Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/83

Rh asleep by the hearth and now about to be carried off to bed.

And the outlaw said: "I've lost my boy to-night. This here one was given me by the will of—God."

Black Morgan Gandil reined his horse close by, leaned to peer down, and the shadow of his hat fell across the face of Pierre.

"There's no good comes of savin' shipwrecked men. Leave him where you found him, Jim. That's my advice. Sidestep a red-headed man. That's what I say."

The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped his blue, stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit of the line that moves in the lock-step: "Take it from me, Jim, there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him lay, I say."

But big Dick Wilbur was already leading up the horse of Hal Boone, and into the saddle Jim Boone swung the inert body of Pierre. The argument was settled, for every man of them knew that nothing could turn Boone back from a thing once begun. Yet there were muttered comments that drew Black Morgan Gandil and Bud Mansie together.

And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes:

"This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled."

"Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started,