erms he was able to expound the why of like. It was
one of the inexorable rules of heredity. To his parents he owed
everything and nothing. He reflected on this paradox until it became
perfectly clear to him. They--his parents--had given him life, and
that was all. He owed them thanks for that, or he would have owed them
thanks if he considered his life to be worth anything. But he owed
them nothing because they had spoiled the life they had given him, had
spoiled it by depriving him of everything he had a right to expect from
them--love, sympathy, decent treatment. They had given him instead,
blows, kicks, curses, hatred. Hatred!

Yes, they had hated him; they had told him that; he was convinced of
it. The reason for their hatred had always been a mystery to him and,
for all he cared, would remain a mystery.

When he was fifteen his mother died. On the day when the neighbors
laid her away in a quiet spot at the edge of the wood near the far end
of the corral fence, he stood beside her body as it lay in the rough
pine box which some of them had knocked together, looking at her for
the last time. He was neither glad or sorry; he felt no emotion
whatever. When one of the neighbors spoke to him, asking him if he
felt no grief, he cursed and stormed out of the house. Later, after
the neighbors departed, his father came upon him in the stable and beat
him unmercifully. He came, dry-eyed, through the ordeal, raging
inwardly, but silent. And that night, after his father had gone to
bed, he stole stealthily out of the house, threw a saddle and bridle on
his favorite pony and rode away. Such had been his youth.

That had been thirteen years ago. He was twenty-eight now and had
changed a little--for the worse. During the days of his exile he had
made no friends. He had found much experience, he had become
self-reliant, sophisticated. There was about him an atmosphere of cold
preparedness that discouraged encroachment on his privacy. Men did not
trifle with him, because they feared him. Around Durango, where he had
ridden for the Bar S outfit, it was known that he possessed Satanic
cleverness with a six-shooter.

But if he was rapid with his weapons he made no boast of it. He was
quiet in manner, unobtrusive. He was taciturn also, for he had been
taught the value of silence by his parents, though in his narrowed
glances men had been made to see a suggestion of action that was more
eloquent than speech.