"How's the old camp looking?"
"All shot to pieces. Half the houses empty, and business gone to pot. It's a purty yellow proposition now."
"You don't say! It was pretty slow when I was there last, but I didn't suppose it had gone broke. What's the matter of it?"
"Too many monopolists. All the good properties have gone into one or two hands. Then these labor wars have scared operators away. However, I'm not complainin'. I've made good on this lease of mine." He grinned boyishly. "I've been back to flash my roll in the old man's face. You see, I left the farm rather sudden one Sunday morning eleven years ago, and I'd never been back." His face changed to a graver, sweeter expression. "My sister wrote that mother was not very well and kind o' grievin' about me, so, as I was making good money, I thought I could afford to surprise the old man by slapping him on the back. You see, when I left, I told him I'd never darken his door again—you know the line of talk a boy hands out to his dad when he's mad—and for over ten years I never so much as wrote a line to any of the family."
As he mused darkly over this period, I insinuated another question. "What was the trouble?"
"That's just it! Nothing to warrant anything more than a cuss-word, and yet it cut me loose. I was goin' around now and then with a girl the old man didn't like—or rather, my old man and her old man didn't hitch—and, besides, her old man was a kind of shiftless cuss, one o' these men that raised sparrows in his beard, and so one Sunday morning, as I was polishin' up the buggy to go after Nance, who but dad should come out and growl:
"'Where ye goin' with that buggy?'
"'None o' your dam' business,' I snaps back, hot as hell in a secunt, 'but just to touch you up, I'll tell you. I'm goin' over to see Nance McRae.'
"Well, sir, that set him off. 'Not with my horses,' says he, and, grabbin' the buggy by the thills, he sent it back into the shed. Then he turned on me:
"'If you want to see that girl, you walk! I won't have you usin' my tired animals to cart such trash—'