down something in his throat. He leaned for a moment
against the door-jamb; his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face quivered with
misery.

"I mean them black wheelers, Mike. Just them two--them wheelers," he
pleaded. Hesitating a little, as the other deigned no response, he
ventured weakly on:

"I was figurin', now--of course, I don't mean nothin' by it, Mike,
only yuh see how a feller _c'u'd_ figger it--that mebbe--mebbe you
made some mistake in readin' that paper. Yuh see how it could happen.
A feller _c'u'd_ make a mistake in readin', now, c'u'dn't he?" With
this flimsy appeal Cassidy played his last and poorest card.

In answer the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his
back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the
room. "Not this time, pardner."

Cassidy stumbled out.

"I've sold them wheelers!" he sobbed under his breath. "Why, it seems
like I was just this minute thinkin' I'd get tuh go and water 'em, and
rub 'em down a bit. _Now_ it ain't no use thinkin' about it--not any
more. It ain't me that's goin' tuh do that. I cain't water 'em. I
ain't got rights to even lay my hands on 'em! O-h-h!" he shuddered,
and agonizedly pulled taut on every tired, aching muscle. "Yuh oughter
be beat up with a club. Yuh oughter get pounded with a rawk. You're a
rotten, whisky-soaked bum, that's all yuh are now, and yuh oughter be
killed and kicked out in the street!"

Half whining, half crying miserably, he drove himself out of the town,
for a mile or more, on the desert, then plodded painfully back again,
mauling and beating himself with the bludgeon of his awful self-pity.

At the foot of a fast-rising "grade" he halted wearily and watched the
work. It was well on toward noon by this time, and the sun was blazing
down through a choking pall of dust that hung in the lifeless air. Men
were driving horses to and fro. They were men with weak, deeply lined
faces and shambling gaits. They broke into querulous curses and beat
their animals savagely on ridiculously small pretexts. They handled
their reins with a uniformly betraying awkwardness.

Cassidy sized them up and sniffed contemptuously to himself. _He_
knew. "That's wot _you_'ll be doing to-morrow," he muttered. "Durn
your hide, that's all you're good for. That's yuh to-morrow, yuh and
the rest of the 'boes."

Not knowing what to do with himself now, he drifted back to the town
and sat in the scanty shade of a joshua, prepared to commune fu