"We'll come to that shortly enough. Disregarding that for a moment--we understand that you want to open up the blood-feud again. Is that true?" Bruce made no answer, only gazed without flinching into his questioner's face. "That was what my brother Dave led me to understand," Simon went on, "so we've decided to let you have your way. It's open--it's been open since you came here. You disregarded the warning I gave--and men don't disregard my warnings twice. You threatened Dave with your rifle. This is a different land than you're used to, Bruce, and we do things our own way. You've hunted for trouble and now you've found it. Your father before you thought he could stand against us--but he's been lying still a long time. The Rosses thought so too. And it is part of our code never to take back a threat--but always to make it good." Bruce still sat with lowered head, seemingly not listening. The clansmen gazed at him, and a new, more deadly spirit was in the room. None of them smiled now; the whole circle of faces was dark and intent, their eyes glittered through narrowed lids, their lips set. The air was charged with suspense. The moment of crisis was near. Sometimes the men glanced at their leader's face, and what they saw there filled them with a grim and terrible eagerness. Simon was beginning to run true to form. His dark passions were slowly mastering him. For a moment they all sat as if entranced in a communion of cruelty, and to Bruce they seemed like a colony of spotted rattlesnakes such as sometimes hold their communions of hatred on the sun-blasted cliffs. All at once Simon laughed,--a sharp, hoarse sound that had, in its overtones, a note of madness. Every man in the room started. They seemed to have forgotten Bruce. They looked at their leader with a curious expectancy. They seemed to know that that wild laugh betokened but one thing--the impact of some terrible sort of inspiration. As they watched, they saw the idea take hold of him. The huge face darkened. His eyes seemed to smolder as he studied his huge hands. They understood, these wilderness men. They had seen their leader in such sessions before. A strange and grim idea had come to him; already he was feasting on its possibilities. It seemed to heat his blood and blur his vision. "We've decided to be merciful, after all," he said slowly. But neither Bruce nor the clansmen misunderstood him or were deceived. They only knew that these words were simply part of a deadly jest that in a moment all would understand. "Instead of filling you full of thirty-thirty bullets, as better men than you have been filled and what we _ought_ to do--we're just going to let you lay out all night--in the pasture--with your feet tied and your hands behind your back." No one relaxed. They listened, staring, for what would follow.