Hal didn't wait for an answer but sprang to his feet and began to walk back and forth between the corn shocks.
He was al- most a foot shorter than Hal, and when the younger man came and put his two hands on the older man's shoulders they made a picture.
He shook Hal's hands loose and turning walked straight away toward the barn.
After the talk with Hal he hadn't returned to the cornfield but worked about the barn.
The whole world seemed to Ray Pearson to have become alive with something just as he and Hal had suddenly become alive when they stood in the corn field stating into each other's eyes.
"I didn't promise my Minnie anything and Hal hasn't made any promise to Nell.
"I must catch Hal and tell him," he kept thinking, and although his breath came in gasps he kept running harder and harder.
When he came to the fence at the edge of the road and confronted Hal Winters, all dressed up and smoking a pipe as he walked jauntily along, he could not have told what he thought or what he wanted.
Hal and his sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit.
Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six Outside dogs.
And when, in addition to this, the worn- out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small.
Hal awoke one day to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further, that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained.
His wrenched shoulder-blade, untreated and unrested, went from bad to worse, till finally Hal shot him with the big Colt's revolver.
Charles and Hal wrangled whenever Mercedes gave them a chance.
Charles and Hal begged her to get off and walk, pleaded with her, entreated, the while she wept and importuned Heaven with a recital of their brutality.
