Bully pulled down his hat over his eyes. He knew that they were glittering covetously, and he desired to hide the glitter from his companion.
A thousand dollars in cash! The words drove through his brain over and over, and fitted themselves into a refrain that chimed with the click and clatter of the wheels underneath him.
He had visions of himself nonchalantly sauntering through the grand stand, waving those hundred-dollar bills and petrifying the Fardale fans with his grandeur. The more he thought it over, the more the idea appealed to him, and the more he mentally condemned his father for a tightwad.
“He’s just rolling in money,” he thought sullenly, “and here I am almost without a cent! I’ll have to run close to the wind to make this eight dollars last me, at that. If I only had that thousand in cash, I guess I’d cut a swath in Fardale!”
Bitter and black thoughts filled his mind during the remainder of the journey. Little by little his mind edged to the conviction that he was a badly injured person, and that he was quite justified in resenting the injury in any manner possible. After all, he had warned his father quite fairly that he intended to raise some money, and if his father refused to take the warning—so much the worse for him!
“What hotel do you patronize here, Mr. Carson?” asked Hostetter, as the train was pulling into Fardale.
“Me?” responded Bully, with careless magnificence. “Oh, I usually frequent the Dobbs Hotel. Are you going there?”
“Well—well, to tell the truth, I—I think I will,” said Hostetter. “It ain’t expensive?”
Bully grinned to himself, fingering his eight dollars.
“Not ’specially so. I’d be glad to have your company, old man.”