s in her heels and in her tongue," Andy continued. "With
her big mouth, red hair, and little eyes, she'd have made anybody laugh.
I laughed."

"You laughed!" snapped out his father with a sneer.

Black Andy's eyes half closed with a morose look, then he went on. "Yes,
I laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured,
accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the
West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He jerked
his head towards the old man and drew the spittoon near with his feet.

"The West hasn't been any worse off since she left," snarled the old
man.

"Well, she took George with her," grimly retorted Black Andy.

Abel Baragar's heart had been warmer towards his dead son George than to
any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair
as Andrew was dark; as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and
dispiriting; as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother
was slow and angular; as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was
phlegmatic and sour--or so it seemed to the father and to nearly all
others.

In those old days they had not been very well off. The railway was not
completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought
and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin
of safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he
was shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his
judgment had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went
away with Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute,
because the thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge
of a precipice. He had won through it, but only by the merest shave,
and it had all left him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his
"having religion." Whenever he remembered George, he instinctively
thought of those black days when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was
crowding him over the edge into the chasm of failure, and came so near
doing it. A few thousand dollars less to put up here and there, and he
would have been ruined; his blood became hotter whenever he thought of
it. He had had to fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who
had been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever all things
to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and not a little uncertain
as to truth--to which the old man shut his eyes when there was a "deal"
on--had, i