"She is keen to guess that," he thought.

He began to talk of himself, boasting and throwing out his chest. "I'd
like to have the chance to show what I can do," he declared. A thought
that had been in his mind on the winter day when Uncle Charlie Wheeler
put the name of Beaut upon him came back and he walked up and down
before the woman making grotesque motions with his hands as Cracked
McGregor had walked up and down before him.

"I'll tell you what," he began and his voice was harsh. He had
forgotten the presence of the woman and half forgotten what had been
in his mind. He sputtered and glared over his shoulder up the hillside
as he struggled for words. "Oh to Hell with men!" he burst forth.
"They are cattle, stupid cattle." A fire blazed up in his eyes and a
confident ring came into his voice. "I'd like to get them together,
all of them," he said, "I'd like to make them----" Words failed him
and again he sat down on the log beside the woman. "Well I'd like to
lead them to an old mine shaft and push them in," he concluded
resentfully.

* * * * *

On the eminence Beaut and the tall woman sat and looked down into the
valley. "I wonder why we don't go there, mother and I," he said. "When
I see it I'm filled with the notion. I think I want to be a farmer and
work in the fields. Instead of that mother and I sit and plan of the
city. I'm going to be a lawyer. That's all we talk about. Then I come
up here and it seems as though this is the place for me."

The tall woman laughed. "I can see you coming home at night from the