"

"And so you naturally defended yourself. That's how we understand it.
Father wants it made clear that he feels you could have done nothing
else."

"Much obliged. I've been sorry ever since I hit him, and not only on my
own account."

"Then none of us need to hold hard feelings." The girl looked at her
father, who answered her appeal with a grim nod, and then she turned again
to the young rustler a little timidly. "I wonder if you would mind if I
asked you a question."

"You've earned the right to ask as many as you like."

"It's about---- We have been told you know the man they call Soapy Stone.
Is that true?"

Flandrau's eyes took on a stony look. It was as if something had sponged
all the boyishness from his face. Still trying to get him to give away his
partners in the rustling, were they? Well, he would show them he could
take his medicine without squealing.

"Maybe it is and maybe it isn't."

"Oh, but you don't see what we mean. It isn't that we want to hurt you."
She spoke in a quick eager voice of protest.

"No, you just want me to squeal on my friends to save my own hide. Nothing
doing, Miss Cullison."

"No. You're wrong. Why are you so suspicious?"

Curly laughed bitterly. "Your boys were asking that question about Soapy
last night. They had a rope round my neck at the time. Nothing unfriendly
in the matter, of course. Just a casual interest in my doings."

Cullison was looking at him with the steel eyes that bored into him like a
gimlet. Now he spoke sharply.

"I've got an account running with Soapy Stone. Some day I'll settle it
likely. But that ain't the point now. Do you know his friends--the bunch
he trails with?"

Wariness still seemed to crouch in the cool eyes of Flandrau.

"And if I say yes, I'll bet your next question will be about the time and
the place I last saw them."

Kate picked up a photograph from the table and handed it to the prisoner.
"We're not interested in his friends--except one of them. Did you ever see
the boy that sat for that picture?"

The print was a snapshot of a boy about nineteen, a good looking handsome
fellow, a little sulky around the mouth but with a pair of straight honest
eyes.

Curly shook his head slowly. Yet he was vaguely reminded of someone he
knew. Glancing up, he found instantly the clew to what had puzzled him.
The young man in the picture was like Kate Cullison, like her father too
for that matter.

"He's your brother." The words were