I took her aboard. She seemed to
want to get away from your show, near as I could find out." The giant
hugged his knees together and blinked appealingly.

"It must be a bang-up living you're giving her," sneered Buck, running
his eye over the equipage. In his passion he forgot the lapse of the
years and the possibility of changes.

"Seems as if you hadn't heard the latest news," broke in Avery, his
face suddenly clearing of the puckers of apprehension. "She never
stuck to me no time. She didn't intend to. She just made believe that
she was going to marry me so that I would take her along. She run away
with the sixteen hundred dollars I had saved up and Signor
Dellabunko--or something like that--who was waiting for her on the
road, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of 'em since, nor I don't want
to, and I've still got the letter that she left me, so that I can
prove what I say. She was going to do the same thing to you, she said
in it, but she had made up her mind that she couldn't work you so
easy. It's all in that letter! Kind of a kick-you-and-run letter!"

In his agitation Buck broke another spoke from the crumbling wheel.
The parrot cracked his beak against the cage's bars and yawled:

"It's the old army game, gents!"

"Hadn't you just as soon tear pickets off'n the fence there, or
something like that?" wistfully queried Avery. "This is all I've got
left, and I haven't any money, and I haven't had very much courage to
do anything since she took that sixteen hundred dollars away from me."
He scruffed his raspy palms on his upcocked knees. "I didn't really
want to run away with her, Ivory, but she bossed me into it. I never
was no hand to stand up for my rights. Any one, almost, could talk me
'round. I wish she'd stuck to you and let me alone." His big hands
trembled on his knees, and his weak face, with its flabby chaps, had
the wistful look one sees on a foxhound's visage. "When did you give
up the road?" he asked.

"Haven't given it up!" The tone was curt and the scowl deepened. "I've
stored my wagons and the round-top and the seats, but I'm liable to
buy an elephant and a lemon and start out again 'most any time."

The eyes of the old men softened with a glint of appreciation as they
looked at each other.

"I don't suppose you have to," suggested Avery, with a glance at the
store.

"Fifty thousand in the bank and the stand of buildings here," replied
Buck, with the careless ease of the "well-fixed." "How