"Not well!" the boy cried in amazement. "Why, what's the matter with him, Dave?"
"A little accident—just a little accident, kid. He—he—now you don't want to go worryin' about it; not yet, anyway."
But Rennie's effort to break bad news gently was too obvious. The boy's voice took on a sharp note of alarm.
"What sort of an accident?" he demanded. "Is he hurt? Talk up, can't you?"
"Well, now, durn it, kid, I'd ruther break a leg than tell you—but your daddy, he's been shot up some."
"Do you mean he's dead?" the boy cried in wide-eyed horror.
"No, he ain't dead—or he wasn't when I started out to find you. But—but he's plugged plumb center, and—and—Oh, hell, I guess you know what I'm tryin' to say!"
The boy stared at him dumbly while the slow thudding pad of the horses' feet on the soft trail smote on his ears like the sound of muffled drums. He failed at first, as the young must ever fail, to comprehend the full meaning of the message. His father dead or dying! His father, Adam Mackay, that living tower of muscle and sinew who could lift with his hands logs with which other men struggled with cant-hook and peavie, who could throw a steel-beamed breaking plow aboard a wagon as another man would handle a wheel-hoe? It was unbelievable.
But slowly the realization was forced upon him. His father had been shot, and with the knowledge came the flame of bitter anger and desire for revenge that was his in right of the blood in his veins. And the desire momentarily overwhelmed sorrow.
"Who did it?" he asked, his young voice a fierce, croaking whisper.