“Hunh! I guess you know your job.” The old man smiled back at him, a glimmer of that same endearing quality in the smile and the eyes. He waved back the gold when Rawley would have returned it. “Keep it--you’ve earned it. No use to me any more.” He settled deeper into the chair and gave a great sigh as his head dropped back against the cushions. “Fifty years ago I picked ’em up--and I’ve lived to see a King turn them over twice in his hand and tell me within a few miles of where I got them. That shows what I mean by King blood. Fifty years ago! It’s a long time to live like a hunk of meat. I’m seventy-nine--” “Get out! You’d have to prove it, Grandfather. That’s a good ten years more than you look.” “Don’t lie to me, boy.” But King, of the Mounted, failed to look censorious. “You read that Bible. Remember, that’s the legacy old King, of the Mounted, leaves to the next King in line. It don’t lie, boy. Read it faithful and heed what it says, and some day you’ll say the old man wasn’t so crazy after all.” “Why, Grandfather,--” But the old man waved him away with a peremptory gesture. Johnny Buffalo glided to the door, opened it and held it so, waiting with the inscrutable calm of his race. “Well, good night, Grandfather. I’m--glad to have had this little talk. And I hope it won’t be the last. I always wanted to pioneer, and I’ve always felt as if I’d like to talk over those times--” Rawley was finding it rather difficult even yet to bridge the silence of a lifetime. “You grew up thinking I was crazy, most likely. Easy to say the old man’s touched in the head--when they don’t want to bother with a cripple. You’re a King. Maybe you can guess what it means to be a hulk in a wheel chair. And the Kings never ran after anybody; nor the Rawlinses, your grandmother’s people. Two good names--glad you carry ’em both. If you live up to ’em both you’ll go far. Take care of those two books, boy. Remember what I said--they’re your legacy from King, of the Mounted. Good night.” The old man snapped out the last two words in a tone of finality and reached for his pipe. Johnny Buffalo opened the door an inch wider. Rawley obeyed the unspoken hint and straightway found himself outside, with the door closed behind him. He waited, listening, loth to go. Now that the feud was broken, he tingled with the desire to know more about his grandfather, more about those wonderful old fighting frontier days, more about King, of the Mounted. “Crazy? I should say not!” Rawley muttered as he made his way slowly across the strip of grass by the syringas. “I only hope my brain will be as keen as Grandfather’s when I am his age.” He stood for a few minutes breathing deep the night air saturated with perfume. Then, with the spell of his grandfather’s vivid personality strong upon him, he went in to where his mother sat gently rocking beside a rose-shaded lamp, looking over a late magazine.