Early the next morning he was awakened by the banging of the stove-lids, and started up, to find his host busy with his preparations for breakfast.
He wished the boy a hearty good-morning, but he did not have anything of importance to say to him until the meal was over, and Oscar, arising from his seat, pulled out his pocket-book.
“How much do I owe you, Mr. Barker?” said he.
“Look here, professor,” replied the ranchman, with a smile, “after you have been in this country a little longer, you will know better than to ask a question like that.”
“Very well,” said Oscar, who knew what that meant. “I am greatly obliged to you for your hospitality. Now, I can’t take my outfit with me; and I ask you again if I can hire you to take it back to the fort for me?”
“And I tell you again that you can’t,” was the blunt, almost rude, reply.
“Well, will you take it for nothing—just to accommodate me?”
“No, I won’t.”
“Very well,” said Oscar again. “Then I shall have to abandon the most of it right here. Thompson, come out to the wagon and select such things as you think we ought to take with us.”
“Are you going to walk to the foot-hills?” asked the ranchman, with an amused twinkle in his eye that made Oscar angry. “The valley to which Thompson intended to take you is all of a hundred miles from here.”