surveyed and listened, the door blew shut
with a crash.

Outside, in a shed, Billy had placed the wagon between himself and his
father.

"How you have grown!" the man was saying; and he smiled. "Come, shake
hands. I did not think to see you here."

"Dare you to touch me!" Billy screamed. "No, I'll never come with you.
Lin says I needn't to."

The man passed his hand across his forehead, and leaned against the
wheel. "Lord, Lord!" he muttered.

His son warily slid out of the shed and left him leaning there.

PART II

Lin McLean, bachelor, sat out in front of his cabin, looking at a small
bright pistol that lay in his hand. He held it tenderly, cherishing it,
and did not cease slowly to polish it. Revery filled his eyes, and in
his whole face was sadness unmasked, because only the animals were
there to perceive his true feelings. Sunlight and waving shadows moved
together upon the green of his pasture, cattle and horses loitered
in the opens by the stream. Down Box Elder's course, its valley and
golden-chimneyed bluffs widened away into the level and the blue of the
greater valley. Upstream the branches and shining, quiet leaves entered
the mountains where the rock chimneys narrowed to a gateway, a citadel
of shafts and turrets, crimson and gold above the filmy emerald of the
trees. Through there the road went up from the cotton-woods into the
cool quaking asps and pines, and so across the range and away to Separ.
Along the ridge-pole of the new stable, two hundred yards down-stream,
sat McLean's turkeys, and cocks and hens walked in front of him here by
his cabin and fenced garden. Slow smoke rose from the cabin's chimney
into the air, in which were no sounds but the running water and the
afternoon chirp of birds. Amid this framework of a home the cow-puncher
sat, lonely, inattentive, polishing the treasured weapon as if it were
not already long clean. His target stood some twenty steps in front of
him--a small cottonwood-tree, its trunk chipped and honeycombed with
bullets which he had fired into it each day for memory's sake. Presently
he lifted the pistol and looked at its name--the word "Neighbor"
engraved upon it.

"I wonder," said he, aloud, "if she keeps the rust off mine?" Then he
lifted it slowly to his lips and kissed the word "Neighbor."

The clank of wheels sounded on the road, and he put the pistol quickly
down. Dreaminess vanished from his face. He looked around alertly, but
no one had seen