Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatum
to Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take the
children and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except the
post-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where a
fellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.
Brit could not imagine himself actually _living_, day after day, in a
town. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in a
restaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days when
he had meant to finish his business in one, because there was an
awfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there was
going to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintance
with her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,
and be reasonably certain of a favorable answer.
Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friend
and neighbor, who had taken all the land the government would allow one
man to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him. They
had planned to run cattle together, had their brand already recorded,
and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young cows.
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