pretty slow when I was there last, but I didn't
suppose it had gone broke. What's the matter of it?"

"Too many monopolists. All the good properties have gone into one or two
hands. Then these labor wars have scared operators away. However, I'm
not complainin'. I've made good on this lease of mine." He grinned
boyishly. "I've been back to flash my roll in the old man's face. You
see, I left the farm rather sudden one Sunday morning eleven years ago,
and I'd never been back." His face changed to a graver, sweeter
expression. "My sister wrote that mother was not very well and kind o'
grievin' about me, so, as I was making good money, I thought I could
afford to surprise the old man by slapping him on the back. You see,
when I left, I told him I'd never darken his door again--you know the
line of talk a boy hands out to his dad when he's mad--and for over ten
years I never so much as wrote a line to any of the family."

As he mused darkly over this period, I insinuated another question.
"What was the trouble?"

"That's just it! Nothing to warrant anything more than a cuss-word, and
yet it cut me loose. I was goin' around now and then with a girl the old
man didn't like--or rather, my old man and her old man didn't
hitch--and, besides, her old man was a kind of shiftless cuss, one o'
these men that raised sparrows in his beard, and so one Sunday morning,
as I was polishin' up the buggy to go after Nance, who but dad should
come out and growl:

"'Where ye goin' with that buggy?'

"'None o' your dam' business,' I snaps back, hot as hell in a secunt,
'but just to touch you up, I'll tell you. I'm goin' over to see Nance
McRae.'

"Well, sir, that set him off. 'Not with my horses,' says he, and,
grabbin' the buggy by the thills, he sent it back into the shed. Then he
turned on me:

"'If you want to see that girl, you walk! I won't have you usin' my
tired animals to cart such trash--'

"I stopped him right there. He was a big, raw-boned citizen, but I was a
husky chunk of a lad myself and ready to fight.

"'Don't you speak a word against Nance,' I says, 'for if you do I'll
waller ye right here and now; and as for your horse and buggy, you may
keep 'em till the cows come home. Here's where I get off. You'll never
see me again.'

"Gee! I was hot! I went in, packed up my grip, and hit the first train
for the West."

"Just as thousands of other angry boys have done," I said, realizing to
the minutest detail this scene.