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It was quite dark now, but the fire lighted the trunks of the trees and the curving branches overhead. Le

“George,” very softly. No answer. “George!”

“Whatta you want?”

“I was only foolin’, George. I don’t want no ketchup. I wouldn’t eat no ketchup if it was right here beside me.”

“If it was here, you could have some.”

“But I wouldn’t eat none, George. I’d leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn’t touch none of it.”

George still stared morosely at the fire. “When I think of the swell time I could have without you, I go nuts. I never get no peace.”

Le

“Where the hell could you go?”

“Well, I could. I could go off in the hills there. Some place I’d find a cave.”

“Yeah? How’d you eat? You ain’t got sense enough to find nothing to eat.”

“I’d find things, George. I don’t need no nice food with ketchup. I’d lay out in the sun and nobody’d hurt me. An’ if I foun’ a mouse, I could keep it. Nobody’d take it away from me.”

George looked quickly and searchingly at him. “I been mean, ain’t I?”

“If you don’ want me I can go off in the hills an’ find a cave. I can go away any time.”

“No — look! I was jus’ foolin’, Le

Le

George said, “I want you to stay with me, Le

Le

“Tell you what?”

“About the rabbits.”

George snapped, “You ain’t go

Le

“You get a kick outa that, don’t you? Awright, I’ll tell you, and then we’ll eat our supper....”

George’s voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. “Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no fambly. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go into town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they’re poundin’ their tail on some other ranch. They ain’t got nothing to look ahead to.”

Le

George went on. “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit-in no bar room blowin’ in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us.”

Le

“You got it by heart. You can do it yourself.”

“No, you. I forget some a’ the things. Tell about how it’s go

“O.K. Someday — we’re go





An’ live off the fatta the lan’,” Le

“Why’n’t you do it yourself? You know all of it.”

“No.... you tell it. It ain’t the same if I tell it. Go on.... George. How I get to tend the rabbits.”

“Well,” said George, “we’ll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we’ll just say the hell with goin’ to work, and we’ll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an’ listen to the rain comin’ down on the roof — Nuts!” He took out his pocket knife. “I ain’t got time for no more.” He drove his knife through the top of one of the bean cans, sawed out the top and passed the can to Le

They sat by the fire and filled their mouths with beans and chewed mightily. A few beans slipped out of the side of Le

Le

“Good boy! That’s fine, Le

Le

George motioned with his spoon again. “Look, Le

“Sure,” said Le

“’Course you did. Well, look. Le

“Hide in the brush,” said Le

“Hide in the brush till I come for you. Can you remember that?”

“Sure I can, George. Hide in the brush till you come.”

“But you ain’t go

“I won’t get in no trouble, George. I ain’t go

“O.K. Bring your bindle over here by the fire. It’s go

They made their beds on the sand, and as the blaze dropped from the fire the sphere of light grew smaller; the curling branches disappeared and only a faint glimmer showed where the tree trunks were. From the darkness Le

“No. Whatta you want?”

“Let’s have different color rabbits, George.”

“Sure we will,” George said sleepily. “Red and blue and green rabbits, Le

“Furry ones, George, like I seen in the fair in Sacramento.”

“Sure, furry ones.”

“’Cause I can jus’ as well go away, George, an’ live in a cave.”

“You can jus’ as well go to hell,” said George. “Shut up now.”

The red light dimmed on the coals. Up the hill from the river a coyote yammered, and a dog answered from the other side of the stream.

The sycamore leaves whispered in a little night breeze.

The bunk house was a long, rectangular building. Inside, the walls were whitewashed and the floor unpainted. In three walls there were small, square windows, and in the fourth, a solid door with a wooden latch. Against the walls were eight bunks, five of them made up with blankets and the other three showing their burlap ticking. Over each bunk there was nailed an apple box with the opening forward so that it made two shelves for the personal belongings of the occupant of the bunk. And these shelves were loaded with little articles, soap and talcum powder, razors and those Western magazines ranch men love to read and scoff at and secretly believe. And there were medicines on the shelves, and little vials, combs; and from nails on the box sides, a few neckties. Near one wall there was a black cast-iron stove, its stovepipe going straight up through the ceiling. In the middle of the room stood a big square table littered with playing cards, and around it were grouped boxes for the players to sit on.