“Do you like building railroads?”
“I got to. I don’t know anything else. Sometimes I think I don’t like it; but I guess I do most o’ the time, any way you look at it.”
“Your mother’s dead, isn’t she? So is mine. I was only nine when mine died.”
“I was fifteen,” said Wing o’ the Crow. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“I’m twenty-two. Do you ride lots?”
“All the time.”
“I’d like to, but we ain’t got any decent saddle hoss. Herd cows?”
“Sometimes. Mostly just ride, though. I could get you a saddle horse, and we could ride together and have lots of fun. Mart—that’s my kid brother—he’d be along whenever he’s down from the mountains. Our cows are all up there in summer. That’s where Mart is supposed to be, building drift fence and things. He was keen enough to be with the cows until the camps came. Now he wants to hang around them all the time. We could shake him, though, now and then, if we wanted to be alone.”
“I couldn’t go with you,” said Jeddo’s daughter. “I gotta work.”