"Thank you!" said Lettis. "Shall I be able to see him this afternoon?"

"Oh, mercy, yes!" said Miss Mary Ann. "Tom is home all day."

"I can thank the kind fates for that," said Lettis. "I had begun to think he was a myth," and he fell in upon the tender meat with the vigorous appet.i.te of youth and a good digestion.

Nathaniel Lettis was by no means a fool, and he had experience in business, but the mainspring of the young fellow was frankness, and in the course of the dinner he told his errand. Mr. Demilt had written to his firm explaining the advantages of starting a straw-board factory in Fairfield. It was too small a thing for the firm to be interested in, but Lettis had a small capital which he wished to invest in an enterprise of his own handling, and it had struck him that there might be a chance for independence; therefore he had come to find out the lay of the land.

Red Saunders' first-glance liking of the stranger deepened as he told of his business. The cowman did not blame people who took devious ways and dealt in ambiguities, for his experience in the world, which was pretty fairly complete, had told him that craft was a necessity for weak natures; nevertheless he cared not for those who used it.

In his part of the West, a man would no more think of giving a false impression of his financial standing to alter his position in one's regard, than he would wear corsets. Money was of small consequence; its sequelae of less. Men spoke openly of how much they made; how they liked the job; how their claims were paying; such matters were neutral ground of chance conversation, as the weather is in the East. The rapid and unpredictable changes of fortune gave a tendency to make light of one's present condition.

A man would say "I'm busted" without any more feeling than he would say "I have a cold." Now, in Fairfield, that is not likely lonesome in that respect, one of the princ.i.p.al objects in life was to conceal the poverty which would persist in sticking its gaunt elbows through the cloth of words spread over it. Red asked straight-forward questions--shrewd ones, too--seeing that the other was one of his own kind and would not resent it.

Lettis wanted nothing better than a chance to expand on the subject. It was close to his heart. He had been a subordinate about as long as a proud and masterful young fellow ought to be.

Now he was quivering to try his own strength, and seeing, for his part, that his host was inspired with a genuine interest and not curiosity, he gave him all the information in his power.

"But a plant like that is going to cost some money, ain't it?"

asked Red.

"Too much for me, I'm afraid," replied Lettis. "I have five thousand to put in, and I suppose I could borrow the rest, but that's saddling the business with too heavy charges right in the beginning. Still, it may not be as bad as I fancy."

Red drummed on the table, thinking. "I wouldn't mind getting into a business of some kind, as long as it was making things," he said.

"I don't hanker to keep store much--suppose I go along with you, when you look up how much straw is raised and the rest of it?"

"Would you?" cried the young fellow, eagerly. "By George, sir, I wish you could see your way clear to take hold of it. Could you stand ten thousand, for instance? Excuse the question, but I'm so anxious over this----"

"Lord! What's the harm of asking facts?" said Red. Then with a gleam of genial pride, "Ten thousand wouldn't break me by a durn sight".

Lettis' boyish face fairly glowed. "It was my good angel made me stop in front of your fence," he said. "I saw you all eating in here and you looked so jolly, that I thought I'd stop, on the chance you might be the man I was looking for; now I'll go right on and see Mr. Demilt and find out what he wants to do in the matter."

"Wait for the waggon and you can ride," said Red. "Boy's gone home to see his dad about working for me this afternoon; in the meantime, it you're not too proud to take hold and help us with this dod-ratted fence, I'll be obliged to you."

"Bring on your fence! I'm ready," said Lettis.

"Come on, boys!" said Red, and the party rose from the table.

Later the waggon came up.

"Well, good day, Lettis," said Red. "If you can't get quarters anywhere else, come on and help me hold the barn down."

"Do you sleep in the barn? Then I'll come back sure. Tell you how it is, Mr. Saunders. I've been stuck up in a three-by-nine office for four years--nose held to 'A to M, Western branch,' and if I'm not sick of it there's no such thing as sickness; to get out and breathe the fresh air, to see the country, to be my own master!

Well, sir, it just makes me tremble to think of it. I hope you find the straw-board what you want to take up."

