“I wasn’t going to rouse you until breakfast was ready,” he interrupted himself to say.  “I heard you groaning, Stevens.  I know you had a bad night.  And the kid, too.  He couldn’t sleep.  But I made up my mind you’d have to get up early.  I’ve got a lot of business on to-day, and we’ll have to rouse Curly Roper out of bed to buy his pack outfit.  Find the coffee, will you?  I couldn’t.”

For a moment Stevens stood over him.

“See here, Aldous, you didn’t mean what you said last night, did you?  You didn’t mean—­that?”

“Confound it, yes!  Can’t you understand plain English, Stevens?  Don’t you believe a man when he’s a gentleman?  Buy that outfit!  Why, I’d buy twenty outfits to-day, I’m—­I’m feeling so fine, Stevens!”

For the first time in forty-eight hours Stevens smiled.

“I was wondering if I hadn’t been dreaming,” he said.  “Once, a long time ago, I guess I felt just like you do now.”

With which cryptic remark he went for the coffee.

Aldous looked up in time to see the boy stagger sleepily out of the tepee.  There was something pathetic about the motherlessness of the picture, and he understood a little of what Stevens had meant.

An hour later, with breakfast over, they started for Curly’s.  Curly was pulling on his boots when they arrived, while his wife was frying the inevitable bacon in the kitchen.

“I hear you have some horses for sale, Curly,” said Aldous.

“Hi ’ave.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-nine, ’r twenty-eight—­mebby twenty-seven.”

“How much?”

Curly looked up from the task of pulling on his second boot.

“H’are you buying ’orses or looking for hinformation?” he asked.

“I’m buying, and I’m in a hurry.  How much do you want a head?”

“Sixty, ’r six——­”

“I’ll give you sixty dollars apiece for twenty-eight head, and that’s just ten dollars apiece more than they’re worth,” broke in Aldous, pulling a check-book and a fountain pen from his pocket.  “Is it a go?”

A little stupefied by the suddenness of it all, Curly opened his mouth and stared.

“Is it a go?” repeated Aldous.  “Including blankets, saddles, pack-saddles, ropes, and canvases?”

Curly nodded, looking from Aldous to Stevens to see if he could detect anything that looked like a joke.

“Hit’s a go,” he said.

Aldous handed him a check for sixteen hundred and eighty dollars.

“Make out the bill of sale to Stevens,” he said.  “I’m paying for them, but they’re Stevens’ horses.  And, look here, Curly, I’m buying them only with your agreement that you’ll say nothing about who paid for them.  Will you agree to that?”

Curly was joyously looking at the check.

“Gyve me a Bible,” he demanded.  “Hi’ll swear Stevens p’id for them!  I give you the word of a Hinglish gentleman!”

Without another word Aldous opened the cabin door and was gone, leaving Stevens quite as much amazed as the little Englishman whom everybody called Curly, because he had no hair.