"Go on."
"Well, that's all I was going to say," said Mr. Braden whose wings of fancy had suddenly dragged before the old lawyer's cynical smile. "Rent the place; get money; apply the money to educate the children. That's it in a nutshell. Any court would approve such action of an executor."
"Possibly—on anex parteapplication. But meantime who pays the mortgage?"
"Mortgage?" said Mr. Braden.
"The mortgage Adam Mackay made to you on the ranch to obtain money to enable him to buy timber limits which were subsequently fire-swept. That's subsisting, isn't it?"
"Certainly it is." There was a shade of defiance in Mr. Braden's tone. "I hope I am not a harsh creditor. The interest might run along and all the rental go toward educating the children."
"Very creditable to your heart," said the judge. "But practically the result would be that the interest would accumulate and compound, and that when these young people had received the education which is the key to Success the property would be saddled with a very heavy encumbrance, more, in fact, than they might care to assume."
"Well," snapped Mr. Braden, "what would you have me do? Insist on my interest and rob these poor children of their chance of life?"
"Very hard situation, isn't it?" said the judge blandly. "It is just as well to look it in the face, though. If, some years hence, the children couldn't pay off these mortgage arrears the property would have to be sold. In fact you might be forced to buy it in to protect yourself."
"Do you suggest—"
"I don't suggest anything. Let us look at another angle of it. Suppose the place is rented and a crop or two fails and the lessee proves incompetent. Then the time comes when, to educate the children, the property, or some of it, must be sold. Again you might be forced to buy it in to protect yourself."
"I don't want the ranch," Mr. Braden said.
"No, of course not. But that is the situation. Now young Angus is a well-grown boy. I think he can run the ranch fairly well. The other children are going to a school which is good enough for their present needs. Angus feels very strongly about the matter. In fact I think he would ask me to oppose any endeavor to rent the place."
"Are you threatening me with a lawsuit?"
"Not at all. There can be no action unless there are grounds for one, and of course a wise trustee walks very carefully. That's all I have to say. Good morning, Braden."
Mr. Braden from his window looked after the bulky, square-set figure of the old lawyer as he made his way down the street.
"You will, will you, you old bum!" he muttered. Then his gaze shifted to a large map of the district which hung on the wall. For some minutes he contemplated it, and then his pudgy finger tapped the exact spot which represented the Mackay ranch. Then half aloud he uttered an eternal truth. "There's sev'ral ways," said Mr. Braden, "of skinning a cat."
The judge merely told Angus that if he could work the ranch properly it would not be rented; and thus encouraged he buckled into the work. The responsibility thrust on him changed his outlook even more than he himself realized.
Jean felt her responsibilities as much as he. She was fond of books, but she grudged the time spent at school, and from before daylight till long after dark she was as busy as a young hen with a brood of chicks. The boys helped her with the hard tasks, and on the whole she got along very well.
But though Angus and Jean felt their responsibilities and endeavored to live up to them, young Turkey did not. He was a curious combination, with as many moods and shifts as an April day. By turns he was headstrong and impulsive, and then coldly calculating. If he felt like it, he would be industrious; but if not, he would be deliberately and provokingly idle. In the days of Adam Mackay these qualities had been not so apparent; but with the passing of his father he recognized no authority and he resented bitterly the least suggestion of control.
He would soon have gotten completely out of hand had Angus permitted it. Matters came to a show-down one morning when Turkey, snug between his blankets, delivered a flat ultimatum to his brother's command that he get up and help pick potatoes.
"You go plum!" said Turkey. "Saturday's a holiday, and I'm goin' fishin'. Pick spuds yourself!"
The next moment he was yanked out of his nest by the ankle and, fighting like a young wildcat, was thrown on the floor.
"Will you pick those spuds?" Angus demanded.
"No!" Turkey shouted, and Angus whirled him over on his face and reaching out acquired a leather slipper.
"Get this straight," he said. "You'll pick spuds, or I'll lick you till you do."
"You lick me, and I'll kill you," roared Turkey, emphasizing the threat with language gleaned from certain teamsters of his acquaintance, but which was cut short by the slipper.
"Will you come to work now?" Angus asked after a heated interval.
"No!" yelled Turkey, sobbing more with rage than with pain, "no, I won't, you big—"
But again the slipper cut him short, and this time his brother put his full strength into it. Finally, Turkey recognized the old-time doctrine of force, and gave up. That day he picked potatoes with fair diligence, and though he would not speak to Angus for a week, he did as he was told.
And so that Fall the young Mackays were very busy, and the threshing was done, and the roots dug and got in, and some fall plowing, before the frosts hardened the earth and the snow came to overlie it.
With winter the work of the ranch lightened—or at least its hours shortened. But still there was plenty to do.
But there were the long evenings, when all the work was done, and supper over and the lamps lit, and they sat by the big, airtight heater, and Angus at least enjoyed the warmth the more because, well-fed and comfortable himself, he knew that every head of his stock was also full-bellied and contented in pen and stable and stall and shed, and the wind might blow and the snow drift and not matter at all.
A year passed uneventfully. The ranch paid its way, though Angus could not meet the mortgage interest. In that year Angus had grown physically. Adam Mackay had been a strong man, and his son was beginning to show his breed, and the results of the good plain food and open air and hard exercise which had been his all his life.
He was yet lanky and apparently awkward, being big of bone, but long ropes of muscle were beginning to come on his arms and thighs, and bands and plasters of it lay on his shoulders and along his back and armored ribs. He took pride in the strength that was coming upon him, rejoicing in his ability to shoulder a sack of grain without effort, to lift and set around the end of a wagon, to handle the big breaking plow at the end of a furrow, and he was forever trying new things which called for strength and activity. At nineteen he could, though he did not know it, have taken the measure of any ordinary man. And about this time an incident occurred which nearly turned out disastrously.
Angus had delivered a load of potatoes at a hotel much frequented by lumberjacks, and, seeking its proprietor, he entered the bar. A logging camp had broken up, and its members, paid off, were celebrating in the good old way. As Angus approached the bar he passed between two young men. These, with one telepathic glance, suddenly administered to the unsuspecting youth the rite known as the "Dutch flip." Although the humor of the "flip" is usually more apparent to perpetrators and onlookers than to the victim, Angus merely grinned as he found himself on his feet again, and all would have been well if, in his involuntary parabola, his feet aforesaid had not brushed a huge tie-maker. This tie-maker was a Swede, "bad," with a reputation as a fighter and the genial disposition of a bear infested with porcupine quills. Also he was partly drunk. In this condition he chose to regard the involuntary contact of Angus' heels as a personal affront. With a ripping blasphemy he slapped the boy in the face, and as instantly as a reflex action Angus lashed back with a blow clean and swift as the kick of a colt, and nearly as powerful.
