About a year later he writes that the cattle business is getting too tame. He's done it so much that all the excitement has gone. He says I wouldn't believe how tame it can be, with hardly any risk of getting shot. He says he wouldn't keep on running off these Mexican cattle if it wasn't for the money in it; and, furthermore, it sometimes seems to him when he's riding along in the beautiful still night, with only God's stars for companions, that there's something about it that ain't right.
But it's another year before he writes that he has disposed of his stock interests and is coming North to lick Ben proper. He does come North. He was correct to that extent. He outfitted at the Chicago Store in Tucson, getting the best all-wool ready-made suit in Arizona, with fine fruit and flower and vegetable effects, shading from mustard yellow to beet colour; and patent-leather ties, with plaid socks--and so on. He stopped off at Red Gap on his way up to do this outrage. His face was baked a rich red brown; so I saw it wouldn't show up marks as legibly as when he was pale.
He said Ben wasn't a right bad fellow and he had no personal grudge against him, except he needed to have his head beat off on account of his inhumanity.
I told him Ben had worked up from yardmaster at Wallace to assistant division superintendent at Tekoa, where he would probably find him; and I wished him God-speed.
He said he rejoiced to know of Ben's promotion, because he had probably softened some, setting round an office. He promised to let me know the result at once. He did. It was the same old result. The fight had gone a few more rounds, I gathered, but Ed still gave the decision against himself in the same conscientious way. He said Ben had licked him fair. It was uncanny the way he took these defeats. No other human being but would of made some little excuse. He came back in another suit and a bit blemished in the face, and said Ben seemed to be getting a fair amount of exercise in spite of his confining office duties; but--mark his words--that indoor work would get him in time. He'd never seen a man yet that could set at a desk all day and keep in shape to resent fighting talk, even from a lighter man by twenty pounds. He said he might have to wait till Ben was general manager, or something; but his day was coming, and it would be nothing for Ben to cheer about when it got here. He now once more drifted out over the high horizon, only one eye being much help to him in seeing the way.