here was bitter anger in his heart. It was bad
enough that Turkey should lie in drunken slumber; but far worse than
that he was the last person who had been near the stable and stack.
Neither Angus nor Gus had been out of the house for five or six hours
before the fire. As they put the horses back Angus found Turkey's mare's
manger full of hay. Drunk or sober the boy would look after the animal's
needs. But to get hay he had either to fork it down from the mow or get
it from the stack. As the mow was dark, with a ladder to climb, there
wasn't much doubt that he had got it from the latter. Then at the stack
he had either dropped the butt of a cigarette or the end of a match.
There was no doubt in Angus' mind as to the origin of the fire.

But as was his custom, he kept his thoughts to himself. He sent Gus to
the house to get what sleep he could, and he remained on guard against
chances from stray sparks.

As he stared at the heap of black and gray and red which had been his
stack his anger hardened. In the heart of the heap he seemed to see the
fields where the hay had grown, green and tender in the spring, laced
with the silver threads of irrigation waters; and lush and high and
waving in the summer winds, tipped and tinged with the pink and red of
clover and alfalfa and the purple bloom of timothy. He thought of the
labor that had gone into it--the careful irrigation, the mowing, the
raking, the hauling, the stacking--all to the end that the stock should
be full-bellied and fat-clad against the cold and snow that shrinks
ill-nourished stock to racks of hide-tied bone. He looked ahead--two
months, three--and he could hear the hunger-bawling of the cattle
clustered by the corral bars, and see them hump-backed and lean and
shivering, and weak and dying of cold and hunger. He could see their
eyes, looking to him for the food man should provide.

Unless he would see that picture become grim reality he must buy feed,
and he had no money to spare. His straw was quite insufficient to
winter his stock on. Then he had counted on selling some of the hay. It
all meant that his debt must be increased. In the breath of the fire the
fruits of his hard work had been wiped out. As he thought of all these
things he was filled with bitterness against his brother.

When dawn came and all danger was over he went in to breakfast. Turkey
still slept. Angus let him slumber, and going to the workshop went to
work repairing a set of sleighs.