The logger recovered from his surprise, and with a roar sprang and caught him. Strong for a boy, Angus was as yet no match for such an adversary. The weight of the man, apart from fighting experience, made the issue undoubted. But suddenly the Swede was twisted, wrenched loose, and sent staggering ten feet. Straight down the length of the room the big tie-maker shot, landing with a terrific crash, and lay groaning.
"Let the kid alone!" a deep voice commanded.
Angus' rescuer was Gavin French, the eldest of the brothers. The largest of a family of big men, Gavin stood three inches over six feet in his stockings, and tapered from shoulders to heels. He was long of limb, long of sinew, and so beautifully built that at first sight his real bulk and weight were not apparent. His hair, reddish gold, was so wavy that it almost curled, his eye a clear blue, but as hard as newly-cut ice. He nodded to Angus.
"All right, Mackay; I won't let him hurt you."
Gavin French surveyed his handiwork with cold satisfaction.
"Give the boys a drink," he said. And when the drink had been disposed of he walked out without a second glance at his late adversary who was sitting up. Angus followed him.
"Thanks for handling him," he said. "He was too strong for me."
The cold blue eyes rested on him appraisingly.
"You'll be all right when you're older. Better keep out of trouble till then."
"He struck me," Angus said, "and no man will ever do that without getting back the best I have, no matter how big he is. That was my father's way."
Gavin French made no reply. He nodded, and turning abruptly left Angus alone.
This episode, trivial in itself, gave Angus food for thought. For long months the sight of the big Swede hurtling through the air was before his eyes, and he admired and envied the mighty strength of Gavin French. By contrast his own seemed puny, insignificant. He set himself deliberately to increase it.
The second fall after Adam Mackay's death the school which Jean and Turkey attended had a new teacher. Jean fell in love with her from the start, and even Turkey, who had regarded teachers as his natural enemies, was inclined to make an exception. Jean brought this paragon to the ranch over Sunday. Alice Page was a clear-eyed young woman of twenty-four, brown of hair and eye as Jean herself, full of quiet fun, but with a dignity which forbade familiarity. She was the first person who had ever given Angus a handle to his name. This was at dinner, and Turkey yelped joyously:
"Ah, there, 'Mister' Mackay!" he cried. "A little more meat, 'Mister' Mackay, and a dose of spuds and gravy, 'Mister' Mackay. I see you missed some of the feathers by your left ear when you was shavin', 'Mister' Mackay!"
Having just begun the use of the razor, Angus reddened to the ear aforesaid. Like most taciturn, reserved people he was keenly sensitive to ridicule.
"'Meester' Mackay! Haw-haw!" rumbled big Gus through a mouthful of food. "He's shave hees viskers! Das ban purty good von. Ho-ho!"
Dave Rennie grinned. Angus' black brows drew down, but just then he choked on a crumb of bread which went the wrong way.
"Pat 'Mister' Mackay on the back!" shrieked Turkey.
"I'll pat you, young fellow!" Angus wheezed.
But Alice Page saw how the land lay; saw also that the black-browed, awkward boy was in danger of losing his temper.
"Shall I call you 'Angus'?" she asked, and there was something in her tone and friendly smile which calmed him.
"That would be fine," he said. "And if you would lick Turkey Monday morning it would be a great favor."
A month afterward Alice Page came to live at the ranch. Her companionship meant much to Jean. It meant more to Angus, who presently suffered a severe attack of calf-love.
Being in love, Angus began to suffer the pangs of jealousy, for there were others who found Alice Page attractive. Chief among these was Nick Garland, the young man who had accompanied Mr. Braden on his first visit to the ranch. His visits became frequent, and he made himself very much at home at the ranch, treating Angus with a careless superiority and seniority which the latter found intensely irritating.
Now Garland, who esteemed himself a devil of a fellow, was merely attempting a flirtation with the pretty school teacher. He could not but notice Angus' attitude toward himself, and in a flash of perception divined the cause. He found it humorous, as no doubt it was. He did not like Angus, which made it the more amusing. He intended to tell Alice Page the joke, but in the meantime kept it to himself.
He rode up one moonlight night while Angus was in the stable dressing by the light of a lantern the leg of a horse which had calked himself, put his mare in a stall and forked down hay as a matter of course. Angus, after a short greeting, maintained silence. Then picking up his lantern, he left the stable. Garland thought his chance had come.
"They tell me you're going to school this winter," he observed.
"No," Angus replied.
"Mighty pretty teacher," Garland insinuated. "If I had the chance, I'd sure go. I think I could learn a lot from her."
"There would be lots of room," Angus retorted.
"What!" Garland demanded, stopping short.
"Ay," Angus said grimly, setting his lantern on the ground and facing him. "You might learn to mind your own business."
Garland peered at him in the moonlight.
"I'm not used to talk like that, young fellow."
"You need not take it unless you like," Angus said.
Garland laughed contemptuously. "Sore, are you? This is the funniest thing I ever came across. I'm on to you, kid. It's too good to keep. I'll have to tell her."
Angus scowled at him in silence for a moment. Then, deliberately, bitterly, he gave him what is usually regarded as a perfectly goodcasus belli.
Garland began to realize that he had made a mistake. He had anticipated fun, but found this serious. If he thrashed Angus he could not very well continue to call at the ranch. Also, looking at the tall, raw-boned youth confronting him, he had an uneasy feeling that he might have his hands full if he tried. He had not realized till then how much the boy had grown. At bottom Garland was slightly deficient in sand. And so he tried to avert the break he had brought about.
"That's no way to talk," he said. "You'll have to learn to take a joke, some day."
"Maybe," Angus retorted. "But I will never learn to take what you are taking."
Garland flushed angrily. The element of truth in the words stung.
"I'd look well, beating up a boy," he said loftily. "I'm not going to quarrel with you. When you're older maybe you'll have more sense."
He left Angus, and marched away to the house. Angus looked after him till the door closed, and then struck straight away across the bare fields for the timber.
