Pagina 44 de 439

"I may need help while I'm there. May I call on you if I do,

seh?"

Neill felt his heart warm toward this hard-faced, genial

frontiersman, who knew how to judge so well the timbre of a

casual acquaintance.

"You sure may, lieutenant."

"Good. I'll count on you then."

So, in these few words, the compact of friendship and alliance

was sealed between them. Each of them was strangely taken with

the other, but it is not the way of the Anglo-Saxon fighting man

to voice his sentiment. Though each of them admired the stark

courage and the flawless fortitude he knew to dwell in the other,

impassivity sat on their faces like an ice-mask. For this is the

hall-mark of the Southwest, that a man must love and hate with

the same unchanging face of iron, save only when a woman is in

consideration.