so, mebbe so. Them Greasers are cruel, thet's certain. Fer thet
matter, I never seen a Greaser who wasn't cruel. But I reckon
all the strenuous work you've seen to-day ain't any tougher than
most any day of a cowboy's life. Long hours on hossback, poor
grub, sleepin' on the ground, lonesome watches, dust an' sun an'
wind an' thirst, day in an' day out all the year round--thet's
what a cowboy has.

"Look at Nels there. See, what little hair he has is snow-white.
He's red an' thin an' hard--burned up. You notice thet hump of
his shoulders. An' his hands, when he gets close--jest take a
peep at his hands. Nels can't pick up a pin. He can't hardly
button his shirt or untie a knot in his rope. He looks sixty
years--an old man. Wal, Nels 'ain't seen forty. He's a young
man, but he's seen a lifetime fer every year. Miss Majesty, it
was Arizona thet made Nels what he is, the Arizona desert an' the
work of a cowman. He's seen ridin' at Canyon Diablo an' the Verdi
an' Tonto Basin. He knows every mile of Aravaipa Valley an' the
Pinaleno country. He's ranged from Tombstone to Douglas. He hed
shot bad white men an' bad Greasers before he was twenty-one.
He's seen some life, Nels has. My sixty years ain't nothin'; my
early days in the Staked Plains an' on the border with Apaches
ain't nothin' to what Nels has seen an' lived through. He's just
come to be part of the desert; you might say he's stone an' fire
an' silence an' cactus an' force. He's a man, Miss Majesty, a
wonderful man. Rough he'll seem to you. Wal, I'll show you
pieces of quartz from the mountains back of my ranch an' they're
thet rough they'd cut your hands. But there's pure gold in them.
An' so it is with Nels an' many of these cowboys.