"That's why I like that picture. It's my country, too." He pointed to a print of Remington's "Fight for The Water Hole."
"That's th' way it looks—heat an' color an' distance," he said. "But when a thing's painted like that, you get more 'n th' looks. You get taste an' smell an' th' feeling. I get thirsty an' hot an' desperate every time I look at that picture very long....
"This Cousin Jack, Kipling," he resumed, turning back to the books, "he wrote a poem about what a man ought to be before he considers himself a man that says all there is to say on th' subject. Nothin' new in what he wrote, but he's corraled all th' ideas anybody's ever thought about. It's fine—"
"But who is that?" she broke in, walking closer to the photograph of a young woman, too eager to see the whole of this room to pause long over any one thing.
He smiled in embarrassment.
"My sister, ma'am."
"Your sister!"
"Yeah. You see, I never had any folks. Nearest thing to ancestors I know about was a lot of bent steel an' burnin' railroad cars. Old Tim picked me out of a wreck when I was a baby, an' we never found out nothin' about me." He rubbed the back of one hand on his hip. "I... It ain't nice, knowin' you don't belong to nobody, so I picked out my family,"—smiling again.
"I was in Phoenix once an' I saw that lady's picture in front of a photograph gallery. It was early mornin' an' I was on my way to th' train comin' north. I busted th' glass of th' show case an' took it. I left a five-dollar gold piece there so th' photographer wouldn't mind, an' I guess th' lady, if she knew, wouldn't care so awful much. Nobody ever seen her here but Tim an' me. I respect her a lot, like I would my sister. You expect she would mind, ma'am?"
"I think she would be very much pleased," Ann said, soberly.