“No, because she’s never seen anything else——” Joe Gilchrist broke off with a gesture of uneasiness. “Shut that door; I want to ask you something.”
The young man obeyed mechanically, and when he turned, the other was leaning forward in the pine pole-rocker, whittling flakes from a plug of tobacco.
“I want to ask you what you think I’ve been doing the last fifteen years,” he drawled. “You ought to know, but if you don’t, I’ll put you wise. I’ve been tryin’ to make money out of breeding horses. It ain’t daisy-pickin’, but after hopin’ a bit, despairin’ a bit, and workin’ a bit, I’ve made it—there it is on four legs in a pretty middlin’ bunch of horses, and what’s it for? Me? You know my wants, Dode Sinclair. No, it’s for Joyce. Joyce’s got to have her chance.”
He stopped abruptly, with an indrawing of his thin lips that the other knew well, and commenced to rub the tobacco between his horny palms.
Dode Sinclair still stared at his boots.
“You’re going to take her East,” he muttered. “You’re going back on the prairie.”
Joe Gilchrist rose slowly from his chair and pointed through the window with the stem of his pipe.
“You see Tin Kettle buttie,” he said evenly, “there to the east of Hungerford Lake: when they read my will they’ll find they’ve got to pack me up there someway—in the democrat, I guess—but that’s where I’m goin’ to be, and I’m tellin’ you now so’s you’ll remember when you feel like sayin’ I’ve gone back on the prairie. But—Joyce’s got to have her chance.”
He stood looking out of the window for a space, then turned with the air of one disposing of an unpleasant topic.
“You can round up. The boy’ll be here any day after a week. I’m sellin’ half the bunch. You’re to run the place when—we go.”