"Quit yore fooling," grinned Charley. "I didn't pick them. Peggy wrote that."
Johnny reached out and put the list in Dailey's hand. "Better begin at th' top, Ben, an' run right down," he suggested. "We won't get 'em mixed that way, or leave nothin' out. Let's start with one of them flour sacks, no matter what's in 'em."
Dailey flushed. "But I just said I was all out——"
"Yo're th' most forgetful man I ever knowed, except, mebby, Buffalo," said Johnny. "You ain't got no mem'ry at all. Don't you remember you found a lot of things you'd poked away an' forgot you had? An' don't you remember that nobody ain't told you, yet, not to sell me nothin'? That there paper is mine, now. I'm borrowin' it because I ain't got my own list writ out. That's writ so pretty an' plain, that it's pretty plain to read. If anybody gets curious, which they won't unless you tell 'em, you say that I gave you that an' wanted it filled. Now, we'll start with th' flour, like I was sayin'."
Dailey looked down the list and then up at Johnny. He was asking Fate why Nelson had to pick that particular time to visit the store. Johnny was smiling, but there was a look in his eyes which made the storekeeper do some quick thinking. He had no orders not to sell to anyone but the SV; and if Big Tom became curious he could put his questions to the two-gun man and get what satisfaction he could. In his heart he was in sympathy with the SV, and he had argued against refusing to sell to it.
"Nelson," said Dailey, slowly going behind the counter, "It's a good thing you remembered about that stuff. Are you takin' it to th' hotel?"
"Reckon not," answered Johnny. "Reckon I'll borrow Charley's pack hoss an' him to take it off to a place I knows of, where there ain't no mice. You'd be surprised, Ben, if you knowed how many mice there are in that hotel."
Charley looked from one to the other and, not knowing what to think or say, grinned somewhat anxiously.
"How's yore dad, an' yore sister?" Johnny asked him.