“Probably the old wretch beat her,” thought Annie angrily.

Another page and here was great-grandfather himself, in middle age, his picture—­a faded daguerreotype—­showing him in his Sunday best, but plainly in no Sunday mood.  “Looks like a pirate,” was Annie’s comment.  There was no picture of great-grandmother.  “Probably he killed her off too young, before she had time to get her picture taken.”  And Annie’s eyes darted blue fire at the supposed culprit.  She shook her brown little fist at him.  “You started all this,” she said aloud.  “You began it.  If you’d had a wife who’d’ve stood up to you you’d never got drunk and killed a man, and you wouldn’t have left your family a nasty old mad vein in the middle of their foreheads, looking perfectly unChristian.  I just wish I had you here, you old scoundrel!  I’ll bet I’d tell you something that’d make your ears smart.”

She banged to the album and put it in its place.

“Well, not me!” said Annie.  “Not me!  I’m not going to be bullied and scared to death by any man with a bad temper, and the very next time Mister Wes flies off the handle and raises Cain I’m going to raise Cain, two to his one.  I won’t be scared!  I won’t be a little gump and take such actions off any man.  We’ll see!”

It is easy enough to be bold and resolute and threaten a picture.  It is easy enough to plot action either before or after the need for it arises.  But when it comes to raising Cain two to your husband’s one, and that husband has been a long and successful cultivator of that particular crop—­why, that is quite a different thing.

Besides, as it happened, Annie did not wholly lack sympathy for his next outburst, which was directed toward a tramp, a bold dirty creature who appeared one morning at the kitchen door and asked for food.

“You two Janes all by your lonesome here?” he asked, stepping in.

Wes had come into the house for another shirt—­he had split the one he was wearing in a mighty bout with the grubbing hoe—­and he entered the kitchen from the inner door just in time to catch the words.

He leaped and struck in one movement, and it carried the tramp and himself outside on the grass of the drying yard.  The tramp was a burly man, and after the surprise of the attack he attempted to fight.  He might as well have battled with a locomotive going full speed.

“What you doin’ way up here, you lousy loafer?” demanded Wes between blows.  “Get to hell out of here before I kill you, like you deserve, comin’ into my house and scarin’ women.  I’ve a great mind to get my gun and blow you full of holes.”

In two minutes the tramp was running full speed toward the road, followed by Wes, who assisted his flight with kicks whenever he could reach him.  After twenty minutes or so the victor came back.  His eyes were red with rage that possessed him.  He did not stop to speak, but hurried out his rackety little car and was gone.  Later they found out he had overtaken the tramp, fought him again, knocked him out, and then, roping him, had taken him to the nearest constable and seen him committed to jail.