"Moses N. Hardluck."
"You're terrible cute, ain't you?"
"Not so very, or I wouldn't be working for my board."
"You hain't never killed yourself with hard work, by the looks o' them hands."
"Oh, I've been going to school."
"A'huh! I thought you had. You talk pretty hifalutin' fer a real workin' man. I tell ye what I think—you're a rich man's son, and you've run away."
"Come, gal, get that coffee bilin'," called the mother. Mrs. Pratt was a wizened little woman, so humped by labor and chills and fever that she seemed deformed. Her querulousness was not so much ill-natured as plaintive.
"He says his name is Mose Hardluck," Harold heard the girl say, and that ended all further inquiry. He became simply "Mose" to them.
There was a satisfying charm to the business of camping out which now came to be the regular order of living to him. By day the cattle, thin and poor, crawled along patiently, waiting for feeding time to come, catching at such bunches of dry grass as came within their reach, and at their heels rode Harold on an old black mare, his clear voice urging the herd forward. At noon and again at night Pratt halted the wagons beside the road and while the women got supper or dinner Harold helped Pratt take care of the stock, which he was obliged to feed. "I started a little airly," he said at least a score of times in the first week. "But I wanted to get a good start agin grass come."
Harold was naturally handy at camping, and his ready and skillful hands became very valuable around the camp fire. He was quick and cheerful, and apparently tireless, and before the end of the week Jennie said: