"You bet," said Ajax.
"And now, Sissy, you run along home," said Pap.
"We'll take her," I said, for Sissy was a sworn friend of ours. At once she put her left hand into mine. We bade the old man good-night, and took leave of him. On the threshold Ajax turned and asked a question----
"Won't you reconsider your decision, Mr. Spooner?"
"No," he snapped, "I won't. I dunno as all this ain't a reg'lar plant. Looks like it. And, as I say, the scallywags in these yere foothills need thinnin'--they need thinnin'."
Ajax said something in a low voice which Sissy and I could not hear. Later I asked him what it was, because Pap had clicked his teeth.
"I told him," said my brother, "that he needn't think his call was coming, because I was quite certain that they did not want him either in Heaven--or in the other place."
"Oh," said I, "I thought that you were going to use a little tact with Pap Spooner."
* * * * *
Next morning, early, we had a meeting in the store. A young doctor, a capital fellow, had come out from San Lorenzo with the intention of camping with us till the disease was wiped out; but he shook his head very solemnly when someone suggested that the first case, carefully isolated, might prove the last.