th the whole truth. If you wait for Lahoma's
letters and only admit what she discovers, Bill and I can't form any
plan of protecting you. While her information is coming, bit by bit,
the man who wants you hanged is liable to show up--"

"Let 'im come!" growled Brick. "He can't get no closer to me than I'll
be to him. I'm not going to air my past history. What Lahoma finds
out, I admits frank and open; otherwise I stands firm as not guilty,
being on safe ground, technical and arbitrary."

"But if Red Kimball brings the sheriff--it's only a matter of
time--your plea of not guilty won't save you from arrest. And he'll
have any number of rascals to prove what he pleases, whether it's the
truth or not. If Gledware comes as a witness, his position will give
him great influence against you--and the fact that he'd testify after
you'd saved his life, would make a pretty hard hit with the jury."

"Jury nothing!" retorted Brick. "This case ain't never going to a
jury. Such things is settled man to man, in these parts."

"But as surely as the sheriff serves his writ, you'll be landed in
jail. And I happen to know the sheriff; he's a man that couldn't be
turned from his duty--good friend of mine, too."

"Is, eh? Then you'd better advise with him for his good."

"Think of Lahoma. If you killed a man--whether the sheriff, or this
Red Kimball--Lahoma could never feel toward you as she does today."

"And how would she feel toward me if I was hanged, uh? I guess she'd
druther I laid my man low than that I swung high." Willock started up
impatiently. "We're wasting words," he said, roughly. "There is but
the two alternatives: I'm one of 'em, and Red Kimball is the other.
It's simply a question of which gets which. I tries to make it plain,
for there's no going back. Now are you with me, or not? If not, I'll
fight it out along as I always done in times past and gone--and
bedinged to 'em! I'm sorry my young days was as they was, and for
Lahoma's sake I'd cut off this right arm--" he held it out,
rigidly--"if that'd change the past. But the past--and bedinged TO
it--can't be changed. It's there, right over your shoulder, out of
reach. This mountain might as well say, 'I don't like being a big
chunk of granite where all the rest of the country is a smooth prairie;
I'm sorry I erupted; and I guess I'll go back into the heart of the
earth where I come from.' A mountain that's erupted is erupted till
kingdom come,