mark against Oakland,
she reflected--Oakland, the man-trap, that poisoned those it could not
starve.

"If it wouldn't drive a man to drink," Billy groaned, when Saxon
returned to him. "Did you ever dream such luck? Look at all my fights in
the ring, an' never a broken bone, an' here, snap, snap, just like that,
two arms smashed."

"Oh, it might be worse," Saxon smiled cheerfully.

"I'd like to know how. It might have been your neck."

"An' a good job. I tell you, Saxon, you gotta show me anything worse."

"I can," she said confidently.

"Well?"

"Well, wouldn't it be worse if you intended staying on in Oakland where
it might happen again?"

"I can see myself becomin' a farmer an' plowin' with a pair of
pipe-stems like these," he persisted.

"Doctor Hentley says they'll be stronger at the break than ever before.
And you know yourself that's true of clean-broken bones. Now you close
your eyes and go to sleep. You're all done up, and you need to keep your
brain quiet and stop thinking."

He closed his eyes obediently. She slipped a cool hand under the nape of
his neck and let it rest.

"That feels good," he murmured. "You're so cool, Saxon. Your hand, and
you, all of you. Bein' with you is like comin' out into the cool night
after dancin' in a hot room."

After several minutes of quiet, he began to giggle.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, nothin'. I was just thinkin'--thinking of them mutts doin' me
up--me, that's done up more scabs than I can remember."

Next morning Billy awoke with his blues dissipated. From the kitchen
Saxon heard him painfully wrestling strange vocal acrobatics.

"I got a new song you never heard," he told her when she came in with
a cup of coffee. "I only remember the chorus though. It's the old man
talkin' to some hobo of a hired man that wants to marry his daughter.
Mamie, that Billy Murphy used to run with before he got married, used to
sing it. It's a kind of a sobby song. It used to always give Mamie the
weeps. Here's the way the chorus goes--an' remember, it's the old man
spielin'."

And with great solemnity and excruciating Batting, Billy sang:

"O treat my daughter kind-i-ly; An' say you'll do no harm, An' when I
die I'll will to you My little house an' farm--My horse, my plow, my
sheep, my cow, An' all them little chickens in the ga-a-rden.

"It's them little chickens in the garden that gets me," he explained.
"That's how I remembered it--from the chickens in the mov