He faltered here, and then flamed out into pugnacity, squaring his huge jaw as if I had accused him--as I did in my heart, I suspect.
"But the dog," he rumbled, "was wuth somethin'--Jack never was.... Cryin' around f'r thirty-seven fifty!... Talkin' o' debts o' honor!... That showed me plain enough he wasn't wuth botherin' with.... Got his mother to come an' ask f'r an allowance o' money--so much a month.... Ever hear of such a thing? An' him not turnin' his hand to a lick of work except around the house helpin' mother.... Tom an' Wallace bed quite a little start in live stock by this time, an' money in bank.... Jack hed the same lay, but he fooled his away--fooled it away.... Broke flat all the time, an' wantin' an allowance.... Mother said the young sprouts at the club had allowances ... an' he read in books that laid around the house about fellers in England an' them places havin' allowances an' debts of honor.... Mother seemed to think one while that we was well enough off so we could let Jack live like the fellers in the books.... He lived more in them books than he did in South Dakoty, an' talked book lingo all the time.... Mother soon seen she was wrong.
"She was some hurt b'cause I talked to the neighbors about Jack bein' plumb no good.... I don't know who told her.... I didn't want the neighbors to think I was fooled by him.... I never said nothing to mother, though.... She couldn't f'rgit thet he was her boy, an' she kep' on lovin' him.... Nobody orto blame her much f'r that, no matter what he done.... You know how it is with women.
"One time purty soon after the thirty-seven fifty deal a bad check f'r two hundred come into my bundle o' canceled vouchers at the bank, an' I knowed in a minute who'd done it.... Jack had been walkin' the floor nights f'r quite a spell, an' his eyes looked like a heifer's that's lost her calf.... He hed a sweetheart in town.... Gal from the East ... big an' dark an' strong enough to take Jack up an' spank him.... It was her brother Jack had lost the money to. Jack jest wrote my name on a check--never tried to imitate my fist much--an' the bank paid it.... When I come home a-lookin' the way a man does that's been done that way by a boy o' his'n, mother told me Jack was gone, an' handed me a letter he left f'r me.... I never read it.... Went out to the barn so mother wouldn't see me, an' tore it up.... I'd 'a' been damned before I'd 'a' read it!"