“I know that. Good night,” said Brant, and therewith he left the prisoner of fools to the company of an accuser which is not to be silenced save by many applications of the searing iron.
The night editor of the Plainsman was in the midst of the last batch of copy when Brant redeemed his promise to return, and Forsyth motioned to a chair.
“Sit down; I’ll be with you in a minute,” he said, and when the desk was cleared he wheeled the pivot chair to face his visitor and drew up another for a foot rest.
“Thanks be; that is the last of it for one more day. It’s a ‘demnition grind,’ but I suppose that is true of every occupation under the sun. Haven’t you found it so?”
“Honestly, no. I think I am in love with my profession. If I didn’t have other things to trouble me, I believe I could go on making maps to the end of the chapter.”
“You think that now because the drudgery is preferable to the other things, maybe. Tell me about the other things.”
“I shall, and I’ll cut it short. You know what the public knows about George Brant of Silverette and elsewhere, so we needn’t go into that, though perhaps you will let me say that I was no worse than other men of my tribe. I mean by that that I never dealt a brace game, and I never picked a quarrel of my own motion.”
“These things say themselves. Go on.”
“Well, one day I came to the end of things. You may imagine that the life would nauseate any man who has ever known anything better, and that is what it did to me. So I turned short, pasted down the old leaf, and began all over again.”
“So far so good. And then?”