She rocked herself, and the clutching fingers left white marks on her face, but the eyes that met his glittered tearless: “Then there ain’t nothing left but to face it like a man?” “That’s all there be.” He might have been giving an opinion on a matter in which he had no interest. “Then there ain’t no use in our having any more talk about it?” “’Tain’t just what you’d call an agreeable subject,” he answered, with the sinister humor of the frontiersman who has learned to make a crony of death. She was tempted to kiss him—they were not given to demonstrations, this pair—then decided it were kinder to him, less suggestive of what they anticipated, not to deviate from their undemonstrative marital routine. “Do you want your breakfast now?” “I guess you might bring it along.” And for the same reason that she refrained from kissing him, she repressed a desire to wring the neck of a young broiler and cook it for his breakfast, remembering that she had heard they gave folks pretty much what they wanted when they wouldn’t want it long. So Jim got his usual breakfast of bacon, uncooked canned tomatoes, soda-biscuit, and coffee. She sat with him while he ate, but they spoke no more of “them” or of how soon “they” might be expected. She told him that young Jim had pretended that morning that he had a cactus thorn in his foot, so that he might have a piece of dried apple. And old Jim, in an excess of parental fondness and pride, said: “The damned little liar, he’ll get to Congress yet!” But the children were a dangerous topic for overstrained nerves at this particular time, so Alida told Jim that she had put the black hen to set and she thought they’d have some chickens at last. Jim smoked while Alida washed the dishes, and when Jim’s back was turned she examined the lock on the door—a good push would open it. Then she looked at the brown bureau, and the recklessness of despair came into her eyes. In the room beyond, Jim was reading a two weeks’ old newspaper and smoking. He looked like a lazy ranchman taking his ease.