Brand Blotters - Page 101/180

Again the feud had slumbered. It was understood that the Yarnells and the

Bellamys were ready to drop it. Only one of the opposite faction remained

on the ground, a twin brother of Duncan. Shep Boone was a drunken

ne'er-do-well, but since he now stood alone nothing more than empty

threats was expected of him. He spent his time idly with a set of gambling

loafers, but he lacked the quality of active malice so pronounced in

Dunc.

A small part of the old plantation, heavily mortgaged, still belonged to

Shep and was rented by him to a tenant, Jess Munro. He announced one day

that he was going to collect the rent due him. Having been drinking

heavily, he was in an abusive frame of mind. As it chanced he met young

Hal Yarnell, just going into the office of his kinsman Dick Bellamy, with

whom he was about to arrange the details of a hunting trip they were

starting upon. Shep emptied his spleen on the boy, harking back to the old

feud and threatening vengeance at their next meeting. The boy was white

with rage, but he shut his teeth and passed upstairs without saying a

word.

The body of Shep Boone was found next day by Munro among the blackberry

bushes at the fence corner of his own place. No less than four witnesses

had seen young Yarnell pass that way with a rifle in his hand about the

same time that Shep was riding out from town. They had heard a shot, but

had thought little of it. Munro had been hoeing cotton in the field and

had seen the lad as he passed. Later he had heard excited voices, and

presently a shot. Other circumstantial evidence wound a net around the

boy. He was arrested. Before the coroner held an inquest a new development

startled the community. Dick Bellamy fled on a night train, leaving a note

to the coroner exonerating Hal. In it he practically admitted the crime,

pleading self defence.

This was the story that Ferne Yarnell told in the parlor of the Palace

Hotel to Jack Flatray and the Lees.

Melissy spoke first. "Did Mr. Bellamy kill the man to keep your brother

from being killed?"

"I don't know. It must have been that. It's all so horrible."

The deputy's eyes gleamed. "Think of it another way, Miss Yarnell. Bellamy

was up against it. Your brother is only a boy. He took his place. A friend

couldn't have done more for another."

The color beat into the face of the Arkansas girl as she looked at him.

"No. He sacrificed his career for him. He did a thing he must have hated

to do."