These night rambles by moonlight were a habit which fitted well with his nature. He was taciturn, reserved, with an infinite capacity, developed by circumstance for solitude. But that night, as he covered mile after mile with a swift, springy stride, his mood was as sinister as the black shadows the great firs threw across his path. His naturally hard, bitter temper, usually controlled, was in the ascendant. His long dislike of Garland had come to a head. And yet there was Garland seated in his house with Alice Page, while he was forced to walk in the night. It amounted to that in his estimation.
At last he turned back, in no better temper. It was late, and he was sure that Garland had gone. But as he came to the road leading to the house he saw figures black in the moonlight approaching. Just then he was in no mood to meet any one. An irrigation ditch bordered by willows paralleled the road. He jumped the ditch and, concealed by the willows, waited till whoever it was should go by.
It was Alice Page, and Garland, leading his horse. Opposite him they halted. Snatches of conversation blurred by the gurgle of running water came to his ears. Garland moved closer to her. Suddenly he caught her in his arms. She strained back, pushing him away, but he kissed her, and at that moment Angus leaped the ditch, landing beside them. The suddenness of his appearance startled them. The horse snorted and pulled back. Garland released Alice with an oath and turned to face the intruder.
"It's you, is it?" he said angrily.
"You had better get out of here," Angus told him, "and be quick about it."
But Garland, being angry, forgot his prudence. He was not going to be ordered off by a boy, especially before Alice Page.
"Be civil, you young fool!" he said. "I've taken enough from you to-night."
"Will you get on your horse and pull out?" Angus demanded between his teeth.
"When I get good and ready, and not before," Garland replied.
Without another word Angus went for him. Garland was older, heavier and presumably stronger, and furious as Angus was he felt that probably he was in for a licking. But he went in hard, like a forlorn hope, and like a forlorn hope he intended to do as much damage as he could.
Garland tried to fend him off with a push, and failing, hit. But his blow glanced from Angus' head and the latter slashed up under the ribs with a vicious right hand, and was amazed at the depth his fist sank in the body and the rasping gasp it brought forth. Angus' knowledge of offensive and defensive was not great. But at school he had engaged in various rough-and-tumble affairs and one winter a lithe young fellow hired by the elder Mackay had shown him how to hold his hands. But these things were quite forgotten for the moment. Like his claymore-wielding ancestors, his one idea was to get to close quarters and settle the matters there. He caught Garland around the middle and was gripped in return.
For a moment he thought Garland was not trying, was not doing his best; and then, suddenly and joyfully, he realized that hewasdoing it, and that it was not good enough. He was stronger than Garland. He had the back, and the legs, and the arms and the lungs of him, man though he was. With the knowledge he snarled like a young wolf, and suddenly strength swelled in him like the bore of a tide. He ran Garland back half a dozen paces, and wrenched and twisted him. Getting his right hand free he smashed him again under the ribs, and as Garland, gasping, clinched, he locked his long arms around him, and with his shoulder against the stomach, his legs propped and braced, and every muscle from jaw to heel tautening, he squeezed him like a young python.
Garland tried to hold the walls of his body against the grip, and failed. Angus heard him pant, and felt the tremors of the man's frame as the strength oozed out of him. Garland's grip weakened and loosened, and he tried for Angus' throat and failed, for the boy's chin was tucked home on his breast-bone, and he beat him over the back and head wildly with his fists and caught at his arms; and then his head and body began to go backward.
Angus heard Alice Page's voice as from a great distance, for that locked grip of his was like the blind one of a bulldog.
"Angus! Angus! let him go!"
And he plucked Garland from his footing easily, for the latter was now little more than dead weight, and threw him on his back into the running ditch. He stood above him, his chest heaving, like a young wolf above his first kill.
Garland splashed into the chilly water, and drew himself out of it gasping and cursing with returning breath. Angus tapped him on the mouth with the toe of his moccasin.
"That is no talk for a woman to hear," he said. "Get out, or I'll throw you back in the ditch."
Garland got to his feet unsteadily, and went to his horse.
"I'll fix you for this," he said as he got into the saddle.
"You are a bluff," Angus told him, "and you know it as well as I do. Get out!"
When horse and rider were indistinct, Angus turned to Alice Page.
"You saw him—kiss me, Angus?" she said.
"Yes," he admitted, "but I didn't mean to. I had words with him to-night, and I was waiting till you would go past, but you stopped right in front of me."
"I'm very glad you were there. I don't want you to think I am the sort of girl who is kissed by moonlight."
"I'd never think that," Angus said. "I think you are the finest girl in the world."
She stared at him in amazement, as much at his tone as at the words.
"Why, Angus!" she exclaimed.
"I do," he asseverated, "the very finest! I've wanted to tell you so, but I hadn't the nerve. I—I think an awful lot of you."
So there it was at last, blurted out with boyish clumsiness.
"Good heavens!" cried Alice Page. "I never—why, Angus, my dear boy—" She laughed and checked herself, and the laugh turned into a little hysterical sob, and without any further warning she began to cry.
Utterly dismayed Angus stood helpless. And then, because it always seemed to comfort Jean when in trouble, he put his arm around her. For a moment Alice Page leaned against him, just as Jean did, but somehow the sensation was quite different. Very hesitatingly and awkwardly, but doing it as well and carefully as he knew how, he kissed her. Whereupon Alice Page jumped as if he had bitten her.
"You, too!" she cried. "O Angus! Oh, good heavens, what a night! Let me go, Angus!"
He let her go, feeling all palpitant and vibrant, for he had never kissed any girl, save Jean, who naturally did not count, but glad that at any rate he had stopped her crying. And Alice Page, who had a large store of common sense, did the very best thing possible. Sitting down on the bank of the ditch she made him sit beside her, and talked to him so gently and frankly that after a while, though he still considered himself to be in love, he felt resigned to its hopelessness, and in fact rather proud of his broken heart and blighted life, as boys are apt to be. Indeed, with his knowledge that he had squared the account with Garland, he was almost happy.
Alice Page was but an episode in the life of the Mackays, but her influence was far-reaching, at least with Angus and Jean. She stimulated in the former a taste for reading, dormant and unsuspected. She made him see that he was wasting his evenings, and she got him books of history and travel and voyages, with a sprinkling of the classics of English fiction. Angus, who had been unaware that such books existed, took to them like a young eagle to the air, for they opened the door to the romances of the world.
Though nobody save Alice Page suspected it, the grim-faced boy was full of the romance of youth. At heart he was an adventurer, of the stuff of which the old conquistadores were made.
