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 "Maybe a month," said the stranger. "You can't tell. What 're you going to do in the meantime?" In the intervals between mopping his brow he was studying the boy and Tempest closely, and apparently the inspection pleased him.

"I guess we shall have to find somewhere to stop," Dave said. "It does n't look like a place where we are likely to get work."

"Work!" the man laughed. "No. I 've been here as a planter for some years now, and I confess I never did see any one work yet. To tell you the truth, it's always a mystery to me how anything ever gets done. You have to explode a stick of dynamite behind these colored people to get a move on them. When I was running a store in Dogtooth City, Dakota, I would n't have stood for this sort of thing, no siree! I was strictly business every time and all the time there. I made my pile in Dogtooth City, and I won't say I did n't come pretty near to making Dogtooth City, too. I was mayor of that little burg three