"I don’t want you to get sick of your bargain the first week," he said one day in answer to Ross’s remonstrance when he refused to stop work on account of a bruise on his wrist. "You open up that little emergency chest and I can go on digging just the same. I don’t want any delayed wages in mine!"
With the advent of Leslie, life fell into pleasanter grooves in Weimer’s cabin. Despite the anxiety ever present with the newcomer, and despite his natural reserve, Ross’s exuberance of spirits caused by his presence and work affected him, and after the supper dishes were washed, the two boys wrestled, chaffed each other or talked, Ross about his father and uncle and aunt, Leslie about his school life in Omaha.
"It’s a boys’ school," he explained one day, "a military academy. I’ve had to go there ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Discipline is fierce. I hate it, and this year I made up my mind I’d not stand it, so I’m here."
"And wish," ventured Ross, "that you were back in school again."
"Yes–almost," Leslie began impulsively and then paused, adding quietly, "Lots of things I wish, and wish ’em hard."
The following evening after supper, Weimer tumbled into his bunk at once and began snoring. The two boys washed the dishes, in silence at first. Outside, snow was falling heavily. Through the drifting flakes the McKenzies’ light shone fitfully. The brothers had been away again hunting and had just returned.
As Leslie set the dishes on their shelf above the stove he glanced uneasily out of the window. He had not seen the McKenzies for some time. Ever since they had crossed the valley that noon on their snow-shoes, their hunting trophies on their shoulders, he had watched their cabin with that same air of uneasy abstraction.
"Ross," he broke out at last, "I’ve got to tell you something. I hate like a dog to tell it, but it’s got to break loose some time and it may as well be right now."
He turned from the shelf, glanced at the snoring Weimer, lowered his voice, and, standing beside the stove, worked restlessly at the damper in the pipe. Ross, without looking at him, slowly scrubbed the dish-pan and then the table.
"It’s like this," Leslie began. "When I met Wilson I had five hundred dollars in my pocket and a grouch against my father. Always before then, father had sent the Academy a check to pay for the semester–you have to pay there in advance for half the year–but this year he had business on hand that couldn’t be interrupted and so he called me into his office in a great hurry the morning I left home and handed over the check to me. It was made out to me and it was for five hundred dollars. That’s the price of the half year, you see. Dad handed it over and just said, ’Here, pay your own bill,’ and got out. That’s about all that’s ever between us, anyway. Well, I went up to Omaha. We’d had it out about school all summer. I was bound not to go this year, and he swore that I should go and go through college if he had to rope me and tie me and take me himself, as he put it! Father is a whirlwind of a man. But I was bound not to go, and the money let me out. I took the check and cashed it at the bank and went to the ’Hill House,’ where I met Wilson. I reasoned that the money was mine because it was to be spent on me. You see, Ross, I was mad enough to reason anything my way that I wanted."