Roberta Littlehale

“ There were men of them rude in virtue as well as strength, and men of them branded with a shifting eye and hunted step. Billy had always had his pleasure with a gun in his hand until these wondrous twelve months of his knowledge of Rudy. That that slight person had no acquaintance with the manner of his former life was due to the respect in which Billy held her. For himself, he couldn't get rid of a troublesome pride when he called up the men—the brakemen, and engineers, and inflated conductors—who had backed away from the steel-ringed mouth of his Colt, his Betty. ”

“ Does he think his life is worth juggling for? An unlodged stone trips jerkily down the hillside, and some bats blacken the air over his head. Betty is so safe, and so sure, and so ready that he will let the idiot come into her face.
A hand shows through the bushes at the gate of the corral. Billy is forced to turn; it is some one who knows the run of the land. A black figure thrusts through the branches and Betty throws out her ball of death. ”

“ But a man must be capering to more than one tune if he's to dance in the open all of his life, so Billy had been giving his later days to the panning for gold in secluded spots of the California Sierras; and the first Sunday that he had lent to the village and set apart for the play had been taken by Rudy! He remembered it all very clearly. He had been so careful to shave. Men must remember a moustache of straw color that brought out the steel in his small gray eyes. ”

“ Billy sent the place over to a hotter climate, and turned on his heel to shake off its dust just as the restless eyes of a high-headed roan brought him to a halt.
It was then that he had heard a voice he felt he would never forget.
"There is room," it called.
Billy Owen had gone on looking over the roan. He was not the man to waste Sunday in church.
"Father's to preach on fighting," he heard it again. "There are fights that he stands by." ”

“ This was a perplexity Rudy's father laid in heaven's care. "There must be something to live on," he had used as a protest. And what had always made Billy's living but his revolver,—his Betty? The mining was snail's pace at best, and with Rudy on his heart there was mad need of haste. With everything at his hand and his Colt ready, there were only the plans, which he straightway laid. Money for the northern mines passed under his nose once every month. ”

“ Men with guns from all over the Union and gold the heaven we sweated for. Prayers, and court, and the gambling tables all running under one roof, and nary a woman's face showing up in the mass to give us courage. ”

“ Money in the helpless hands of his wife meant only unwelcome care for her, and their exclusion in a larger, isolated home was in no sense different from life in their cabin.
Frazer held himself aloof from the movement of the growing towns and cities, and watched the weak physical fiber of his children, marked by their unambitious Southern strain. Energy for acquirement of any sort was not theirs, and for his family his money meant only the material supply of food and clothes. ”

“ But how had he expected her to know anything of any man but the one she loved? She did not know, she had answered him; she had not thought to think of it.
And she had not slept through the long night hours, nor had he, and in the morning the fever was high again. In the dragging feebleness of his convalescence both had avoided any reference to the revelation that night. Things went on as before, but the humble devotion and care of Frazer's Mexican protégée was as properly interpreted by the quick camp instinct as it was immediately acquiesced in and forgotten. ”

“ He had held out a hand to her and she had come over and knelt at his side.
"Little one," he had said, "this life is not right for our children. To-morrow we must get the priest and be married. There is money now, and they must be taught to live more cleverly than their father and their mother."
He had left her perplexed in her relief, while he threw himself on the bed for the sleep of utter exhaustion.
The burden of life would be doubly worse with the material leisure money could bring, but Frazer had never stopped toiling all his days. ”

“ The scrub-oak would have to lengthen its fat shadow very perceptibly before the man would find it necessary to get on his feet; so he allowed a portion of his attention to revert to the cause of his being here.
Billy Owen was not analytical. He did not go back any farther than his love for a woman as the representative cause of the present effect. The spirit of his ancestors, trained to conquest and struggle, had suffered a taint in the far gone years, and he had become the son of an uncertain race. ”

“ Eniory fell in his own blood, and a horseman was riding off wildly and safe through the shower of bullets that rained around him. Every man with a cayuse tore in pursuit, but they only brought back eight half-dead horses. Stokes had staked relay beasts at different points along the road, and was then safe in the chaparral cañons toward the north.
"The gambling dens choked up with the crowds; gold-dust was heaped on gold-dust for the reward of the cowardly hound. Murders weren't rare then, but there was only one Ned Emory, remember. ”

“ He had raised the boy quietly, and the child Jad hung about his neck, frenzied and fainting. The weakness of his condition made anything impossible beyond literally riding with him in his arms back again to camp. The boy's clothes were torn and dirty and his flesh was bleeding, but his delicate Southern beauty was none the less strongly in evidence.
Frazer remembered the interest and assistance of his comrades. They had hovered in the silence of men's earnestness until the boy was able to make himself coherent. ”

“ It is not in excuse that I speak, nor in weakening. It is to tell you that those among you who are men will follow my steps under like circumstances.
"'Emory gave me his hand and his oath, in the manner of his frankness, to stand by an arranged agreement.
"'We were to meet at eight o'clock on that Sunday night. A—a beautifully good woman was to decide on our argument which man she would marry. In riding to meet my engagement I happened on an accident. Within half a mile of the settlement, close onto time, my piebald went back on his haunches and the groan of a man came up from the roadside. ”

“ The horses jogged lazily through the coarse, thick dust on the river's levee, and the insects from the grain fields and the frogs from the sloughs had things wholly to themselves until Bill suddenly interrupted.
"Mrs. Chase is pretty enough yet to understand why she sent two fellows to the devil, isn't she?"
"What are you talking about?" I answered.
"Oh," said Bill, pulling himself up, "I forgot you didn't struggle with the rest of us through those groggy days."
I knew Bill well enough to let him relapse just so many minutes ”

“ He could not tell how long it was before he got possession of himself. The candles were dripping low in their tin sockets, and one of the women who loved him was still in her chair near his elbow, frightened, and quiet, and intense. ”

“ It was a voice, Billy thought, the bees would look for. He threw her a glance that shouldn't reveal any weakness for the sort of blood-spilling that the parson approved of, and straightway for got to look off again. Rudy Field was smiling at him, and Rudy was radiant with the spirit of well-doing. The bell's noisy excitement had given way to the voices of the people in an opening hymn of thanksgiving, and the girl hurried off the steps, passed the horses, and laid her hand on his arm.
"He says men ought to break each other's noses if there's cause ”

“ Ah—God—out in the darkness I saw Emory taking advantage of the delay.
"'None of you is so much a cur as to let the life run in a man who, under his honor, couldn't yield a rival three minutes' grace. ”

“ Service must have been about to begin, for there was only a girl standing out on the steps, and the horses in ranks along the fences, who slept, or brushed flies, or hated their neighbors, as their natures gave impulse. ”

“ He could have got to Guinea before motion 'd have come to us. Then, simultaneously with our steps forward, he turned and looked into our faces.
"It was a moment to test the nerve of any man. He stood it as we were used to seeing him face all things. ”