“I’m goin’ after Munson,” he said. Charlie nodded. There was no use trying to dissuade a man with that look in his eyes, no use to speak of the law and county officers. But he did. And young Bill only shook his head, as Charlie suspected he would. “The law,” he said slowly, “is a long way off. An’ I’m here. There’s a woman in this, too.” There generally was, Charlie reflected, a woman somewhere in the background of things like this. “I should never have left here,” young Mather said again. “Munson was afraid of me. I thought he was afraid of Jed. Seems like he wasn’t. I got to make it good. I expect we better feed ourselves. It’s a long way back to the Wineglass on an empty stomach.” “I’m not hungry,” Charlie replied. “But a cup of coffee wouldn’t do no harm.” They had that. There was food, cold meat and bread. But coffee seemed to satisfy them. They resaddled their mounts. The cloud bank of the night had become scattered wraiths, fleeing across a luminous sky. Touches of color streaked the east. “I forgot,” Mather said from his saddle. “I was goin’ to send a horse back for the old man to ride home. You could take him.” “It’ll be three or four days before we move a wheel, maybe longer,” Charlie answered. “Can’t work cattle in snowbanks. Your old man can stay at the wagon, or, if he wants to ride home, there’s plenty of extra horses there. Somebody ought to send word to Benton about this killin’. Listen, kid. Your business is your own. I’m askin’ you friendly. What are you aimin’ to do?” “Find Munson an’ Dolly.” “Yeah. But how? An’ what about when you find ’em?” “Munson has a place about two miles down this bottom,” said young Bill. “I expect they'll be there. Munson’ll claim self-defense. What I’ll do--well, that depends.” “If you’re goin’ straight to that place, I'll be along,” Charlie said, wondering, as he uttered the words, why he should, what impulse prompted him to commit himself so, what curious motive prompted him to ride with this grave-faced boy on a blood feud. For it was nothing else, now. “You ain’t interested in this,” young Bill answered. “I’m interested in _you_,” Charlie told him. “Gosh darn it, I don’t blame you, but these family feuds are hell. I’ll ride as far as this feller’s place with you just for luck. If he ain’t there and you still aim to camp on his trail, I’ll go back to the round-up.” “All right,” young Bill muttered “That’s white of you. But don’t mix in, Charlie. ’Tain’t your funeral.” Light grew as they rode down a winding bottom between high walls of earth, where stunted trees clung precariously. Snow masked short sagebrush. A white world with pines black on the rim of the canyon. Their horses floundered deep. The hard crust tinkled as hoofs broke through. “Hell of a May mornin’, this is.” Charlie Shaw thought of weak cattle dying by the hundred in this untimely burst of arctic weather. What Bill Mather thought lay behind the mask of his unsmiling face.