Craig, bouncing alone on the middle seat of the buckboard, grunted.
“Excuse me, Mr. Craig, but that’s some news—what he said about getting aholt of the old Walpole tract.”
The Comas boss did not comment.
The driver said nothing more for some time; he was a slouchy woodsman of numb wits; he chewed tobacco constantly with the slow jaw motion of a ruminating steer, and he looked straight ahead between the ears of the nigh horse, going through mental processes of a certain sort. “Now ’t I think of it, I wish I’d grabbed in with a question to young Latisan. But he doesn’t give anybody much of a chance to grab in when he’s talking. Still, I’d have liked to ask him something.” He maundered on in that strain for several minutes.
“Ask him what?” snapped Craig, tired of the monologue.
“Whuther he’s talked with my old aunt Dorcas about the heir who went off into the West somewheres. Grandson of the old sir who was the first Walpole of the Toban—real heir, if he’s still alive! My aunt Dorcas had letters about him, or from him, or something like that, only a few years ago.”
“Look here!” stormed Craig. “Why haven’t you said something about such letters or such an heir?”
“Nobody has ever asked me. And he’s prob’ly dead, anyway. Them lawyers know everything. And he’s a roving character, as I remember what my aunt said. No use o’ telling anybody about him—it would cost too much to find him.”
“Cost too much!” snarled the Comas director. “Oh, you——” But he choked back what he wanted to say about the man’s intellect. Craig pulled out notebook and pencil and began to fire questions.
Latisan was headed for home, the old family mansion in the village of Toban Deadwater where Ward and his widowed father kept bachelor’s hall, with a veteran woods cook to tend and do for them. The male cook was Ward’s idea. The young man had lived much in the woods, and the ways of women about the house annoyed him; a bit of clutter was more comfortable.