"Even the cattle got no fight in 'em." He added, "That sounds like I'm a
fighter. I ain't."

"Till you're stirred up, Mr. Wilkes?"

"Heat me up an' I'll burn. Soil wood."

"You're pretty familiar with the Western country?"

"I get around."

"Perhaps you'd recognize this."

He took a scroll from his breast pocket and unrolled the photograph of
the forest and the ranchhouse with the two mountains in the distance.
Wilkes considered it unperturbed.

"Them are the Little Brothers."

"Ah! Then all I have to do is to travel to the foot of the Little
Brothers?"

"No, about sixty miles from 'em." "Impossible! Why, the mountains almost
overhang that house."

Wilkes handed back the picture and resumed his eating without reply. It
was not a sullen resentment; it was hunger and a lack of curiosity. He
was not "heated up."