OU couldn't do nothing," Brick returned contemptuously, "you're too
old. As for that, I ain't come to the pass of needing being waited on,
I guess. It ain't dangers that subdues me, it's principles. Look
here!"

He walked to the cross-bar that was set in the walls to guard the floor
from the unknown abyss. "I found out they was a hole in the rock just
about five feet under the floor. I can take this rope and tie one end
to the post and let myself down to that little room where there's grub
enough to last a long siege, where there's bedding and common luxuries,
as tobacco and the like. I ain't been smoked out, into the open, I
goes free and disposed and my hands held up according."

When he had finished the last morsel of his story and had warmed some
of it over for another taste, there came an ominous silence, broken at
last by the querulous voice of Bill, arguing against surrender.

Willock waited in patience till his friend had exhausted himself. "I
ain't saying nothing," he explained to Wilfred, "because he ain't
pervious to reason, and it does him good to get that out of his system."

"Let me make a suggestion," exclaimed Wilfred suddenly.

Willock looked at him suspiciously. "If it ain't counter to my plans--"

"It isn't. It's this: Suppose we drop the subject till tomorrow--it
won't hurt any of us to sleep on it, and I know I'D enjoy another night
with you, as in the old days."

"I'm willing to sleep on it, out of friendship," Willock conceded
unwillingly, "though I'd rest easier on a bed in the jail. There never
was no bird more crazy to get into a cage than I am to be shut up. But
as to the old days, they ain't none left. Them deputies is in the
dugout, they're in the cabin I built for Lahoma, they think they owns
our cove. Well, they's no place left for me; life wouldn't be nothing,
crouching and slinking up here in the rocks. Life wouldn't be nothing
to me without Lahoma. I'd have a pretty chance for happiness, now
wouldn't I, sitting up somewheres with Bill Atkins! I ain't saying I
mightn't get out of this country and find a safe spot where I could
live free and disposed with an old renegade like HIM that nobody ain't
after and ain't a-caring whether he's above ground or in kingdom come.
But I couldn't be with Lahoma; I'm under ban."

"If you were on my farm near Oklahoma City," Wilfred suggested, "and
Lahoma and I lived in the city, you could often see her. Up there,
nobody'd molest y