The thing could have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do.

Rough words had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other; and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud and kept it a-going.

And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each other, year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you see -- till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about.

Wherever a Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was going to get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on the other.

They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the family.