he yellow road up the bluff slowly,
heading toward Choke Gulch. As he neared the top, he lifted his head and
saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy
made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique.

"Hurry! For God's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless
and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony
that danced like a dervish.

The old man nodded, with a flash of pleasure at the sight of the boy,
then let his head fall wearily upon his breast. He felt very powerless.
When he reached Piney's side he put out his hand and held to the boy's
hand as though he found its warmth and firmness sustaining.

"Let's git into the timber," said Piney, and they rode forward a little
way quite silent. "I don' want Mist' Steerin' to look back an' see me
here," the boy explained. In the growth where the hills began to roll
down toward Choke Gulch, Piney stopped short, with a detaining hand upon
Bernique's bridle.

"I hearn," he said. His young face was so grey and solemn that Bernique
regarded him questioningly. "I was simlike half asleep up there in the
bushes. Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened.
I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you
cayn't tell nobody! Mist' Steerin', he cayn't tell nobody!--but Me!" the
boy was breathing harder, his face was growing greyer, "Unc' Bernique,
I'm f'm the hills, an' not like them," the blood began suddenly to come
back to his lips; he raised in his stirrups and slashed at the branches
of a black-jack tree with his riding switch, as though he cut a vow
across the air, high up. "But what I can, I will!" he cried, and
clenched his hands proudly. "Fer her an'--an' fer him!" he choked.
Whatever he meant to do, his young passion for Salome Madeira and his
young affection for Steering, his hero, leaped out on his face whitely.
"She loves him, too, Unc' Bernique!" he cried in a final, broken
crescendo.

Old Bernique stared at the boy in exaltation. "God above!" he shouted,
"if that is it, it begins to be hope in my old breast! All may come
right yet, and no oaths broken!"

"None broke!" cried Piney. "One more took! I'm a-ridin' saouth, to
Madeira Place, Unc' Bernique;" he gathered up the reins from his pony's
neck,--"I'm a-goin' to Miss Sally Madeira to tell her abaout Mist'
Steerin';" he was blind with hot, young tears. "She'll do the rat thing
whend she knows, Unc' Berniq