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The old man rose and walked up and down the room in a shuffling kind of way. His best days were done, the spring of his life was gone, and the step was that of a man who had little more of activity and force with which to turn the halting wheels of life. His face was not altogether good, yet it was not evil. There was a sinister droop to the eyelids, a suggestion of cruelty about the mouth; but there was more of good-nature and passive strength than either in the general expression. One could see that some genial influence had dominated what was inherently cruel and sinister in him. Still the sinister predisposition was there.

“He can’t never come here, Pierre, can he”? he asked, despairingly.

“No, he can’t come here, Galbraith. And look: if the Riders of the Plains should stop here to-night, or to-morrow, you will be cool–cool, eh?”

“Yes, I will be quite cool, Pierre.” Then he seemed to think of something else and looked up half-curiously, half-inquiringly at the half-breed.

Pierre saw this. He whistled quietly to himself for a little, and then called the old man over to where he sat. Leaning slightly forward he made his reply to the look that had been bent upon him. He touched Galbraith’s breast lightly with his delicate fingers, and said: “I have not much love for the world, Pete Galbraith, and not much love for men and women altogether; they are fools–nearly all. Some men–you know–treat me well. They drink with me–much. They would make life a hell for me if I was poor–shoot me, perhaps, quick!–if–if I didn’t shoot first. They would wipe me with their feet. They would spoil Pretty Pierre.” This he said with a grim kind of humour and scorn, refined in its suppressed force. Fastidious as he was in appearance, Pierre was not vain. He had been created with a sense of refinement that reduced the grossness of his life; but he did not trade on it; he simply accepted it and lived it naturally after his kind. He was not good at heart, and he never pretended to be so. He continued: “No, I have not much love; but Val, well, I think of him some. His tongue is straight; he makes no lies. His heart is fire; his arms are strong; he has no fear. He does not love Pierre; but he does not pretend to love him. He does not think of me like the rest. So much the more when his trouble comes I help him. I help him to the death if he needs me. To make him my friend–that is good. Eh? Perhaps. You see, Galbraith?”

The old man nodded thoughtfully, and after a little pause said: “I have killed Injins myself;” and he made a motion of his head backward, suggestive of the past.

With a shrug of his shoulders the other replied “Yes, so have I–sometimes. But the government was different then, and there were no Riders of the Plains.” His white teeth showed menacingly under his slight moustache. Then there was another pause. Pierre was watching the other.

“What’s that you’re doing, Galbraith?”

“Rubbin’ laudanum on my gums for this toothache. Have to use it for nuralgy, too.”

Galbraith put the little vial back in his waistcoat pocket, and presently said: “What will you have to drink, Pretty Pierre?” That was his way of showing gratitude.

“I am reform. I will take coffee, if Jen Galbraith will make some. Too much broke glass inside is not good. Yes.”

Galbraith went into the sitting-room to ask Jen to make the coffee. Pierre, still sitting on the bar-counter, sang to himself a verse of a rough-and-ready, satirical prairie ballad: [bb]!!!! “The Riders of the Plains, my boys, are twenty thousand strong Oh, Lordy, don’t they make the prairies howl! ‘Tis their lot to smile on virtue and to collar what is wrong, And to intercept the happy flowin’ bowl.