the
words. His face was gray when he looked up again, and his voice hard.

"Tell me as briefly as you can how I come here, and who picked me up."

"My father and his men. They passed you lying on the snow. They
brought you home."

"Who is your father?"

The boy stiffened and his color rose in pride and defiance.

"My father is Jim Boone."

Instinctively, while he stared, the right hand of Pierre le Rouge crept
toward his hip.

"Keep your hand steady," said the boy. "I got a nervous
trigger-finger. Yeh, dad is pretty well known."

"You're his son?"

"I'm Jack Boone."

"But I've heard--tell me, do you look like your father?"

Jack Boone smiled, strove to frown, and then burst into surprisingly
musical laughter. It came in bursts and ripples, and seemed that it
would never end. His merriment ended slowly, for he saw the eyes of
Pierre stare into blank distance, and knew that the man with the red
hair was thinking of the woman whom the landslide had buried.
Something that was partially sympathy and partially curiosity altered
Jack's expression.

After all, it was very difficult to remain hostile in front of the
steady blue eyes of this stranger.

Pierre said gravely: "Why am I under guard?"

Jack was instantly aflame with the old anger.

"Not because I want you here."

"Who does?"

"Dad."

"Put away your pop-gun and talk sense. I won't try to get away until
Jim Boone comes. I only fight men."

Even the anger and grief of the boy could not keep him from smiling in
his peculiarly winning way.

"Just the same I'll keep the shooting-iron handy. Sit still. A gun
don't keep me from talking sense, does it? You're here to take Hal's
place. Hal!"

The little wail told a thousand things, and Pierre, 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