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Updated: May 6, 2025
The saloon keepers sold their wares for cash and, as the men of the town and the farmers who drove into town felt that without drink life was unbearable, cash always could be found for the purpose of getting drunk. Hugh McVey's father, John McVey, had been a farm hand in his youth but before Hugh was born had moved into town to find employment in a tannery.
Woolly felt of his swollen jaw tenderly and turned in pretended amazement: "Why, was yuh thinkin' he was a woman?" Punk ceased operations on his cigarette and stared meditatively into the fire. "Wonder haow he's goin' to ack-kwire that brand? Trade those hides fer it, mebbe." But Red McVey for once was silent.
Occasionally he looked at the equestrienne on the prancing roan, but for the greater part of the time the lenses were centered on the face and form of the woman in the buckboard. For the first time in his life Red McVey had dodged a direct issue when Carter had asked him why Douglass had not met them in person.
On Main Street the old and young men who stood about before the stores in the evening tried also to make light of the jeweler's son and the air of importance he constantly assumed. They also spoke of him as a young upstart and a windbag, but after the beginning of his connection with Hugh McVey, something of conviction went out of their voices.
"Learn your trade. Don't listen to talk," he said earnestly. "The man who knows his trade is a man. He can tell every one to go to the devil." Hugh McVey was twenty-three years old when he went to live in Bidwell.
But the offers as yet were scarcely half the amount which Douglass had sturdily demanded for his holdings, although at his advice the two women and Red McVey sold out their interests to a syndicate headed and promoted by Anselm Brevoort.
As they went past the barns and the bunkhouse where several men now slept they heard, as though coming out of the past, the loud snoring of the rapidly ageing farm hand, Jim Priest, and then above that sound and above the sound of the animals stirring in the barns arose another sound, a sound shrill and intense, greetings perhaps to an unborn Hugh McVey.
Then, with an inscrutable and not altogether pleasant flicker in his eyes, "Not a bad looker, eh, Red?" McVey emptied the glass. "Brandy's hell foh a woman," was his enigmatical reply. An hour later they gained her apartments unobserved, the hotel corridors being deserted at that hour.
But his mirth got a sudden check as McVey nodded his head knowingly. "Yes, I heered about it; 'twer Matlock, an' he's been talkin' a heap disrespec'ful about how he broke it off in yuh, oveh to Cheyenne. Says as how he is seven hundred dollars nearer even with yuh. I didn't think yuh'd let that coyote soak yuh thataway." His words were distinctly reproachful. Douglass smiled mysteriously.
Over at the piano Grace was playing with much tender feeling one of Chopin's delicious nocturnes; before the open fireplace, Carter, Brevoort and McVey were discussing the possibilities of a well-managed ranch. The big room with its happy combination of modern and primitive amenities was the epitome of cheerfulness and comfort. "Original? No man can say anything that is that.
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