Jean needed no encouragement to study. Outwardly, Angus was hard and practical. Outwardly, Jean was thoughtful and at times dreamy. Inwardly the reverse was true. Jean was more practical than he, less inclined to secret dreams. She intended to fit herself to teach, and her studies were a means to that end. But most of Angus' reading, apart from technical works, was the end itself. He was not conscious that it was developing him, broadening his outlook, replacing to some extent more intimate contact with the outer world of men and affairs.
Thus time passed and another year slid around. Alice Page was gone, teaching in a girls' residential small college on the coast. The ranch was beginning to respond to the hard work. Stock on the range was increasing in numbers and value. More settlers were coming in, and land which had been a drug on the market was beginning to find purchasers.
Angus had grown into a young man, tall and lean, quite unstiffened by his hard work. Turkey was a youth, slimmer of build and smaller of bone than his brother, but wiry and hard and catlike in quickness. Jean had grown from a slip of a girl into a slender, brown-eyed maid. She was through with the local school, and though she never hinted at it, Angus knew quite well that she desired to attend the college where Alice Page taught. It was characteristic of him that he said nothing until he could speak definitely. But one night he told her she had better get ready to go. Jean was startled.
"How on earth did you know I was thinking of that?"
"It didn't need the second sight of old Murdoch McGillivray," her brother returned. "You had better get such things as you want."
"But—can you afford it?" she asked doubtfully.
"Yes. You write to Alice to-night."
So in the early fall Jean went away, and her brothers missed her very much; Turkey, because he had now to mend his own clothes and take a turn at the cooking, and Angus because he had confided in her more than in anybody else.
When the fall grew late and the snow near, Rennie rode the range for stock, which was usually split up into small bands, scattered here and there in valleys and pockets along the base of the hills. Each bunch had its own territory, from which it seldom strayed unless feed got short. Therefore any given lot could usually be found by combing a few square miles. Before the heavy snows these bunches were rounded up and driven to the ranch to winter there. But this time Rennie could find no trace at all of one bunch.
"It's them three-year-old steers," he said, "that used in between Cat Creek and the mountain. They sure ain't on the range."
"They must have drifted off. Maybe the feed got short."
"The feed's good yet—never saw it better this time of the year."
"Likely they've gone up one of the big draws off the pass," Angus suggested.
"Well, I wish you'd tell me which. I've rode every draw for ten miles each way, and durn' if I can find a hoof."
This was serious. It was up to them to find those steers before the snow came. Angus had no mind to see them come staggering in in mid-winter, mere racks of bones; and apart from that he had counted on the proceeds of their sale to pay Jean's expenses and some of the interest on Braden's mortgage. Accordingly, he turned himself loose on the range with Dave and Turkey. They spent the better part of a week in the saddle and rode half a dozen ponies to a show-down, but of the missing stock they found never a trace.
"I'll bet somebody's rustled them," Turkey decided.
"Bosh!" said Angus.
"If you're such a darn' wise gazabo, why don't you find 'em?" Turkey retorted. "What do you think, Dave?"
"Don't know," said Rennie. "Blamed if it don't look like it."
"Rustled—nothing!" Angus exclaimed contemptuously. "There aren't any rustlers here."
"There never was no rustlers no place till folks began to miss stock," Rennie pointed out mildly.
"But who would rustle them?"
"Well, of course that's the thing to find out."
It was a puzzle. Every steer wore the MK, and mistakes of ownership were out of the question. From calfhood they had summered on that range, coming in fat and frisky to winter by the generous stacks. There was no good reason why they should have left it. Not only had the entire range been combed carefully, but none of the other cattle owners had seen them.
"If they been rustled," Rennie decided, "it's good bettin' it's Injuns. Some of the young Siwashes is plenty cultus."
"What could they do with them? They couldn't range them with their own stock."
"No, but they could drive them south if they was careful about it, and mix 'em up with the stock of them St. Onge Injuns, and nobody'd be apt to notice. I've sent word to a feller down there to ride through and take a look."
In due course Rennie heard from the "feller." The steers were not on the St. Onge reserve. Thus Angus was up against a blank wall. Nobody would deal openly in stock plainly branded. Garland knew as much as anybody of transactions in stock, but he had heard nothing which might give a clew to the missing steers.
With the passage of time Garland and Angus were on terms again, though naturally there was little cordiality. But apparently Garland retained no active ill-feeling. The occurrences of that night were known to nobody but the three participants. As for Garland himself having had anything to do with the steers, it seemed out of the question. He had never been mixed up in any shady transactions, and apart from that, handling stolen stock would be too risky for him. There were only a few white men who were not above all suspicion; and these there was no reason at all to suspect. But for that matter there was no more reason to suspect any Indian. Rennie, however, had a species of logic all his own.
"No reason!" he grunted. "Why, you say yourself there ain't no reason to suspect a white man. Then it's got to be an Injun, ain't it? Sure! On gen'ral principles it's a cinch."
But Angus did not hold with this view. Though he had no special affection for Indians—as few people who know them have—in his opinion they were no worse than other people in the matter of honesty. The older men he would trust with anything. Some of them, especially the chief, a venerable and foxy old buck named Paul Sam, had been friends of his father.
"I'll have a talk with old Paul Sam the first time I see him," he told Rennie. "He's as straight as they make them."
"Well, I guess he's the best of the bunch," Rennie admitted.
A day or two afterward Angus met Paul Sam on the range, looking for ponies. Though the Indian was old, he sat his paint pony as easily as a young man. In his youth he must have been as straight and clean-cut as a lance, and even the more than three score and ten snows which had silvered his hair had bent his shoulders but little. He was accompanied by his granddaughter, Mary, a girl of Jean's age, who, being his last surviving relative, was as the apple of his eye. He had sent her to mission school and denied her nothing. As he owned many horses and a large band of cattle, Mary had luxuries unknown to most Indian girls. She was unusually good-looking and a good deal spoiled, though Paul Sam, being of the old school, cherished certain primitive ideas concerning women.
He listened in silence to Angus' statement regarding the missing stock, surveying him with a shrewd old eye.
"You think Injun kapswalla them moos-moos?" he asked with directness.
"I didn't say anybody stole them. I'm just trying to find out what's become of them."
Paul Sam grunted. "All time white man lose moos-moos, lose kuitan, him tumtum Injun steal um," he said. "All time blame Injun. Plenty cultus Injun; plenty cultus white man, too."
"That's true," Angus admitted.
