few words as would suffice. I had suddenly become aware that the woman
was holding something back. The signs in her discourse are not to be
mistaken. I taxed her with this. She denied it. Then she said that, even
if she was holding back something, it was nothing to rave about. Just an
anecdote that this here talk about fighting characters had reminded her
of. She wouldn't of thought of it even now if Ben Steptoe hadn't told her
last spring why he didn't lick his Cousin Ed that last time. And this
here Ed Steptoe was the only honest male she had ever known. But that
was because something was wrong in his head, he being a born nut. And
it wasn't really worth going back over; but--well--she didn't know.
Possibly. Anyway--

These Steptoe cousins come from a family back in the East that was remote
kin to mine and they looked me up in Red Gap when they come out into the
great boundless West to carve out a name for themselves. About fifteen
years ago they come. Ben was dark and short and hulky, with his head
jammed down between his shoulders. Ed was blond and like a cat, being
quick. Ben had a simple but emphatic personality, seeing what he wanted
and going for it, and that never being more than one thing at a time. Ed
was all over the place with his own aspirations and never anything long
at a time; kind of a romantic temperament, or, like they say in stories,
a creature of moods. He was agent for the Home Queen sewing machine when
he first come out. But that didn't mean sewing machines was his life
work. He'd done a lot of things before that, like lecturing for a
patent-medicine professor and canvassing for crayon portraits with a
gold frame, and giving lessons in hypnotism, and owning one-half or
a two-headed pig that went great at county fairs.

Ben had come along the year before Ed and got a steady job as brakeman
on the railroad, over on the Coeur d'Alene Branch. He told me he was
going to make railroading his life work and had started in at the bottom,
which was smart of him, seeing he'd just come off a farm. They probably
wouldn't of let him start in at the top. Anyway, he was holding down his
job as brakeman when Ed sailed in, taking orders for the Home Queen, and
taking 'em in plenty, too, being not only persuasive in his methods but
a wizard on this here sewing machine. He could make it do everything
but play accompaniments for songs--hemming, tucking, frilling, fancy
embroidering. He knew every last little dingus t