“Yes, he’s got to know—ain’t that enough? Curse it, man, can’t you see there’s ways of doin’ these things? Sudden like that—it’d break him up.”
“Joe Gilchrist knows how to take his medicine.”
“No man better; but I know him, I tell you—the horses are his life. There’s time enough for him to know.”
“Three days,” replied the policeman shortly. “The regulations allow three days for glanders. He’s bound to know then—why not now?”
Dode Sinclair laid his hands on the other’s shoulders and looked into his stern-set face.
“Because I’m asking you, Jim,” he said. “Maybe your memory’s short; maybe you forget the early days now you’re a corporal. Try back a bit—try back to the spring of 1900, when the chinook came and thawed out the Warlodge mushy a bit previous, and you thought it’d bear and it didn’t; and the elegant fix I found you in——”
“You don’t need to tell me, Dode,” said the other, looking away up the trail. “But you know what Fenton’s like, and——” Suddenly he threw back his head. “Well!—open the door, then!”
Joe Gilchrist rode slowly through the herd. Some of the brood mares he knew by name—had known them for fifteen years.
“See that pot-bellied grey with the roan foal?” he said to Dode. “Got her for fifteen dollars off the Indians at Red Deer. We’ve had her fifteen years, and she’s had twelve foals. Seems to me she’s about done now, though. Got that peaked look.”
“Hasn’t lost her winter coat yet,” Dode answered shortly, and moved on towards the edge of the herd. “Ragged, that’s all.”