"That's where you're fooled, Maw. They'll be back, don't you fret—leave 'em alone. My old dad brought me up to meet trouble halfway down the trail and shootin' as I ride. It's a good way—only way I know anything about. The Meddalark's never learnt how to lie and dodge, Maw, and now's a pore time to begin, looks like to me. Last night don't set well with me; when you come to think it over, I'm the feller that's got to live with me the closest and the longest, Maw. I'd hate to have to live with a feller all my life that I was ashamed of." He smiled suddenly with a boyish grin. "You see, Maw, I kinda put a spoke in the wheel of destiny, and she's liable to bust something if she ain't watched till she hits her stride again.
"Son, yore fightin' days are yet to come. How about some more gumdrops? You be a good boy to-day, and mind what Maw tells you, and mebbe there'll be a bag of candy in my pocket when I git back. You betcha."
Maw rose and stood goblinlike behind the boy's chair, her face turned grayish under the tan.
"Larkie, I know that town better than you do. There's a mean, low-lived bunch hanging around that I wouldn't put nothing past. If you must go, wait till the boys come with the cattle so you can have help. Six of you won't be any too many to face Palmer's bunch, and what saloon loafers he can drum up in town. Lark, I know. I was there when that trouble with the Willis boys come up, and I know just what that mob is capable of when they've got somebody to stir 'em up. You wait, Larkie. Don't go and do anything foolish, like riding to Smoky Ford to-day, right when—" Her voice broke and she turned her back on them, wiping her eyes surreptitiously on her apron.
"I like the way you count me," Bud cried with thin cheerfulness. "Never mind, Maw. I can rope and throw Lark any time he gets to horning in where he shouldn't, and I promise you that he isn't going to pull open any hornet's nest just to see how it's made. And Lark's right about one thing, anyway. The best thing to do, now it's pretty well known where we stand, is to ride in and show we aren't ashamed of ourselves. The Willis boys were afraid, Maw. They tried to run, and then when they were caught, they begged like whipped pups. And moreover, they were guilty as hell. Buck up, Maw." He went over and patted her on the shoulder. "Lark isn't going to do anything you'd be ashamed of."
"If you see gran'pa," said the boy fiercely, "you tell—tell him I'm goin' t' stay with—with you. Tell him I—I'm goin' t' kill him when I get big."
Lark looked down at him thoughtfully, smiled a bit at Maw's shocked expostulations, and turned to the door.
"I'll sure tell him that, son," he promised gravely. "And don't you worry a minute about me, Maw."
Maw did worry, however. She would have worried more if she could have seen and heard what was going on in Smoky Ford that morning. Old Palmer—who must have been old in sin, since he was not more than forty-five—had ridden in early with Johnson, White and two others of similar type. He did not go to the sheriff, as a man would have done whose cause was unassailable, but had talked in the saloons, his listeners for the most part those men who had joined in the search for the lost boy.
"Smallpox, my eye!" Palmer cried thickly. "There ain't a case in the country. It was my son's boy that they had hid away in that room—and us all huntin' the hills for him! It's like the Meddalark—an outlaw bunch if ever there was one. Look at old man Larkin! If ever a man deserved stringin' up, he did. And Lark and that kid nephew ain't any better. Stealin' calves from me right along—and now they take the boy and hide him away in a room—" There was a great deal of the same kind of talk, for Palmer was not the man to let anything slip away from him.