Simon looked at his brother's face with some wonder. More crafty and cunning, Dave was like the coyote in that he didn't yield so quickly to fury as that gray wolf, his brother. But when it did come, it seared him. It had come now. Simon couldn't mistake the fact; he saw it plain in the glowing eyes, the clenched hands, the drawn lips. Dave was remembering the pain of the blow Bruce had given him, and the smart of the words that had preceded it.
"You and he must have had a little session down there by the creek," Simon suggested slowly, "when your gun was jammed. Of course, he took the gun. What's the use of trying to lie to me?"
"He did. What could I do?"
"And now you want him potted—from ambush."
"What's the use of waiting? Who'd know?" The two men stood face to face in the quiet and deepening dusk of the barn; and there was growing determination on each face. "Every day our chance is less and less," Dave went on. "We've been thinking we're safe, but if he knows where that agreement is, we're not safe at all. How would you like to get booted off these three thousand acres now, just after we've all got attached to them? To start making our living as day laborers—and maybe face a hangin' for some things of long ago? With this land behind him, he'd be in a position to pay old debts, I'm telling you. We're not secure, and you know it. The law doesn't forget, and it doesn't forgive. We've been fooling away our time ever since we knew he was coming. We should have met him on the trail and let the buzzards talk to him."
"Yes," Simon echoed in a strange half-whisper. "Let the buzzards talk to him."
Dave took fresh heart at the sound of that voice. "No one would have ever knowed it," he went on. "No one would ever know it now. They'd find his bones, some time maybe, but there'd be no one to point to. They'd never get any thing against us. Everybody except the mountain people have forgotten about this affair. Those in the mountains are too scattered and few to take any part in it. I tell you—it's all the way, or no way at all. Tell me to wait for him on the trail."
"Wait. Wait a minute. How long before he will come?"
"Any time now. And don't postpone this matter any more. We're men, not babies. He's not a fool or not a coward, either. He's got his old man's blood in him—not his mother's to run away. As long as he ain't croaked, all we've done so far is apt to come to nothing. And there's one thing more. He's going to take the blood-feud up again."
"Lots of good it would do him. One against a dozen."