Brand Blotters

The story that Ferne Yarnell told them in the parlor of the hotel had its

beginnings far back in the days before the great war. They had been

neighbors, these three families, had settled side by side in this new land

of Arkansas, had hunted and feasted together in amity. In an hour had

arisen the rift between them that was to widen to a chasm into which much

blood had since been spilt. It began with a quarrel between hotheaded

young men. Forty years later it was still running its blind wasteful

course.

Even before the war the Boones had begun to go down hill rapidly. Cad

Boone, dissipated and unprincipled, had found even the lax discipline of

the Confederate army too rigid and had joined the guerrillas, that band of

hangers-on which respected neither flag and developed a cruelty that was

appalling. Falling into the hands of Captain Ransom Yarnell, he had been

tried by drumhead courtmartial and executed within twenty four hours of

his capture.

The boast of the Boones was that they never forgot an injury. They might

wait many years for the chance, but in the end they paid their debts.

Twenty years after the war Sugden Boone shot down Colonel Yarnell as he

was hitching his horse in front of the courthouse at Nemo. Next Christmas

eve a brother of the murdered man--Captain Tom, as his old troopers still

called him--met old Sugden in the postoffice and a revolver duel followed.

From it Captain Tom emerged with a bullet in his arm. Sugden was carried

out of the store feet first to a house of mourning.

The Boones took their time. Another decade passed. Old Richard Bellamy,

father of the young man, was shot through the uncurtained window of his

living rooms while reading the paper one night. Though related to the

Yarnells, he had never taken any part in the feud beyond that of

expressing his opinion freely. The general opinion was that he had been

killed by Dunc Boone, but there was no conclusive evidence to back it.

Three weeks later another one of the same faction met his fate. Captain

Tom was ambushed while riding from his plantation to town and left dead on

the road. Dunc Boone had been seen lurking near the spot, and immediately

after the killing he was met by two hunters as he was slipping through the

underbrush for the swamps. There was no direct evidence against the young

man, but Captain Tom had been the most popular man in the county. Reckless

though he was, Duncan Boone had been forced to leave the country by the

intensity of the popular feeling against him.