Dutch bristled like a turkey rooster. “What do you mean by that?”
The Irishman smiled derisively. “I reckon you can guess if you try real hard.”
Dutch fumed, but did no guessing out loud. His reputation was a whitewashed one. Queer stories had been whispered about him. He had been a nester, and it was claimed that calves certainly not his had been found carrying his brand. The man had been full of explanations, but there came a time when explanations no longer were accepted. He was invited to become an absentee at his earliest convenience. This was when he had been living across the mountains. Curly had been one of those who had given the invitation. He had taken the hint and left without delay. Now he was paying the debt he owed young Flandrau.
Though the role Curly had been given was that of the hardened desperado he could not quite live up to the part. As Buck turned to leave the bunk house the boy touched him on the arm.
“How about Cullison?” he asked, very low.
But Buck would not have it that way. “What about him?” he demanded out load, his voice grating like steel when it grinds.
“Is he—how is he doing?”
“What’s eatin’ you? Ain’t he dying fast enough to suit you?”
Flandrau shrank from the cruel words, as a schoolboy does from his teacher when he jumps at him with a cane. He understood how the men were feeling, but to have it put into words like this cut him deeply.
It was then that Maloney made a friend of the young man for life. He let a hand drop carelessly on Curly’s shoulder and looked at him with a friendly smile in his eyes, just as if he knew that this was no wolf but a poor lost dog up against it hard.