"Yes; if you ever want a good horse"—and his small, black eyes glittered—"let me know."
"Got 'bout all I kin afford," replied Morrison; "twenty to work on my job now." Again Morrison looked at him; this time from his scrubby black beard to his dust-covered shoes. "Seems to me I heard your name before. There was a man by that name that was mixed up in that Jim Bailey murder. You ain't he, be ye?"
"No—I come from Montreal," replied Bergstein in a more positive tone. "The name's common enough." Here he opened the black valise stuffed with business papers and handed Morrison a card.
Morrison looked at it carefully, tucked it in a fly-specked screen behind the bar, and with a satisfied air said:
"Let's see—you hain't had no supper, hev ye? Supper's most ready—I'll go and tell the old woman you're here."
"No—I ain't stoppin' for supper," replied Bergstein, paying for his glass. "I'm going up to Thayor's place now; this feller Holcomb's expectin' me."
"Suit yourself, friend," returned Morrison, and he pulled down the heavy shutter screening the array of bottles.
Bergstein left with a brusque good-night and walked slowly up the road.
He had not told Morrison all he knew. Trading horses was not the Jew's only business; he was equally adept in buying and selling timber-lands and the hiring of men. When he was successful—and he was generally successful—his gains were never less than fifty per cent; less than that would have spelled failure in his eyes. For in Bergstein's veins ran the avaricious tenacity of the Pole and the insincerity of the Irishman. The former he inherited from his father, a peddler, the latter from his mother, the keeper for many years of a rough dive for sailors along the quay in Montreal. Both had died when he was a child and from an early age he shifted for himself, made no friends and needed little sleep and pursued his business with ferocious energy by night as well as by day. Added to this was a certain secretiveness. He appeared in localities mysteriously and left them as suddenly. It was often his habit to walk to unfrequented stations and take his chances of boarding a train. His movements were carefully planned and guarded—evidently he did not care to have many of them known.
He was not long in reaching the camp, though it was getting dark when he started, the straight road of macadam showing white among the gloom of the trees.