"I guess I will. You might sponge Yuma's back a little, Red. She's brought me close to two hundred miles in the last three days."
"Sure, Bo! I'll brush her teeth and manicure her toe-nails if you say the word. I guess that hoss has kind of made a hit with you."
Collie yawned. "Mebby. But it isn't in it with the hit she'll make with you if you try to take up her feet. She's half-sister to a shot of dynamite. I'm only telling you so she won't kick your fool head off."
"You talk like most a full-size man," said Overland.
Down at the meadow, Overland looked at the colt and shook his head. "He is correct," he said succinctly. "That hoss don't welcome handlin' worth a bean."
Winthrop's silence rather stirred Overland's sensitive pride in his horsemanship. "'Course I broke and rode hundreds like her, down in Mex. But then I was paid for doin' it. It was my business then. Now, minin' and educatin' Collie is my business, and a busted neck wouldn't help any."
Winthrop realized for the first time that Overland's supreme interest in life was Collie's welfare. Heretofore the paternal note had not been evident. Winthrop had imagined them chums, friends, tramps together. They were more than that. Overland considered Collie an adopted son.
The Easterner glanced at Overland's broad shoulders stooped beneath the weight of the heavy stock saddle. Something in the man's humorous simplicity, his entire willingness to serve those whom he liked and his stiff indifference to all others, appealed to Winthrop. So this flotsam of the range, this erstwhile tramp, this paradox of coarseness and sentiment, had an object in life? A laudable object: that of serving with his sincerest effort the boy friend he had picked up on the desert, a castaway.
As they toiled up the stream toward the camp, Winthrop recalled their former chats by the night-fire. Now he began to see the drift of Overland's then frequent references to Collie. And there was a girl,—mentioned by Overland almost reverently,—the Rose Girl, Louise Lacharme, of whom Anne Marshall had written much in eulogy to him. And Winthrop himself?
His swift introspection left him aware that of them all he alone seemed to lack a definite aim. Making money—mining—was still to him a game, interesting and healthful, but play. To Overland it was life. Winthrop saw himself as he was. His improved health scoffed at the idea of becoming sentimental about it. He laughed, and Overland, turning, regarded him with bushy, interrogative brows.