“And she wants a thousand dollars in money or free gold—a thousand dollars to-day?”
“No use asking me what for, Dan, for I don’t know,” confessed Lyster. “I can’t see why she don’t tell you herself; but you know she has been a little queer since the fever—childish, whimsical, and all that. Maybe as she has not yet handled any specie from your bonanza, she wants some only to play with, and assure herself it is real.”
“Less than a thousand in money and dust would do for a plaything,” remarked Overton. “Of course she has a right to get what she wants; but that amount will be of no use to her here in camp, where there is not a thing in the world to spend it for.”
“Maybe she wants to pension off some of her Indian friends before she leaves,” suggested Max—“old Akkomi and Flap-Jacks, perhaps. I am a little like Miss Slocum in my wonder as to how she endures them, though, of course, the squaw is a necessity.”
“Oh, well, she was not brought up in the world of Miss Slocum—or your world, either,” answered Overton. “You should make allowance for that.”
“Make allowance—I?” and Lyster looked at him curiously. “Are you trying to justify her to me? Why, man, you ought to know by this time what keeps me here 258 a regular lounger around camp, and there is no need to make excuses for her to me. I thought you knew.”
“You mean you—like her?”
“Worse than that,” said Max, with his cheery, confident smile. “I’m trying to get her to say she likes me.”
“And she?”
“Well, she won’t meet me as near half-way as I would like,” he confessed; “talks a lot of stuff about not being brought up right, and not suited to our style of life at home, and all that. But she did seem rather partial to me when she was ill and off guard. Don’t you think so? That is all I have to go on; but it encourages me to remember it.”