Williams news., 1922-11-24
Copyright bx Little. BsssEn q c.

''1hese Ross men were frontiersmen of the first order. They were vfrtuous men too-trusting every one, and oh !! what strength they had! With their own hands they cleared away the for est and put the land into rich pasture and hay and grain. They raised great herds of cattle and had f1ocks of sheep too.
 ''It was then that dark days began to come Another family-headed by the father of the man I call Simon migrated here from the mountain dis trfcts of Oklahoma. But they were not so ignorant as maHy mountain people, and they were killers Per haps that's a word you don't know. Perhaps you didn't know 1t existed. A killer is a man that has killed other men. It isn't a hard thing to do at all, Bruce, after you are used to it. These people were used to 1t. And because they wanted these great lands my own fathers home-they began to Kill the Rosses.
 At first they made no war on the Folgers. The Folgers, you must know. were good people, too. honest to the last penny. They were connected. by marriage only. to the Ross family. They were on our side clear through. At the beginning of the feud the head Of the FoiEef family was just q young man, newly married. And he had . son after a while. 2.
 The newcomers called it . feud. But 1t wasn't Aa feud-if was simply murder. Oh. yes. we killed some of theni..T Folger and my father and all his kin united against them making a great clan-but they were nothing in
 A. Simon himself was just a boy when 1t began But he grew to be the great est power, the leader of the enemy clan before he was twenty-one.
 "You must know, Bruce that my own father held the land But he WIS so generous that lis br0IHe1 $ - 10 helped him farm 1t hardly realized that possession was in his name. And father was a dead shot. It took a long time before they could kill him"
 The cofdness that had come over. her words did not in the Least hide her depth of feeling. She gazed moodHy into the darkness and spoke almost in a monotone.
 "But Sinon-just a boy then-and Dave. his brother, and the others Of them kept after us like SO many wolves. There was no escape. The only thing we could do was to fight back-and that was the way we learned to hate. A man can hate Bruce, when he is fighting for his home. He can learn it very well when he sees his brother fall dead. or his father-or q stray bullet hit his wife A woman can learn it, too, as old Eli mira did. when she finds her sons body in the dead leaves. There was no law here to stop it. The little sem blance of law that was in the valleys below regarded 1t as a blood-feud, and didn't bother itself about 1t. Besides at first we were too proud to call for help. And after our numbers were few. the trails were. watched-and those who tried to go down into the valleys-never got there.
 "One after another the Rosses were killed, and I needn't make it any worse for you than I can help-by telling of each killing. Enough to say that at last no one was left except few old men whose eyes were too dim to shoot straight, and my own father. And I was q baby then-tust born- @ s% F,zF ET2
 Then one night my father-seeing the fate that was coming down upon them-took the last course to- defeat them Matthew Folger-a connection by marriage-was stil1 alive. SiInon's clan hadn't attacked him yet. He had no share in the land, but instead lived in this house live In now. He had a few cattle and some pasture land farther down the Divide. There had been no purpose in killing him. He hadn't been worth the extra bullet
 "One night my father left me asleep and stole through the forests to talk to him. They made an agreement have pieced 1t out. a little at a time. My father deeded all his land to Fol ger.
 "I can understand now. The enemy clan pretended 1t was a blood-feud only-and that 1t was fair war to kill the Rosses. Although my father knew their real aim was to obtain the land. he didn't think they would dare kill Matthew Folger to get It.. He knew that he himself would fall, sooner or later but he thought that to kill Fol ger would show their caEds-and that would be too much, even for Simon's people. But he didn't know He hadn't foreseen to what lengths they would go:",
 Bruce leaned forward. "So they Folger2" he asked.
 He didn't know that his face had gone suddenly stark whfte,s and that ] q curious glitter ;hau~.4l!sses To his eyes. Hers-oke breathlessly ss:st sssr=st hs. naIHSs .,.::s-:--s . :: :. :. z .tsa