noon
`` Afore God , '' he declared in a low voice , `` she war a comely gal ! '' Kenneth Thornton -- now self rechristened Cal Maggard , was up and his coffee pot was steaming on the live coals long before the next morning 's sun had pierced its shafts into the gray opaqueness that cloaked the valleys . He squatted on his heels before the fire , honing the ancient blade of the scythe that he had found in the cock loft , and that blade was swinging against the stubborn resistance of weed and briar-trailer before the drench of the dew had begun to dry . He did not stop often to rest , and before noon he straightened and stood breathing deep but rhythmically to survey a levelled space where he had encountered an impenetrable thicket . Then Cal Maggard leaned his scythe and axe against a young hickory and went over to the corner of the yard where a spring poured with a crystal flow into a natural basin under the gnarled roots of a sycamore . Kneeling there , stripped to the waist , he began laving his chest and shoulders and dipping his face deep into the cold water . So intent was he that he failed to hear the light thud of hoofs along the sand-cushioned and half-obliterated road which skirted his dilapidated fence line , and he straightened up at length to see a horseman who had drawn rein there and who now sat sidewise gazing at him with one leg thrown across his pommel .