"I shouldn't wonder if it would be," answered Red. "We'll make a corking team to do business, Lettis, I can see that--so cautious and full of tricks, and all that."

The young man laughed and then sobered down. "Of course, I know the whole thing would look insane to most people," he said st.u.r.dily, "but I've been in business long enough to see sharp gentlemen come to grief in spite of their funny work. I don't believe a man'll come to any more harm by believing people mean well by him than he would by working on the other tack."

"Good boy!" said Red, slapping him on the back. "You stick to that and you'll get a satisfaction out of it that money couldn't buy you. Another thing, you'd never get a cent out of me in this world it you were one of these smooth young men. My eye teeth are cut, son, for all I may seem easy. The man that does me a trick has a chance for bad luck, and you can bet on that."

"Lord! I believe you!" replied Lettis, taking in the dimensions of his new friend. "Well, good-bye for the present, Mr.

Saunders--thank you for the dinner and still more for the heart you have put into me."

At six o'clock the fence was not quite finished.

"If you'll stay with me until the thing's done, I'll stand another dollar all around," said Red. "I don't want it to stare me in the face to-morrow."

The eldest spoke up. "We'll stay with you, Mr. Saunders, but we don't want any money for it, do we, fellers?"

"No," they replied in chorus, well meaning what they said.

"Why, you're perfectly welcome to the cash!" said Red.

"And you're welcome to the work," retorted the boy. "We're paid plenty as it is."

"If that's the way you look at it, I'm much obliged to you," said Red, who would not have discouraged such a feeling for anything.

He said to himself, "This don't seem much like the kind of people I've heard inhabited these parts. Those boys are all right.

Reckon it you use people decent they'll play up to your lead, no matter what country it is."

At seven thirty the fence was done, gorgeous in a coat of fresh red paint, and the hands departed, each with a slice of Miss Mattie's chocolate cake, a thing to make the heathen G.o.ds feel contemptuous of ambrosia.

They went straight to the blacksmith's shop, where they were anxiously expected.

"Good Lord!" he said a little later, "it you fellers will talk one at a time, p'r'aps I can make out what's happened. Now, Sammy, sp'ose you do the speaking?"

Whereupon Sammy faithfully chronicled the events of the day. The boys had behaved themselves as if there was nothing out of the common happening while they were with Red, being held up by a sense of pride, but naturally, the splendid physique of the cowman, his picturesque attire, his abandoned way of scattering money around and the air of a frolic he had managed to impart to a day's hard work, all had effect on imagination, and the boys were very much excited.

"I'd like to know how many Injuns that feller's killed!" piped up the youngest. "My! he could grab hold of a man and wring his neck like a chicken."

"Aw, tst!" remonstrated the blacksmith. But the elders stood by the younker this time.

"Yes, he could, Mr. Farrel!" said they. "You ought to seen him when he rolled up his sleeves! He's got an arm on him like the hind leg of a horse, and he uses an ax like a tack-hammer. He got mad once when he pounded his thumb, and busted the post square in two with one crack."

"Well, he looks like a husky man," admitted the blacksmith. "But why didn't you boys take the extry dollar when he made the offer?

He 'pears to know what he was about and looks kind of foolish to say 'no' to it."

There was a moment's silence. "We wanted to show him we were just as good as the folks he knew," explained the eldest, somewhat shame-facedly.

The blacksmith straightened himself. "Quite right, too," said he. "We _air_, when you come to that." A little pride is a wonderful tonic. Each unit of that gathering felt himself the better for the display of it.

In the meantime, Red was repairing the ravages of the day opposite Miss Mattie at a supper table which was bountifully spread. Miss Mattie put two and two together, and found they meant a larger sum of eatables than she had hitherto felt sufficient, and with a little pang at the thought of the inadequacy of her first offering to her cousin, provided such fatness as the land of Fairfield boasted.

They discussed the events of the day with satisfaction.

"My!" said Miss Mattie. "You do things wholesale while you are about it, Will, don't you?"

Red smiled in pleased acknowledgment. "I'm no peanut stand, old lady," said he. "I like to see things move."