He raised his eyes suddenly. Rood had lounged off a few steps with an idle gait, swaying from side to side, his hands still in his pockets. But there was tenseness in the pose of his half-turned head. He was listening.
“Hed ye done traded her off?” asked Price, interested. “Gimme a chaw o’ terbacco.”
“Ain’t got none. Pete, can’t ye gin this hyar destitute cuss a chaw o’ terbacco?”
Rood could not choose but turn his face, while he held out his plug. The crafty Mink scanned it, as he leaned his own sun-burned cheek upon the muzzle of the long rifle on which he lazily supported his weight.
“Naw, Jerry, ’twarn’t my cow. I can’t keep nuthin’ long enough ter lose it; I hed traded her off to Ben Doaks.”
There was no mistaking the patent disappointment on Rood’s face. One with far less sharp intelligence than Mink possessed might have descried that hot look in his eyes, as if they burned,—that vacillating glance which could fix on naught about him. The surprise of the moment deterred him from observing Mink, whose air of unconsciousness afterward afforded no ground for suspicion or fear.
Rood pocketed his plug, and presently slouched off toward the tree where the marksmen were preparing for the shooting-match.
Now and then there flitted to the door of the mill the figure of a stripling, all dusted with flour and meal, and with a torn white hat on his head. He wore ragged jeans trousers of an indeterminate hue, and an unbleached cotton shirt. When the men were strolling about, he slunk into the duskiness within. But when they were all intent upon the projected trial of skill, he crept shyly to the door, and looked out with a singularly blank, inexpressive gaze.
“Hy’re ye, Tad!” called out Mink gayly.