“You keep away from the window,” said Annersley.  “Them coyotes out there ’most like aim to rush me when the blaze dies down.  Reckon they’ll risk settin’ fire to the cabin.  I don’t want to kill nobody—­but—­you keep back—­and if they git me, you stay right still in here.  They won’t hurt you.”

“Not if I git a bead on any of ’em!” said Young Pete, taking courage from his pop’s presence.  “Did you shoot any of ’em yet, pop?”

“I reckon not.  I cut loose onct or twict, to scare ’em off.  You keep away from the window.”

Young Pete had crept to the window and was gazing out at the sinking flames.  “Say, ain’t we pardners?” he queried irritably.  “You said we was when you brung me up here.  And pardners stick, don’t they?  I reckon if it was my shack that was gittin’ rushed, you ’d stick, and not go bellyin’ under the bunk and hidin’ like a dog-gone prairie-dog.”

[Illustration:  “Say, ain’t we pardners?”]

“That’s all right,” said Annersley.  “But there’s no use takin’ chances.  You keep back till we find out what they’re goin’ to do next.”

Standing in the middle of the room, well back from the southern window, the old man gazed out upon the destruction of his buildings and carefully hoarded hay.  He breathed hard.  The riders knew that he was in the cabin—­that they had not bluffed him from the homestead.  Probably they would next try to fire the cabin itself.  They could crawl up to it in the dark and set fire to the place before he was aware of it.  Well, they would pay high before they got him.  He had fed and housed these very men—­and now they were trying to run him out of the country because he had fenced a water-hole which he had every right to fence.  He had toiled to make a home for himself, and the boy, he thought, as he heard Young Pete padding about the cabin.  The cattlemen had written a threatening letter hinting of this, yet they had not dared to meet him in the open and have it out face to face.  He did not want to kill, yet such men were no better than wolves.  And as wolves he thought of them, as he determined to defend his home.

Young Pete, spider-like in his quick movements, scurried about the cabin making his own plan of battle.  It did not occur to him that he might get hurt—­or that his pop would get hurt.  They were safe enough behind the thick logs.  All he thought of was the chance of a shot at what he considered legitimate game.  While drifting about the country he had heard many tales of gunmen and border raids, and it was quite evident, even to his young mind, that the man who suffered attack by a gun was justified in returning the compliment in kind.  And to this end he carefully arranged his cartridges on the floor, knelt and raised the window a few inches and cocked the old carbine.  Annersley realized what the boy was up to and stepped forward to pull him away from the window.  And in that brief moment Young Pete’s career was shaped—­shaped beyond all question or argument by the wanton bullet that sung across the open, cut a clean hole in the window, and dropped Annersley in his tracks.