“They were three men who have got all the stock they want and have gone off somewhere to begin business for themselves. I don’t know whether you could fill their places or not. You don’t look like men who had been in the habit of herding stock.”
And they didn’t, either. One of them, as we have said, was Harding, and the other was Ainsworth, and they looked just what they were—regular squawmen. Claude had been long enough on the plains to tell a stockman when he saw him.
“Perhaps we don’t,” said Harding, “but we have been used to the business all our lives. Is old man Preston out this way? Then we will ride with you until we find him.”
Claude rode on ahead, followed by the squawmen, and somehow he did not feel safe in their presence; but before long something that one of the men said opened his eyes and made him feel that his uncle, by hiring the two men in question, would make easy of accomplishment certain plans he had formed.
“You’re getting rich herding cattle, ain’t you?” said Harding. “Well, it beats the world how some men can get rich and do nothing. If I had what old man Preston is worth I wouldn’t never do nothing no more.”
“Neither would I,” said Claude. “But it takes money to make money; haven’t you lived long enough to prove that? A man who hires out to be abroad in all sorts of weather, and who loses his sleep of nights for the paltry sum of forty-five dollars a month, don’t see much money by the time the year is up.”
Here the subject was dropped, but enough had been said to set each one to thinking. Harding and his partner were hard up, to use the language of the country. The provisions their wives drew every week did not furnish them with money, and how in the world they were going to get funds was what troubled them. If the truth must be known, they came there to Mr. Preston’s house not for the purpose of herding cattle, but with an eye on the safe in the office. Claude, dull as he was about some things, saw that, and instantly two courses of action suggested themselves to him: should he scrape acquaintance with the men, in case his uncle hired them, and share the proceeds with them, or should he pretend to be on their side, find out what arrangements they made in regard to robbing the safe, and then go to his uncle and expose them?
“By gracious! here is another chance to make money,” said Claude, so overcome with his grand idea that it was all he could do to keep from laughing outright. “If I go in with them they will take the money and leave me to whistle for my share; but if I go to my uncle and post him, he will certainly reward me for my efforts, and that will be better than stealing. I tell you I will get the start of that man yet.”
Claude was so impatient to reach his uncle and turn the men over to him that he put his horse into a lope, and in the space of half an hour discovered his relative riding slowly toward him. He simply said, “Here are two men who want a chance to herd cattle,” and then passed on, so that he could have an opportunity to think over his new scheme without being bothered by anybody. It was in his mind all that day, and when he went home to supper that night he found the men, with their hats off and their sleeves rolled up, in the act of taking a wash.
“I guess uncle has hired you,” said he.