“Wasn’t it before you went away? No? Well he got careless with his six-gun down in the Birch Creek line camp last winter and shot his fool self. Darned near cashed in. He was on the bed ground for two months.” Robin listened, with a loud thumping in his breast, a feeling of relief that was like a great weight rolled off his back. He had seen the glaze of death gather in Mark Steele’s eyes as his knees sagged under him. He had stood there looking down at the red stain spreading and soaking into the dirt floor. He had seen Mark lie like a log for twenty minutes. It had never occurred to Robin that he wasn’t dead. How could a man, even an iron-hard man, survive a .45 slug through the base of his neck, in the region of his wishbone? Yet there he was, reining in a black horse that curvetted and twisted in eagerness to be off, while Mark talked to the stableman. Robin could see his lips move. The old passion flickered up in Robin’s breast. All the indignity, the calculated insults, the treachery, Tex Matthews’ death, Steele’s bold thievery, stirred Robin’s blood again. The old sores reopened. So that was how it went? He wondered why. What had caused Steele and Thatcher to take that tack? Accident! Didn’t want it known that an unarmed boy had shot him with his own gun. Vanity? Perhaps. It didn’t matter. Tucked within the waistband of his trousers Robin’s .45 rested against his stomach. He slid his hand under his coat, felt the curved bone handle of the gun and took a step toward the door. Boyd’s eyes had been on his face, in which all unconsciously something of Robin’s feelings must have been reflected. Boyd caught his arm as he moved. “Aw, look. Let him go for this time,” he counseled cheerfully. “You got all the time there is to carry on your private war. He’s pullin’ for Lonesome Prairie. They’re gatherin’ saddle stock. He wanted me to ride with him but I ain’t quite ready. Pass it up this time, Robin. Have a drink and let him go. Who wants to throw lead on a spring day like this?” Robin laughed. He could scarcely have followed up that first impulse since at that very moment Shining Mark gave the black his head and broke away in a gallop. Robin watched him grow small until he was a bobbing dot on the out trail. Then he said to Jack Boyd: “I guess he’ll keep for awhile.” “Let’s amble across to the Silver Dollar,” Jack suggested. “There’s some fellows over there.” The afternoon and evening Robin spent was like that of a prodigal son returned. He had not been in Big Sandy since the evening he cut his string and went home full of shame and impotent anger. He had come back under a cloud. That cloud was dispelled. Here on his own ground, among his own peers, he passed the first carefree hours that had fallen to his lot in weary months.