We debated this briefly.  We agreed that the reticence of losers is due to something basic in human nature; a determination of the noblest sort to disregard failure—­that is, Ma Pettengill said you couldn’t expect everything of human nature when it had its earrings in, and I agreed in as few words as would suffice.  I had suddenly become aware that the woman was holding something back.  The signs in her discourse are not to be mistaken.  I taxed her with this.  She denied it.  Then she said that, even if she was holding back something, it was nothing to rave about.  Just an anecdote that this here talk about fighting characters had reminded her of.  She wouldn’t of thought of it even now if Ben Steptoe hadn’t told her last spring why he didn’t lick his Cousin Ed that last time.  And this here Ed Steptoe was the only honest male she had ever known.  But that was because something was wrong in his head, he being a born nut.  And it wasn’t really worth going back over; but—­well—­she didn’t know.  Possibly.  Anyway—­

These Steptoe cousins come from a family back in the East that was remote kin to mine and they looked me up in Red Gap when they come out into the great boundless West to carve out a name for themselves.  About fifteen years ago they come.  Ben was dark and short and hulky, with his head jammed down between his shoulders.  Ed was blond and like a cat, being quick.  Ben had a simple but emphatic personality, seeing what he wanted and going for it, and that never being more than one thing at a time.  Ed was all over the place with his own aspirations and never anything long at a time; kind of a romantic temperament, or, like they say in stories, a creature of moods.  He was agent for the Home Queen sewing machine when he first come out.  But that didn’t mean sewing machines was his life work.  He’d done a lot of things before that, like lecturing for a patent-medicine professor and canvassing for crayon portraits with a gold frame, and giving lessons in hypnotism, and owning one-half or a two-headed pig that went great at county fairs.

Ben had come along the year before Ed and got a steady job as brakeman on the railroad, over on the Coeur d’Alene Branch.  He told me he was going to make railroading his life work and had started in at the bottom, which was smart of him, seeing he’d just come off a farm.  They probably wouldn’t of let him start in at the top.  Anyway, he was holding down his job as brakeman when Ed sailed in, taking orders for the Home Queen, and taking ’em in plenty, too, being not only persuasive in his methods but a wizard on this here sewing machine.  He could make it do everything but play accompaniments for songs—­hemming, tucking, frilling, fancy embroidering.  He knew every last little dingus that went on it; things I certainly have never learned in all my life, having other matters on my mind.  He’d take a piece of silk ribbon and embroider a woman’s initials on it in no time at all, leaving her dead set to have this household treasure.