“So much good that I can’t tell it all in one short talk,” answered Michael steadily. “We’ll have to get better acquainted and then I hope I can make you understand how it has helped. Now tell me about the others. Where is Buck?”
There was a dead silence.
“It’s hard to say!” at last muttered Sam irresponsibly.
“Don’t you know? Haven’t you any kind of an idea, Sam? I’d so like to hunt him up.”
The question seemed to have produced a tensity in the very atmosphere, Michael felt it.
“I might, an’ then agin’ I might not,” answered Sam in that tone of his that barred the way for further questions.
“Couldn’t you and I find him and—and—help him, Sam? Aunt Sally said he was in trouble.”
Another match was scratched and held close to his face while the narrow eyes of Sam seemed to pierce his very soul before Sam answered with an ugly laugh.
“Oh, he don’t need none o’ your help, you bet. He’s lit out. You don’t need to worry ’bout Buck, he kin take car’ o’ hisse’f every time.”
“But won’t he come back sometime?”