“I know what it is now,” he said to Jud Carpenter at the mill that morning; “she is half in love with that slow, studious fellow.”
Jud laughed: “Say, excuse me, sah—but hanged if you ain't got all the symptoms, y'self, boss?”
Travis flushed:
“Oh, when I start out to do a thing I want to do it—and I'm going to take her with me, or die trying.”
Jud laughed again: “Leave it to me—I'll fix the goggle-eyed fellow.”
That night when the door bell rang at Westmoreland, Jud Carpenter was ushered into Clay's workshop. He sat down and looked through his shaggy eyebrows at the lint and dust and specimens of ore. Then he spat on the floor disgustedly.
“Sorry to disturb you, but be you a surveyor also?”
The big bowed glasses looked at him quietly and nodded affirmatively.
“Wal, then,” went on Jud, “I come to git you to do a job of surveying for the mill. It's a lot of timber land on the other side of the mountain—some twenty miles off. The Company's bought five thousand acres of wood and they want it surveyed. What'll you charge?”
Clay thought a moment: “Going and coming, on horse-back—it will take me a week,” said Clay thoughtfully. “I shall charge a hundred dollars.”