‘Would you like to see it on the model?’ Elbert inquired.
The other didn’t seem to hear. ‘Now, what would you expect me to lay out for a little tan kack like this?’ he asked.
‘Hundred-seventy-five,’ Elbert said throatily. ‘Would you like to look at it on the model?’
‘No, it might confuse me a whole lot to see it on your dappled gray. Anyway, I can see Buddy Pitcairn made her from here. I’m shore partial about him monogram when I fork leather.’
A check was written with the remark: ‘You can ship her to me, care of Mort Cotton’s ranch at San Forenso, Arizona, and take plenty of time to look up this paper, young man. I never feel sure that the bank will like it, when I write out money for myself.’
The easy, rapid writing hinted an intelligence in curious contrast to the quaint speech and big loose hands, blackened and rounded to tool handles. The name on the check was Robert Leadley, and that was but the first of several calls which this customer made at the leather-store, ostensibly for further purchases, but always lingering to talk with Elbert. The latter had never known any one so easy to be with, and one late afternoon at closing time, when Mr. Leadley, with embarrassment, invited him to go out to supper, Elbert had been on the point of asking the same thing. They stopped for a soft drink at an old brown rail in Main Street.
‘I ’member when this was a great sportin’ place,’ Mr. Leadley said. ‘I used to come in here from the mountains with gold in a little chamois sack. Had a California claim in those days. I’m back in Arizona now, not a great ways from where I began. When the time came for me to go out this last trip, I felt like coming over to L.A., just like I used to from these mountains. Why, I was in this very place one night when a man was shot. Just yonder by that plate of hard-boiled eggs, he went down, callin’ on a woman.’
‘I didn’t quite understand what you mean by “going out,”’ said Elbert, not wanting to miss anything.
‘When you’ve got a claim in the mountains and you figure on leaving, you designates it “going out.”’
‘Is it a gold mine?’