“It weren’t a ground-hog, Uncle Bob—­it were a skunk!”

“Think of that!” murmured Mr. Yancy.

CHAPTER IV

LAW AT BALAAM’S CROSS-ROADS

But Mr. Yancy was only at the beginning of his trouble.  Three days later there appeared on the borders of Scratch Hill a lank gentleman armed with a rifle, while the butts of two pistols protruded from the depths of his capacious coat pockets.  He made his presence known by whooping from the edge of the branch, and his whoops shaped themselves into the name of Yancy.  It was Charley Balaam, old Squire Balaam’s nephew.  The squire lived at the crossroads to which his family had given its name, and dispensed the little law that found its way into that part of the county.  The whoops finally brought Yancy to his cabin door.

“Can I see you friendly, Bob Yancy?” Balaam demanded with the lungs of a stentor, sheltering himself behind the thick bole of a sweetgum, for he observed that Yancy held his rifle in the crook of his arm and had no wish to offer his person as a target to the deadly aim of the Scratch Hiller who was famous for his skill.

“I reckon you can, Charley Balaam, if you are friendly,” said Yancy.

“I’m a family man, Bob, and I ask you candid, do you feel peevish?”

“Not in particular,” and Yancy put aside his rifle.

“I’m a-going to trust you, Bob,” said Balaam.  And forsaking the shelter of the sweetgum he shuffled up the slope.

“How are you, Charley?” asked Yancy, as they shook hands.

“Only just tolerable, Bob.  You’ve been warranted—­Dave Blount swore hit on to you.”  He displayed a sheet of paper covered with much writing and decorated with a large seal.  Yancy viewed this formidable document with respect, but did not offer to take it.

“Read it,” he said mildly.  Balaam scratched his head.

“I don’t know that hit’s my duty to do that, Bob.  Hit’s my duty to serve it on to you.  But I can tell you what’s into hit, leavin’ out the law—­which don’t matter nohow.”

At this juncture Uncle Sammy’s bent form emerged from the path that led off through the woods in the direction of the Bellamy cabin.  With the patriarch was a stranger.  Now the presence of a stranger on Scratch Hill was an occurrence of such extraordinary rarity that the warrant instantly became a matter of secondary importance.

“Howdy, Charley.  Here, Bob Yancy, you shake hands with Bruce Carrington,” commanded Uncle Sammy.  At the name both Yancy and Balaam manifested a quickened interest.  They saw a man in the early twenties, clean-limbed and broad-shouldered, with a handsome face and shapely head.  “Yes, sir, hit’s a grandson of Tom Carrington that used to own the grist-mill down at the Forks.  Yo’re some sort of wild-hog kin to him, Bob—­yo’ mother was a cousin to old Tom.  Her family was powerful upset at her marrying a Yancy.  They say Tom cussed himself into a ’pleptic fit when the news was fetched him.”