Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/272

 door up. Then he went outside and did the same to the window.

"George, get your horse up, and I'll get the pinto," he said. Mis' Higginson exploded.

"What's the pore gal done?" she cried.

"Don't ask me!" cried Amandy's father. "If you let her out till I return I'll kill all my family and the pinto, and fire the house, and kill George, and blow my own head off. Are you ready, George?"

"To bee sure," said George in a shaking voice. It seemed to him that he wasn't now so sure that Billy Prentiss was a gay seducer. Bill was terrible. But when Bill got on his hind legs, George was nowhere. Bill was now commander.

"I've made a plan," he said, when he got outside and had the pinto saddled up. "You will ride over to Williams' raynch, ten miles to the north-west, George. They've Brother Brandram stayin' with 'em. Tell him to kem over at once to see someone in imminent danger o' death. If he won't come, make him at the p'int o' your gun. I'll seek Billy Prentiss with thess shot-gun. I'll either