Mackenzie followed swiftly through the door, gun in hand.

He ran a few short steps after the flying boy, and was about to throw his gun to his shoulder when a voice arrested him.
"Here, Mackenzie, what are you doing with that gun ?" It was French, standing between the stable and the house, dishevelled, bloated, but master of himself.

Mackenzie stopped as if gripped by an unseen arm.
"What are you doing with that gun ?" repeated French sternly.
"Bring it to me." Mackenzie stood in sullen, defiant silence, his gun thrown into the hollow of his arm.

French walked deliberately toward him.
"Give me that gun, you dog!" he said with an oath, "or I'll kill you where you stand." Mackenzie hesitated but only for a moment, and without a word surrendered the gun, the fiendish rage fading out of his face, the aboriginal blood lust dying in his eyes like the snuffing out of a candle.

In a few brief moments he became once more a civilized man, subject to the restraint of a thousand years of life ordered by law.
"Kalman, come here," French called to the boy, who stood far off.
"Mackenzie," said French with great dignity as Kalman drew near, "I want you to know that this boy is a ward of a dear friend, and is to me like my own son.