but they meant business. I dropped to the floor and lay on my side,
shootin'; Bard, he followered suit. They went down like tenpins till our
guns were empty. Then we up and rushed what was left of 'em--Piotto and
his daughter. Bard makes a pass to knock the gun out of the hand of Joan
and wallops her on the head instead. Down she goes. I finished Piotto
with my bare hands."

"Broke his back, eh?"

"Me? Whoever heard of breakin' a man's back? Ha, ha, ha! You been
hearin' fairy tales, son. Nope, I choked the old rat."

"Were you badly hurt?"

Lawlor searched his memory hastily; there was no information on this
important point.

"Couple of grazes," he said, dismissing the subject with a tolerant wave
of the hand. "Nothin' worth talkin' of."

"I see," nodded Bard.

It occurred to Lawlor that his guest was taking the narrative in a
remarkably philosophic spirit. He reviewed his telling of the story
hastily and could find nothing that jarred.

He concluded: "That was the way of livin' in them days. They ain't no
more--they ain't no more!"

"And now," said Anthony, "the only excitement you get is out of
books--and running the labourers?"

He had picked up the book which Lawlor had just laid down.

"Oh, I read a bit now and then," said the cowpuncher easily, "but I
ain't much on booklearnin'."

Bard was turning the pages slowly. The title, whose meaning dawned
slowly on his astonished mind as a sunset comes in winter over a grey
landscape, was The Critique of Pure Reason. He turned the book over and
over in his hands. It was well thumbed.

He asked, controlling his voice: "Are you fond of Kant?"

"Eh?" queried the other.

"Fond of this book?"

"Yep, that's one of my favourites. But I ain't much on any books."

"However," said Bard, "the story of this is interesting."

"It is. There's some great stuff in it," mumbled Lawlor, trying to
squint at the title, which he had quite overlooked during the daze in
which he first picked it up.

Bard laid the book aside and out of sight.

"And I like the characters, don't you? Some very close work done with
them."

"Yep, there's a lot of narrow escapes."

"Exactly. I'm glad that we agree about books."

"So'm I. Feller can kill a lot of time chinning about books."

"Yes, I suppose a good many people have killed time over this book."

And as he smiled genially upon the cowpuncher, Bard felt a great relief
sweep over him, a mighty gladness that this was not Dre