, but it seemed to Rainey also that the girl had
deliberately ignored their services and that, despite her involuntary
admiration of Lund's fight against odds, or in revulsion of it, she
reckoned them hostile to her sentiments. Lund roused him by talking of
the burial-service for Simms.

"You're a writer," he said. "What's the good of knowin' how to handle
words if you can't fake up some sort of a service? One's as good as
another, long as it sounds like the real thing.

"I reckon there's a God," he went on. "Somethin' that started things,
somethin' that keeps the stars from runnin' each other down, but, after
He wound up the clock He made, I don't figger He bothers much about the
works.

"Luck's the big thing that counts. We're all in on the deal. Some of us
git the deuces an' treys, an' some git the aces. If yo're born lucky
things go soft for you. But, if it warn't for luck, for the chance an'
the hope of it, things 'ud be upside down an' plain anarchy in a jiffy.
If it warn't the pore devil's idea that his luck has got to change for
the better, mebbe ter-morrer, he'd start out an' cut his own throat, or
some one else's, if he had ginger enough."

"It's hardly all luck, is it?" asked Rainey. "Look at you! You're bigger
than most men, stronger, better equipped to get what you want."

"Hell!" laughed Lund. "I was lucky to be born that way. But you've got
to fudge up some sort of a service to suit the gal. You've got that
Bible. It ought to be easy. Simms wouldn't give a whoop, enny more'n I
would. When yo're dead yo're through, so far's enny one can prove it to
you. A dead body's a nuisance, an' the sooner it's got rid of the
better. But if it's goin' to make the livin' feel enny better for
spielin' off some fine words, why, hop to it an' make up yore speech."

Peggy Simms saved Rainey by producing a prayer-book, bringing it to
Lund, her face pale but composed enough, and her shadowed eyes calm as
she gave it to him.

"I reckon Rainey here 'ud read it better'n me," he said. "He's a
scholar."

"If you will," asked the girl. She seemed to have outworn her first
sorrow, to have obtained a grip of herself that, with the dignity of her
bereavement, the very control of her undoubted grief, set up a barrier
between her and Lund. Rainey was conscious of this fence behind which
the girl had retreated. She was polite, but she did not ask this service
as a favor, as a friendly act. Refusal, even, would not have visibly