"I'll show him all the happenstances he wants to see before I'm
through," he said, aloud. "Something's gonna happen. Something's got
to happen. Jack Harpe won't let this slide. Not by a jugful."

The words were confident enough, but they were words that he had been
in the habit of repeating to himself nearly every day for some time.
Perhaps they had lost some of their force. Perhaps--

"Twelve hundred dollars," mused Racey. "And the same for Swing. Six
months' work for--Hell, it can't turn out different! I know it can't.
We'll show 'em all yet, won't we, Cuter old settler?"

Cuter old settler waggled his ears. He was a companionable horse,
never kicked human beings, and bucked but seldom.

"Yep," continued Racey, sitting back against the cantle, "she's a long
creek that don't bend some'ers or other."

And then the creek that was his flow of thought shot round a bend into
the broad and sparkling reaches of a much pleasanter subject than the
one that had to do with Harpes and Tweezys and Joneses. After a time
he came to where the pleasanter subject, on her knees, was
weeding among the flowers that grew tidily round Moccasin Spring.
Baby-blue-eyes, low and lovely, cuddled down between tall columbines
and orange wall-flowers. Side by side with the pink geranium of
old-fashioned gardens the wild geranium nodded its lavender blooms in
perfect harmony.

The subject, black-haired Molly Dale, rested the point of her
hand-fork between two rows of ragged sailors and Johnny-jump-ups and