imagination for little else; the mold was broken, but the child
was not conscious of its bottle shape. Nevertheless the shape was
there. When that child learned the truth, when it heard the
laughter and felt the ridicule, what then? He could not bring
himself to envy Allegheny Briskow.

"First off, Ma and me are goin' over to Dallas to do some
tradin'," the girl was saying. "After that we're goin' to the
mountains."

"Your mother mentioned mountains."

"Yep. Her and Pa have allus been crazy about mountains, but they
never seen 'em. That's the first thing Ma said when Number One
blowed in. When we saw that oil go over the crown block, and when
they told us that black stuff was really oil, Ma busted out cryin' and
said she'd see the mountains, after all--then she wouldn't mind if
she died. Pa he cried, too, we'd allus been so pore--You see, Ma's
kind of marked about mountains--been that way since she was a
girl. She cuts out stories and pictures of 'em. And that's how me
and Buddy came to be named Allegheny and Ozark. But we never
expected to _see_ 'em. The drought burned us out too often."

Allegheny and Ozark. Quaint names. "Times must have been hard."
The remark was intended only as a spur.

"_Hard!_" There was a pause; slowly the girl's eyes began to
smolder, and as she went on in her deliberate way, memory set a
tragic shadow over her face. "I'll say they was hard! Nobody but
us nesters knows what hard times is. Out west of here they went