Owen smiled so faintly that the expression was hardly noticeable. “Maybe,” he said, “you'd better ask Mr. Lester. He knows the people better than I do.”
McKeever came angrily erect, but he was much too smart to allow his emotions to control his business sense. “Well, son,” he snapped, glaring at Dunc, “what do you say?”
Dunc had begun to see the purpose behind the queer turn of the marshal's talk. “I don't know,” he said carefully. “Maybe they'd listen to me, and maybe they wouldn't.” But his mind was thinking far ahead, and he was thinking that McKeever's railroad would mean work for the hill-people, something to fill the gap that the Brunner raids had opened. There would be sawmills and timber to cut, and roads and settlements would change the face of the hills. Dunc thought that all these things might be to the good.
He looked first at Owen, and the marshal nodded. Then to McKeever he said, “I can't promise it'll do any good, but maybe I can talk to them.”
“You do that,” the banker said quickly, wiping his face again. “I'd appreciate it, son.”
Owen sat for one long moment, quietly at peace with the world and with himself. He felt no obligation toward anyone but Elizabeth and the boys, and he was eager to see them. He was anxious to experience the pungent smell of fresh-turned earth again. Duty—if that was the name for it—no longer held him. The glories of the past did not entice him as they enticed Arch Deland. What he had done, he told himself, was not so much. A million men before him had left their plows for various reasons, for causes as subtle as the act of breathing, to fight for certain beliefs that they could not put into words. And they would do it again in the future.
Owen Toller stood up and looked at Dunc. “Are you ready, son?”
The boy rose from his chair. “I'm ready.” Owen unpinned his deputy's badge and laid it carefully on Will Cushman's desk. “Then,” he said, “I guess it's time we went home.”
THE END