"What are they doing there?"

"Waitin' till spring, when they'll fetch their cattle up an' settle
there."

"They want--Lydia--to keep house for them?" The old man writhed.

"Yes, God's sake, that's it! An' they want Liddy to marry a devil
called Borotte, with a thousand cattle or so--Pito the courier told me
yesterday. Pito saw her, an' he said she was white like a sheet, an'
called out to him as he went by. Only half a lung I got, an' her boneset
and camomile 'd save it for a bit, mebbe--mebbe!"

"It's clear," said Halby, "that they trespassed, and they haven't proved
their right to her."

"Tonnerre, what a thinker!" said Pierre, mocking. Halby did not notice.
His was a solid sense of responsibility.

"She is of age?" he half asked, half mused.

"She's twenty-one," answered the old man, with difficulty.

"Old enough to set the world right," suggested Pierre, still mocking.

"She was forced away, she regarded you as her natural protector, she
believed you her father: they broke the law," said the soldier.

"There was Moses, and Solomon, and Caesar, and Socrates, and now...!"
murmured Pierre in assumed abstraction.

A red spot burned on Halby's high cheekbone for a minute, but he
persistently kept his temper.

"I'm expected elsewhere," he said at last. "I'm only one man, yet I wish
I could go to-day--even alone. But--"

"But you have a heart," said Pierre. "How wonderful--a heart! And
there's the half a lung, and the boneset and camomile tea, and the
blister, and the girl with an eye like a spot of rainbow, and the
sacred law in a Remington rifle! Well, well! And to do it in the early
morning--to wait in the shelter of the trees till some go to look after
the horses, then enter the house, arrest those inside, and lay low for
the rest."

Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. Here was raillery and good
advice all in a piece.

"It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's trouble and I should go down,
who's to tell the truth? Two could do it; but one--no, it isn't wise,
though it would look smart enough."

"Who said to go alone?" asked Pierre, scrawling on the table with a
burnt match.

"I have no men."

Pierre looked up at the wall.

"Throng has a good Snider there," he said. "Bosh! Throng can't go."

The old man coughed and strained.

"If it wasn't--only-half a lung, and I could carry the boneset 'long
with us."

Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, and, taking him by
the arms, pu