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Updated: June 19, 2025
Upon one occasion Thayor's strained silence, when he was alone with him smoking in his den and Alice had retired, had thrown Sperry into a state of positive alarm and kept his heart thumping the while, until a yawn of his host and a cheerful good-night relieved him of his fear. The doctor, like others of his ilk, was innately a coward.
Thayor stood for a moment in deep thought, reached down into his pocket and took from it a roll of bills. "Hand this to Holt, Billy, and tell him to give it to the poor fellow from me." When Blakeman opened the steel grille for his master at an early hour the day following, the thought uppermost in his mind was the change in Thayor's appearance.
I say "the news" since Bergstein did not put in an appearance to officially announce it. His mismanagement of the commissary department was laid at Thayor's door. The men's grumbling had been of some weeks' duration; their opinions wavering, swaying and settling under Bergstein's hypnotic popularity as easily as a weather-vane in April. Nowhere had they earned as good wages as at Big Shanty.
"He's all hustle, and smarter than a steel trap that's why I put him in charge of the gang in the lower shanty besides, I saw the boys wanted him." "I must see Mr. Bergstein in the morning," was Thayor's reply. "He left day before yesterday," said Holcomb. "He told me an uncle of his had died in Montreal; he'll be back, he said, in three or four days." "Ah, indeed," said Thayor with a nod.
The trapper was the first to mention it as he and the Clown sat smoking with Billy in the dusk outside the latter's cabin the evening before Thayor's arrival. Holcomb, squatting on the ground, had been whittling a twig to a fine point now he leaned forward and drove it out of sight in the cool earth with his heel.
"Did you, indeed, sir!" exclaimed Blakeman, his face lighting up. "Well, I'm happy to hear it, sir I am, indeed. A full blue-coat, sir, I dare say." "Yes, and a splendid set of horns." They had reached the broad corridor leading to his wife's bedroom, Blakeman continuing up to Thayor's room with his traps.
He had been frank in giving his opinion of Bergstein, since Thayor had put the question point blank to him. Their talk before the fire had been a genial one, save for this somewhat unpleasant subject, yet despite Thayor's kindly optimism in regard to Bergstein, owing purely to his excellent recommendation, Holcomb felt a distrust of the mysterious stranger who had wormed his way into Big Shanty.
He had not only Thayor's happiness to think of, but Margaret's as well. Both, he determined, must be kept in ignorance of what, so far, only he and Blakeman knew. "The morning the little fellow, Le Boeuf, got hurt," Blakeman went on, "the doctor took Miss Margaret for a walk. I was in the pantry and saw them start off together in the woods down by the brook.
Possibly it was the persuasion latent in a bottle of Thayor's private reserve, that little by little coaxed the trapper into an unusually talkative mood, for until far into the night the man from the city lay on his back on the springy boughs, listening and smoking, keenly alive to every word the old man uttered.
"More devil than cheat," replied Dinsmore "and three-quarters snake. The gang he trained agin ye done what he told 'em to they burned ye out with him a-leadin' 'em. I watched him and know see him with the can 'fore the fire began. It's as plain as day, Mr. Thayor. Father's right yer life ain't safe till ye git to the cars." Thayor's grizzled, unshaven jaw closed hard.
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