“Take my gun—­take it quickly, Sally, I can’t trust myself; looking at him, I can see the place where the bullet should strike home.”

He forced the butt of his revolver into her hands, rose, and stepped to the door, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Tell me what he does.”

“He’s comin’ straight toward us as if he didn’t fear nothin’—­grey William Drew!  He’s not packin’ a gun; he trusts us.”

“The better way,” answered Bard.  “Bare hands—­the better way!”

“He has killed men with those bare hands of his.  I can see ’em clear—­great, blunt-fingered hands, Anthony.  He’s coming around the side of the house.  I’ll go into the front room.”

She ran past Anthony and paused in the habitable room, spying through a crack in the wall.  And Anthony stood with his eyes tightly closed, his head bowed.  The image of the leashed hound came more vividly to her when she glanced back at him.

“He’s walkin’ right up the path.  There he stops.”

“Where?”

“Right beside the old grave.”

“Anthony!” called a deep voice.  “Anthony, come out to me!”

He started, and then groaned and stopped himself.

“Is the sign of the truce still over his head, Sally?”

“Yes.”

“I daren’t go out to him—­I’d jump at his throat.”

She came beside him.

“It means something besides war.  I can see it in his face.  Pain—­sorrow, Anthony, but not a wish for fightin’.”

From the left side of his cartridge belt a stout-handled, long-bladed hunting-knife was suspended.  He disengaged the belt and tossed it to the floor.  Still he paused.

“If I go, I’ll break the truce, Sally.”

“You won’t; you’re a man, Anthony; and remember that you’re on the range, and the law of the range holds you.”

“Anthony!” called the deep voice without.

He shuddered violently.

“What is it?”

“It sounds—­like the voice of my father calling me!  I must go!”

She clung to him.

“Not till you’re calmer.”

“My father died in my arms,” he answered; “let me go.”

He thrust her aside and strode out through the door.

On the farther side of the grave stood Drew, his grey head bare, and looking past him Anthony saw the snow-clad tops of the Little Brother, grey also in the light of the evening.  And the trees whose branches interwove above the grave—­grey also with moss.  The trees, the mountain, the old headstone, the man—­they blended into a whole.

“Anthony!” said the man, “I have waited half my life for this!”

“And I,” said Bard, “have waited a few weeks that seem longer than all my life, for this!”

His own eager panting stopped him, but he stumbled on:  “I have you here in reach at last, Drew, and I’m going to tear your heart out, as you tore the heart out of John Bard.”