Hapsburg Liebe

“ From the boarding-house came a joyous cry, “Fight!” Bill Cole and a score of his timberjacks, hatless and coatless, rushed toward the two belligerents, and Lettie joined them without being noticed.
The combatants rose and began to hammer away at each other with savage force. The younger man struck quite as often with his injured hand as he struck with the other. Now Mott knocked Dunellen down; now Dunellen knocked the bully down. There were no sounds save those of their rapid breathing and their crashing blows, so great was the interest in the fight. Mott was the stronger ”

“ No man ever hated another man more than the bully hated young Tom Dunellen, from the Pigeon River country. Dunellen walked as straight to Bill Cole’s office in the rear end of the commissary building as if he had already been there a hundred times; he stopped and laughed aloud at the chalk-writing on the half-closed door—it had been put there during muddy weather:
CLEAN YOUR DAM FEET PLEASE
Bill Cole had known that Lettie and her foster-mother, the only women in the camp’s vicinity, couldn’t read when he put it there. ”

“ All the old women is done dead, and the young women is all married off and gone—I don’t know whar. I’ve l’arned a lesson, Lettie, by the others. I never fit a fight with anything but my bare hands, and I never expect to. And I’ve never started a quar’l, though maybe I’ve brought a good many to a end.
“I’m not a bad man. But people thinks I am, jest acause my name is Dunellen and acause I’m from the Pigeon River country. Lettie, I’ve suffered a good deal about that. It made it hard for me to be a clean, straight man. But I am a clean, straight man. I’m a-givin’ it to ye right, Lettie.” ”

“ It happened so quickly that the watching timberjacks could not prevent it. Both men straightened on the ground and lay still.
Bill Cole made a hasty examination of the two silent figures. The bigger man was beyond human aid. Dunellen was still alive, but he had a deep gash in his left side where Mott’s knife had gone in; the bare end of a shattered bone showed through the skin of the back of his right hand. They carried him to the bed in Bill Cole’s room, in the lower story of the boarding-house, and a small, geared logging locomotive was sent thundering to the lowland for a doctor. ”

“ Lettie murmured barely above the rippling of little Nobody’s Creek.
He bent toward her and took one of her sunburned hands.
“I believe it,” he said almost brokenly. “And God knows I’m much obliged. I never had a reel friend in my life, afore. I’ve been mighty lonesome without people, and without friends, and without anybody to like me.”
“I’m lonesome too,” Lettie told him. “My folks was all killed in feuds too. Jest like you’re the last, I’m the last. I’m glad I met you, acause I didn’t know the’ was anybody else but me that didn’t have no folks.” ”

“ I’m no hand to talk about a man to his back, but—ef you was only a friend o’ mine, I’d say, ‘Don’t.’ Ef you was somebody I didn’t know, I’d say, ‘Don’t.’ Even ef yo was the wust kind of a’ inemy o’ mine, I’d say, ‘Don’t.’ As it is, I’d rather kill Burley Mott ’an to see you marry him. ”

“ Lettie had more curiosity than the average woman. She gave one quick glance toward Granny Parkis, who sat dozing in her chair just inside the cabin, and then she ran down through the riotously blooming laurels. She wanted to see the stranger ”

“ It was this here:
“‘Now that you’re old enough to marry, be mighty keerful who it is ye fall in love with, Letitia,’ she says to me—she allus did say that word ‘Letitia’ so primpy-like! ‘Acause,’ she says to me, ‘it’ll be a long-time thing with you. ”

“ Therefore he must avoid a fight with Tom Dunellen.
“Oh, go on to grub, boy!” he said easily. “You’re hungry and tired, and I ain’t goin’ to force a fight on you.”
Dunellen laughed, took up his luggage and went toward the boarding-house. Lettie tugged at Mott’s corduroy coat-sleeve.
“Who is he?” she asked.
Mott told her. He continued:
“And Tom is the last livin’ man o’ the Pigeon River Dunellens; all the others was killed fightin’ feuds with their boots on,” which was true. “When you fight a Pigeon River Dunellen, you’ve got to kill him in the end ”