d all night. When he come back
he showed me a whole wad of money. I says, 'Where did you get it?' He
got mad and tells me to shut up.

"That day we got on a train. I says, 'Where are we goin'?' and he says
to never mind, and did I want some peanuts.

"We kept ridin' and ridin' in the same car, and eatin' bananas and
san'wiches and sleepin' settin' up at nights. I was just about sick when
we come to Albuquerque. You see, that was where the needle went through
the timetable, and dad said we would get off there. He got awful drunk
that night.

"Next day he said he was goin' to quit liquor and make a fresh start. I
knowed he wouldn't, 'cause he always said that next mornin'. But I guess
he tried to quit. I don't know.

"One night he didn't come back to the room where we was stayin' upstairs
over the saloon. They found him 'way down the track next day, all cut to
pieces by the train."

The boy paused, reached forward, and plucked a withered stem of grass
which he wound round and round his finger.

Walter Stone sat looking across the valley.

"I guess his money was all gone," resumed the boy. "Anyhow, 'bout a year
after, Overland Red comes along. He comes to the saloon where I was
stayin',--they give me a job cleanin' out every day,--and he got to
talkin' a lot of stuff about scenery and livin' the simple life, and all
that guff. The bartender got to jawin' with him, and I laughed, and the
bartender hits me a lick side the head. Red, he hits the bartender a
lick side of _his_ head--and the bartender don't get up right away.
'I'll learn him to hit kids,' said Red. 'If you learn him to hit 'em as
hard as that,' I says to Red, 'then it will be all off with me the next
time.'

"Does he hit you very often?' said Red.

"Whenever he feels like it,' I told him.

"Red laughed and said to come on. I was sick of there, so I run away
with Red. We tried it on a freight and got put off. Red had some water
in a canteen he swiped. It was lucky for us he did. We kept walkin' and
goin' nights, and mebby ridin' on freights in the daytime if we could.
One day, a long time after that, we was crossin' the desert again. We
got put off a freight that time, too. We was walkin' along when we found
a guy layin' beside the track. Red said he wasn't dead, but was dyin'.
We give him some water. Then he kind of come to and wanted to drink it
all. Red said, 'No.' Then the guy got kind of crazy. He got up and
grabbed Red. I was scared.

"Red,