“You’ve bought them, you say?”
“Yes,” was the brief answer.
“I’d take them back,” Hugh said slowly but decidedly. “Horses and dogs talk with their tails, and I don’t like the way this one acts.”
“I can’t take them back. I got them from a mover. I got them for a song, and we’re going to need them for the binder. I know what we said,” he went on, interrupting Hugh, who was trying to speak, “but there was a bargain in them and we do need them.”
“But we haven’t the money! How did you buy them? You couldn’t pay for them outright.”
Hugh Noland had been feeling his way down the foreleg of the horse nearest him. The animal was nervous and had crowded over against its mate in an endeavour to get away. Both its ears were laid back, and there was a half-threatening air about its movements. As Hugh straightened up to continue the discussion of finances, it jumped aside, quivering with fright.
“I gave a check on the bank,” John replied uneasily. Hugh had never criticised him before.
Hugh was taken up with soothing the nervous animal for a moment.
“You’ll run out of money before the summer’s over,” he said warningly.
“Oh, I’ve had to borrow a little already. With Elizabeth’s illness and all, I saw we weren’t going to get through, so I just took out a loan of five hundred and paid Doc Morgan while I was at it. I meant to have told you. I’ve got some calves coming from over west to-morrow too.” John poured it all out while he was at it, with a relief in having it over.