The deep tone was little better than a grunt.
Seth nodded, and gazed out of the window. The parlor window looked out in the direction of the Reservation. If he intended to convey a hint it was not taken. Old Rube had expected Seth to join him outside for their usual smoke. That after-supper prowl had been their habit for years. He wanted to talk to him.
“I was yarnin’ with Jimmy Parker s’afternoon,” said Rube.
Seth looked round.
The old man edged heavily round the table till he came to the high-backed, rigid armchair that had always been his seat in this room.
“He says the crops there are good,” he went on, indicating the Reservation with a nod of his head toward the window.
“It’ll be a good year all round, I guess,” Seth admitted. 110
“Yes, I dare say it will be,” was the answer.
Rube was intently packing his pipe, and the other waited. Rube’s deep-set eyes had lost their customary twinkle. The deliberation with which he was packing his pipe had in it a suggestion of abstraction. Filling a pipe is a process that wonderfully indicates the state of a man’s mind.
“Jimmy’s worried some. ‘Bout the harvest, I guess,” Rube said presently, adjusting his pipe in the corner of his mouth, and testing the draw of it. But his eyes were not raised to his companion’s face.