"You nanitch good for them moos-moos? Him all got brand?"
"Yes."
The old man reflected. "Spose man kapswalla um no sell um here," he announced. "Drive um off—si-a-a-ah—then sell um."
This was precisely Rennie's reasoning.
"Where?" Angus queried. But on this point Paul Sam had no theory. Nobody could tell, but some day it might be cleared up.
"Well, if you hear anything of my steers, let me know," continued Angus.
Paul Sam nodded. "Your father my tillikum," he said. "Him dam' good skookum man. S'pose me hear, me tell you."
But the young eyes of Mary had sighted ponies to the left. She announced this to her grandfather in soft, clucking gutturals.
"Goo'-by," said Paul Sam.
"Good-by," said Angus. "Good-by, Mary."
The girl nodded, with a flash of white teeth and a glance which dwelt for an instant admiringly on Angus' long, lean body. Then she shook up her fast pony and sailed away through the timber of the benchland to round up the bunch of half-wild cayuses, while her grandfather followed at a pace better suited to his years.
But the fall went and the snow came, and Angus got no news. It was a heavy loss just then, which he could not afford. Somehow it must be made up, and the only way he saw to do it was to cut cordwood. The price was low and the haul was long, but it was a case, for he had to have the money.
So all that winter he and Gus cut and split, while Rennie hauled and Turkey looked after the house and the feeding. And so all through the cold weather they made cordwood. It did not make up for the loss of the steers, but it helped, and he was able to send money to Jean.
The long winter passed. The days lengthened and the sun mounted higher, so that it was warm on the south side of house and barn and stack. The snow went in a glorious, booming Chinook wind that draped the ranges with soft, scudding clouds, and set every gulch roaring with waters. The ground thawed, and earth-smells struck the nostrils again. Up against the washed blue of the sky flocks of geese bore their way northward. One morning they heard the liquid notes of a meadow-lark. Then came robins and bluebirds, and a new season opened with a rush.
That spring Angus kept three teams going steadily on plows and disks while the high winds dried the soil to a powder, raising dust clouds that choked and blinded, so that they came in black and gritty to a shower bath of Angus' invention. He had accomplished this by a primitive water wheel operated by the swift water of the irrigation ditch back of the house. The water was always cold, and invigorated accordingly. But it was icy in the morning. Rennie tried it once and gave it up, while big Gus scornfully refused to experiment with a morning bath.
"It'll brace you up," Turkey urged.
"Vatter ent brace nobody," Gus replied with contempt. "Dees all-over vash by mornin' ban no good. Ay ent need him. It ent make me dirty to sleep."
But the dust vanished with the spring rains, and the grain sprouted in the drills. One day the fields lay bare and bald and blank; and the next, as it seemed, they were covered with a film of tender green. Then all hands began to clear and repair the irrigation ditches, so that when dry weather came the fields should have water in plenty.
So the early summer came and with it Jean's holidays. Her return, Angus recognized, necessitated some preparation.
"She'll have a fit when she sees the house," he told Turkey.
"What's the matter with it?" that young man asked.
"She'll find plenty the matter with it," Angus predicted apprehensively. "We'd better clean up a little."
"Well, maybe we had," Turkey admitted.
They gave the house what they considered a thorough cleaning, which consisted in sweeping where it seemed necessary, and removing some of the pot-black from kitchen utensils which Jean had never set down on the fire. Angus eyed the rusty-red kitchen range, which Jean had kept black and shining.
"I wonder if we hadn't better give that a touch of polish," he said. "Where is the polish, anyway?"
"Search me," Turkey replied. "I've never seen any. What's the use? It cooks all right."
They could not find Jean's polish, and experimented with black harness dressing. But the smoke when the fire was lit drove them out of the house, and they let it go.
Angus drove into town to meet Jean behind a pair of slashing, upstanding, bright-bay three-year-olds, of which he was very proud. Jean had never seen them in harness—indeed they had been harnessed less than a dozen times—and he anticipated her pleasure in them, for she loved horses. He put up and fed the colts at the livery stable, had his dinner, made some purchases, and as it was nearly time for the river steamer on which Jean would arrive, turned toward the stable to hitch up.
As he turned a corner he met Garland, Blake French, and several other young men. Apparently they were out on a time, for none of them were entirely steady upon their legs. Blake French, however, was much the worst.
In the years that had passed the French family had not changed their habits. The ranch was still a hang-out for every waster in the country. But the young men were away a great deal in the summer and fall, following the various local races. They had two or three good horses, and seemed to find the sport profitable. Also they had achieved a rather unenviable notoriety. They had all been mixed up more or less in various rows, but somehow these matters had been hushed up. Nobody desired to incur the enmity of a family which was supposed to have money, and one way and another a good deal of influence.
Angus would have passed, but Garland stopped him, asking him to come and have a drink. Angus refused civilly, and Blake sneered.
"It won't cost you anything," he said thickly.
"I don't drink," Angus said shortly.
"Do you do anything?" Blake sneered. "Do you have any fun at all?"
"What I have is my own business," Angus returned, his temper beginning to ruffle.
Blake French, his brow lowering, caught him by the lapel of the coat. "Are you telling me to mind my own business?" he demanded.
"That will be plenty of that sort of thing," Angus told him. "Let go, now, and don't pull me about."
But Blake, being surly and quarrelsome even when sober, gave the lapel a savage jerk, and reached out with his other hand. Angus caught his wrist, and brought a stiffened forearm across his throat. At the same moment he stepped forward, crooked his right leg behind Blake's left knee and threw his full weight against him. Blake went down hard, but was up in an instant and made a staggering rush. Angus dodged.
"Take care of him, you!" he said to Garland. "I don't want to hit him."
Blake's friends closed in on him, and Angus made his escape. He was glad to get clear so easily, for he had no mind to be mixed up in a fight on the street. He hooked up the colts and drove down to the landing, hearing as he did so the deep bellow of the river steamer's whistle. When he got the colts tied and went out on the wharf the boat had already docked. Behind a group of passengers a girl was bending over a couple of grips. Her back was toward Angus, and never doubting that it was Jean, he reached down with one hand for a grip, while he slipped his other arm around her waist.
"Hello, old girl!" he said. But to his utter amazement, as she snapped erect in the crook of his arm, it was not Jean at all. This girl was taller, black of hair and blue of eye. For a moment he did not recognize her, and then he knew her for Kathleen French, whom he had not seen for more than a year. "Oh," he said blankly, "it's you!"
