“No, ye didn’t!” crossly denied Fenno, the barriers down. “You never ‘thought,’ in all your born days. If you’d knowed what it meant to think, you’d ’a’ knowed a white man couldn’t go hatin’ Trevy, like I made out I hated him. Nobody could. And likewise you’d ’a’ remembered how he kept me alive that day down by Ova, when I was throwed and crippled up and couldn’t stir to help myself; an’ how he brang water to me; an’ how he flagged you and brang you to me, besides. An’ now you go jawin’ about takin’ him away; an’ askin’ what do I want for my share of him. Well, I want just a even billion dollars for my share of Trevy. I ain’t sellin’. I’m buyin’. Now whatcher want for your share of him? Speak up! If I got it, I’ll pay.”
Royce pondered a moment. He could not fathom this phase of the old man. Then a solution came to him.
“Remember the day we got him?” asked Mack. “Remember how we made dice marks on a lump of sugar, out to the foreman shack, to see which owned him? He ate the sugar, and we compromised by owning him between us. Suppose we throw dice again to see who owns him? Loser to give up all claim to him. How about it?”
“Nope,” refused Joel, stubbornly. “Lemme buy him off’n you, Mack. I’ll pay—”
“I’m not selling him,” as stubbornly insisted Royce, enamored of his own sporting idea. “I’m giving you your chance. Take it or leave it. You ought to be glad I don’t suggest we let him go to whichever of us he chooses.”
Joel winced. Then, despondently, he clumped across the room to the shelf where lay the parcheesi game. Choosing a cylinder cup and a pair of dice, he came back to the table. On the way he paused to pat furtively the collie’s silken ears.
“Best two out of three?” suggested Royce.
“Nope,” said Fenno. “One throw. When a tooth’s got to come out, a single yank is best. You throw first.”
Royce took the dice-cup and shook it with relish. Nothing could beat him. He knew that. In his present streak of luck, when a glorious bride and a legacy were falling to his lot, a bout of chance with his Jonah-like old partner could not fail to bring him success—and Treve.
Expertly he chucked the dice out on the table, in the flickering candle-flare. Over and over the white cubes tumbled and hopped and rolled; coming to a halt, at last, barely an inch from the table edge and almost side by side. Both men leaned forward to read the pips on the exposed top surfaces of the dice.