He lapsed into that kind of listening silence that comes to one who is striving to recall something that has been heard, not seen, or felt, and I was about to insist upon a further elucidation of those subterranean sounds when the door opened and a man, whom father had hired for the day, put in his head:
“Say, Mr. Gordon, I can’t find a spade anywhere,” he announced.
“Well, there!” father exclaimed, with a disturbed look, “our spade was left at the mine the last day that we worked there.”
“That’s too bad!” the man, who was a neighbor, as neighbors go on the frontier, said regretfully. “I can go back home and get mine, but the team’s hitched up; it’s stopped raining, an’ there’s a load of posts on the wagon. Seems ’most a pity for me to take time to go an’ hunt up a spade, but I reckon I’ll have to do it. I never saw the man yet that could dig post holes without one.”
“Oh, no, Reynolds, don’t stop your work for that; I’ll have to bring mine down; it’s about as near to get it from the Gray Eagle as to go to one of the neighbors; you just go on with your work.”
Reynolds withdrew accordingly, and, as the door closed upon him, father said:
“I’m anxious to earn every dollar I can to help fence that wheat field, before Horton’s cattle ‘accidentally’ stray into it. I was out to look at it this morning. The field looks as if covered with a green carpet, it’s coming up so thick. I count it good luck to be able to get Reynolds to go on with the fence-building while I work in the mine, for I can exchange work to pay him, while the pay that comes from the mine is so much cash.”
“And when we get our title clear, won’t I shoo Mr. Horton’s cattle to the ends of the earth!” I said, resentfully, for we all understood well enough that the reason that father was so anxious to earn money was to pay for the final “proving up” on his homestead claim, as well as to build fences. “I’m teaching Guard to ‘heel’ on purpose to keep track of those cattle,” I concluded, audaciously, for father didn’t approve of a policy of retaliation.
“Horton’s cattle are not to blame,” he said now, but the shadow that always came over his patient face at the mention of our intractable neighbor settled heavily upon it as he spoke.