You've got away
with one call because--well, because I was fool enough to let you.
Mebbe another time I won't feel so foolish."
There were few words spoken between them during the following hours of
the morning, though several times Dade caught Calumet watching him with
a puzzled, amused smile in which there was a sort of slumbering
ferocity. By the middle of the morning the front of the ranchhouse had
been raised with the assistance of jacks, the old rotted sills taken
out and new ones substituted. About an hour before noon, while
Calumet, in woolen shirt and overalls, his face dirty, his hair
tousled, and his temper none too good, was wedging the sill tight
against the studding above it, he became aware of Betty standing near
him. She nodded toward the sill.
"That makes an improvement already," she said.
"Ye-es?" he said, with an irritating drawl.
There was a silence; she stood, regarding his back, a faint smile on
her face.
"I want to compliment you on your judgment of horses," she persisted,
in an attempt to make him talk; "the ones you bought are fine."
Calumet drove a wedge home viciously. But he did not answer.
"I've been checking up your other purchases," she went on; "and I find
that you followed the list I gave you faithfully."
He turned and looked up.
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