After they had parted, on the night of their first supper together, Elbert fell to thinking of his own relationships at home. This occupied him for an hour or two before going to bed—mixed in with memories of what he had heard about Mr. Leadley’s missing son, and old days on the Rio Brava. He saw for the first time that there were two sides to this father-and-son business; that it was just possible a man might be able to talk to another man, saying things he couldn’t tell his own son. Moreover, Elbert was able to see something of the tangle between Bart and his father with a clearness that had never come to him in regard to his own affairs.
He was a touch lonely that night, but queerly glad, for the first time, that he had never shown the knack to ‘work’ his father. All regret eased about that; better as it was.
Mr. Leadley didn’t appear to be in any hurry to get back to his mine. It seemed to do him good to talk about the old days. Elbert listened eagerly, especially about Bart as a horseman.
‘You see, he learned all we knew about hosses and all that the Mexicans know besides. He rode light, his hand quick, a sort of kidding way with him that got right into the good feelings of a hoss. I made him give up a bad one once and I had no right to do that, but I didn’t see it straight until afterward. It was an old gray outlaw he brought home from a near-by ranch—a discard, but Bart was sitting him upright and amiable. That hoss pretty near finished me. I’m limpin’ yet, on rainy days, from tryin’ to correct his misdemeanors. And because I couldn’t, it bore down on me not to let Bart ride him, who could. That was another mistake.... A hossman at ten, Bart was; had to have his six-gun before he was twelve. He could fan it, too. No use me tryin’ to keep him from it, and the fellows I worked with at the mines whisperin’ that he’d kill himself—that he wouldn’t live to be hanged. You always hear what you’re afraid of.
‘Slim, black-haired, easy smilin’ and Spanish on his tongue, Mexican spurs and reata, more interested in guitar music than gold mining, and off by himself or with the Mexicans instead of with his own kind. You know, Bart’s mother was Spanish.... Yet any one could see Bart was game and gritty—life a feather to him—take it or leave it; laughin’ but dangerous. No, they couldn’t see it, either,’ Mr. Leadley finished abruptly. ‘I’m talking from a distance, from where I am now, I didn’t see it myself then—not rightly, I didn’t. I’m shore gettin’ talkative.’
‘I like to hear about him,’ said Elbert.
‘Now as to that, I had a queer feelin’ you did from the first day I came to the leather-store. Guess that’s why I’ve kept hangin’ around—that, and your bein’ about Bart’s age and size.’
And yet, if it hadn’t been for the curious sensitiveness within him that registered Mr. Leadley’s feelings, Elbert would have thought that the other was merely recalling matters of pleasantness from years ago. Finally one evening, after talk touching Bart’s prolonged stay below the Border, Elbert said:
‘I’d certainly like to get somewhere down in Sonora.’