Page:Morley roberts--Painted Rock.djvu/49

 grasses of summer and the dancing haze of noonday heat.

"Like enough," said Jeff, "I'll never see the ole man no more. He's stiff and rheumaticky, and he cayn't get no gun out fast enough for Walker. I dew wish that Walker would run up agin someone like Ben Thompson. Ben Thompson would hev made him look like a Mexican's blanket, more holes than wool. But Walker don't take no chances thataway. He's no more than a poor fool-killer, and Paw's a fool."

Jeff wiped away a tear, and made himself some coffee by heating up the remains of his Dad's breakfast. It was a hard life that he led, and he never knew it. The world was big, so he had heard, but West Virginia was the end of it towards the East. A remote California was in the far West. The round and broken prairie was his world; and the slow creek his river. He wondered how much bigger the Mississippi was. For his mother, now in the cemetery at the 'City' toward which the old pinto was going, had come from Memphis.

"I'd like to go to Sis in Ole Virginny,"