Scott grasped his hand eagerly. “I kind of thought you felt that way,” he said, “when you hesitated in the first place. Perhaps I was a little quick on the trigger, but I have had that graft business thrown at me so often that I could not stand it any longer.”
“Don’t blame you a bit. You are a new man and not responsible for your predecessors. Wonder you did not jump me when I insulted you the first time. There was no reason why I should not have responded decently to your introduction, no matter what I may have thought of you. My name is Baxter, Yale ’12.”
“Well, I am mighty glad to know that there is a white man so close to me here,” Scott said earnestly, “for there is something rotten going on in my district and I need some help.”
“There certainly has been something rotten in your district in the past,” Baxter agreed, “and I’ll be mighty glad to help you. Let’s eat lunch here under this tree and talk it over.”
So the two pugilists sat down on the sunny slope and ate lunch together like long lost brothers.
“How long have you been on the job?” Baxter asked between bites.
“About a week now,” Scott replied. “Oh, sure,” Baxter exclaimed, “I knew that. Of course we all heard how you bought and rode Jed Clark’s horse. He certainly is a beauty. Have you had any trouble with him?”
“No,” Scott said, “no real trouble. He ran away with me the other day when a mountain lion got on our trail, but he only took me home a little faster than I intended to go. There does not seem to be a mean trait about him.”
“He killed the first man who tried to ride him,” Baxter explained. “That gave him the name of an outlaw and kept any one else from trying him. He probably never was mean and only killed the fellow by accident. You were certainly lucky to get him.”
And so they talked of little things of purely personal interest, really getting acquainted with each other while they ate their little packages of lunch.
“Now,” Baxter exclaimed with a comfortable sigh as he stretched flat on his back and gazed out across the valley, “let’s have your trouble.”
“Well,” Scott began thoughtfully, “I might as well begin at the beginning and tell you the whole story. Then you can judge for yourself. I have mighty little definite to go on and I am too green to understand that.”