"I think so," she said dryly. "I can stand without being held, thanks."
Angus dropped his arm from her waist, blushing.
"I thought you were Jean. I'm awfully sorry."
Kathleen French's dark blue eyes looked him up and down, and to his relief she seemed more amused than angry.
"But your sister wasn't on the boat. It's nice to be welcomed by somebody." She frowned, glancing down the wharf. "Have you seen any of my brothers? Somebody should be here to meet me."
"Blake is in town. I haven't seen any of the other boys."
"Then why isn't Blake here?" she demanded.
"I don't know," Angus returned. "It's not my fault, is it?"
"No, of course not. He was to be here—or somebody was—and drive me out. I suppose I'll have to go somewhere and wait his pleasure. Where is he, do you know?"
"Why—" Angus began doubtfully, and stopped.
"Look here," said Kathleen French, "has Blake been drinking?"
"I think he could drive all right."
"Pig! Brute!" Blake's sister ejaculated viciously. "He couldn't keep sober, even to meet me. Didn't think I mattered, I suppose. I'll show him. Able to drive, is he? Well, he isn't able to drive me. I'll get a livery rig."
"I will drive you out."
"That's good of you. But it's out of your way."
"It will do the colts good—take the edge off them. But I don't know what to do about Jean. She was to have come on this boat."
"She must have missed it. Likely she will be on the next."
This seemed probable. As there was nothing to be done about it, Angus went for Kathleen's trunk. He wheeled it on a truck to the rig, picked it up and deposited it in the wagon back of the seat without apparent effort. As the trunk went up Kathleen French's eyes widened a little. He turned to her.
"The step is broken and if you climb in the mud will get on your dress," he said. "I had better lift you over the wheel, if you don't mind."
"Of course I don't mind."
He lifted her up as one holds a child aloft to see a passing parade, until her feet set on top of the wheel. As she seated herself she glanced at him with a queer expression of puzzlement. He unhitched the colts, gathered up the lines and came up over the wheel beside her. As he dropped into the seat the team got away with a plunge and they went townward with slack tugs, the reins and Angus' arms pulling the load.
"They're a little frisky," he said. "They'll be all right when they get out of town."
"You don't think I'm afraid, do you?" she said.
"No, I guess you are not nervous of horses."
Angus hoped they would see nothing of Blake. But as they clattered up the main street, the colts dancing and fighting the bits and Angus holding them with a double wrap and talking to them steadily to quiet them, Blake and his companions were crossing from one side to the other. He recognized Angus and his sister, and probably remembered that he was to meet her. With the memory of his recent encounter surging in his fogged brain he lurched out into the roadway and called on Angus to stop; and as the latter did not do so, he made an unsteady rush for the colts' heads.
Just then Angus could not have stopped the colts if he had wished to, and he did not wish it. He knew that if Blake got hold of them it meant a wrangle on the street, and so he loosed a wrap and clicked a sharp command. The colts went into their collars with a bound.
As they did so Kathleen French reached swiftly across and plucked the whip from its socket on the dash. Angus had time for just one glance. The nigh forewheel was just grazing Blake, so that he jumped back. His flushed, scowling face was upturned, his mouth open in imprecation. Then with a vicious swish and crack the lash of the blacksnake curled down over his head and shoulders, and he went out of sight.
Angus was too fully occupied with the colts to look back. They missed a wagon and a buggy by inches merely, and were a mile out of town before he was able to pull them down to an ordinary gait; and he was in no sweet temper at them, at Blake, and even at Blake's sister; for that young lady's swishing cut with the whip had put the finishing touch to the colts' nerves.
Kathleen herself had not uttered a word, nor had she grasped the seat rail, even when in danger of collision. Now she sat upright, an angry color in her cheeks, her mouth set in a straight line, and the whip still in her hand. She met Angus' eyes with a defiant stare.
"Well?" she said.
"I didn't say anything."
"You're thinking a lot, though."
"Am I?"
"Yes, you are! And don't you say a word of it to me. I can't stand it."
"I am not going to say anything," Angus told her, and stared ahead over the colts' ears, in which companionable fashion they drove for nearly two miles. Then he felt her hand on his arm.
"I'm sorry, Angus. I was utterly rude. Let it go, won't you?"
"Of course," he assented. "I wasn't any too polite myself. The team nearly got away from me."
"And then you think I shouldn't have taken the whip to Blake."
"You might have taken an ax to him for all I'd care," Angus admitted.
"Hello!" she said. "Have you had any trouble with Blake?"
"No real trouble." He told her what had occurred.
"Well, I'm glad I used the whip," she commented. "He won't be proud of it—before his friends. Wait till I see the boys! A nice lot, sending Blake—Blake!—to meet me." Her teeth clicked over the words. "I suppose," she went on bitterly after a pause, "there's a black sheep in every family. But in some families—What do you think of our family?"
Angus stared at her. He had never thought much about the Frenches, who were outside his orbit. Being young, one side of him had at times envied their easy life; but another side of him held for them the grim, bitter scorn of the worker for the idler and waster. These things, however, were far below the surface.
"I don't know your family very well," he said.
She did not press the question.
"That is so. Angus—I hope you don't mind being called that, any more than I mind being called by my first name—we've known each other for years, but not very well. Perhaps we'll know each other better. I'm home for good. I'm supposed to be a young lady, now."
"Are you?" said Angus. She laughed.
"My education—polite and otherwise—is finished. That is what I mean. I am now prepared to settle down to the serious business of life—of a young woman's life."
"And what is that?"
"If you don't know I won't tell you. Never mind about me. Tell me about yourself."
"Myself? Oh, I've just been living on the ranch."
She considered him gravely, and he stared back. Whatever she saw, he found her decidedly good to look upon, not only because of her eyes and hair and clear, satiny skin, but because of the lithe, clean-run shape of her, which he admired as he would that of a horse, or an athlete's in training. She broke the silence abruptly.
"Do you know what my trunk weighs?"
He glanced back at it, shaking his head. "No. It's riding all right there."
"Do you know what I weigh?"
"Perhaps a hundred and thirty."
"Ten pounds more. And the trunk weighs more than two hundred."
"Well, what about it?" Angus asked, puzzled.
"What about it? Are you in the habit of picking up trunks like that as if they were meat platters, and girls as if they were babies? I was watching you, and you didn't even breathe hard."
"Oh, is that it?" Angus laughed. "That's nothing. Any of your brothers could handle that trunk."
