Baldwin was too shrewd to try to push his advantage when there was, or seemed to be, a chance that the desired end was as good as half attained. And it was a purely manful prompting that made him get up and thrust out his hand to the young fellow who was trying to be as frank as he dared to be.
"Put it there, John," he said heartily. "Nobody in the Timanyoni is going to pry into you an inch farther than you care to let 'em; and if you get into trouble by helping us, you can count on at least one backer who will stand by you until the cows come home. Now then, hunt up your coat, and we'll drive over to Hillcrest for a bite to eat. I know you won't be easy in your mind until you've had it out with Corry's mother—about that little railroad trick—and you may as well do it now and have it over with. No; excuses don't go, this time. I had my orders from the Missus before I left town, and I know better than to go home without you. Never mind the commissary khaki. It won't be the first time that the working-clothes have figured at the Hillcrest table—not by a long shot."
And because he did not know how to frame a refusal that would refuse, Smith got his coat and went.
IX
Relapsings
Given his choice between the two, Smith would cheerfully have faced another hand-to-hand battle with the claim-jumpers in preference to even so mild a dip into the former things as the dinner at Hillcrest foreshadowed. The reluctance was not forced; it was real. The primitive man in him did not wish to be entertained. On the fast auto drive down to Brewster, across the bridge, and out to the Baldwin ranch Smith's humor was frankly sardonic. Dinners, social or grateful, were such childish things; so little worth the time and attention of a real man with work to do!
It mattered nothing that he had lived twenty-five years and more without suspecting this childishness of things social. That door was closed and another had been opened; beyond the new opening the prospect was as yet rather chaotic and rugged, to be sure, but the color scheme, if somewhat raw, was red-blood vivid, and the horizons were illimitable. Smith sat up in the mechanician's seat and straightened the loose tie under the soft collar of his working-shirt, smiling grimly as his thought leaped back to the dress clothes he had left lying on the bed in his Lawrenceville quarters. He cherished a small hope that Mrs. Baldwin might be shocked at the soft shirt and the khaki. It would serve her right for taking a man from his job.
The colonel did not try to make him talk, and the fifteen-mile flight down the river and across into the hills was shortly accomplished. At the stone-pillared portal he got out to open the gates. Down the road a little distance a horseman was coming at a smart gallop—at least, the rider figured as a man for the gate-opener until he saw that it was Corona Baldwin, booted and spurred and riding a man's saddle.
Smith let the gray car go on its way up the drive without him and held the gates open for the horse and its rider.