THE MAN IN SADDLE
waited, and in the pause had a memory of how last night Blanche had told him Ferrier was not there. Suppose he had not returned yet. It was still so early in the morning. Suppose he did not return all day—how was a man to find him—and where? Reluctance vanished. Ferrier became the person in all the world Carron most desired to see. He knocked again, loud and imperative. A voice within the house called aloud. The sound was formless, but he thought it was a summons.
He entered on a long darkish room, disorderly and as cluttered with incongruous stuff as Ferrier's mind. Clothes were strewn on the floor; old saddles rested on chairs; crockery, cartridges and food on the table, dogs lying under it; no windows open, a stale air in the place. Close under a window on a bench, the boy George had a gun and a greased rag in his hand. His shoulders were gathered into such a lump that he looked deformed. He had stopped his work of polishing and sat looking at the intruder with pale eyes, the lids of which were fixed.
"Where is your brother?" Carron asked.
Without seeming to hear what had been said, without moving, the boy opened his mouth and emitted the sound that Carron had mistaken for a summons to himself. Evidently it had been meant to
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