Yours truly
Wm Jordan
There were two notations in pencil at the bottom of the letter. One read:
Walt—Im passin the kid along to you. Get busy.
Dan
And the other, Buck's:
Dont kill this kid but come as near to it as you kin.
Walt
A great light broke in on Whitey. So this was the meaning of it all? the twenty-five mile walk to Cal Smith's house; the singular conduct of the men at the T Up and Down; the nester's lending him that jack Felix, that he knew would run home and leave Whitey alone on the plains; and Walt Lampson's sending him out on the range, in the face of a storm. And as a sort of high peak in his mountain range of troubles Whitey remembered Little Thompson's talk about funerals. Whitey buried his head in his hands and groaned at the thought. He had dreamed of funerals ever since. He determined to make a will and put in it that Little Thompson should not be allowed to come to his (Whitey's) funeral.
They had passed him along from one to another, making a fool of him, and laughing behind his back all the time. He knew how rough cowmen often were in their fun, and the only wonder was that they hadn't treated him worse. He supposed that they would have done so had his father not been a ranch-owner. So! they probably thought he was something of a molly-coddle. He was angry enough, but this thought made him angrier—that he hadn't been treated worse. Which goes to show what a reasonable thing anger is!