“Did he say that?” and Walton's eyes flashed. “I'd like to prove to him that I'm no—But what's the use?”
“Look, he's coming!” the boy said, eagerly. “Maybe he's changed his mind. A woman was listening to what he said. Perhaps she's told him to call us back.” The fat, middle-aged farmer, bald, perspiring, and without hat or coat, strode down to them, and languidly opened the gate.
“Say, I just want to tell you fellows one more thing,” he panted, as he wiped his bearded chin with his pudgy hand, “and that is this: We may look like a lot of galoots just out of an asylum along this here road, but most of us have a grain of sense. Back here a piece a neighbor of mine sent two able-bodied men like you two about their business a month ago, and that night his barn was fired. Now, if you fellows try any game of that sort on me, I'll—”
“Dry up!” Walton cried, as he suddenly faced him. “I wasn't begging of you. I only let this boy go up to you because he is nearly starved. You can't insult me—I won't have it! I am not a tramp. As proof of it, I have a good solid gold watch here that I am willing to sell you or any one else at any fair price you may put on it.”
“Huh! let me see it.” The farmer's eyes gleamed avariciously as Walton took the watch from his pocket and extended it to him.
The man tested the weight of the timepiece by tossing it lightly in his palm, and then he pried the case open with the stiff nail of his thumb, and, with a critical eye, examined the works.
“Full-jewelled and good make,” he said; and then he gave it back. “I'm a trader,” he went on. “I make money buying and selling any old thing from a pickaxe to a piano, from a pet cat to a blooded horse; but I hain't in your market.”
“You say you 'hain't'?” Dick Warren mocked him, in fresh anger.
“No, I hain't,” the obtuse farmer repeated. “I did a fool thing like that when I was a boy. I bought a bay mare from a man who rid up to my daddy's barn without a saddle, blanket, or bridle—had just a heavy hemp rope round her neck. I bit, and chuckled all that day as I rid about, showing the gals how bright I'd been. Then the sheriff of the county hove in sight, and—well, my daddy had to pay out a hundred-dollar lawyer's fee to prove that I wasn't of age, never had had any sense, and couldn't have knowed the mare was stolen property. So, you see, when a fellow comes hiking along here without a nickel to buy a loaf of bread, and lookin' like he's been wading through swamps and sleeping in haystacks, and has a gold ticker that is good enough fer the vest-pocket of Jay Gould, why, I feel like pullin' down the left-hand corner of my right eye an' axin' him ef he hain't got a striped suit under his outside one, hot as the weather is.”
“You blamed old—” Dick Warren began, threateningly, as he bristled up to the farmer, his fists drawn; but Walton put out his hand and stopped him.