHAPTER 26.  BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER AT LAST

It was the first warm day of spring and the sunshine was very soothing to Melissa as she sat on the old porch early in the afternoon.  Perhaps it was a memory of childhood, perhaps she was thinking of the happy days she and Chad had spent on the river bank long ago, and perhaps it was the sudden thought that, with the little they had to eat in the house and that little the same three times a day, week in and week out, Mother Turner, who had been ailing, would like to have some fish; perhaps it was the primitive hunting instinct that, on such a day, sets a country boy’s fingers itching for a squirrel rifle or a cane fishing-pole, but she sprang from her seat, leaving old Jack to doze on the porch, and, in half an hour, was crouched down behind a boulder below the river bend, dropping a wriggling worm into a dark, still pool.  As she sat there, contented and luckless, the sun grew so warm that she got drowsy and dozed—­how long she did not know—­but she awoke with a start and with a frightened sense that someone was near her, though she could hear no sound.  But she lay still—­her heart beating high—­and so sure that her instinct was true that she was not even surprised when she heard a voice in the thicket above—­a low voice, but one she knew perfectly well: 

“I tell you he’s a-comin’ up the river now.  He’s a-goin’ to stay with ole Ham Blake ter-night over the mountain an’ he’ll be a-comin’ through Hurricane Gap ‘bout daylight termorrer or next day, shore.  He’s got a lot o’ men, but we can layway ’em in the Gap an’ git away all right.”  It was Tad Dillon speaking—­Daws Dillon, his brother, answered: 

“I don’t want to kill anybody but that damned Chad—­Captain Chad Buford, he calls hisself.”

“Well, we can git him all right.  I heerd that they was a-lookin’ fer us an’ was goin’ to ketch us if they could.”

“I wish I knowed that was so,” said Daws with an oath.  “Nary a one of ’em would git away alive if I just knowed it was so.  But we’ll git captain Chad Buford, shore as hell!  You go tell the boys to guard the Gap ter-night.  They mought come through afore day.”  And then the noise of their footsteps fainted out of hearing and Melissa rose and sped back to the house.