That night Bud shared Cash Markham's blankets, and in the morning
he cooked the breakfast while Cash Markham rounded up the burros and
horses. In that freemasonry of the wilderness they dispensed with
credentials, save those each man carried in his face and in his manner.
And if you stop to think of it, such credentials are not easily forged,
for nature writes them down, and nature is a truth-loving old dame who
will never lead you far astray if only she is left alone to do her work
in peace.
It transpired, in the course of the forenoon's travel, that Cash Markham
would like to have a partner, if he could find a man that suited. One
guessed that he was fastidious in the matter of choosing his companions,
in spite of the easy way in which he had accepted Bud. By noon they had
agreed that Bud should go along and help relocate the widow's claim.
Cash Markham hinted that they might do a little prospecting on their own
account. It was a country he had long wanted to get into, he said, and
while he intended to do what Mrs. Thompson had hired him to do, still
there was no law against their prospecting on their own account. And
that, he explained, was one reason why he wanted a good man along.
If the Thompson claim was there, Bud could do the work under the
supervision of Cash, and Cash could prospect.
"And anyway, it's bad policy for a man to go off alone in this part of
the country," he added with a speculative look across the sandy waste
they were skirting at a pace to suit the heavily packed burros. "Case
of sickness or accident--or suppose the stock strays off--it's bad to be
alone."
"Suits me fine to go with you," Bud declared. "I'm next thing to broke,
but I've got a lot of muscle I can cash in on the deal. And I know the
open. And I can rock a gold-pan and not spill out all the colors, if
there is any--and whatever else I know is liable to come in handy, and
what I don't know I can learn."
"That's fair enough. Fair enough," Markham agreed. "I'll allow you wages
on the Thompson job' till you've earned enough to balance up with the
outfit. After that it'll be fifty-fifty. How'll that be, Bud?"
"Fair enough--fair enough," Bud retorted with faint mimicry. "If I was
all up in the air a few days ago, I seem to have lit on my feet, and
that's good enough for me right now. We'll let 'er ride that way."
And the twinkle, as he talked, was back in his eyes, and the smiley
quirk was at the corner of his lips.