"Gavin could, of course. But he's very strong."
"Well?" said Angus, smiling at her.
"Why, yes, you must be. But I've always thought of you as a boy. And I suppose you've thought of me as a gawky, long-legged girl."
"I haven't thought of you at all," Angus told her.
"Now I know I'm going to like you," she laughed. "I don't know a man—except my brothers, who of course don't count—who would have told me that."
Angus flushed, but stuck to his guns.
"Well, why should I think of you?"
"No reason. You don't know much about girls, do you?"
"Not a thing. I have had no time for them."
"And no use for them!"
"I did not say that."
"But you looked it, Angus. I'll never forget the look of relief on your face years ago when we appeared to take poor, little lost Faith Winton off your hands—and off your pony. And yet she liked you. She speaks still of how good and kind you were to her, though you frightened her at first."
"She must be thinking of Jean's doughnuts," Angus grinned. "I had forgotten all about it. Where is she now?"
"I don't know. She and her father were in Italy when I heard from her last."
"She would be grown up," Angus deduced. "I wonder if I would know her?"
But the French ranch hove in sight, its big two-story house and maze of stables in a setting of uncared-for fields, which Angus never saw without something akin to pain. A chorus of dogs greeted the sound of wheels, and half a dozen of them shot around the corner of the house.
Angus liked dogs, but not when he was driving colts. But just as they began to dance and the nigh bay had lashed out with a vicious hoof, Gavin French came around the corner, and at his command the dogs shrank as if he had laid a whip across them. Just then Gavin was wearing riding breeches, moccasins, and a flannel shirt wide open at the throat and stagged off at the sleeves, so that the bronzed column of his neck and the full sweep of his long, splendidly muscled arms were revealed. He strode softly, cat-footed, gripping with his toes, and the smoke of the short pipe which was his inseparable companion, drifted behind him.
"Hello, Kit!" he said, and nodded to Angus. "Where is Blake? He went for you."
"Blake's drunk," Kathleen replied.
"Drunk, is he?" Gavin said without surprise.
"And you're a nice bunch of brothers to send him! Couldn't one of you have come?"
"Oh, well, he was going, anyway," said Gavin carelessly. "Did you see him?"
"Yes, I saw him. He tried to stop Angus' team on the main street, and I slashed him back with the whip."
"You little devil!" said her brother, but with a certain admiration in his voice. "But that's pretty hard medicine, Kit!"
"And what sort of medicine is it for me to have a drunken blackguard of a brother run out on the street to hold up the rig I'm driving in?" she flared. "I'm entitled to ordinary respect; even if I am a sister, and Blake and all of you had better understand it now."
"Pshaw!" said Gavin. "The trouble with you, Kit, is that you've got a wire edge. You're set on a hair-trigger."
"And the trouble with Blake and the whole lot of you is that you've run wild," she retorted. "You've got so that you don't care for anything or anybody. You're practically savages. But I can tell you, you'll remember some of the ordinary usages of civilization now I'm home."
"And a sweet temper you've come back in!" said Gavin. He lifted his sister down over the wheel and reached for the trunk.
"It's heavy, Gan," she said, with a glance at Angus.
"Is it?" said Gavin, gripping the handles. He lifted it without apparent effort, and set it on his right shoulder. "I may be able to stagger along with it," he told her ironically. "Would you like me to carry you, too?"
"You can't!"
"Can't I?" laughed the blond giant. "Have you any money left to bet on that?"
"Five dollars that you can't carry me and the trunk—upstairs and to my room."
"My five," said her brother. "Come here." With the trunk on his shoulder he bent his knees till he squatted low on the balls of his feet. "Now sit on my shoulder and put your right arm around my neck. Give me your left hand. All set?"
"All set."
Angus watched with interest, doubtful if he could do it. But slowly, steadily, without shake or tremor the knees of the big man began to straighten, and his shoulders topped by girl and trunk to rise, until he stood upright. Upright he hitched to get a better balance, and strode off for the house as easily as Angus himself would have carried a sack of oats. Kathleen looked back at him and laughed.
"Good-by, Angus. Thank you ever so much—and come and see me."
The last thing Angus saw as he wheeled the colts for home, was the burdened bulk of Gavin French stooping for the doorway.
Jean arrived on the next boat three days later, with a tragic tale of missed connections. It seemed to Angus that the few months of absence had made quite a difference. She seemed, in fact, almost a young lady, even to his brotherly eye.
But however she had changed she had not lost her grip on practical things, and when she began to look around the house Angus and Turkey found that their trouble in cleaning up had been wasted. For Jean dug into corners, and under and behind things where, as Turkey said, nobody but a girl would ever think of looking; and in such obscure and out-of-the-way places she found some dirt, some articles discarded or lost, and the more or less permanent abode of Tom and Matilda.
Tom and Matilda were mice, which had become thoroughly tame and domesticated. In the evenings Rennie fed them oatmeal and scraps of cheese, chuckling to see them sit up on their hunkers and polish their whiskers and wink their beady, little eyes, and all hands had united in keeping the cats out. Everybody had regarded Tom and Matilda as good citizens; and they had developed a simple and touching trust in mankind. But Jean broke up their home ruthlessly, with exclamations of disgust; and commandeering all the men for a day, turned the house inside out, beat, swept, washed and scrubbed; and then put everything back again. She professed to see a great difference, but nobody else agreed with her.
"The only difference I see," said Turkey, "is that I don't know where to find a darn thing."
"Well, you won't find it on the floor, or under a heap of rubbish six months old," Jean told him.
"Oh, all right," Turkey grumbled. "Now you've got all our things mixed up maybe you'll be satisfied."
Jean appealed to Angus, who agreed with Turkey. Whereat Jean sniffed and left them to their opinions.
Angus was a little apprehensive of his first meeting Blake French, but to his relief the latter chose to ignore what had occurred. Rather to his surprise Kathleen rode over to call on Jean, and the two girls struck up a certain friendship. Thus Angus saw more of Kathleen and her people than he had ever done before, including the head of the family, Godfrey French himself.
Godfrey French, though well on in years, was still erect and spare. He had a cold, blue eye, much like Gavin's, but now a trifle weary, and a slightly bent cynical mouth beneath a white moustach. He was invariably courteous and dignified, and whatever might be said of his sons, there was no doubt that the father possessed the ingrained manner of a gentleman. Yet Angus did not like him, and he thought that old French had little or no use for him. Somehow, French put him in mind of a gray-muzzled old fox.
