Something had evidently disturbed White’s ideas of isolation and independence—­it would all come out later.  Truedale knew his man fairly well by that time; at least he thought he did.  Again Jim took up his gun and Con thought lazily that he must get over to his shack.  He occupied a small cabin—­Dr. McPherson’s property for sleeping purposes.

“Do yo’ know,” Jim broke in suddenly; “yo’ mind me of a burr runnin’ wild in a flock of sheep—­gatherin’ as yo’ go.  Yo’ sho are a miracle!  Now old Doc McPherson was like a shadder when he headed this way—­but he took longer gatherin’, owin’ to age an’ natural defects o’ build.  Your frame was picked right close, but a kind o’ flabby layer of gristle and fat hung ter him an’ wasn’t a good foundation to build on.”

Conning gave a delighted laugh.  Once Jim White began to talk of his own volition his discourse flowed on until hunger or weariness overtook him.  His silences had the same quality—­it was the way Jim began that mattered.

“When I first took ter handlin’ yo’ for ole Doc McPherson, I kinder hated ter take my eyes off yo’ fearin’ yo’ might slip out, but Gawd! yo’ can grapple fo’ yo’ self now and—­I plain hanker fur the sticks.”

“The sticks?” This was a new expression.

“Woods!” Jim vouchsafed (he despised the stupidity that required interpretation of perfectly plain English), “deep woods!  What with Burke Lawson suspected of bein’ nigh, an’ my duty as sheriff consarnin’ him hittin’ me in the face, I’ve studied it out that it will be a mighty reasonable trick fur this here officer of the law to be somewhere else till Burke settles with his friends an’ foes, or takes himself off, ’fore he’s strung up or shot up.”

Truedale turned his chair about and faced Jim.

“Do you know,” he said, “you’ve mentioned more names in the last ten minutes than you’ve mentioned in all the weeks I’ve been here?  You give me a mental cramp.  Why, I thought you and I had these hills to ourselves; instead we’re threatened on every side, and yet I haven’t seen a soul on my tramps.  Where do they keep themselves?  What has this Burke Lawson done, to stir the people?”

“You don’t call your santers real tramps, do you?  Why folks is as thick as ticks up here, though they don’t knock elbows like what they do where you cum from.  They don’t holler out ter ’tract yer attention, neither.  But they’re here.”

“Let’s hear more of Burke Lawson.”  Truedale gripped him from the seething mass of humanity portrayed by White, as the one promising most colour and interest.  “Just where does Burke live?”

“Burke?  Gawd!  Burke don’t live anywhere.  He is a born floater.  He scrooges around a place and raises the devil, then he just naturally floats off.  But he nearly always comes back.  Since the trap-settin’ a time back, he has been mighty scarce in these parts; but any day he may turn up.”