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He kep' store then close by whar we lived, and he give her most anythin' she wanted. She called it 'credit'. "One day Bailey went off to Montreal, where Bergstein had a place fixed up for her. I'd been off trappin' up Big Shanty, and when I come back home next night she was gone. She didn't come back for most a week, and when she come I see she was drunk. Bailey come back the next day.
An hour later the two, with Bergstein, stood on the veranda before the latter's departure. "Is there anything else you can think of that we need, Billy?" Thayor asked. "That's about all I can think of," returned Holcomb, glancing over the long list that Bergstein held in his hand. "He was a hard-working man," Bergstein casually remarked, referring to the uncle who had so suddenly succumbed.
"Perhaps so but I don't think so now, and I'll tell you why in a minute. You remember, too, that Jimmy said he was all right that night when he got through work and put him in the barn for the night?" Thayor raised his eyes in surprise. "That barn was locked," Holcomb went on, "and Bergstein had the key." "What was the veterinary's opinion?" Thayor had asked seriously, after a moment's thought.
Holcomb lighted a candle, extracted a bunch of keys, unlocked a cupboard, and handed Bergstein a black bottle. "I thought you were in Canada," he said, eyeing Bergstein closely. "I jest got back I didn't wait for the funeral." "Well, keep that horse covered," Holcomb added; "you'll find some extra heavy blankets back of the feed bin."
Then suddenly he looked straight into the eyes of his employer. "I know a man may sometimes be wrong in sizing up another," he began, "but Bergstein seems to me to have considerable of the peddler in him." "And yet you say, Billy, the horses he sent were sound, and the price fair." "The price he asked was not," replied Holcomb. "I gave him what I knew they were worth he wasn't long in taking it.
Though Bergstein left Big Shanty at a quarter before eight in the morning with the order for the horses in his pocket, it was noon by the sawmill whistle before he reached Morrison's. There he engaged a single rig to take him out to the railroad. What he had done, or where he had been in the meantime, no one knew.
Thayor met the owl-like eyes grimly, a bitter smile playing about his unshaven chin, but he did not confirm the statement. "But there's one that'll never trouble ye no more," exclaimed Dinsmore, looking queerly at the man beside him. "Who?" asked Thayor. "Bergstein, damn him!" returned Dinsmore slowly; "I seen him." "But he left the camp days ago the morning I discharged him."
All the accounts had now been gone over even to the minutest detail, and Billy felt supremely happy and relieved at his employer's enthusiastic approval of all he had done, so much so that even the one discordant note Bergstein seemed of vague importance. He crossed the clearing on his way to his cabin cautiously, feeling his way with his feet to avoid tripping over an unseen root.
The night was intensely dark so dark that as he neared his cabin he was forced to stop and feel for his card of matches. At that instant someone in the pitch darkness ahead of him coughed. "Is that you, Freme?" called Holcomb, watching the sputtering sulphur blaze into flame. "No," answered a hard nasal voice to the right, and within a rod of him; "it's me Bergstein.
They, too, looked at Thayor's purchase as a gold mine. Morrison had done a thriving business with the stout little tumblers with bottoms half an inch thick. Bergstein frequently treated when they growled over the bad food he treated liberally, and they forgot. He blamed it on Thayor and they agreed.
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