Grant nodded. “I have friends down yonder who will send that doctor out,” he said. “Here are your dollars from the fund. Ten of them this time.”
The man handed him one of the bills back. “If you want me to take more than five you’ll have to show your book,” he said. “I’ve been finding out how you work these affairs, Larry.”
Grant only laughed, but Breckenridge turned to the speaker with an assumption of severity that was almost ludicrous in his young face.
“Now, don’t you make yourself a consumed ass,” he said. “You want those dollars considerably more than we do, and we’ve got quite a few of them doing nothing in the bank. That is, Larry has.”
Grant’s eyes twinkled. “It’s no use, Breckenridge. I know the kind of man he is. I’m going to send Miss Muller here, and we’ll come round and pound the foolishness out of you if you try to send back anything she brings with her. This place is as cold as an ice-store. What’s the matter with your stove?”
“The stove’s all right,” and the man pointed to his leg. “The trouble is that I’ve very little wood. Axe slipped the last time I went chopping in the bluff, and the frost got into the cut. I couldn’t make three miles on one leg, and pack a load of billets on my back.”
“But you’d freeze when those ran out, and they couldn’t last you two days,” said Breckenridge, glancing at the little pile of fuel.
“Yes,” said the man grimly. “I guess I would, unless one of the boys came along.”
“Anything wrong with your oxen?” asked Grant.
“Well,” said the man drily, “we’ve been living for ’most two months on one of them. I salted a piece of him; the rest’s frozen. I had to sell the other to a Dutchman. Since the cattle-boys stopped me ploughing I hadn’t much use for them, any way.”