The father let his rifle down and stood its butt against the porch boards. The boy, though, kept alert. There was a good deal of killer about him, and it was why he still lived. The last four years had made a whole generation of young boys -- who ought to have been going to school and learning a trade and thrilling deep in their bones just to dance with a girl and peck her on the cheek -- into slit-eyed killers with no more tell of emotion than an old riverboat faro gambler.