Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/91

Rh shocked out of the thought of his own troubles, waited.

"My brother, Hal; he's dead; he died last night, and on the way back dad found you and brought you to take Hal's place. Hal's place!"

The accent showed how impossible it was that Hal's place could be taken by any mortal man.

"I got orders to keep you here, but if I was to do what I'd like to do, I'd give you the best horse on the place and tell you to clear out. That's me!"

"Then do it."

"And face dad afterward?"

"Tell him I overpowered you. That would be easy; you a slip of a boy, and me a man."

"Stranger, it goes to show you may have heard of Jim Boone, but you don't anyways know him. When he orders a thing done he wants it done, and he don't care how, and he don't ask questions why. He just raises hell." "He really expects to keep me here?"

"Expects? He will."

"Going to tie me up?" asked Pierre ironically.

"Maybe," answered Jack, overlooking the irony. "Maybe he'll just put you on my shoulders to guard."

He moved the gun significantly.

"And I can do it."

"Of course. But he would have to let me go some time."

"Not till you'd promised to stick by him. I told him that myself, but he said that you're young and that he'd teach you to like this life whether you