ntial
particulars Canaan did not have to yield an inch of her title to
equality with the biggest and best anywhere. "Yass, saouthwest
Mizzourah's hard to beat in spots; th'aint no State in the Union quite
like her. She's different," he had said, rocking on his heels, his chest
lifting.

"I think you must be right about that," Steering had answered, every
time with profounder emphasis.

Off here alone on the ridge road now, Missouri's unspeakable difference
was coming over him in great submerging waves. Though he tried bravely
to face the State and have it out with her, he couldn't do it.

"Missouri," he said at last to himself, and to her confidentially, "I'd
like to cry. I'd give five hundred plunkerinos if I might be allowed to
cry." Then he flicked his riding-crop over his leg in a devilishly
nonchalant way, and rode straight forward.

The road went on interminably, its dust-white line, with the rocky ridge
through the middle, dipping and rising and getting nowhere. The horse
grew nervous and shied repeatedly from sheer loneliness. The road
entered a wood. Deep in its leafy fastness wild steers heard the beat of
the horse's hoofs, laid back their ears and galloped into safer depths,
bellowing with alarm. Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a
baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy,
from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the timber; and then
only because he saw a horseman down the ridge road ahead of him. What
instantly attracted Steering's attention was the man's back. It was a
small but proud back. It had none of the hill stoop. It was erect,
sinewy, soldierly. Steering was so lonely that he would have welcomed
companionship with a chipmunk. The chance of companionship with a man
who had an interesting back grew luminous. He urged his horse forward
eagerly, almost hysterically glad of his opportunity.

"Good-afternoon," he called, having recourse to his well-tried form of
greeting. "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?"

The man addressed half turned, disclosing a thin and delicate face to
Steering. Then he reined his horse in gently. "Good-evening, sair. Is it
that you inquire to Poetical? It is a vair' long five miles f'm here,
sair."

Steering rode up beside the man, more and more pleased, regarding and
analysing. The man's hickory shirt, his warped boots, his blue jean
trousers, his heavy buskins were mean and earth-stained, but inherent in
the quality