Pete got in contact with a voracious bulldog, that came from somewhere over in the back country; and in the final analysis—in which the two animals participated—Pete was left in a badly mangled condition.
Cal found him, and happening to be near the shanty of a neighbor, several miles from his own shack, carried the unfortunate Pete tenderly to shelter.
It was through this neighbor, another hermit, with another history, that Cal got interested in a pile of old newspapers and magazines which had been procured in some way by this isolated tenant of the sands, who still maintained a lagging interest in the affairs of the outside world.
“Pete”
During Pete’s convalescence, Cal found in one of these old papers an account of a women’s rights meeting in his native city, in which his former ideal of beauty and loveliness had taken a prominent part.
Her picture was in the paper and Cal was
“A Cactus at Fifty”
disillusioned. The finger of time had touched the love of his youth and she was ugly. The tender blossom of nineteen was a cactus at fifty. To use his own phrase—“she looked like the breakin’ up of a hard winter.” In addition to the picture, the report of the proceedings, during which his former affinity had violently attacked what Cal considered were the sacred prerogatives of the male sex, extinguished the last lingering fond impression, and the lovely vision vanished.