"Awful!" echoed Leslie. "It’s––" A sudden working in his throat stopped him. He turned his face away.
"I wouldn’t stay here for all the gold in these mountains if things weren’t just as they are," Ross continued sympathetically, "and I presume you’re caught in some such way, too, or you’d get out."
Leslie hesitated, nodded and again faced Ross, "How are you caught?" he asked eagerly.
Ross told him briefly about his father’s interest in the claims and Weimer’s appeal for help that had led to his, Ross’s, coming.
As he talked Leslie’s eagerness evaporated. He evidently was looking for another sort of explanation, and his response was only half-hearted:
"Then your father sent you. That’s bad luck when you want to be in school." He hesitated and added: "It’s not every fellow that wants to go to school. I hate it!"
"You do!" exclaimed Ross. "Well, I can’t say I waste any love on studying myself, that is, in most studies, but I’m after results. I’m willing to bone down to work because of where the work will take me. The only thing I really like to study is medicine, anatomy and all that sort of thing, you know. But in order to get anywhere in the profession, I have to take a lot of mathematics and language and things that I detest."
Leslie’s shoulders came up. "I won’t study what I don’t like," he declared arrogantly, "and I can’t be made to–guess they’re finding that out, too!" The last was under his breath.
"Well," Ross began vaguely, "if you want to be a business man it’s not necessary to go through college. Our most successful business men––" His voice trailed into silence as he saw that the other was not listening.
There ensued a few moments of quiet. In the bunk Weimer snored gently. A nickel clock suspended on a peg from the side logs ticked loudly. The pine chunks in the sheet-iron stove cracked and snapped cheerfully. Leslie stared dejectedly at the table, while Ross, his forehead knit into a puzzled frown, stared at Leslie. What could have happened, he asked himself, to rob the other in four weeks of his former desire to turn prospector? Homesickness? Perhaps, but Ross decided the trouble lay deeper. If it were mere homesickness, the boy would be haunting Miners’ Camp and the post-office or else clearing out of the mountains.