“Well, the doctor’s all wrong about him!” I exclaimed, and gave my views. The post-trader watched me in his tilted chair, with a half-whimsical smile, rolling his eternal cigar, and I finished with the story of the horse. Then the smile left his face. He got up slowly, and slowly took a number of turns round his office, pottered with some papers on his desk, and finally looked at me again.
“Tell me if he does,” he said.
“Offer the horse? I shall not remind him—and I should take it only as a loan.”
“You tell me if he does,” repeated the post-trader, now smiling again, and so we parted.
“I wonder what he didn’t say?” I thought as I proceeded to the hotel; for he had plainly pondered some remarks and decided upon silence. Between them, he and the doctor had driven me to a strong hope that McDonough would vindicate my opinion of him by making good his word. At breakfast next morning at the hotel one of the invariable characters at such breakfasts, an unshaven person in tattered overalls, with rope-scarred fists and grimy knuckles, to me unknown, asked:—
“Figure on meeting your friend McDonough?”
“Not if he doesn’t figure on meeting me.”
They all took quiet turns at looking at me until some one remarked:—
“He ain’t been in town lately.”
“I’m glad his leg’s all right,” I said.