He put it in a pocket of his coat and through the afternoon he
waited, outwardly quiet and composed, for the appointed hour when
single-handed he would defend his honor and his brother's against the
unequal odds of a brace of bullies, both of them quick on the trigger,
both smart and clever in the handling of weapons.
But if Stackpole told no one, some one else told some one. Probably the
messenger of the Tatums talked. He currently was reputed to have a leaky
tongue to go with his jimberjaws; a born trouble maker, doubtless, else
he would not have loaned his service to such employment in the first
place. Up and down the road ran the report that before night there would
be a clash at the Stackpole mill. Peg-Leg Foster, who ran the general
store below the bridge and within sight of the big riffle, saw fit to
shut up shop early and go to town for the evening. Perhaps he did not
want to be a witness, or possibly he desired to be out of the way of
stray lead flying about. So the only known witness to what happened,
other than the parties engaged in it, was a negro woman. She, at least,
was one who had not heard the rumor which since early forenoon had been
spreading through the sparsely settled neighborhood. When six o'clock
came she was grubbing out a sorghum patch in front of her cabin just
north of where the creek cut under the Blandsville gravel pike.
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