He began to realize that he had come to the end of his period of command.

When he left that sickbed he could only advise.
As a king about to die he looked at his heirs and found them strong and sufficient and pleasing to the eye.

Nowhere in the mountains were there two boys as tall, as straight, as deadly with rifle and revolver, as fierce, as relentless, as these two boys of his.

He had sharpened their tempers, and he rejoiced in the sullen ferocity with which they looked at him now, unloving, cunning, biding their time and finding that it had almost come.

But he was not yet done.