“That was why he sent me home alive.  To make me live and keep hating him, the same’s he’d lived and hated me.  But he made a mistake.  Pete Reeve is a wise fox, but he made one mistake.  He forgot that I might have somebody to send on his trail.  He didn’t know that I had two boys I’d raised so’s they was each better with a gun nor me.  He didn’t dream of that, curse him!  But when you, Harry, or you, Joe, pump the lead into him, shoot him so’s he’ll live long enough to know who killed him and why!”

As he spoke, there was a quality in his voice that seemed to find the boys in the darkness and point each of them out.  “Which of you takes the trail?”

A little silence followed.  Bull wondered at it.

“He’s gone by way of Johnstown,” continued the wounded man.  “If one of you cuts across the summit toward Shantung he’s pretty sure to cut in across Pete’s trail.  Which is goin’ to start?  Well, you can match for the chance!  Because him that comes back with Pete Reeve marked off the slate is a man!”

That chilly little silence made Bull’s heart beat.  To be called a man, to be praised by stern Bill Campbell—­surely these were things to make anyone risk death!

“Is that the Pete Reeve,” said Harry’s voice, “that shot up Mike Rivers over the hill to the Tompkins place, about four year back?”

“That’s him.  Why?”

Again the silence.  Then Bull heard the old man cursing softly—­meditatively, one might almost have said.

“Cut across for Johnstown,” said Joe softly, “in a storm like this?  They won’t be no trails left to find above the timberline.  It’d be sure death.  Listen!”

There was a lull in the wind, and in the breeze that was left, they could hear the whisper of the snow crushing steadily against the window.

“It’s heavy fall, right enough,” declared Harry.

“And this Pete Reeve—­why, he’s a gunfighter, Dad.”

“And what are you?” asked the old man.  “Ain’t I labored and slaved all my life to make you handy with guns?  What for d’you think I wasted all them hours showin’ you how to pull a trigger and where to shoot and how to get a gun out of the leather?”

“To kill for meat,” suggested Harry.

“Meat, nothing!  The kind of meat I mean walks on two feet and fights back.”

“Maybe, if we started together—­” ventured Joe.

His father broke in, “Boy, I ain’t going to send out a pack of men to run down Pete Reeve.  He met me single and he fought me clean, and he’s going to be pulled down by no pack of yaller dogs!  Go one of you alone or else both of you stay here.”

He waited, but there was no response.  “Is this the way my blood is showin’ up in my sons?  Is this the result of all my trainin’?”

After that there was no more talk.  The long silence was not broken by even the sound of breathing until someone began to snore.  Then Bull knew that the sleep of the night had settled down.