“You and I can do it.”

“You bet we can!”

“Let’s do it.  Shake hands.”

And thus, while the amazed factions looked on the two modern young mountaineers, eye to eye and hand gripping hand, pledged death to the long warfare between their clans and a deathless friendship between themselves.  And a little later a group of lounging Hawns and Honeycutts in the porches of the two ancient hostile hotels saw the two riding out of town side by side, unarmed, and on their way to bring old Aaron and old Jason together and make peace between them.

The coincidence was curious, but old Aaron, who had started for town, met old Jason coming out of a ravine only a mile from town, for old Jason, with a sudden twitch of memory, had turned to go up a hollow where lived a Hawn he wanted to see and was coming back to the main road again.  Both were dim-sighted, both wore spectacles, both of their old nags were going at a walk, making no noise in the deep sand, and only when both horses stopped did either ancient peer forward and see the other.

“Well, by God,” quavered both in the same voice.  And each then forgot his mission of peace, and began to climb, grunting, from his horse, each hitching it to the fence.

“This is the fust time in five year, Jason Hawn, you an’ me come together, an’ you know whut I swore I’d do,” cackled old Aaron.

Old Jason’s voice was still deep.

“Well, you’ve got yo’ chance now, you old bag o’ bones!  Them two boys o’ ours air all right but thar hain’t no manhood left in this hyeh war o’ ours.  Hit’s just a question of which hired feller gits the man who hired the other feller.  We’ll fight the ole way.  You hain’t got a knife—­now?”

“Damn yo’ hide!” cried old Aaron.  “Do you reckon I need hit agin you?” He reached in his pocket and tossed a curved-bladed weapon into the bushes.

“Well,” mumbled old Jason, “I can whoop you, fist an’ skull, right now, just as I allers have done.”

Both were stumbling back into the road now.

“You air just as big a liar as ever, Jase, an’ I’m goin’ to prove it.”

And then the two tottering old giants squared off, their big, knotted, heavily veined fists revolving around each other in the old-fashioned country way.  Old Jason first struck the air, was wheeled around by the force of his own blow, and got old Aaron’s fist in the middle of the back.  Again the Hawn struck blindly as he turned, and from old Aaron’s grunt he knew he had got him in the stomach.  Then he felt a fist in his own stomach, and old Aaron cackled triumphantly when he heard the same tell-tale grunt.

“Oh, yes, dad—­blast ye!  Come on agin, son.”

They clinched, and as they broke away a blind sweep from old Jason knocked Aaron’s brassrimmed spectacles from his nose.

They fell far apart, and when old Jason advanced again, peering forward, he saw his enemy silently pawing the air with his back toward him, and he kicked him.