Stonor chuckled. “Gaviller hates a cash trader worse than a devil with horns. It’s nonsense anyway. What would the Kakisas do with cash? This talk of sending in an expedition will all blow over before spring.”
“Stonor, what for do you think he lives like that by himself?”
“I don’t know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman at the bottom of it. He’s young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he’d be thankful for a friend now.”
“White men got funny ideas about women, I think.”
“I suppose it seems so. But where did you get that idea?”
“Not from the talk at the store. I have read books. Love-stories. Pringle the missionary lend me a book call Family Herald with many love-stories in it. From that I see that white men always go crazy about women.”
Stonor laughed aloud.
“Stonor, were you ever real crazy about a woman?”
The trooper shook his head—almost regretfully, one might have said. “The right one never came my way, Tole.”
“You don’t like the girls around here.”