Winner Take All

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Some of these pages you have criticised, some of them you have praised; and all of them beg leave to recall herewith the Author's esteem and affection.

By easy stages Blue Jeans had arrived at the water tanks.
That had not pleased him much, though the water which fell in a musical drip from the stack nearest the rails into what impressed one as a sensible, frugal tub, until it, too, filled and overflowed and betrayed its trivial nature, was sweet on his tongue and grateful to his mare.
Arriving anywhere by easy stages had never appealed to him. Swift and sudden, that was the better way. Rather would he have whirled into Reservoir with zest and some commotion. But Girl o' Mine was in no shape for that. She drooped. Events which had jostled him roughly in the last few weeks had dealt with her unkindly as well. There had been many weary miles and not much grain.
And yet his poverty had not been a thing of easy stages. It had seemed both swift and sudden, and he liked it none the better for that. But he would not enter Reservoir with ostentation. He'd ride in without enthusiasm, and thus call no attention to the pass to which he'd come.
Nor was he in a hurry to get there, either. The town, a quarter of a mile across the track, squat and squalid in the dust, held nothing for his mood.
Reservoir was a poor town, anyway.
And Life was a poor thing, too.
He'd tried for hours and hours to think of one fair promise which it still held for him—just one!—tried hard! And couldn't!