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Show /? "Did you win?" I asked. "Hell yes. We was tough as tiisse crowbars we'd been swinging id mem boys were town boys. I guess John and I'd been storing j a litde fight too and we really unloaded." Even more than my fadier's words I can remember my emotion hearing mat story and the vision I held of him as a bold young wboy riding over the green mountain meadows where grazed the d Herefords with their snow-white faces, rode die meadows and the lis, under the pines and through die white-boled aspen quaking the breeze, die horse good and his neck hot and sleek under the n. I looked up at Mt. Sneffels catching the late afternoon sun, I ought of that ranch lost to us and I felt absolutely determined win it back. Dad had been keeping an eye on the fire and now he rolled the sticks out of the coals. He offered one to Henry and one to me, owing us how to break off the black charred crust to expose the naming meat. We handled them with gloves on, keeping a piece crust on one end to hold, and, when they had cooled enough, s ate the meat. It was tender and sweet, with ajtonsistency strange > me. We all ate, squatting there together, a man and his two ns. Then Dad stood up, stretching out the kinks. "Say," said Henry, rising too and watching him slyly, "you never d say what happened with that little girl you were chasing." "That one at Ridgeway?" He gave a snort of laughter. "Yeah, I re misjudged her all right. Soon as I bloodied up her boy friend r her, she couldn't say enough nasty things to me-or pet him lough." Henry laughed. "By god, that's girls for you. So you didn't do 10 well, huh?" Dad gave him a sharp look. "Well," he said, sly himself now, hat other girl-the one John'd found-it was me that ended up alking her home. She lived in a little shack about a quarter of mile out of town and it must of taken me two, three hours to :t back. John was pretty upset about that; he quit right then. And ell, she wasn't nothing but some miner's daughter. But he quit id went back to dairying, and seems like we never were friends jain. Not good ones anyhow. Nope, I guess things change and that's ist the end of 'em." I was stopped, looking at him confused. Henry shrugged, indif- 235 |