“Oh, yes,” Sproatly answered confidently. “If I couldn’t plant something on to them when they’d given me a lead like that, I’d be no use in this business. At present, my command of Western phraseology is my fortune.”
“You sell things, then?”
Sproatly pointed to two big boxes in the bottom of the wagon. “Anything from cough cure to hair restorer, besides a general purpose elixir that’s specially prepared for me. It’s adaptable to any complaint and season. All you have to do”—and he lowered his voice confidently—“is to put on a different label.”
Winifred laughed when she met his eyes.
“What happens to the people who buy it?” she inquired.
“Most of them are bachelors, and tough. They’ve stood their own cooking so long that they ought to be impervious to anything, and if anybody’s really sick I hold off and tell him to wait until he can get a doctor. A sensitive conscience,” he added reflectively, “is quite a handicap in this business.”
“You have always been in it?” asked Winifred.
“No,” replied Sproatly, “although you mightn’t believe it, I was raised with the idea that I should have my choice between the Church and the Bar. The idea, however, proved—impracticable—which is rather a pity. It has seemed to me that a man who can work off cough cures and cosmetics on to healthy folks and talk a scoffer off the field, ought to have made his mark in either calling.”
He looked at her as if for confirmation of this view, but Winifred, who laughed again, glanced at the two wagons that, several miles away, moved across the gray-white sweep of prairie.
“Shall we overtake them?” she asked.