"Which he might have. That's before my time, I reckon. I was just bein' weaned when Louisiana was run out of the country. My old man could tell you all about it. He's Carter Wallace, of the Lazy Y at Willow Spring." "I knew him," said De Launay. "You knowed my old man?" "But maybe he'd not remember me." Sucatash sensed the fact that De Launay intended to be reticent. "Dad sure knows all the old-timers and their histories," he declared. "Him and old Ike Brandon was the last ranchers left this side the Esmeraldas, and since Ike checked in a year ago he's the last survivor. There's a few has moved into town, but mostly the place is all pilgrims and nesters." They had climbed the stairs and come into the hidden sanctum of Johnny the Greek, and De Launay looked about curiously, noting the tables and the scattering of customers about the place, rough men, close cropped, hard faced and sullen of countenance, most of them, typical of the sort of itinerant labor that was filling the town with recruits and initiates of the I. W. W. There were one or two who were of cleaner strain, like the two young cowmen. Behind the bar was a red-faced, shifty-eyed man, wearing a mustache so black as to appear startling in contrast to his sandy hair. De Launay eyed him curiously, noting with a secret smile that his right arm appeared to be stiff at the wrist. He made no comment, however, but followed the two men to the bar where the business of the day began. It consisted of imbibing vile whisky served by the stiff-armed Snake Murphy. But De Launay still had something on his mind. "You say Ike Brandon's dead?" he asked. "What became of his granddaughter?" "Went to work," said Sucatash. "Dave, where's Marian Pettis?" "Beatin' a typewriter fer 'Cap' Wilding, last I heard," said Dave. "She was a little girl when I knew her," said De Launay, his voice softening a little with a queer change of accent into a Southern slur. Snake Murphy, who was polishing the rough bar in front of him, glanced quickly up, as though hearing something vaguely familiar. But he saw nothing but De Launay's thoughtful eyes and sober face with its small, pointed mustache. "'Scuse me, gents," he murmured. "What'll it be?" "A very little girl," said De Launay, absently looking into and through Murphy. "A sort of little fairy." The lanky Sucatash looked at him askance, catching the note of sentiment. "Yeah?" he said, a bit dryly. "Well, folks change, you know. They grow up." "Yes," said De Launay. "And this Marian Pettis, she done growed up. I ain't sayin' nothin' against a lady, you understand, but she ain't exactly in the fairy class nowadays, I reckon."