to leave the
country school where he rode daily, and attend the better one in the
nearest village, which necessitated boarding. After nerving himself for
days to ask permission, he had been refused flatly.

"What do you think I'm made of--money?" his father had demanded. "You'll
stay where you are until you've learned to read, and write, and figure:
then you'll help me with the cattle. Next thing you'll be wantin' to
play a flute or the piano."

He thought of his father always with hardness and unforgiveness, for he
realized now, as he had not at the time he ran away from home, what the
thousands of acres, the great herd of sleek cattle, meant--the fortune
that they represented.

"He could have so well afforded it," Bruce often mused bitterly. "And
it's all I would have asked of him. I didn't come into the world because
I wanted to come, and he owed it to me--my chance!"

The flakes of snow which fell at first and clung tenaciously to Bruce's
dark-blue flannel shirt were soft and wet, so much so that they were
almost drops of rain, but soon they hardened and bounced and rattled as
they began to fall faster.

As he threw an armful of wood behind the sheet-iron camp stove, Bruce
gave a disparaging poke at a pan of yeast bread set to rise.

"Slim and I will have to take this dough to bed with us to keep it warm
if it turns much colder. Everything's going to freeze up stiff as a
snake. Never remember it as cold as this the first storm. Well, I'll get
a pail of water, then let her come." He added uneasily: "I wish Slim
would get in."

His simple preparations were soon complete, and when he closed the heavy
door of whip-sawed lumber it was necessary to light the small kerosene
lamp, although the dollar watch ticking on its nail said the hour was
but four-thirty.

He eyed a pile of soiled dishes in disgust, then set a lard bucket of
water to heat.

"Two days' gatherings! After I've eaten four meals off the same plate it
begins to go against me. Slim would scrape the grub off with a stick and
eat for a year without washing a dish. Seems like the better raised some
fellers are the dirtier they are when they're out like this. Guess I'll
wash me a shirt or two while I'm holed up. Now where did I put my
dishrag?"

His work and his huge masculinity looked ludicrously incongruous as he
bent over the low table and scraped at the tin plates with his thumb
nail or squinted into the lard buckets, of which there seemed an en