Overland Red rolled a cigarette, pausing in his narrative to see whether Winthrop, who sat with bowed head, was asleep or not.
Winthrop glanced up. "I'm awake," he said, smiling. "Very much awake. I can see it all—you two, down on your luck, and the snow freezing and melting on the bottoms of your trousers. And the stuffy little rescue mission with a few weary faces and many empty chairs; the 'preacher guy,' as you call him, earnest, and ignorant, and altogether wrong in trying to reason with Toledo Blake's empty stomach."
"That's it!" concurred Overland. "A empty stomach is a plumb unreasonable thing. But the preacher guy done some good, at that. He set Toledo Blake to thinkin' which was somethin' new and original for Toledo.
"It was nex' spring Toledo and me was travelin' out this way, inspectin' the road-bed of the Santa Fé, when we runs onto a big red-ant's nest in the sand alongside of the track. Toledo, he squats down and looks. The first thing he sees was a leetle pa ant grab up a piece of crust twice his size and commence sweatin' and puffin' to drag it home to the kids.
"'The leetle cuss!' says Toledo. 'He's some strong on the lift!' And Toledo, he takes the piece of crust from the pa ant and sticks it at the top of the hole, thinkin' to help the pa ant along. But the pa ant, he hustles right up and grabs the crust and waves her around his head a couple of times to show how strong he is, and then starts back to where he found the crust. Down he plumps it—gives it a h'ist or two and then grabs it up. He waves it around in his mitts and wobbles off toward the hole again. Independent? Well, mostly!
"Toledo, he said nothin', but his eyes was pokin' out of his head tryin' to think. You never see a man sweat so tryin' to get both hands onto a idea at once. His dome was kind of flat, but he could handle one idea, in single harness, at a time.
"Anyhow, the next town we strikes, Toledo, he quits me and gets a sort of chambermaid's job tidyin' up around a little old boiler-factory and machine-shop; pilin' scrap-iron and pig-iron and little things like that. And he stuck, too.
"A couple of years after that I was beatin' it on a rattler goin' west, and I drops off at that town. About the first thing I seen was Toledo comin' down the street. Alongside of him was a woman carry in' a kid in her arms, and another one grazin' along close behind. And Toledo had a loaf of bread under his arm.
"'This here is Mrs. Blake,' says Toledo, kind of nervous.
"'I am glad she is,' says I. 'Toledo, you're doin' well. Don't know nothin' about the leetle colt in the blanket, but the yearlin' is built right. He's got good hocks and first-class action.'