instinct he had divined and made preparations for a long drought.
Being rich, with land in other counties, he was able to move his stock
to green pastures. We knew that he was storing up the money sucked by
the sun out of us. He was foreclosing mortgages, buying half-starved
horses and steers for a song, selling hay and straw at fabulous
prices. And we were reeling upon the ragged edge of bankruptcy! He,
the beast of prey, the vulture, was gorging on our carrion.

Men--gaunt, hollow-eyed men--looked at him as if he were an obscene
bird, looked at him with ever-increasing hate, with their fingers
itching for the trigger of a gun. Pap had his weakness. He liked to
babble of his own cuteness; he liked to sit upon a sugar barrel in the
village store and talk of savoury viands, so to speak, and sparkling
wines in the presence of fellow-citizens who lacked bread and water,
particularly water.

One day, in late March, he came into the store as the sun was setting.
In such a village as ours, at such a time, the store becomes the club
of the community. Misery, who loves company, spent many hours at the
store. There was nothing to do on the range.

Upon this particular afternoon we had listened to a new tale of
disaster. Till now, although most of us had lost stock, and many had
lost land as well, we had regarded health, the rude health of man
living the primal life, as an inalienable possession. Our cattle and
horses were dying, but we lived. We learned that diphtheria had
entered Paradise.

In those early days, before the antitoxin treatment of the disease,
diphtheria in Southern California was the deadliest of plagues. It