"'Taint any worse than lying!"
The boy stamped angrily from the room, and the girl sat long by the fire and, one by one, fed letters to the flames.
CHAPTER VI
THE CROOKED GAME
"Clickity-click, clickity-click, clickity-click," the monotonous song of the rails told off the miles as the heavy train rushed westward between the endless cornfields of a flat middle State. To the well-built athletic young man who was one of the four occupants of the little end-room, smoking compartment, the outlook was anything but cheerful.
As far as the eye could reach long rows of shriveled husks, from which the season's crop of yellow ears had been torn, flapped dejectedly against their dried and broken stalks. Here and there a square of rich, black loam, freshly turned, bespoke the forehanded farmer; while in the fields of his neighbors straggling groups of cattle and hogs gleaned half-heartedly in the standing roughage.
"Not much for scenery, is it?" The offensively garrulous passenger directed his remarks to the young man, who abstractedly surveyed the landscape. "No, sir," he continued, "you've got to go West for Scenery. Ever been West?"
The young man nodded without removing his gaze from the window.
"I live in Coloraydo," the other persisted. "Went out there for my health—and I stayed. Johnson's my name. I'm in the mining business."