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“‘Where ye goin’ with that buggy?’

“‘None o’ your dam’ business,’ I snaps back, hot as hell in a secunt, ‘but just to touch you up, I’ll tell you. I’m goin’ over to see Nance McRae.’

“Well, sir, that set him off. ‘Not with my horses,’ says he, and, grabbin’ the buggy by the thills, he sent it back into the shed. Then he turned on me:

“‘If you want to see that girl, you walk! I won’t have you usin’ my tired animals to cart such trash–‘

“I stopped him right there. He was a big, raw-boned citizen, but I was a husky chunk of a lad myself and ready to fight.

“‘Don’t you speak a word against Nance,’ I says, ‘for if you do I’ll waller ye right here and now; and as for your horse and buggy, you may keep ’em till the cows come home. Here’s where I get off. You’ll never see me again.’

“Gee! I was hot! I went in, packed up my grip, and hit the first train for the West.”

“Just as thousands of other angry boys have done,” I said, realizing to the minutest detail this scene. “They never think of going East.”

“No, the West is the only place for a man in trouble–at least, so it seems to me.”

“Where did you go? What did you do?”

He mused again as if recalling his struggles. “I dropped off in Kansas and got a job on a farm and fussed around there for the fall and winter. Then I got the minin’ fever and came to Victor. Of course, there wasn’t anything for a grass-cutter like me to do in the hills but swing a pick. I didn’t like underground work, and so I went on a ranch again. Well, I kept tryin’ the minin’ game off and on, prospectin’ here and there, and finally I got into this leasin’ business, and two years ago I secured a lease on the ‘Red Cent’ and struck it good and plenty. Oh, I don’t intend to say it’s any Portland–but it pays me and I’ve been stackin’ up some few dollars down at the Commercial Bank, and feelin’ easy.”

The man’s essential sturdiness of character came out as he talked, and his face lost the heavy and rather savage look it had worn at first. I had taken a seat beside him by this time and my sincere interest in his affairs seemed to please him. He was eager to talk, as one who had been silent for a long time.

I led him back to the point of most interest to me. “And so at last you relented and went home? I hope you found the old folks both alive? Did they know where you were?”

“Yes. My sister saw my name in a paper–when I made my stake–and wrote, and mother used to send word–used to mention dad occasionally.” He laughed silently. “It sure is great fun, this goin’ back to the home pasture with a fat wad in your pants pocket–Lord! I owned the whole town.”

“Tell me about it!” I pleaded.

He was ready to comply. “Our house stood near the railway, about four miles this side of Jackson, and you bet I had my head out of the winder to see if it was all there. It was. It looked just the same, only the old man had painted it yellow–and seemed like I could see mother settin’ on the porch. I’d had it all planned to hire the best automobile in town and go up there in shape to heal sore eyes–but changed my plan.

“‘I’ll give ’em more of a shock if I walk out and pretend to be poor and kind o’ meek,’ I says to myself.

“So I cached my valise at the station and I wallered out there through the dust–it was June and a dry spell and hot. Judas priest! I thought I’d sweat my wad into pulp before I got there–me just down from the high country! On the way I got to wonderin’ about Nancy. ‘Is she alive, I wonder?’