Then he loaded the magazine, weighted the gun deftly at the balance, and dropped the rifle across his knees.
"Morning," said Pierre le Rouge cheerily, and swung off the bunk to the floor.

"How old's the gun ?" The boy, without the slightest show of excitement, snapped the butt to his shoulder and drew a bead on Pierre's breast.
"Sit down before you get all heated up," said a musical voice.
"There's nobody waiting for you on horseback." And Pierre sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him.
All that had happened between was blotted from his memory.

He fumbled at his throat.

The cross was not there.

He touched his pockets.
"Ease your hands away from your hip," said the cold voice of the boy, who had dropped his gun to the ready with a significant finger curled around the trigger, "or I'll drill you clean." Pierre obediently raised his hands to the level of his shoulders.