The Brother Grober decided to stop for a moment to take up strength, and pulling strongly on the hand brake, brought the old Packard to quivering rest beside a jagged little mesquite bush. Looking vacantly about him, he noted that in the fields scattered white heads of cotton, missed by the mechanical picker, hung broken-necked down their stalks, sprayed with black mud and wagging sadly in the breeze; it all should have been taken up and burned against the bollweevil, but the land no doubt belonged to Spurgis since was house stood up at the end of the road, and poor Spurgis was sick.

Some Saturdays the two white men did not hunt, but would sit nearly motionless on the front porch of the little lodge, with the bourbon and the bucket of ice cubes between them on the floor, staring somberly off toward the rows of houses which had crept out from the city to menace their land.