It was neither more nor less than a big
photo of C. Wilbur Todd. Yes, sir, he'd brought her one.

"'I think the artist has caught a bit of the real just there, if you
know what I mean,' says Wilbur, laying a pale thumb across the upper
part of the horrible thing.

"'I understand,' says Nettie, 'the real you was expressing itself.'

"'Perhaps,' concedes Wilbur kind of nobly. 'I dare say he caught me in
one of my rarer moods. You don't think it too idealized?'

"'Don't jest,' says she, very pretty and severe. And they both gazed
spellbound.

"'Chester,' I says in low but venomous tones, 'you been hanging round
that girl worse than Grant hung round Richmond, but you got to remember
that Grant was more than a hanger. He made moves, Chester, moves! Do you
get me?'

"'About them calves,' says Chester, 'pa told me it's his honest
opinion--'

"Well, that was enough for once. I busted up that party sudden and firm.

"'It has meant much to me,' says Wilbur at parting.

"'I understand,' says Nettie.

"'When you come up to the ranch, Miss Nettie,' says Chester, 'you want
to ride over to the Lazy Eight, and see that there tame coyote I got. It
licks your hand like a dog.'

"But what could I do, more than what I had done? Nettie was looking at
the photograph when I shut the door on 'em. 'The soul behind the wood
and wire,' she murmurs. I looked closer then and what do you reckon it
was? Just as true as I set here, it was Wilbur, leaning forward all
negligent and patronizing on a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano, his
hair well forward and his eyes masterful, like that there noble
instrument was his bond slave. But wait! And underneath he'd writ a bar
of music with notes running up and down, and signed his name to it--not
plain, mind you, though he can write a good business hand if he wants
to, but all scrawly like some one important, so you couldn't tell if it
was meant for Dutch or English. Could you beat that for nerve--in a day,
in a million years?

"'What's Wilbur writing that kind of music for?' I asks in a cold voice.
'He don't know that kind. What he had ought to of written is a bunch of
them hollow slats and squares like they punch in the only kind of music
he plays,' I says.

"'Hush!' says Nettie. 'It's that last divine phrase, "To kiss the
cross!"'

"I choked up myself then. And I went to bed and thought. And this is
what I thought: When you think you got the winning hand, keep on
raising. To call is to