“I’ll tell you anything,” replied Smirker quickly. “But first I’d like to have you tell me something. When I was going to pitch into you,” he added, turning to White-horse Fred, “you told me to come on, and you would show me what a Mortimer was made of, didn’t you?”
“I did,” replied the boy. “I knew, of course, that you were too much for me, but I wasn’t going to surrender. That’s something I don’t know how to do.”
“And you have said two or three times that Julian is four brother, hain’t you?” Smirker went on.
“I have, and he is.”
“Then you must be the son of old Major Mortimer?”
“I am proud to say that I am.”
“Well, now if you are, what business you got walking about on top of the ground? That’s what I’d like to know. You had ought to be at the bottom of the lake that lies behind your father’s rancho. Sanders put you there, ’cause I seen him do it with my own eyes.”
“I know he did, and my body is there yet,” replied White-horse Fred.
“Eh?” exclaimed Smirker, drawing away from the boy toward the trapper.
“Don’t you know that a Mortimer can’t be killed?” asked Fred, who, having recovered from the effects of his struggle with the robber, was his jolly, reckless self once more. “And have you not yet learned that the members of our family have the power of throwing the shield of their protection around their servants? It’s a fact. You remember old Juan, do you not? Dick Mortimer shot him twice with his own hands, and you knocked him on the head with the butt of your rifle; and then you both picked him up and threw him over a cliff, didn’t you?”