n, and we'll write 'em and have
it done with and off our minds. I dunno--I've got a couple of lots in
Phoenix I'll leave to the girl. By rights she should have 'em. Lovins,
here, 'll have my share in all mining claims; these two I'll name
'specially, because I expect them to develop into paying mines; the
Blind Lodge, anyway."

A twinge of jealousy seized Bud. Cash was going ahead a little too
confidently in his plans for the kid. He did not want to hurt old Cash's
feelings, and of course he needed Cash's assistance if he kept Lovin
Child for his own. But Cash needn't think he was going to claim the kid
himself.

"All right--put it that way. Only, when you're writing it down, you make
it read 'child of Bud Moore' or something like that. You can will him
the moon, if you want, and you can have your name sandwiched in between
his and mine. But get this, and get it right. He's mine, and if we ever
split up, the kid goes with me. I'll tell the world right now that this
kid belongs to me, and where I go he goes. You got that?"

"You don't have to beller at the top of your voice, do yuh?" snapped
Cash, prying the cork out of the ink bottle with his jackknife. "Here's
another pen point. Tie it onto a stick or something and git to work
before you git to putting it off."

Leaning over the table facing each other, they wrote steadily for a few
minutes. Then Bud began to flag, and finally he stopped and crumpled the
sheet of tablet paper into a ball. Cash looked up, lifted his eyebrows
irritatedly, and went on with his composition.

Bud sat nibbling the end of his makeshift penholder. The obstacle that
had loomed in Cash's way and had constrained him to reveal the closed
pages of his life, loomed large in Bud's way also. Lovin Child was a
near and a very dear factor in his life--but when it came to sitting
down calmly and setting his affairs in order for those who might be left
behind, Lovin Child was not the only person he must think of. What of
his own man-child? What of Marie?

He looked across at Cash writing steadily in his precise way,
duly bequeathing his worldly goods to Lovin; owning, too, his
responsibilities in another direction, but still making Lovin Child his
chief heir so far as he knew. On the spur of the moment Bud had thought
to do the same thing. But could he do it?

He seemed to see his own baby standing wistfully aloof, pushed out of
his life that this baby he had no right to keep might have all of his