“Is old man—I mean is Mr. Preston your uncle?” asked one of the men in surprise.
“Oh, yes, he is my uncle easy enough, but he treats me mighty mean. In fact he uses all his hands mean.”
Claude looked all around before he gave utterance to this falsehood, for if Thompson or some of the older hands on the ranch had heard him, it is possible that he would have listened to the truth, plainly told. A kinder owner to work for than Mr. Preston did not exist, and every one who had earned his daily bread on that ranch knew it. If the three men who had left the ranch to begin business for themselves could have heard it, they would have told a different story. These men had been at work for Mr. Preston a long time, and each one carried, besides his stock, one thousand dollars, with which to start him on the road to prosperity.
CHAPTER XVII.
The Plan Discussed.
“There!” said Claude, as he lifted his face from the towel and gazed after the two men who were walking into the dining-room. “I have given them something to chew on. I don’t know whether they believe that Uncle Preston is guilty of meanness or not—I rather think, from the expression of their faces, that they do not; but it will show them what I think, and perhaps it will amount to something.”
Thompson, the foreman, was the one who objected to Mr. Preston hiring the men, and he showed it so plainly that it is a wonder the men did not see it. During the week following he would hardly pay any attention to them except to give them their orders, and he got through with that as soon as possible. At the end of that time he found opportunity to speak to Mr. Preston privately.
“So you have hired those two men, have you?” said he.
“I have, and I didn’t think I could do any better,” said his employer.
“I should not raise a bit of fault with them if they were stock-herders,” said Thompson, “but I know they are not. When you go down to the fort make inquiries about them, and you will find that they have Indian wives. These men are making forty-five dollars a month, and their wives are getting their provisions for nothing.”