"On each side of us the farms had been deserted before I was born. Sometimes I used to wish there were other boys in them to play with, but for the most part I accepted it just as I accepted the whining complaints of mother, dad's stooped shoulders and the feeling of never having all that I could possibly eat at one time.
"But one day a strange man drove up. He was fat, with a red face and a gold watch-chain. He came in and clapped father on the back, and began to talk faster and laugh more than any one I had ever heard. Even dad and mother smiled as they listened. When mother told me he was going to stay all night I went out in the barn and cried."
Herrick stopped and looked into the fire. He forgot Jean, everything but the memories called to life by his own words. His face was hard with hatred against that starved childhood and against his parents, for always Herrick's hatred was deep against the thing that hurt him. There were shadows about his lips, and his hands clenched until the cords rose on his wrist.
"You poor, lonely, little boy," Jean whispered.
"I was. For you see, until that night, when Ed Pierce came back, I didn't know there was anything else. I used to feel those stone fences closing in like a grave. I didn't know but that the whole world was flat and bare and stony. I thought that the Pierces and Thompsons had just died under the strain, and that some day father and mother would die too, and then I would be left alone.
"After dinner we sat round the fire. They had done all the gossiping and Ed Pierce began to tell of the Far West. You must say it just like that—The Far West!
"I can't tell you what it meant to me. It was a mixture of Heaven and pirate expeditions in tropic seas and gold mines. But the thing that stunned me was that we could go. It was on this earth and we could get there! We could have it all, if father would only go and take it. I can hear Pierce's big voice now: 'Take a chance, Bill. Don't be scared. You're young enough yet. You'll make good with a quarter of the strength you'll waste on this hole.'
"And my father sat there with his head sunk and his shoulders bent, shaking his head!
"I crawled over to his chair and got hold of his knees. I begged him to go. I believe I screamed. Father loosened my hands and told me to shut up. But Pierce said:
"'Listen to him, Bill, the kid's got more sense than you. You've stuck here so long you're plumb scared to move.'