“An’ live off the fatta the lan’,” Lennie shouted.

O.K. Someday—we’re gonna get the jack together and we’re gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an’ a cow and some pigs and——

“They was so little,” he said, apologetically. “I’d pet ’em, and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead—because they was so little.”

With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.

Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place.

Never did seem right to me. S’pose Curley jumps a big guy an’ licks him. Ever’body says what a game guy Curley is. And s’pose he does the same thing and gets licked. Then ever’body says the big guy oughtta pick somebody his own size, and maybe they gang up on the big guy. Never did seem right to me. Seems like Curley ain’t givin’ nobody a chance.

“Listen to me, you crazy bastard,” he said fiercely. “Don’t you even take a look at that bitch. I don’t care what she says and what she does. I seen ’em poison before, but I never seen no piece of jail bait worse than her. You leave her be.”

“Say—what you sellin’?” “Huh?” “I said what stake you got in this guy? You takin’ his pay away from him?”

Well—she got the eye.

And at his heels there walked a dragfooted sheep dog, gray of muzzle, and with pale, blind old eyes.