"It'll help pay for the brat's board these last ten years--an' mebby, when it comes to a show-down, I can stick him for a thousand." The woman made no answer.

She was, in a way, past answering with a mind of her own.

The man, as he stood there, was wicked and cruel, every line in his ugly face and angular body a line of sin.

The woman was bent, broken, a wreck.

In her face there was no sign of a living soul.