"M-m?"
"Stark says a man that would come from Bonesteel a day like yesterday was a fool."
"Why will he partake of the fuel he brought to keep from freezing, then?"
"Well, Stark is too lazy to care. He's advertised to prove up, you know, and he always has something to say about working."
"Used to come to town after the mail during the rainy spell last summer, and upon seeing Baptiste at work in the field, cry 'Just look at that fool nigger, a workin' in the rain.'" Both laughed. A few minutes later the town was thrown into an uproar over the incident related in the last chapter.
Now it happened that day that Augustus M. Barr went to the postoffice and received a heavy envelope. He glanced through the contents with a serious face, and put the papers in his pocket. On the way to his claim, he took them out and went through them again, and returned them to his pocket. A few minutes later he reached into the pocket, drew out what he thought to be the papers, and silently tore them to threads, and flung the bundle of paper to the winds.
When Jean Baptiste left the town for his little sod house on the hill, he saw A.M. Barr just ahead of him. He followed the same route that Barr had taken, and when he reached the draw on the town site that lay between his place and the town, he espied some papers. He picked them up, continued on his way, and presently observed the torn ball of paper that Barr had cast away. He idly opened the package he held. He wondered at the contents and as he read them through he became curious. The papers had to do with something between Augustus M. Barr, Isaac Syfe, and Peter Kaden.
"Now that is singular," he said to himself. He continued to read through the papers, and as he did so, another fact became clear to him. Kaden was a sad character. And because he was so forlorn, never cultivated any friendship, lived alone and never visited, the people had begun to regard him as crazy. But now Jean Baptiste understood something that neither he, nor any of the people in the country had dreamed of. He read on. He recalled that the summer before a young lady, beautiful, refined but strange at times, had stayed at the Barr claim. Barr had introduced her as his niece. The people wondered at her seclusion. She had a fine claim. Barr had come to him once and spoken about selling it, stating that the girl had fallen heir to an estate in England and was compelled to return therewith.... Later he had succeeded in selling the place. She had disappeared; but he had never forgotten the expressions he had observed upon the face of Christine.... He had thought it singular at the time but had thought little of it since. He read further into the papers, and learned about some other person, a woman, but concerning her he could gather nothing definite. He could not understand about Christine either, except that she had fallen heir to nothing in England; was not there, but not more than three hundred miles from where he stood at that moment. But there was before him what he did understand, and which was that there was something between Augustus M. Barr, Isaac Syfe, and Peter Kaden, and something was going to happen.