"I can look fer him."
"Shade!"—wily Arch purposely spoke loud enough for Shade's wife to hear, and he saw her thin, worn, shrewish face turn eagerly—"I'll give ye just fifty dollars to stay here in the house an' git well fer two more weeks. You know why, an' you know hit's wuth it to me. What you say?"
Shade rubbed his stubbled chin ruminatively and his wife Mandy broke in sharply:
"Take it, you fool!"
Apparently Shade paid no heed to the advice nor the epithet, which was not meant to be offensive, but he knew that Mandy wanted a cow of just that price and a cow she would have; while he needed cartridges and other little "fixin's," and he owed for moonshine up a certain creek, and wanted more just then and badly. But mental calculation was laborious and he made a plunge:
"Not a cent less'n seventy-five, an' I ain't goin' to argue with ye."
Arch scowled.
"Split the difference!" he commanded.
"All right."
A few minutes later Arch was loping back up the river road. Within an hour he had won old Jason to a non-committal silence and straight-way volunteered to show the colonel the outcroppings of his coal. And old Jason mounted his sorrel mare and rode with the party up the creek.