“It’s almighty plain that she didn’t inherit none of her observin’ powers from you.”
Bob glared at him.
“Wal, what are you seein’ that I ain’t?” he demanded. “Somethin’ that’s wrong, I’ll bet—By smoke! Thad, if you was to happen to get into Heaven by any hook or crook so ever, you’d set yourself first off to suspicionin’ them there angels of high gradin’ the gold they say the streets up there is paved with.”
The other returned with withering contempt:
“You’ve said it! But don’t it signify nothin’ to you when your gal—when any gal takes notice of how a feller is lookin’ different from what he did when she first met up with him? Ain’t it got no meanin’ for you when she says, ‘Since he come to us’? Come to us—to us—can’t you see nothin’? If I was as dumb as you be, I’d set off a stick of powder under myself to see if I couldn’t get some sort of, what I heard Doctor Jimmy once call, a re-action.”
Bob laughed.
“I figger on gettin’ all the reactions I need from you, without wastin’ any powder. Hugh did come to us, didn’t he? Even if that measly Lizard did fetch him far as the gate.”
“Oh, sure,” grumbled the other with fine sarcasm. “Hugh, he didn’t come to this here Cañada del Oro—not a-tall—he jest come to us.”
Bob continued as if the other had not spoken:
“As far as his not bein’ the same as when he come, well, he ain’t—anybody can see that. ’Tain’t only that he’s started in to workin’, all at once, like he jest naterally had to get rich. He’s different in a lot of ways. Take his looks, for instance—he used to be kind of white like—you remember, and now he’s tanned as black as any of us old desert rats. He’s sturdier and heavier like, every way. Hard work agrees with him, ’pears like.”