“Well, then, let me tell you somethin’.” Paisley tapped the stalk of his rifle impressively with his knuckles. “Just as soon as you take Smythe’s money your trappin’ days and all other days are over here, for all time. They’ll have you just where they’ve been tryin’ to get the rest of us. Once they get hold of your deed you can whistle. This land is worth thousands more’n they offer you, and they know it. What has Hallibut’s mill done for the ma’sh-trappin’? I guess you know. They’ll drive the furs off and they’ll drive you’n me off, and they want to do just that, too.”
Declute arose from the floor.
“If I thort that——” he commenced; but his wife broke in:
“If you thort! Just as if you could thunk, you thick-head you. Didn’t I tell you that I suspicioned them fellers, and don’t Bill Paisley here know? Don’t he allars know? Shet right up, Ander, an’ don’t you try an’ think. You had no right to act without seein’ Bill here an’ Big Mac, anyway.”
“But I wasn’t goin’ to, Rachel,” drawled Declute. “I war goin’ over to Big Mac’s this very night, lookin’ in on Bill on the way over. Don’t you get too danged crusty, wife.”
The ponderous woman waved a hand toward the progeny on the floor.
“You, David an’ Moses an’ Zaccheus,” she commanded, “scramble out o’ th’ road instantly, I’m wantin’ to get over t’ th’ cubboard.”
There was a hurried scramble out of the way, and the mother rolled across the room and secured a paper from an inner recess of the home-built cupboard.
“Bill Paisley,” she said, passing the paper over to the visitor, “you be goin’ to keep this here deed for me an’ Ander—ain’t I right, Ander?” she nodded, the corner of her mouth drawn down warningly.
“If you say so, ma—in course,” consented Ander.