"You see, there's every sort of graft. All through life we're looking around for something we ain't got. Did you ever see a kid around his parents? Graft; it's all graft. No kiddy ever acted right because he fancied that way. He's lookin' ahead fer something he's needing, and his pop or his momma are the folks to pass it along to him. Did you ever know a kid take his physic without the promise of candy, or the certainty it would come his way? That's graft. Say, ain't the gal you fancy the biggest graft of all? You don't get nowhere with her without graft. She'll eat up everything you can hand her, from automobiles and jewels down to five-cent candy. Then when you've started getting old and sick and foolish again, having grafted a pile out of life yourself, don't every grafter you ever knew come around an' hand you cures and listen to your senile wisdom just as though they thought you the greatest proposition ever and hated to see you sick? That's graft. You've got a pile and they're needin' it."
The twinkle in the big man's eyes while he was talking found a joyous response in Gordon's. The tongue in the cheek of this native of Snake's Fall pleased him mightily. But the wide-eyed sunset of Peter McSwain's features was one of sober earnestness and admiration.
"Gee!" he cried, with prodigious appreciation. "He orter write a book!"
CHAPTER V
A LETTER HOME
The bathroom proved to be a veritable rabbit hutch, though clean. But Gordon was astonished to find how far the old life had fallen away behind him. The bareness of the room did not disturb him in the least, and, after a wash in the trough at the back of the hotel, and having dried himself on a towel that may have seen cleaner days, and refused to be inveigled by the attraction of an unclean comb, securely tied to a defective mirror in the passage to the back door, he came back to his bedroom with an added appreciation for its questionable luxury.
Mallinsbee had ridden off on a great chestnut horse, nor, until Gordon saw him in the saddle, was he definitely able to classify him in his mind. Big as the amiable stranger was, he sat in the saddle as though he had been born in it, and he handled his horse as only a cattle man can.
At supper-time he had an opportunity of studying something of his fellow guests in the house. They were a mixed gathering, but every table in the dining-room was full to overflowing. Certainly McSwain was justified in his claim to a rush of business.
It was quickly obvious to Gordon that these people were by no means natives of the place. The majority were undoubtedly business men. Shrewd, keen men of the speculative type, judging from the babel of talk going on about him. As far as he could make out the whole interest of the place was land. Land—always land—and again land.