"I think," he said, "that that man must be crazy, or something. There were thirty cents coming to me in change. He tossed out a quarter and said, 'Two bits,' and then a dime and said, 'Short bit—thank you,' and closed up the drawer and started off. I didn't want more than was coming to me, so I handed out a nickel and said, 'There, that makes it right.' The man looked at it, laughed, and pushed it back, and said, 'Keep it, sonny; I haven't got any chickens.' Now, I'd like to know what it all meant."
We both laughed, and when Jack recovered his composure he said:
"It means simply that we're getting out into the mining country, where no coin less than a dime circulates. He didn't happen to have three dimes, so the best he could do was to give you either twenty-five or thirty-five cents, and he was letting you have the benefit of the situation by making it thirty-five. A bit is twelve and a half cents, and a short bit ten cents. A two-bit piece is a quarter."
"Yes; but what about his not keeping chickens?"
"Oh, that was simply his humorous way of saying that all coins under a dime are fit only for chicken feed."
We camped that night beside the trail near a little log store. "What you want to do," said the man in charge, "is to take your horses down there behind them trees to park 'em for the night. Good feed down there."
"'To park,'" said Jack, in a low voice. "New and interesting verb. He means turn 'em out to grass. We mustn't appear green." Then he said to the man:
"Yes, we reckoned we'd park 'em down there to-night."
The next day was the coldest we had experienced, and we were glad to walk to keep warm. We were getting among the smaller of the hills, with their tops covered with the peculiarly dark pine-trees which give the whole range its name. We camped at night under a high bank which afforded some protection from the chilly east wind. Now that we were all sleeping in the wagon there was no room in it to store the sacks of horse feed which we had, and we knew that if we put them outside that Old Blacky would eat them up before morning.
"There's nothing to do," said Jack, "but to carry them around up on that bank and hang them down with ropes. Leave 'em about twelve feet from the bottom and ten feet from the top, and I don't think the Pet can get them."