in great condition. Billy Murphy pulled
down seventy-five round iron dollars only last week for puttin' away the
Pride of North Beach. That's what ha paid us the fifty back out of."

But this time it was Saxon who rebelled.

"There's Carl Hansen," Billy argued. "The second Sharkey, the alfalfa
sportin' writers are callin' him. An' he calls himself Champion of the
United States Navy. Well, I got his number. He's just a big stiff. I've
seen 'm fight, an' I can pass him the sleep medicine just as easy. The
Secretary of the Sportin' Life Club offered to match me. An' a hundred
iron dollars in it for the winner. And it'll all be yours to blow in any
way you want. What d'ye say?"

"If I can't work for money, you can't fight," was Saxon's ultimatum,
immediately withdrawn. "But you and I don't drive bargains. Even if
you'd let me work for money, I wouldn't let you fight. I've never
forgotten what you told me about how prizefighters lose their silk.
Well, you're not going to lose yours. It's half my silk, you know.
And if you won't fight, I won't work--there. And more, I'll never do
anything you don't want me to, Billy."

"Same here," Billy agreed. "Though just the same I'd like most to death
to have just one go at that squarehead Hansen." He smiled with pleasure
at the thought. "Say, let's forget it all now, an' you sing me 'Harvest
Days' on that dinky what-you-may-call-it."

When she had complied, accompanying herself on the ukulele, she
suggested his weird "Cowboy's Lament." In some inexplicable way of love,
she had come to like her husband's one song. Because he sang it, she
liked its inanity and monotonousness; and most of all, it seemed to her,
she loved his hopeless and adorable flatting of every note. She could
even sing with him, flatting as accurately and deliciously as he. Nor
did she undeceive him in his sublime faith.

"I guess Bert an' the rest have joshed me all the time," he said.

"You and I get along together with it fine," she equivocated; for in
such matters she did not deem the untruth a wrong.

Spring was on when the strike came in the railroad shops. The Sunday
before it was called, Saxon and Billy had dinner at Bert's house.
Saxon's brother came, though he had found it impossible to bring
Sarah, who refused to budge from her household rut. Bert was blackly
pessimistic, and they found him singing with sardonic glee:

"Nobody loves a mil-yun-aire. Nobody likes his looks. Nobody'll share
his sligh