Smith was more than satisfied with the zest with which Susie now entered into the plot, and the shrewdness which she showed in planning details that he himself had overlooked.
“You work along with me, kid, and I’ll make a dead-game one out of you!” he declared with enthusiasm. “When we make a stake, we’ll go to Billings and rip up the sod!”
“I’ll like that,” said Susie dryly.
“When the right time comes, I’ll know it,” Smith went on. “When I wakes up some mornin’ with a feelin’ that it’s the day to get action on, I always follows that feelin’—if it takes holt of me anyways strong. I has to do certain things on certain days. I hates a chilly day worse nor anything. I wants to hole up, and I feels mean enough to bite myself. But when the sun shines, it thaws me; it draws the frost out of my heart, like. I hates to let anybody’s blood when the sun shines. I likes to lie out on a rock like a lizard, and I feels kind. I’m cur’ous that way, about sun, me—Smith.”
XIV
THE SLAYER OF MASTODONS
Dora and Susie had planned to botanize one fine Saturday morning, and Susie, dressed for a tramp in the hills, was playing with a pup in the dooryard, waiting for Dora, when she saw Smith coming toward her with the short, quick step which, she had learned, with him denoted mental activity.
“This is the day for it,” he said decisively. “I had that notorious feelin’ take holt of me when I got awake. How’s your heart, girl?”