Manley clattered up, vociferously glad to greet him. Kent, at his urgent invitation, led his horse to the stable and turned him into the corral, unsaddled and unbridled him so that he could eat. Also, he told his errand. Manley interrupted the conversation to produce a bottle of whisky from a cunningly concealed hole in the depleted haystack, and insisted that Kent should take a drink. Kent waved it off, and Manley drew the cork and held the bottle to his own lips. As he stood there, with his face uplifted while the yellow liquor gurgled down his throat, Kent watched him with a curiously detached interest. So that's how Manley had kept his vow! he was thinking, with an impersonal contempt. Four good swallows--Kent counted them. “You're hitting it pretty strong, Man, for a fellow that swore off last fall,” he commented aloud. Manley took down the bottle, gave a sigh of pure, animal satisfaction, and pushed the cork in with an unconsciously regretful movement. “A fellow's got to get something out of life,” he defended peevishly. “I've had pretty hard luck--it's enough to drive a fellow to most any kind of relief. Burnt out, last fall--cattle scattered and calves running the range all winter--I haven't got stock enough to stand that sort of a deal, Kent. No telling where I stand now on the cattle question. I did have close to a hundred head--and three of my best geldings are missing--a poor man can't stand luck like that. I'm in debt too--and when you've got an iceberg in the house--when a man's own wife don't stand by him--when he can't get any sympathy from the very one that ought to--but, then, I hope I'm a gentleman; I don't make any kick against _her_--my domestic affairs are my own affairs. Sure. But when your wife freezes up solid--” He held the bottle up and looked at it. “Best friend I've got,” he finished, with a whining note in his voice. Kent turned away disgusted. Manley had coarsened. He had “slopped down” just when he should have braced up and caught the fighting spirit--the spirit that fights and overcomes obstacles. With a tightening of his chest, he thought of his “pal,” tied for life to this whining drunkard. No wonder she felt the need of a friend! “Well, are you going out with the Wishbone?” he asked tersely, jerking his thoughts back to his errand. “If you are, you'll need to go over there to-night--the wagons start out to-morrow. Maybe you better ride around by Polly's place and have him come over here, once in a while, to look after things. You can't leave your wife alone without somebody to kinda keep an eye out for her, you know. Polycarp ain't going to ride this spring; he's got rheumatism, or some darned thing. But he can chop what wood she'll need, and go to town for her once in a while, and make sure she's all right. You better leave your gentlest horse here for her to use, too. She can't be left afoot out here.” Manley was taking another long swallow from the bottle, but he heard.