Free Valley Thieves by Max Brand Page B

She took it at once. He put his bald old head back on the edge of the chair.
    "You ain't a bad girl, M'ria," he said. "Gimme a kiss."
    She leaned over him and kissed him on the lips. It must have been a little hard for her to do, but most youngsters are accomplished hypocrites if hypocrisy will give them advantage in the family.
    "You make that soup pretty good, too," said the old man. "You make it better than that Alice ever done. I'm glad she gone and got married. Get out of here, now."
    Maria got out. She had just time to pass one glance at Chuck, and the glint in her eyes said that she and Chuck knew each other fairly well. She was receiving sparks as well as passing them out, I should have said.
    When the door was closed after her, I was glad of the interruption. I was glad that the old man had some food to comfort his stomach while he talked to me. He got out a pipe and loaded it, and put it in his toothless mouth. He had a wad of blackened string wound around the stem of the pipe so that he could hold it better between his gums. He went on examining me.
    "You bring up thirteen dollars and forty cents, and you're goin' to buy Cary cattle, are you?" he said.
    "I brought along no money to buy. I wanted to see the cows and find out what the prices might be."
    "How long you been around these parts?"
    "I've had a ranch for about eight years."
    "And you don't know that strangers ain't welcome in Cary Valley?"
    "I don't know," said I. "Of course, I've heard that people don't come up here very much. Not most people. But I've seen some of the Cary cattle, and I wanted to buy some of them."
    "You're a bright man. You got an education. A gent that's got an education is sure to be bright," said the old man, "and you stand there and try to tell me that you didn't know that you wasn't wanted up here?"
    "I thought it was worth a chance," said I. "I didn't know, I can tell you, that you had gunmen out watching for strangers. But I'd seen the Cary cattle, and I wanted to buy some of them."
    "Why did you want to buy 'em? Because they're so good?"
    "No. They're not good. There's no size to them," I said.
    "No? No size to my cows?" shouted the old man, suddenly enraged. And Chuck took a little hitch step toward me as though he were going to bash me in the face with his fist.
    "There's no size to them. They're all legs," said I, "but they fat up well in a short season. If I could cross them on the short-legged breed I've got, I might manage to turn out a herd with size and one that fats up early in the season."
    "You're a fool. He talks like a poor fool, Grandpa," said Chuck.
    "Does he?" said that terrible old man. "If you was to listen to some fool talk like this, you might learn somethin', though. He's right. And doggone me if it ain't a pleasure to hear sense talked once in a while, instead of the blatherin' blither I get up here, most of the time."
    Chuck was pushed into the background of the conversation by this blast. The old man went on:
    "You sound like you might have had a real business idea. But I dunno. It don't sound just right. You know you could 'a' got my cattle without ridin' clear up here. More'n once a year I send beef down to Blue Water and Belling Lake."
    "I only got the idea the other day," said I.
    The old man closed his eyes and smoked through a long moment.
    "No," he announced at last. "You're lyin'. Doggone me if I wouldn't almost like to believe you. But I don't. Now, you come clean and tell me what really brought you up here."
    "I've told you," said I.
    "Yeah? You told me? Put up your hand and swear."
    Well, I'm ashamed to say it, but I raised my right hand and swore. I think most of you would have done the same thing, if you'd been standing in my boots.
    When I finished, Grandpa said:
    "It ain't goin' to do. There's some folks, built along the lines of this gent, Chuck, that would rather put their hand into the fire than to swear a wrong oath, but he ain't quite that simple. No, sir, he's got more brains than