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Show WHERE WERE THE BANDITS? Chapter XVII Let's underline one quality in this portrait of Father. He revealed the trait early even before, as a teen-ager, he left Norway for America with almost no money in his pocket. He had courage. Extreme expressions of it came in occasional outbursts of fiery temper. Once, for example, he blazed up with righteous wrath that scorched a picture on m y memory. A homesteader who had bought groceries on credit at out store asked Father for a chance to work out the bill. Father extended credit to help settlers stay on their claims, and he sometimes gave them work improving our ranch. "Go up in the hills and cut me a load of fence posts," he instructed the man. Promptly enough, the homesteader drove into out* backyard late next afternoon with a load. Father paused in pitching manure on a wagon and, carrying his pitchfork, walked over to inspect the posts. He took one look then started back in disbelief. Evidently the homesteader had gone no farther than the first straggling junipers at the foothills and had chopped any tree, no matter how twisted and angular, into six-foot lengths. No wonder Father was astounded and angry-the load looked like a boxful of snakes. There wasn't a straight post in the lot. "What would I do with those?" Father exploded. "I couldn't set them in a line or string wire on them!" Sullenly, silently the settler started to unload anyway. Before he could throw one of the useless objects on the ground, Father shouted, "Stop! I won't take them. They're no use to me." The man persisted. He lifted a post, was about to throw it on the ground. Father startled me-and the homesteader. Furiously he ran at the man as |