One day in mid-summer as Angus sat in the shade of the workshop mending a broken harness, old Paul Sam on his single-footing pony drew up at the door.
"'Al-lo!" he greeted.
"Hello, Paul Sam," Angus returned. "You feel skookum to-day?"
"Skookum, me," the Indian replied. "Skookum, you?"
"Skookum, me," Angus told him.
The old man got off his pony, sat down on an empty box, and drew out an old buckskin, bead-worked fire-bag. From this he produced a stone pipe bowl and a reed stem. Fitting the two together he filled the bowl and smoked.
This, Angus knew, was diplomacy. Whatever the Indian had come for, not a word concerning it would he say till he had had his smoke. Then it would probably be unimportant. So Angus waited in silence, and Paul Sam smoked in silence. Finally the latter tapped out and unjointed his pipe and put it away in his fire-bag.
"Me got cooley kuitan," he announced.
"Cooley" is apparently a corruption of the French word "courir," to run. "Kuitan" is a horse. Hence a "cooley kuitan" in Chinook signifies a race horse.
Angus shook his head. He knew very well what Sam Paul intended doing with this race horse. There was a local race meet each year, in connection with the local fair. The race meet outsized the fair, dwarfed it in interest. It drew tin horns and sure-thing gamblers as fresh meat draws flies. These gentry ran various games, open when they could and under cover when they could not. Then there were men with a seasoned old ringer under a new name, or a couple of skates with which to pull off a faked match race. There were various races, but the big event was a mile for horses locally owned. There was some excellent stock in the country, and great rivalry developed.
In this race each year the Indians had entered some alleged running horse and backed it gamely. But each year they lost, their horses being neither trained nor ridden properly, and being completely outclassed as well; for as a rule they were merely good saddle cayuses and overweighted at that. This year French's horse, a beautiful, bright bay named Flambeau, seemed likely to win. Angus had seen him and admired him. Therefore he shook his head.
"You only think you've got a cooley kuitan," he said. "Keep out of that race, Paul Sam. You'll only lose money."
"Him good," the Indian insisted. "S'pose him get good rider him win. Injun boy no good to ride. Injun boy all right in Injun race; no good in white man's race."
"That's true enough," Angus agreed. "Injun boy don't kumtux the game. Well, what about it?"
"Mebbe-so you catch white boy to ride um?" Paul Sam suggested.
"Do you mean Turkey?" Angus queried.
"Ha-a-lo," Paul Sam negatived. "White boy, all same ride white man's horse."
"A jockey! Where would I get you a jockey?"
But that detail was none of Paul Sam's business.
"You catch um jock!" he said hopefully.
"But I don't know where to get one. A jockey would cost money, and you wouldn't win, anyway. You Injuns start a horse every year, and you never have one that has a lookin. You'd better get the idea out of your head."
But an idea once implanted in an Indian's head is apt to stay. Paul Sam grinned complacently.
"Me got dam' good cooley kuitan. Me kumtux kuitan."
He told Angus the history of his horse, as he knew it. Stripped of details, it amounted to this: Some five years before a fine English mare which had been the property of a deceased remittance man, had been auctioned off. She was in foal, and the colt in due course had been sold, and in some obscure and involved cattle deal had become the property of Paul Sam, who had let him run with his cayuses. When he broke him to the saddle he found him remarkably fast. Being a real fox, he said nothing about the colt's turn of speed, but bided his time. Now, in his opinion, he could make a killing and spoil the Egyptian, alias the white man, if only the colt were properly trained and ridden. He applied to Angus for help, as being the son of his tillikum, Adam Mackay. He invited him out to inspect the horse.
Angus went and took Dave Rennie. The horse which Paul Sam led forth for inspection was a big, slashing four-year-old, with a good head, an honest eye, deep chest and clean, flat limbs. Every line of him told of power and endurance; and to the eye which could translate power into terms of speed, of the latter as well. Rennie whistled softly.
"He looks to me like he had real blood in him. He's a weight carrier. English hunting stock, I sh'd say. Some of 'em can run, all right. If the mare was in foal when she was brought out, I wouldn't wonder if this boy's sire was real class. He looks it." The big horse reached out a twitching muzzle to investigate. Rennie stroked the velvet nose. "Kind as a kitten, too. He seems to have the build, but that don't say he can run."
"Him run," Paul Sam affirmed. "You ride him."
He cinched an old stock saddle on the chestnut, and Rennie mounted. He cantered easily across the flat and back.
"He's easy as an old rocker and light as a driftin' cloud," he said. "The bit worries him, though. He needs rubber. You get on him, and see what a real horse feels like."
Angus lengthened the stirrups and swung up. As soon as he felt the motion he knew he was astride a wondrous piece of mechanism. The undulating lift of the big chestnut was as easy and effortless and sustained as a smooth, rolling swell. Of his own accord the horse quickened his pace from the easy sling of the canter to a long, stretching, hand-gallop, drawing great lungfuls of air, shaking his head, rejoicing in his own motion, glad to be doing the work he was fitted for. At the end of the little flat Angus pulled up and turned. Rennie's distant shout came faintly:
"Let him come!"
Breathing the horse for a moment, Angus loosed him from the canter to the gallop and then, as he felt the coil and uncoil of the splendid muscles, and the swell and quiver of the body, and the increasing reach and stretch of the ever-quickening stride, he let him run.
All his life Angus had ridden ponies, cayuses, but now he had a new experience. The big chestnut, as he was given his head, made half a dozen great bounds and then, steadying himself, he stretched his neck, his body seemed to sink and straighten, and with muzzle almost in line with his ears he began to put forth the speed that was in him. The rapid drum of his hoofs quickened to a roar; the wind sang in Angus' ears; the figures of Paul and Sam and Rennie seemed to come toward him, and he shot past them and gradually eased the willing horse to canter and walk.
"Him cooley kuitan, hey?" Paul Sam grinned. "You catch um jock?"
"But I don't know where to get one," Angus replied.
"Well," said Rennie, "I don't know where to get no regular jockey, but I know an old has-been that used to ride twenty years ago, before he got smashed up. I dunno 's he'd ride now, in a race, but he could put the horse in shape. He's got a fruit and chicken ranch somewheres on the coast. Me and him was kids together, and he might come if I asked him. Only he wouldn't do it for nothing."
"You catch um," said Paul Sam. "Me pay um. Mebbe-so me win hiyu dolla!"