women isn't very high. And it's odd, too, isn't it, that
both the very highest and very lowest of such opinions are always held
by men who base them upon what they have been taught by one woman
alone. Tell me, Joe, what's happened? How have you and Garry hit it
off, since I went down river? . . . Trouble?"

The fat man's eager denial was still self-consciously defensive.

"Not a bit!" he stated. "Not one little wrangle, even. Of course I
was expectin' it. I've watched 'em come around too many times not to
know how they can cuss a man cold one minute, and then make him plumb
ashamed of mankind in general, with beggin' and pleadin'. I just beat
him to it the morning he woke up; I told him what he could have, and
what he couldn't, and he took it calmly enough. He just set there,
pretty blue and shaky, and not quite clear in his head, and smiled that
slow grin of his that's hardly any smile at all.

"I don't mean that he didn't swear! O my--O my! It's nice, ain't
it, to have the gift of ease and eloquence in speech? He made me
feel sort of amateurish and inadequate--me! But he didn't beg.
Not--one--peep--out--of--him! He told me what he thought of me just as
polite and cool as could be and let it go at that. He said he guessed
I was boss, for a while at least, and asked for chopped fine!" Fat Joe
hesitated. His color grew higher again. "After what's just happened,"
he added, "I'm almost ashamed to mention it, but--but ain't this friend
of yours one of them chaps they call 'thoroughbreds' in novels?"

Steve flashed a glance at that earnest face. For a moment he had
forgotten the first glimpse he had caught of Joe that evening, bent
double over the block of yellow paper--a glimpse which still seemed
funny and yet not very funny either.

"He comes of a very old family," he replied. "Old as they are reckoned
in this country." And his answer held a question.

Joe shook his head.

"That ain't quite what I mean. I've seen lots of the younger sons of
them old families. I've run into them in Yokohoma and Buenos Ayres;
I've met up with them along the Yukon and down on the Mexican border.
They're scattered all around, out through the Panhandle, ridin' calico
ponies, with jingly spurs and more than a bushel of doo-dads on the
saddle. They all come from old families, and I suppose after all it
was a blessing that they had that much in their favor. Because if most
of them hadn't had a family tree to lean