Fragments of a song, bawled jocosely, came to the Schoolmaster's ears as he tramped down the road to the cottage, on the edge of the township.
He brooded over the change in Davey, asking himself how he came to be kicking over the traces; why he was going to the dogs with the ne'er-do-wells of McNab's, what Donald Cameron would say to it if he knew; how he could fail to know; what his mother was feeling and thinking about it. She would know, of that he was certain. Not much escaped those clear, still eyes of hers.
In the morning when he saw the boy again, he tried to speak to him; but Davey swung past, dragging his hat over his face, shamefacedly.
The Schoolmaster got into the habit of watching him, trying to see his face. Sometimes it surprised him. He had seen Davey thrashing a steer until the blood poured from its tawny hide. He had seen him swinging along the roads on sale days after the midday meal, reckless and laughing, his head thrown back, a couple of McNab's men at his heels. He had heard him singing drunkenly on his way home to the hills in the evenings.
He went after him one evening, when Johnson, Cameron's head stockman, had gone on early, and Davey was going home alone.
"Look here, Davey," he said, riding beside him, "what's this game you're on? You'll have to drop it."
Davey laughed.
"You're like the rest of them," he said bitterly. "Think a fellow never grows up! I've been treated like a kid too long. The old man's been making me the laughing stock of the country ... and he's got to understand I'm a man ... and I've got to be treated like one."
"You needn't go drinking and chucking money about at McNab's to be that—"
Davey's eyes veered on him.