"Cutting wood, just now."
Baldwin shook his head.
"How Pollard uses so much help is more'n I can see. He's got a range back of the hills, I know, and some cattle on it; but he's sure a waster of good labor. Take me, now. I need a hand right bad to help me with the cows."
"I'm more or less under contract with Pollard," said Terry. He added:
"You talk as if Pollard might be a queer sort."
Baldwin seemed to be disarmed by this frankness.
"Ain't you noticed anything queer up there? No? Well, maybe Pollard is all right. He's sort of a newcomer around here. That big house of his ain't more'n four or five years old. But most usually a man buys land and cattle around here before he builds him a big house. Well—Pollard is an open-handed cuss, I'll say that for him, and maybe they ain't anything in the talk that goes around."
What that talk was Terry attempted to discover, but he could not. Jack
Baldwin was a cautious gossip.
Since they had finished buying, the storekeeper perched on the edge of his selling counter and began to pass the time of the day. It began with the usual preliminaries, invariable in the mountains.
"What's the news out your way?"
"Nothing much to talk about. How's things with you and your family?"