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finished. At last he wiped his eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” he said sincerely, quite as if he were civilized. “You caught me off guard. I’m really sorry, Professor.”
    “It’s all right,” I lied. “Doctor, I want that Chair if you don’t. I’ve worked hard for it. I’ve earned it. I—I
need
it.”
    “Well gosh, son, go to it. It’s all yours.”
    I had wanted to hear that for so long, I’d dreamed of it so much—and now, hearing it, I became furiously angry. “Why didn’t you resign?” I shouted. “That’s all you had to do, resign, put a two-cent stamp on an envelope, save me all this work, this worry—I nearly died with a hole in my canteen,” I wept, waving at the pottery kiln they call “outdoors” in this terrible land. “Two horses I killed, my work is waiting, my books, students—”
    I found myself patting the table inarticulately, glaring into his astonished eyes. “Why?” I yelled. “Why, why, why—” I moaned.
    He got up and came round the table and stood behind me. On my shoulders he put two huge warm hands like epaulets. “I didn’t know, son. I—damn it, I did know, I guess.” I hated myself for it, but my shoulders shook suddenly. He squeezed them. “I did know. I reckon I just didn’t care.”
    He took his hands away and went back to his chair. He must have made a sign because Big Horn came back with more whiskey.
    After a time I said, with difficulty, “All the way out here I hated you, understand that? I’m not—I don’t—I mean, I never hated anything before, I lived with books and people who talk quietly and—and scholastic honors … Damn it, Dr. Grantham, I admired and respected you, you understand? If you’d stayed at the Institute for the next fifty years, then for fifty years I’d’ve been happy with it. I admired the Chair and the man who was in it, things were the way they should be. Well, if you didn’t want to stay, good. If you didn’t want the Chair, good. But if you care so little about it—and I respect your judgment—you understand?”
    “Oh gosh yes. Shut up awhile. Drink some whiskey. You’re going to bust yourself up again.”
    We sat quietly for a time. At length he said, “I didn’t care. I admit it. Not for the Institute nor the Chair nor you. I should’ve cared about you, or anyone else who wanted it as bad as you do. I’m sorry. I’m real sorry. I got—involved. Other things came to be important.”
    “Peyotl. Selling drugs to the Indians,” I snarled. “You’ve probably got a nice little heap of dust salted away!”
    The most extraordinary series of expressions chased each other across his face. I think if the first one—blind fury—had stayed, I’d have been dead in the next twelve seconds.
    “I don’t have any money,” he said gently. “Just enough for a stake every once in a while, so I can—” He stared out at the yellow-white glare. Then, as if he had not left an unfinished sentence, he murmured, “Peyotl. Professor, you know better than to equate these buttons with opium and hashish. Listen, right near here, in the seventeenth century, there used to be a mission called Santo de Jesús Peyotes. Sort of looks as if the Spanish priests thought pretty well of it, hm? Listen,” he said urgently, “Uncle Sam brought suit against an Indian by the name of Nah-qua-tah-tuck, because Uncle’s mails had been used to ship peyotl around. When the defense witnesses were through testifying about how peyotl-eaters quit drinking, went back to their wives, and began to work hard; when a sky pilot name of Prescott testified about his weekly services where he served the stuff to his parish, and they were the most God-fearing parish in the Territories, why, Uncle Sam just packed up and went right back home.”
    I knew something of the forensics of the alkaloid mescaline. I said, “Well and good, but you haven’t told me how you—how you could—”
    “Easy, ea—sy,” he soothed, and just in time too. “Chip, you’re