A
practical creature, she depended from the first on getting a lift from
time to time. Yet Johnnie knew better than another the vast, silent,
secret network of hate that draws about the victim in a mountain
vendetta. If the spirit of feud was aroused against the mill owners, if
the Groners and Dawsons had been able to enlist their kin and clan, she
was well aware that the man or woman who gave her smiling information as
to ways and means, might, the hour before, have looked on Gray Stoddard
lying dead, or sat in the council which planned to kill him. Thus she
walked warily, and dared ask from none directions or help. She was not
yet in her own region, these lower ridges lying between two lines of
railway, which, from the mountaineer's point of view, contaminated them
and gave them a tincture of the valley and the Settlement.
Noon came and passed. She was very weary. Factory life had told on her
physically, and the recent distress of mind added its devitalizing
influence. There was a desperate flagging of the muscles weakened by
disuse and an unhealthy indoor life.
"I wonder can I ever make it?" she questioned herself. Then swiftly,
"I've got to--I've got to."
Her eye roved toward a cabin on the slope above. There lived a man by
the name of Straley, but he was a cousin to Lura Dawson, the girl who
had died in the hospital.
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