Bart Garson was known to everyone in Concho City as a hulking bully. His home was a shack, a few miles out of town, and his wife, Annie, did her best to keep the small house neat and clean, but it was a discouraging task. Years of poverty and constant fear of her good-for-nothing husband had given her a haunted, terror-stricken look. The two also had a son called Billy, who was thin and undernourished, and looked a couple of years younger than his actual age of sixteen. The poor boy also lived in fear of his father, and after going to town to get his pa's tobacco one morning, he came home empty-handed, and expecting a beating.