The next moment they entered the tent. "Where's the ink, Harry?" he asked. As she went to her trunk, he added, "Give us a sheet of paper, too. That's it. Let's go outside, Jones; it's cooler there."
They sat down on the shady side of the tent. Harry heard them talking long and low. After a while Rob came inside, put down the pen and ink, and went out again. Shortly afterward, Jones rode away.
Harry waited, hoping that Rob would come in and tell her what they had been talking about; but he did not. Going to the door, she saw him driving along the fence line, unloading the posts that he had cut that morning in Spring Creek cañon.
Harry felt hurt and irritated. Slowly something hardened in her throat, and setting her lips, she sat down with her mending. When, after a while, Rob came up to get a fresh bag of water, she did not look up or speak.
But Rob was too full of his own thoughts to notice Harry's mood. He drew a cracker box to the table, reached for a scrap of wrapping paper, and was soon deep in figuring. "Twenty-four, six, thirty. Six tons of alfalfa. How many hundred of barley and wheat and oats will it take to winter the stock on, I wonder?" He thrust his legs out under the table, ran his hands through his hair, and stared at the figuring before him.
"Yes, I ought to have three hundred dollars at least, before snow flies," he said. "I will, too, if I stick on the job and nothing happens."
"If nothing happens," Harry repeated, with a short laugh. "Does anything ever happen out here, pleasant or otherwise?"
"Eh? What's started you off? I mean, if the work goes well and we don't get a setback of some kind. Three hundred dollars will see us through the winter, all right."
"'Us!' Don't count me in, please."
"Well, you have got a grouch, sis," said Rob, in some surprise. "What's the matter now? I thought you were here for a year. In fact, I was just going to ask you if you don't want to homestead here."