Bannister's cousin."
"But--weren't they enemies?"
"That's how I understand it. But this man's passed over the
range. A MAN doesn't unload his hatred on dead folks--and I
expect if y'u'll study him, even y'u will be able to figure out
that my friend measures up to the size of a real man."
"I don't see why if--"
"No, I don't suppose y'u do," interrupted the foreman, turning on
his heel. Then to Bannister, who was looking down at his cousin
with a stony face: "I reckon, Bann, we better make arrangements
to have the bodies buried right here in the valley," he said
gently.
Bannister was thinking of early days, of the time when this
miscreant, whose light had just been put out so instantaneously,
had played with him day in and day out. They had attended their
first school together, had played marbles and prisoners' base a
hundred times against each other. He could remember how they used
to get up early in the morning to go fishing with each other. And
later, when each began, unconsciously, to choose the path he
would follow in already beginning to settle into an established
fact. He could see now, by looking back on trifles of their
childhood, that his cousin had been badly handicapped in his
fight with himself against the evil in him.
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