Perhaps before his eyes the historic vision of the road had risen: that
crowded pageant, brute and human, all whose red passions, burning rights and
burning wrongs, frenzied fightings and awful deaths had left but the
sun-scarred dust, the silence of the woods clothing itself in green. And
from this panoramic survey it may have come to him to feel the shortness of
the day of his own life, the pitifulness of its earthly contentions, and
above everything else the sadness of the necessity laid upon him to come
down to the level of the cougar and the wolf.
But as O'Bannon struck his horse and would have passed on, he sprang up
quickly enough and walked out into the middle of the road. When the horse's
head was near he quietly took hold of the reins and throwing his weight
slightly forward, brought it to a stop.
"Let go!" exclaimed O'Bannon, furious and threatening.
He did let go, and stepping backward three paces, he threw off his coat and
waistcoat and tossed them aside to the green bushes: the action was a
pathetic mark of his lifelong habit of economy in clothes: a coat must under
all circumstances be cared for. He tore off his neckcloth so that his high
shirt collar fell away from his neck, showing the purple scar of his wound;
and he girt his trousers in about his waist, as a laboring man will trim
himself for neat, quick, violent work. Then with a long stride he came round
to the side of the horse's head, laid his hand on its neck and looked
O'Bannon in the eyes: "At first I thought I'd wait till you got back to town. I wanted to catch
you on the street or, in a tavern where others could witness. I'm sorry. I'm
ashamed I ever wished any man to see me lay my hand on you.
"Since you came out to Kentucky, have I ever crossed you? Thwarted you in
any plan or purpose? Wronged you in any act? Ill-used your name? By
anything I have thought or wished or done taken from the success of your
life or made success harder for you to win?
"But you had hardly come out here before you began to attack me and you have
never stopped. Out of all this earth's prosperity you have envied me my
little share: you have tried to take away my school. With your own good name
gone, you have wished to befoul mine. With no force of character to rise in
the world, you have sought to drag me down. When I have avoided a brawl with
you, preferring to live my life in peace with every man, you have said I was
a coward, you unmanly slanderer! When I have desired to live the best life
I could, you have turned even that against me. You lied and you know you
lied--blackguard! You have laughed at the blood in my veins--the sacred
blood of my mother--"