"But he drank like a fish," he thought, "and spent most of his time at the sporting house on East Maple."
"As a boy," he said aloud, "I could think of nothing more ideal than to follow in his footsteps when I grew up. Course, when I had grown up, there was no more frontier, no more show downs in the center of town. It was a terrible disappointment and one that I haven't gotten over, even yet."
"My father," said Manny pensively, "claimed that I had clumsy wooden hands. He was wrong and I think he knew it. But he'd never admit it to me."
"Do you know what disturbs me?" said Amos Handworthy. "There have been challenges for me, some financial, some physical, others social, and I've met and beaten every one of them. But I've never been in the same mother naked kind of situation my Father had to meet where it was one man's raw courage and skill against another's."
"The thing that disturbs me," said Manny, "is that whenever I knock off a particularly tough job, instead of being elated, I'm totally depressed until the next challenging one comes along."
Amos Handworthy raised the wine bottle to the light and studied the play of color through the thickened glass.
"Come inside," he said abruptly. "I've got something special I want to show you."
Manny followed after his host and found himself in a huge, high ceilinged room flanked on all four walls by reward posters, some as much as one hundred years old. There were no furnishings in the room, just a series of unusual pieces of furniture that proved on closer scrutiny to be automata of diverse types. In the center of the room was a great amorphous mass covered by an enormous sheet.
"I have no kin," said Handworthy, staring possessively about him. "I've never married so I have no children. But I'm a happy man nevertheless. These are my children," he said, gesticulating about him. "This one, is a particular delight," he added, his voice swelling with pride as he brought Manny over for a closer view.