Cassidy shifted irresolutely from one foot to the other. A sickening feeling of hollowness within him was crying aloud to be appeased by either food or drink, and his shaking body begged for a place to rest itself into tranquillity; but still for a while he stood there, fighting off these yearnings while he gathered his far-strayed wits. Now and then he weakly attempted to catch the other's eye, but as Mike studiously refused to be caught, Cassidy could only blink owlishly and fumble again with the tangled ends of the skein. Finally, abandoning it all as useless, he turned toward the door, yet arrested his dazed shambling to ask one last question. "How's that?" Mike responded vaguely over his shoulder. "Still harping on that, are you?" "Did I really sell you them blacks?" ventured Cassidy quaveringly, controlling his voice only with a tremendous effort. "Reelly, truly--did I sell 'em?" Mike rolled a cigar over in his mouth, with a complacent lick of his tongue. "That's what," he replied laconically. Cassidy gulped down something in his throat. He leaned for a moment against the door-jamb; his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face quivered with misery. "I mean them black wheelers, Mike. Just them two--them wheelers," he pleaded. Hesitating a little, as the other deigned no response, he ventured weakly on: "I was figurin', now--of course, I don't mean nothin' by it, Mike, only yuh see how a feller _c'u'd_ figger it--that mebbe--mebbe you made some mistake in readin' that paper. Yuh see how it could happen. A feller _c'u'd_ make a mistake in readin', now, c'u'dn't he?" With this flimsy appeal Cassidy played his last and poorest card. In answer the other snapped some ashes from his sleeve, turned his back, slapped the cash-register shut, and strode masterfully down the room. "Not this time, pardner." Cassidy stumbled out. "I've sold them wheelers!" he sobbed under his breath. "Why, it seems like I was just this minute thinkin' I'd get tuh go and water 'em, and rub 'em down a bit. _Now_ it ain't no use thinkin' about it--not any more. It ain't me that's goin' tuh do that. I cain't water 'em. I ain't got rights to even lay my hands on 'em! O-h-h!" he shuddered, and agonizedly pulled taut on every tired, aching muscle. "Yuh oughter be beat up with a club. Yuh oughter get pounded with a rawk. You're a rotten, whisky-soaked bum, that's all yuh are now, and yuh oughter be killed and kicked out in the street!" Half whining, half crying miserably, he drove himself out of the town, for a mile or more, on the desert, then plodded painfully back again, mauling and beating himself with the bludgeon of his awful self-pity.