him and the prone man so he might watch him against any attempt to rise, squinting, he read at the end, “Seattle!”
“You lie, doc, damn you!” He threw himself down upon the man again; again held the knife to his throat; again fumbled in his pockets, till a thought, a remembrance of the days when the two still had money, came to him, and instantly he tore open the man's clothes at his waist and found the money belt bulging with bank notes. The belt he tore from him and cast aside. Color—too much of it—came to his face.
Months passed before him, months of incredible toil for himself and the man of brain, who, he had believed, was using that brain for the two of them just as he, the man of brawn, was using his brawn—for the two of them. A flood of racking hardships suffused his mind, these infinitely more painful, soul-flaying, in the bitter retrospect. The fury of a patient man broke forth. He cast the knife aside.
“Get up!” he whispered hoarsely. “And fight!”
Lederer was a skillful boxer. But he had boxed only with gentlemen, or those so called. He would almost rather have been knifed than feel the writhe of perspiring flesh, the hot, panting breath of this enraged creature. Yet he could not choose but rise and fight, thinking of tricks.
He was besting the yoeman when his endurance failed. The fourteen hours a day at toil he had disdained was the other's advantage, Lederer's undoing. He found himself being mauled to unconsciousness.
In a brief lapse into consciousness—before he went to sleep again for many hours—he remembered signing something with a pencil that Kibble had forced into his hands. He had no idea what it was even after he came to himself, deathly sick, sore all over to the verge of paralysis. But there was a note that informed him:
I loved you like a brother, you low-lived scoundrel. And I worked for you like I done for myself. You think I liked it. That I ain't fit for nothing else. Now you try it. You'd leave me to starve in a strange country, or freeze to death, while you splurged with the money you robbed me out of.
I got your ticket and a paper saying you made up your mind to stay and let me have our ticket and go. I got your money, only not being a dirty thief I don't intend to keep it. I'll find that wife you deserted. You think I didn't twig to what you meant. I didn't, then. But now I know you deserted her. Because you deserted me. I'll give her your half, if I kin find her. If not it will be in a bank in Aukland for you. When you have starved and froze for a winter in the Klondike. Or else gone to work with your hands, which you despise. You can come out dead or else a man, or a little of a man, whichever you wish.
My share is fifteen hundred pounds, which will build me a shanty and buy me oxen and mostly pay for my land. And I will be married, God bless her. And may He have mercy on your soul. Richard Kibble.
More stories by Mr. Solomons will appear in early issues.
STILL ON THE FARM
FOR a good many years we have heard people wondering what would be the result of the shift of American population from the farms to the cities. We began to think that nearly all the American farmers had renounced the plow and the front porch for the city office and the movies. Figures made public by the census bureau have convinced us that there isn't so much to worry about, after all. The farmer still is very much on the job.
There are almost six and one half million farms in operation in the United States. Their products each year are valued at around twenty billion dollars. Almost half the people of the United States earn their livings, directly or indirectly, through the tilling of the soil. Of course all these people are not farmers; in addition to the men who operate the farms there are millions of storekeepers, mechanics and other tradesmen who live in small towns in farming districts whose incomes are derived indirectly from agriculture. Farming remains the greatest business of the nation.
Texas has the most farms—436,000. Georgia is second with 310,000; Kentucky third with 270,000.
