buried his brother without a tear, and then sat down and looked at the
slender child who bore his name. Andy was a beautiful boy. He had the
black hair and eyes, the well-made jaw, and the bone of the Lannings,
and if his mouth was rather soft and girlish he laid the failing to the
weakness of childhood. Jasper had no sympathy for tenderness in men. His
own life was as littered with hard deeds as the side of a mountain with
boulders. But the black, bright eyes and the well-made jaw of little
Andy laid hold on him, and he said to himself: "I'm fifty-five. I'm
about through with my saddle days. I'll settle down and turn out one
piece of work that'll last after I'm gone, and last with my signature
on it!"

That was fifteen years ago. And for fifteen years he had labored to make
Andy a man according to a grim pattern which was known in the Lanning
clan, and elsewhere in the mountain desert. His program was as simple as
the curriculum of a Persian youth. On the whole, it was even simpler,
for Jasper concentrated on teaching the boy how to ride and shoot, and
was not at all particular that he should learn to speak the truth. But
on the first two and greatest articles of his creed, how Jasper labored!

For fifteen years he poured his heart without stint into his work! He
taught Andy to know a horse from hock to teeth, and to ride anything
that wore hair. He taught him to know a gun as if it were a sentient
thing. He taught him all the draws of old and new pattern, and labored
to give him both precision and speed. That was the work of fifteen
years, and now at the end of this time the old man knew that his life
work was a failure, for he had made the hand of Andrew Lanning cunning,
had given his muscles strength, but the heart beneath was wrong.

It was hard to see Andy at the first glance. A film of smoke shifted and