"This Cousin Jack, Kipling," he resumed, turning back to the books, "he wrote a poem about what a man ought to be before he considers himself a man that says all there is to say on th' subject. Nothin' new in what he wrote, but he's corraled all th' ideas anybody's ever thought about. It's fine--" "But who is that?" she broke in, walking closer to the photograph of a young woman, too eager to see the whole of this room to pause long over any one thing. He smiled in embarrassment. "My sister, ma'am." "Your sister!" "Yeah. You see, I never had any folks. Nearest thing to ancestors I know about was a lot of bent steel an' burnin' railroad cars. Old Tim picked me out of a wreck when I was a baby, an' we never found out nothin' about me." He rubbed the back of one hand on his hip. "I... It ain't nice, knowin' you don't belong to nobody, so I picked out my family,"--smiling again. "I was in Phoenix once an' I saw that lady's picture in front of a photograph gallery. It was early mornin' an' I was on my way to th' train comin' north. I busted th' glass of th' show case an' took it. I left a five-dollar gold piece there so th' photographer wouldn't mind, an' I guess th' lady, if she knew, wouldn't care so awful much. Nobody ever seen her here but Tim an' me. I respect her a lot, like I would my sister. You expect she would mind, ma'am?" "I think she would be very much pleased," Ann said, soberly. "An' that up there's my mother," he said, after their gazes had clung a moment. "Whistler's 'Mother'!" "Yes, he painted it; but she's th' one I'd like to have for my mother, if I could picked her out. She looks like a good mother, don't she? I thought so when I got that ... with a San Francisco newspaper." Ann did not trust herself to speak or to look at him. "Your father?" she asked after a moment. "Oh, I had one. Tim. He was my daddy. He did all any father could for me. No, ma'am, I wouldn't pick out nobody to take Tim's place. He brought me up. But if I was to have uncles, I'd like them." He moved across the room to where prints of Lincoln and Lee were tacked to the wall. "But, they were enemies!" Ann objected. "Sure, I know it. But they both thought somethin' an' stuck by it an' fought it out. Lincoln believed one way, Lee another; they both stood by their principles an' that's all that counts. Out here we have cattlemen an' sheepmen. I'm in cattle an' lots of times I've felt like gunnin' for th' fellers who were tryin' to sheep me, but then I'd stop an' think that maybe there was somethin' to be said on their side. "I'd sure liked to have men for uncles who could believe in a thing as hard as they believed!" A pause followed and he looked about the room again calculatingly; then started as though he had forgotten something. "But what I brought you in here for was to tell you that this is yours, to do what you want with ... you ..." His words brought them back to the situation they confronted and an embarrassed silence followed.