Page:Edison Marshall--The voice of the pack.djvu/51

Rh "Anyway, have that out with him at the end of his stay. He wants fishing, and you 've got that in the North fork. He wants shooting, and if there is a place in the United States with more wild animals around the back door than at your house, I don't know where it is. Moreover, you 're a thousand miles back—"

"Only one hundred, if you must know. But Steele—do you suppose he's the man his grandfather was before him—that all the Failings have been since the first days of the Oregon trail? If he is—well, my hat's off to him before he steps off the train."

The mountaineer's bronzed face was earnest and intent in the bright lights of the club. Steele thought he had known this breed. Now he began to have doubts of his own knowledge. "He won't be; don't count on it," he said humbly. "The Failings have done much for this region, and I'm glad enough to do a little to pay it back, but don't count much on this Eastern boy. He's lived in cities; besides, he's a sick man. He said so in his wire. You ought to know it before you take him in."

The bronzed face changed; possibly a shadow of disappointment came into his eyes. "A lunger, eh?" Lennox repeated. "Yes—it's true that if he'd been like the other Failings, he'd never have been that. Why, Steele,