I looked at the face which was turned toward me. It was a face from which had been whipped the knowledge of how to smile. We rode for a half-mile in silence with only the cuppy thud of hoofs on the soft earth, the creaking of stirrup leather and the clink of bit rings.
"Why," I asked at last, "don't you leave such a country and establish yourself where you can have security?"
His angular chin came up with a jerk. His eyes flashed.
"Go away?" he repeated. "Do you think a man wants to be driven from the country where he and his parents and his children were born? Besides, sir, my mother belongs to the old order. I was the first to be educated. She still smokes her pipe in the chimney-corner. She is of the mountains. She must stay here." He paused, then his words began again dispassionately, and gathered, as he talked, the fiery resonance of the instinctive orator.
"If the men who love war, leave lawless countries, who in God's name is to do the work? The order is changing. What does Kipling say about the men who blaze trails?
"'On the sand-drift, on the veldt-side, in the fern-scrub we lay,
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way.'
"These men have made a mockery of the law. It is my desire to punish them with the law. It is my purpose to do so unless they kill me first. Why am I representing your company? For the fee? No, sir!... God knows I need the fee, but I shall also have a bigger compensation. When the new order comes I shall see Garvin's power crumple. I shall send him to the gallows or to the penitentiary. That will be my reward." His voice was again passionate. "The filthy assassin realizes my motive and he sees in you my allies. Watch him, and safeguard your steps."