“Now, lad, I don’t want you to look at it that way, not at all, not at all, lad.” Tim was as gentle as oil in his front now, afraid that he was in the way of losing a good herder whom he had tricked into working at a bargain price. “I don’t think you understand the lay of it, if you’ve got the impression I intended to take you in at the jump-off, John. It’s never done; it’s never heard of. A man’s got to prove himself, like David of old. There’s a lot of Goliaths here on the range he’s got to meet and show he’s able to handle before any man would trust him full shares on the increase of two thousand sheep.”
“You didn’t talk that way at first,” Mackenzie charged, rather sulkily.
“I took to you when I heard how you laid Swan out in that fight you had with him, John. That was a recommendation. But it wasn’t enough, for it was nothing but a chance lucky blow you got in on him that give you the decision. If you’d ’a’ missed him, where would you ’a’ been at?”
“That’s got nothing to do with your making a compact and breaking it. You’ve got no right to come here beefing around about the loss of a few sheep with a breach of contract on your side of the fence. You’ve put it up to me now like you should have done in the beginning. All right; I’ll prove myself, like David. But remember there was another fellow by the name of Jacob that went in on a livestock deal with a slippery man, and stick to your agreement this time.”
“I don’t want you to feel that I’m takin’ advantage of you, John; I don’t want you to feel that way.”
“I don’t just feel it; I know it. I’ll pay you for the seven sheep the grizzly killed, and take it out of his hide when I catch him.”
This offer mollified Tim, melting him down to smiles. He shook hands with Mackenzie, all the heartiness on his side, refusing the offer with voluble protestations that he neither expected nor required it.
“You’ve got the makin’ of a sheepman in you, John; I always thought you had. But–––”