"Who does?" "Dad." "Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until Jim Boone comes. I only fight men." Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling. "Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun don't keep me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's place. Hal!" The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited. "My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place. _Hal's_ place!" The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken by any mortal man. "I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do, I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out. That's me!" "Then do it." "And face dad afterward?" "Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy, and me a man." "Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you don't anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done, and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just raises hell." "He really expects to keep me here?" "Expects? He will." "Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically. "Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put you on my shoulders to guard." He moved the gun significantly. "And I can do it." "Of course. But he would have to let me go sometime." "Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life whether you wanted to or not. Me speaking personally, I agree with Black Gandil: This is the worst fool thing that dad has ever done. What do we want with you--in Hal's place!" "But I've got a thing to do right away--today; it can't wait." "Give dad your word to come back and he'll let you go. He says you're the kind that will keep your word. You see, he found you with a cross in your hand." And Jack's lips curled again. It was all absurd, too impossible to be real. The only real things were the body of yellow-haired Mary Brown, under the tumbled rocks and dirt of the landslide, and the body of Martin Ryder waiting to be placed in that corner plot where the grass grew quicker than all other grass in the spring of the year. However, having fallen among madmen, he must use cunning to get away before the outlaw and his men came back from wherever they had gone. Otherwise there would be more bloodshed, more play of guns and hum of lead. "Tell me of Hal," he said, and dropped his elbows on his knees as if he accepted his fate. "Don't know you well enough to talk of Hal." "I'm sorry." The boy made a little gesture of apology. "I guess that was a mean thing to say. Sure I'll tell you about Hal--if I can." "Tell me anything you can," said Pierre gently, "because I've got to try to be like him, haven't I?"