Going Some

Going Some is a Fiction Romance Story Book. Four cowboys inclined their bodies over the barbed wire fence which marked the dividing line between the Centipede Ranch and their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung thick and low so low that it seemed they might almost be plucked by an upstretched hand and a silent air blew across thousands of open miles of land lying crisp and fragrant under the velvet dark. And as the four inclined their bodies, they inclined also their ears, after the strained manner of listeners who feel anguish at what they hear. A voice, shrill and human, pierced the night like a needle, then, with a wail of a tortured soul, died away amid discordant raspings: the voice of a phonograph. It was their own, or had been until one overconfident day, when the Flying Heart Ranch had risked it as a wager in a foot race with the neighboring Centipede, and their own man had been too slow. As it had been their pride, it remained their disgrace. Dearly had they loved, and dearly lost it. It meant something that looked like honor, and though there were ten thousand thousand phonographs, in all the world there was not one that could take its place. The sound ceased, there was an approving distant murmur of men's voices, and then the song began. Higher and higher the voice mounted until it reached again its first thin, ear splitting pitch.