"Why, why, yes." She was aghast at the tone, ready to shed protective tears. "Didn't you tell me—wasn't I to have charge of the little things?"
"Oh, hell!" Uncle Jim burst out. "Little things, yes—about the house I meant. Not my business. Dry up that sobbing now—and don't monkey any more with my business."
Uncle Jim got up and stalked off downtown.
CHAPTER XVII
Early one morning in March Bob picked Noah Ezekiel Foster up at a lunch counter where the hill billy was just finishing his fourth waffle.
"Want you to go out and look at two or three leases with me," said Rogeen as they got into the small car.
Bob had not lost his job with Crill over the Chandler loan. He was still lending the old gentleman's money and doing it without Mrs. Barnett's approval. But the widow had, he felt sure, done the moist, self-sacrificing, nagging stunt so persistently that her uncle had compromised by advancing much more money to Reedy Jenkins than safety justified. Crill had never mentioned the matter, but Bob knew Jenkins had got money from somewhere, and there certainly was no one else in the valley that would have lent it to him. For Reedy had managed to pick his cotton and gin it at the new gin on the Mexican side, where the bales were still stacked in the yards.
"Why do you suppose," asked Bob as they drove south past the Mexican gin, "Jenkins has left his cotton over on this side all winter?" Bob had formulated his own suspicions but wanted to learn what Noah Ezekiel thought, for Noah picked up a lot of shrewd information.
"Shucks," said Noah, "it's so plain that a way-farin' man though a cotton grower can see. He's kept it over there because he owes about three hundred thousand dollars on the American side, and as quick as he takes it across the line there'll be about as many fellows pullin' at every bale as there are ahold of them overall pants you see advertised."