“Think of it!  Think of it!” Jack half whispered, his imagination in play.  “Plot after plot being added to this little oasis until it extends from range to range, one sea of green!  Many little towns, with Little Rivers the mother town, spreading its ideas!  Yes, think of being in at the making of a new world, seeing visions develop into reality as, stone by stone, an edifice rises!  I—­I—­” Jack paused, a cloud sweeping over his features, his eyes seeming to stare at a wall.  His body alone seemed in Little Rivers, his mind on the other side of the pass.  He was in one of those moods of abstraction that ever made his fellow-ranchers feel that he would not be with them permanently.

Indeed, he had whole days when his smile had a sad turn; when, though he spoke pleasantly, the inspiration of talk was not in him and when Belvy Smith could not rouse any action in the cat with two black stripes down its back.  But many Little Riversites, including the Doge, had their sad days, when they looked away at the pass oftener than usual, as if seeing a life-story framed in the V. His came usually, as Mrs. Smith observed, when he had a letter from the East.  And it was then that he would pretend to cough to Firio.  These mock coughing spells were one of the few manifestations that made the impassive Firio laugh.

“Now you know I am not well, don’t you, Firio?” he would ask, waggishly, the very thought seeming to take him out of the doldrums.  “I could never live out of this climate.  Why, even now I have a cough, kuh-er!”

Firio had turned a stove cook.  He accepted the humiliation in a spirit of loyalty.  But often he would go out among the sagebrush and return with a feathery tribute, which he would broil on a spit in a fire made in the yard.  Always when Jack rode out to meet Mary at the foot of the range, Firio would follow; and always he had his rifle.  For it was part of Jack’s seeming inconsistency, emphasizing his inscrutability, that he would never wear his revolver.  It hung beside Pete’s on the wall of the living-room as a second relic.  Far from being a quarrel-maker, he was peaceful to the point of Quakerish predilection.

“Nobody ever hears anything of Leddy,” said Jim; “but he will never forget or forgive, and one day he will show up unexpectedly.”

“Not armed!” said Jack.

“Do you think he will keep his word?”

“I know he will.  I asked him and he said he would.”

“You’re very simple, Jack.  But mind, he can keep his word and still use a gun outside the town!”

“So he might!” admitted Jack, laughing in a way that indicated that the subject was distasteful to him; for he would never talk of the duel.

Now we come to that little affair of Pedro Nogales.  Pedro was a half-breed, whose God among men was Pete Leddy no less than Jack was Firio’s and the Doge was Ignacio’s.  In his shanty back of Bill Lang’s the Mexicans and Indians lost their remaining wages in gambling after he had filled them with mescal.  It happened that Gonzalez, head man of the laborers under Bob Worther, who had saved quite a sum, came away penniless after taking but one drink.  Every ounce of Bob’s avoirdupois was in a rage.