The brother slouched to the bed and sat down.  “How’s the Concho been making it?” he asked.

“We’ve been doing pretty fair.  I’ve been busy.”

“How’s old man Loring?”

“About the same.”

“Nell gone into mourning?”

Corliss frowned and straightened his shoulders.

“See here, Will, you said you’d talk business.  I’m waiting.”

“Touched you that time, eh?  Well, you can have Nell and be damned.  No Mexican blood for mine.”

“If you weren’t down and out—­” began Corliss; then checked himself.  “Go ahead.  What do you want?”

“I told you—­money.”

“And I told you—­no.”

The younger man started up.  “Think because I’m edged up that I don’t know what’s mine?  You’ve been piling it up for three years and I’ve been hitting the road.  Now I’ve come to get what belongs to me and I’m going to get it!”

“All right, Will.  But don’t forget that I was made guardian of your interest in the Concho until you got old enough to be responsible.  The will reads, until you come of age, providing you had settled down and showed that you could take care of yourself.  Father didn’t leave his money to either of us to be drunk up, or wasted.”

“Prodigal son, eh, Jack?  Well, I’m it.  What’s the use of getting sore at me?  All I want is a couple of hundred and I’ll get out of this town mighty quick.  It’s the deadest burg I’ve struck yet.”

John Corliss gazed at his brother, thinking of the bright-faced, blue-eyed lad that had ridden the mesas and the hills with him.  He was touched by the other’s miserable condition, and even more grieved to realize that this condition was but the outcome of a rapid lowering of the other’s moral and physical well-being.  He strode to him and sat beside him.  “Will, I’ll give anything I have to help you.  You know that.  Anything!  You’re so changed that it just makes me sick to realize it.  You needn’t have got where you are.  I would have helped you out any time.  Why didn’t you write to me?”

“Write?  And have you tell Nell Loring how your good little brother was whining for help?  She would have enjoyed that—­after what she handed me.”

“I don’t know what she said to you,” said Corliss, glancing at his brother.  “But I know this:  she didn’t say anything that wasn’t so.  If that’s the reason you left home, it was a mighty poor one.  You’ve always had your own way, Will.”

“Why shouldn’t I?  Who’s got anything to say about it?  You seem to think that I always need looking after—­you and Nell Loring.  I can look after myself.”

“Doesn’t look like it,” said Corliss, gesturing toward the washstand.  “Had anything to eat to-day?”

“No, and I don’t want anything.”

“Well, wash up and we’ll go and get some clothes and something to eat.  I’ll wait.”

“You needn’t.  Just give me a check—­and I won’t bother you after that.”