‘All you have to do is convince Mort Cotton of the facts, and the whole business then lies between you and him. There’s nobody else.’
Elbert went to the door to breathe, more astonished than ever before in his life; astonished and hurt, too, by the reality of this friendliness, and the mystery of the smiling courage with which Mr. Leadley bore his pain. Sonora—to find Bart Leadley at large in Sonora—expenses to draw from—an interest in the mine. His eyelids narrowed as he turned from the corral, where the mare stood listening in the vivid afternoon light.
Then presently he saw, stretched from one branch of scrub-oak to another, between him and the corral gate, a shining thread that hung and waved in the sunlight. Just a spider’s suspension cable, but a deep meaning now about that connecting thread; so thin one wouldn’t see at all, if the sun hadn’t been shining just right. Mr. Leadley had trusted him, felt drawn to him, even before the accident in the shaft—mysterious threads binding people together. Why, that must have been the meaning of his taking the job in the leather-store. The voice called from behind:
‘But Bart Leadley isn’t dead! I don’t feel he’s dead,’ Mr. Leadley said, when Elbert hurried in. ‘No, you won’t be able to go for a doctor just yet—little later for that, maybe. The paper’s done, but there’s something to tell about Red Ante before you go—and, yes, about Mamie. I’m giving her to you outright, not that Bart isn’t a horseman—he’s that before everything else—but you might be a long time findin’ him, and I don’t want her to change hands too often. And then you’re the one who’ll need her in Sonora.... Don’t try to run her, young man. Just try to come to an understanding. Stand around and talk to her—she’s one more listenin’ mare. She likes to be consulted about family affairs. It won’t do you no harm. And don’t ever tie her up, when you camp in the open. She’ll graze within range and keep an eye on you besides, like her mother used to. You’ll get the hang of each other. Keep on her right side, and whistle when you want her—’
He put two fingers to his lips to show how. Elbert couldn’t make a sound that way. He thought of getting a whistle to carry.
As dusk thickened, a wind stirred across high country—sometimes the sound of a waterfall, sometimes the sound of the sea in the top branches of big timber. The mountains grew heavy on Elbert’s heart with the falling night. Meanwhile he was encouraged to bake a honey-cake for his own supper.
‘No, you don’t need salt nor sodie—all that’s in the flour—just can-milk and honey in the batter, an’ grease on the pan.... Not too near the coals, an’ keep turnin’ her round and round. You’ll have a cake yet, young man, and what you have over you can feed Mamie to-morrow. She’ll like it, if it’s good.’
‘Just a trickle—’
Elbert heard the words from time to time through the first half of the night. Then for a while delirium was unmistakable: