ed together like brothers.

For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then she
wrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royal
was old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for them
as she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honour and
protect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if he
did not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.

Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnly
while they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing the
unearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel that
they could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of
the question. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncher
fancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnie
and enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar bank-note. With the two dollars
and a half which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to a
mail-order house for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwards
because the coat was not "wind and waterproof" as advertised in the
catalogue.

More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a notice
that he was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. He
felt hurt, because, as he pointed out to Frank, he was perfectly
willing to support Minnie and the kids if they came back where he could
have a chance. He wrote this painstakingly to the lawyer and received
no reply. Later he learned from Minnie that she had freed herself from
him, and that she was keeping boarders and asking no odds of him.

To come at once to the end of Brit's matrimonial affairs, he heard from
the children once in a year, perhaps, after they were old enough to
write. He did not send them money, because he seemed never to have any
money to send, and because they did not ask for any. Dumbly he sensed,
as their handwriting and their spelling improved, that his children
were growing up. But when he thought of them they seemed remote,
prattling youngsters whom Minnie was for ever worrying over and who
seemed to have been always under the heels of his horse, or under the
wheels of his wagon, or playing with the pitchfork, or wandering off
into the sage while he and their distracted mother searched for them.
For a long while--how many years Brit could not remember--they had been
living in Los Angeles. Prospering, too, Brit understood. The gir