Milford pushed out his lips like a mudfish. “And I say you be.”

The boy shook his head. “What you’re fixin’ to do ain’t right.”

Milford raised the butt of his rifle as though to strike. He lowered it. “All right. Stay home and hide. You ain’t got the guts of a sapsucker.” He clicked to the horse and rode away.

Tom said, “I’ve sure done it now. But how’s a man to be a man if he don’t do what he knows is right?”

Waiting with Tom was not like waiting with old Milford. It was good to be alone with him in the daytime.

Doney said, “I got dinner ready, do you want to eat now?”

“Honey, I cain’t eat, with a mess like this un goin’ on.”

“You figure pa’s aimin’ to do somethin’ fearful?”

“Fearful or no, it’s wrong.”

It was a new thought to have old Milford wrong.

“Reckon you hadn’t ought to of gone with him?”

He shook his head. “There comes a time when a man knows.”

They sat unhappily. There was no sound but the chinaberry bough scraping the roof. Midday was cruel with its heat. Waves of it vibrated from the sand. The chickens lifted their wings and parted their bills, and their trips for water to the cypress trough were of no help in cooling.

Tom said, “Hark!” In the distance there was a bellowing. Here and there a shrill animal scream tore across it. “He’s done it. He’s cut Dixon’s fences and the cattle is stampeding to the river.”

He paced back and forth. Doney thought that he looked as he would look when he was old. It stabbed her to think of him growing old, shortening their time together.

He said, “There belonged to be some other way to settle it. Pa should of gone to Dixon.”

The sound of the stampeding cattle faded to a thin roll like far thunder. Stillness and heat took over the pine woods. A dirt dauber buzzing in the rafters was suddenly noisy. Then, violating the peace, Milford’s rifle cracked in the distance. It popped thinly again and again, like a string of firecrackers.

“Tom, what’s he shootin’?”

“Ain’t no earthly tellin’. But it won’t settle nothin’. It’ll begin a bitter thing.”

She ached to smooth away the furrows between his eyebrows. All the cattle in the county were not worth the distress in his face.

“Dixon’ll fight back, and there’ll be no peace for nary one.” His face lightened. “Mebbe t’other cattlemen won’t back pa.”

“They always do back him, don’t they?”

“They always have. There’s got to be a first time for everything.” His face darkened again. “Even if they don’t back him, pa’ll not give in till hell freezes. Dixon couldn’t even have the law on him. Pa’d shoot ary sheriff come to arrest him.”