“Ye hev, Mink. Yes, ye hev.”
Mink looked bewildered for a moment. Then a shade of consciousness settled on his face. He lifted one foot over his knee, and affected to examine the sole of his boot. The light zephyr was tossing his long, tangled locks, the sun shone through their filaments. No vanity was expressed in wearing them thus,—only some vague preference, some prosaic prejudice against shears. Their fineness and lustre did nothing to commend them, and they had been contemptuously called a “sandy bresh-heap.” His bright eyes had a fringe of the same unique tint that softened their expression. He dropped his boot presently, and fixed his gaze upon a flitting yellow butterfly, lured by some unexplained fascination of fragrance to these skyey heights.
“Ye can’t make out ez I stand in yer way, enny,” he said at last, enigmatically.
Doaks’s face flushed suddenly. “Naw, I ain’t claimin’ ez I hev enny chance. Ef I hed, an’ ye war in my way,” he continued, abruptly, with a sudden flare of spirit, “I’d choke the life out’n ye, an’ fling yer wu’thless carcass ter the wolves. I’d crush yer skull with the heel o’ my boot!”
He stood up for a moment; then turned suddenly, and sat down again. Mink looked at him curiously, with narrowing lids.
Doaks’s hands were trembling. His eyes were alert, alight. The blood was pulsing fast through his veins. So revivified was he by the bare contemplation of the contingency that he seemed hardly recognizable as the honest, patient, taciturn comrade of Piomingo Bald.
“Waal,” Mink said presently, “that war one reason I wanted ter herd along o’ you-uns this year. I ’lowed I’d make right smart money through the summer season, an’ then me an’ Lethe would git married nex’ fall, mebbe. My folks air so pore an’ shiftless,—an’ I’d ez lief live along of a catamount ez Lethe’s step-mother,—an’ so I ’lowed we’d try ter git a leetle ahead an’ set up for ourselves.”
Doaks trembled with half-repressed excitement.
“Ye tole me ez ye an’ she hed quar’led,” he said. “Ye never dreampt o’ sech a thing ez savin’ fur a house an’ sech till this minit. Ye ain’t been ter see her sence ye hev been on the Big Smoky till ye fund out ez I went down thar wunst in a while, an’ the old folks favored me.”