I've got a lot of business on to-day, and we'll have to rouse Curly Roper out of bed to buy his pack outfit.

Find the coffee, will you?
I couldn't." For a moment Stevens stood over him.
"See here, Aldous, you didn't mean what you said last night, did you?
You didn't mean--that ?" "Confound it, yes! Can't you understand plain English, Stevens?
Don't you believe a man when he's a gentleman?
Buy that outfit! Why, I'd buy twenty outfits to-day, I'm--I'm feeling so fine, Stevens!" For the first time in forty-eight hours Stevens smiled.
"I was wondering if I hadn't been dreaming," he said.

"Once, a long time ago, I guess I felt just like you do now." With which cryptic remark he went for the coffee.
Aldous looked up in time to see the boy stagger sleepily out of the tepee.
There was something pathetic about the motherlessness of the picture, and he understood a little of what Stevens had meant.
An hour later, with breakfast over, they started for Curly's.

Curly was pulling on his boots when they arrived, while his wife was frying the inevitable bacon in the kitchen.
"I hear you have some horses for sale, Curly," said Aldous.
"Hi 'ave." "How many ?" "Twenty-nine, 'r twenty-eight--mebby twenty-seven." "How much ?" Curly looked up from the task of pulling on his second boot.
"H'are you buying 'orses or looking for hinformation ?" he asked.
"I'm buying, and I'm in a hurry.

How much do you want a head ?" "Sixty, 'r six----" "I'll give you sixty dollars apiece for twenty-eight head, and that's just ten dollars apiece more than they're worth," broke in Aldous, pulling a check-book and a fountain pen from his pocket.