I've picked my man. It don't make any
difference to me how many times he played hookey when he was a kid, or
how many men he's licked since he growed up. I've hired him to help run
the Double Cross, and run it right; and I ain't a bit afraid but what
he'll make good." He smiled and knocked the ashes gently from his pipe
into the palm of his hand, because the pipe was a meerschaum just
getting a fine, fawn coloring around the base of the bowl, and was dear
to the heart of him. "Down to the last, white chip," he added slowly,
"he'll make good. He ain't the kind of a man that will lay down on his
job." He got up and yawned, elaborately casual in his manner.
"You lay around and take it easy this afternoon," he said. "I've got to
jog over to the river field; the boys are over there, working a little
bunch we threw in yesterday. To-morrow we can ride around a little, and
kinda get the lay of the land. You better go by-low, right now--you look
as if it wouldn't do you any harm!" Whereupon he wisely took himself off
and left Ford alone.
The door he pulled shut after him closed upon a mental battle-ground.
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