Whether it was this stern sense of discipline or not that endeared him to the men, these old-timers are, to a man, very loyal to the young couple who united in their marriage the two hostile mountain elements. One in especial, a white-haired old man, described by the fanciful as a retired outlaw, living yet on Nan’s ranch in the Gap, always spends his time in town at the de Spain home, where he takes great interest in an active little boy, Morgan de Spain, who waits for his Uncle Duke’s coming, and digs into his pockets for rattles captured along the trail from recent huge rattlesnakes. When his uncle happens to kill a big one––one with twelve or thirteen rings and a button––Morgan uses it to scare his younger 432 sister, Nan. And Duke, secretly rejoicing at his bravado, but scolding sharply, helps him adjust the old ammunition-belt dragged from the attic, and cuts fresh gashes in it to make it fit the childish waist. His mother doesn’t like to see her son in warlike equipment, ambushing little Nan in the way Bob Scott says the Indians used to do. She threatens periodically to burn the belt up and throw the old rifles out of the house. But when she sees her uncle and her husband watching the boy and laughing at the parade together, she relents. It is only children, after all, that keep the world young.
