As for being as much his father's boy as his mother's--Little Jim felt that he quite agreed to that, and, if anything, that he belonged more to his father, who was kind to him, than to any one else in the world. Little Jim, trying to reason it out, now thought that he knew why his mother had left home. She had gone to live in town that she might have better clothes and be with folks and not wear her fingers to the bone simply for a bed and three meals a day, as Little Jim had heard her say more than once.
But the trip to Aunt Jane's, down in Arizona, was too vivid in his imagination to allow room for pondering. Big Jim had said they were to leave in the morning. So, while supper was cooking, Little Jim slipped into his bedroom and busied himself packing his own scant belongings. Presently his father called him. Little Jim plodded out bearing his few spare clothes corded in a neat bundle, with an old piece of canvas for the covering. His father had taught him to pack.
Big Jim stared. Then a peculiar expression flitted across his face. Little Jim was always for the main chance.
"I'm all hooked up to hit the trail, dad."
In his small blue overalls and jumper, in his alert and manful attitude, Little Jim was a pocket edition of his father.
"Where's your shootin'-iron?" queried Big Jim jokingly.
"Why, she's standin' in the corner, aside of yours. A man don't pack his shootin'-iron in his bed-roll when he hits the trail. He keeps her handy."
"For stingin' lizards, eh?"
"For 'most anything. Stingin' lizards, Injuns, or hoss-thieves, or anything that we kin shoot. We ain't takin' no chances on this here trip."
Big Jim gestured toward the table and pulled up his chair. Little Jim was too heartily interested in the meal to notice that his father gazed curiously at him from time to time. Until then, Big Jim had thought of his small son as a chipper, sturdy, willing boy--his boy. But now, Little Jim seemed suddenly to have become an actual companion, a partner, a sharer in things as they were and were to be.