Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1915-11-18

haint nuver dared ter ~oa him
afore."
NO" she cried bitterly, he will vel.
come the chance to humiiiate and 10
refuse my plea He has been waiting
for this; to see me come to him . sup
plant IN Bonded knee. and then to
laugh at me and turn me away" She
paused and added brokenly: And yet
I've got to 80 to him in surrender-to
be refused-but I'll CO."
Listen" said the preacher. and his
words carried that soft quality Of paci-
hcation which she had once or twice
heard before. "Thar's q heap worse
fellers than Bad Anse Havey. Eff ye
could Jest hev seed yore way ter treat
him a leetle dif'rent-"
How could II" demanded Juanita
hotly. How could 1 be friends with a
murderer and keep my s~elf-respectf'
The brown-faced man looked up at
her and spoke simply.
1--we done kept mine" he said.
The girl rose.
"Will you go with met" she asked a
little weakly. 81 don't feel quite
strong enough to go over there alone.
While they are humbling me 1 would
like to have a friend at hand. / think
it would help a little"
Pm ready now" and so, with the
man who had guided her on other mis-
sions, she set out to make what terms
she could with the enemy she had SO
stubbornly deied.
It seemed an interminable Journey,
though they took the short cut Of the
foot-trail over the hills.
The house that had come down to
Anse Havey had been built almost q
century before. 1t was originally
placed in a section so large that else
where it would have been a domain-a
tract held under the original Virginia
grant. Since those days much of 1t
had been parceled out as marriage por-
tions to younger generations.
Cabins that had once housed slaves,
barns, a smoke-house, an icehouse, and
a small hamlet of dependent shacks
clustered about a clearing which had
been put there rather to avoid surprise
than to give space for gardening. The
Havey Of two generations ago had
been something Of a hermit scholar,
and in his son had lurked a diminish
ing craze for books and an increasing
passion for leadership.
The feud had blazed to its ~fiercest
heat in his day, and the father of Bad
Anse Havey had been the first Bad
Anse. His son had succeeded to the
title as a right Of heritage, and had
been trained to wear 1t like a fighting
Though he might be a whelp Of
the wolf breed, the boy was a strong
whelp and one in whom slept latent
possibilities and anomalous qualities,
for in him broke out afresh the love of
books.
1t might have surprised his newspa-
per biographers to know how deeply
he had conned the few volumes on the
rotting shelves of the brick house, or
how deeply he had thought along some
lines. 1t might have amazed them had
they heard the fire and nan with
which he quoted the wise counsel of
the foolish Polonius. Beware Of en-.
tering a quarrel, but being in, so bear
thee that the opposer may beware
Of thee"
AS to entering a quarrel, it suficed
his logic that he had been born into It;
that he had "heired" his hatreds.
And because in these parts his IA
Their had held almost dictatorial pow
ers, it had pleased him to send his son,
just come to his majority, down to the
state capital as a member of the legis-
lature and the son had gone to sit for
a while among lawmakers.