“And then I want some toys for the kid. Anything you can get that seems the right kind. She’s a girl, so you don’t want a drum, or soldiers, or guns, or things of that kind. Get a doll if you can, and a musical box, or anything tasty and that’s likely to catch a baby’s eye.”
“Why, she can’t hardly see yet. She’s like a blind kitten. Lucy told me herself yesterday she were only six weeks old.”
“Never you mind. She’s a smart kid; knows more now than most babies at six months. You might get a rattle—a nice one with bells; she might fancy that.”
“Silver or gold?” sneered Fletcher, whom this conversation was making meditative.
“The best you can get. Don’t stint yourself for money; everything of the best. Then clothes for her; she is going to be as well dressed as any baby in California. I take it you’d better go to Mrs. Wingate, at the Eldorado Hotel, and get her to make you out a list; then go to the store and buy the list right down.”
“Seems to me you’ll want a pack train, not a burro, to carry it all.”
“Well, if you can’t get everything on Spotty and one burro, buy two. I’ll give you a sack of dust and you can spend it all.”
Fletcher was silent after this, and as he lay rolled in his blanket that night he looked at the stars for many hours, thinking.
Early in the morning he departed on the now brisk and rejuvenated Spotty. Besides his instructions he carried one of Moreau’s buckskin sacks, roughly estimated to contain twelve hundred dollars’ worth of dust, and, he told Moreau, one of his own. He was due to return the next morning. With a short word of farewell, he touched Spotty with the single Mexican spur he wore, and darted away down the rough trail. Moreau watched him out of sight.
The day passed as quietly as its predecessors. The main events that marked their course had been the men’s clean-up, Lucy’s gain in strength and the evidences of increasing intelligence in the child.