“Is that so?  Because I’m so very poor?”

“I heard that in the store this evenin’.  I was a-comin’ in as you was a-comin’ out.  I heard Popsy say you was the porest man in the county, porer than all of us pore folks put together.”

She had lost her nervousness.  She stood squarely before the old man, lifting her tender blue eyes to his.

“Wal—­an’ what are you a-goin’ to do about it?”

“I can’t do overly much, Mr. Spooner, but fer a little girl I’m rich.  The dry year ain’t hurt me any—­yet.  I’ve three dollars and sixty cents of my own.”

One hand had remained tightly clenched.  Sissy opened it.  In the moist pink palm lay three dollars, a fifty-cent piece, and a dime.  Never had Pap’s voice sounded so harsh in my ears as when he said:  “Do I understan’ that ye offer this to—­me?”

His tone frightened her.

“Yas, sir.  Won’t you p-p-please t-take it?”

“Did yer folks tell ye to give me this money?”

“Why, no.  I’d oughter hev asked ’em, I s’pose, but I never thought o’ that.  Honest Injun, Mr. Spooner, I didn’t—­and—­and it’s my own money,” she concluded, half defiantly, “an’ Popsy said as how I could do what I liked with it.  Please take it.”

“No,” said Pap.

He stared at us, clicking his teeth and frowning.  Then he said, curtly, “Wal, I’ll take the dime, Sissy—­I kin make a dime go farther than a dollar, can’t I, boys?”

“You bet,” said Ajax.

“And now, Sissy, you run along home,” said Pap.

“We’ll take her,” I said, for Sissy was a sworn friend of ours.  At once she put her left hand into mine.  We bade the old man good-night, and took leave of him.  On the threshold Ajax turned and asked a question——­

“Won’t you reconsider your decision, Mr. Spooner?”

“No,” he snapped, “I won’t.  I dunno as all this ain’t a reg’lar plant.  Looks like it.  And, as I say, the scallywags in these yere foothills need thinnin’—­they need thinnin’.”

Ajax said something in a low voice which Sissy and I could not hear.  Later I asked him what it was, because Pap had clicked his teeth.

“I told him,” said my brother, “that he needn’t think his call was coming, because I was quite certain that they did not want him either in Heaven—­or in the other place.”

“Oh,” said I, “I thought that you were going to use a little tact with Pap Spooner.”

* * * * *

Next morning, early, we had a meeting in the store.  A young doctor, a capital fellow, had come out from San Lorenzo with the intention of camping with us till the disease was wiped out; but he shook his head very solemnly when someone suggested that the first case, carefully isolated, might prove the last.

There were two fresh cases that night!