"I know, till you heard about Hettie and—and—but go on. I'm a listenin'."
"Well, there ain't much to tell." Dick Wrinkle was perspiring freely. He took off his hat and wiped his red neck and bald pate with an impatient hand. "Being hit that way, you see, was the last thing I remembered. Folks say I must have wandered about over the plains like a wild animal that didn't know how to do a thing but eat and drink what I could run across. Some cowboys tuck me up and l'arned me to cook, and I followed that for a long time. Then, t'other day, they put me on the back of a bucking bronco, just for the fun o' the thing. I stayed on as long as I could, but he finally flung me over on my head. That fetched me to. The whole thing come back like a flash. Several years had slipped by, but when I come to my right mind I thought that same storm was raging. I refused to believe so much time had passed till a cowboy showed me the date on a newspaper, and that plumb floored me."
"You don't say!" Old Wrinkle stroked his beard thoughtfully and, in paternal sympathy, avoided his son's anxious eyes. "Well, well, that was all-powerful curious, but—but I've read of sech things, and maybe Hettie has, too; if she hain't, I'll try to show her that—I mean—but I reckon I'd better trot over to the spring-house and kinder lead your Ma up to it, and not have it sprung too suddenlike. She ain't one o' your weak sort that flops down at the slightest report of good or bad luck, but we'd better be on the safe side. I'll tell yore Ma, I say, an' then I'll go up to the big house an see if I can do anything with Hettie."
"Well, maybe you'd better," Dick Wrinkle agreed, slowly, "and I reckon you'd better give her a full account o' how it all happened. I don't want to be eternally going over it. I've had enough of it myself."
"You mean about—yore crazy spell?" The old man stared inquiringly.
"Yes, about all that. I've told you—I've done give you full particulars. You know as much about it as I do. A man out of his right senses don't remember anything worth while, nohow."
"Well, I hope I'll git it straight, an' not backside foremost. It would be funny if I begun it whar the bronco throwed you and ended up in the tornado. Het will have to be worked fine, Dick. She sorter feels 'er oats now. She always did hold 'er head in the air, but it's higher now since she got rich. She mought take a fool notion that the bronco throwed you powerful soon after her change o' luck."
"I don't want 'er dern money!" Dick Wrinkle snarled, his glance shifting unsteadily. "I don't need anybody's cash. I've got a thousand dollars in my pocket now."
"You say you have?" The eyes under the bushy gray brows fluttered thoughtfully. "Well, if I was you, I believe, Dick, that I'd not haul it out an' make a show of it. You see—well, you see, it's like this: Het's a thinkin' woman, an' sorter keen-eyed at times, when she wants to be, an' lookin' at a wad like that mought—I don't say, it would—but it mought, bein' a sort o' money-maker herself, it mought set her to wonderin' how a feller clean out o' his senses could accumulate so much cash in times as hard as these. If crazy fellers kin load up like that out thar, men of brains could walk clean off with the State."
Dick Wrinkle started slightly and let his glance trail along the ground, in several directions before lifting it again to the would-be helpful countenance before him.