"She was some hurt b'cause I talked to the neighbors about Jack bein' plumb no good.... I don't know who told her.... I didn't want the neighbors to think I was fooled by him.... I never said nothing to mother, though.... She couldn't f'rgit thet he was her boy, an' she kep' on lovin' him.... Nobody orto blame her much f'r that, no matter what he done.... You know how it is with women.
"One time purty soon after the thirty-seven fifty deal a bad check f'r two hundred come into my bundle o' canceled vouchers at the bank, an' I knowed in a minute who'd done it.... Jack had been walkin' the floor nights f'r quite a spell, an' his eyes looked like a heifer's that's lost her calf.... He hed a sweetheart in town.... Gal from the East ... big an' dark an' strong enough to take Jack up an' spank him.... It was her brother Jack had lost the money to. Jack jest wrote my name on a check—never tried to imitate my fist much—an' the bank paid it.... When I come home a-lookin' the way a man does that's been done that way by a boy o' his'n, mother told me Jack was gone, an' handed me a letter he left f'r me.... I never read it.... Went out to the barn so mother wouldn't see me, an' tore it up.... I'd 'a' been damned before I'd 'a' read it!"
He gloomed out over my head in an expressionless way that aroused all the curiosity I am capable of feeling as to the actual workings of another's mind. He seemed to be under the impression that he had said a great many things in the pause that ensued; or he regarded my understanding as of small importance; for he recommenced at a point far advanced in his narrative.
"—'N' finely," said he very calmly, "we thought she was goin' to die. I asked the doctor what we could do, an' he told me what.... Knowed all the boys since he helped 'em into the world, you know—a friend more'n a doctor—an' he allowed it was Jack she was pinin' f'r. So I goes to her, a-layin' in bed as white as a sheet, an' I says, 'Mother, if they's anything you want, you can hev it, if it's on earth, no matter how no-account I think it is!' ... A feller makes a dumb fool of himself such times, neighbor; but mother was good goods when we was poor an' young—any one of the neighbors can swear to that.... She looks up at me ... an' whispers low ... 'Go an' find him!' ... An' I went.
"I knowed purty nigh where to look. I went to Chicago. He'd dropped clean down to the bottom, neighbor.... Playin' a pianah ... f'r his board an' lodgin' an' beer ... in ... in a beer hall."
I was quite sure, he paused so long, that he had told all he had to narrate of this history of the boy who could not stand punishment, and was so much like a collie; and I knew from the manner in which he had lapsed into silence, more than from what he had said, what a dark passage it was.
"Well," he resumed finally, "I hed my hands spread to strangle him right there.... I could 'a' done it all right—he was that peaked an' little.... He wouldn't 'a' weighed more'n a hundred an' fifty—an' my son!... I could 'a' squushed the life out of him with my hands—an' it was all right if I hed.... You bet it was!... Not that I cared f'r the two hundred dollars. I could spare that all right. I'll lose that much on a fair proposition any time.... But to take that thing back to mother ... from where I picked it up from!
"I reckon I was ruther more gentle with Jack goin' home than I ever was before.... I hed to be. They was no way out of it except to be easy with him—'r lam the life out of him an' take him home on a cot ... an' mother needed him in runnin' order. So I got him clothes, an' had him bathed, an' he got shaved as he used to be—he had growed a beard—an' I rode in one car and him in another.... When mother seed him, her an' him cried together f'r I suppose it might have been two hours 'r two and a quarter, off an' on, an' whispered together, an' then she went to sleep holdin' his hand, an' begun to pick up, an' Jack went back to his own ways, an' the rest of us to ourn, an' it was wuss than ever.... An' when he sold a team o' mine and skipped ag'in, I was glad, I tell you, to be shet of him.... An' they could do the mile to the pole in twenty, slick as mice.
"Next time mother and Wallace went an' got him.... Mother found out some way that he was dyin' in a horsepittle in Minneapolis.... He claimed he'd been workin f'r a real estate firm; but I had the thing looked up ... an' I couldn't find where any of our name had done nothing.... An' it seemed as ef we'd never git shet of him.... That sounds hard; but he was a kind of a disease by this time—a chronic, awful painful, worryin' disease, like consumption.... An' we couldn't git cured of him, an' we couldn't die.... It was kind o' tough. He moped around, an' mother had some kind o' promise out of him that he wouldn't leave her no more, an' he was pleadin' with her to let him go, an' Tom an' Wallace an' me never sayin' a word to him, when this here Philippine War broke out ... you know what it's about—I never did ... an' Jack wanted to enlist.
"'I can't let him go!' says mother.