He hurriedly drank the remainder of his coffee, and was in his office getting his medicine-case ready.  James lingered, in the hopes of getting a word and a kiss from Clemency.  But the child, the moment her uncle went out, fled.  It was odd.  She wanted to stay and have a minute with James alone more than she had ever wanted anything, but it was for just that very reason that she ran away.

James felt hurt.  At that time, the mind of a girl, and its shy workings, were entirely beyond his comprehension.  He saw no earthly reason why Clemency should have avoided him.  He followed Gordon with rather a downcast face into the office, and begun assisting him with his medicines.  Gordon himself was too full of interest in the horse trade to remark anything.  At times he chuckled to himself.  Now and then he would burst out anew in a great peal of laughter.  “Hang it all!  I don’t like to be done any better than any other man, but that little red-haired scamp was clever and no mistake,” he said, “showing me that little sore.  I believe he had sandpapered the poor beast on purpose.  He took me in as neatly as I ever saw anything done in my life.  Well, Elliot, you wait and see me get even with Sam Tucker.  I have been waiting my chance.  About two years ago he worked me, and not half as cleverly as this either.  He made me feel that I was a fool.  The red-haired one needed the devil himself to get round him, and see through his little game.  Sam Tucker sold me, or rather traded with me a veritable fiend of a horse for an old mare.  The mare was old, but she had a lot of go in her, and was sound, and the other, well, Sam had bought him for a song, because nobody would drive him, and he had killed two men.  He was a white horse with as wicked an eye as you ever saw, and ears always cocked for mischief, like the arch fiend’s horns.  Well, Sam, he made some kind of a dye, and he actually dyed that animal a beautiful chestnut, and traded him for my old mare.  I even paid a little to boot.  Well, next morning I sent Aaron down to the store in a soaking rain, and the horse bolted at a white rock beside the road, and the buggy was knocked into kindling wood.  Aaron wasn’t hurt.  He always comes out right side up.  But when he came leading that snorting, dancing beast home, the chestnut dye was pretty well off, and I knew him in a minute.  Well, he was shot, and I was my old mare and some money out.  I wasn’t going to have men’s lives on my conscience.  But this is another matter.  Now I’ve got my chance to get even, and I’m going to get my old mare back.”

Presently the two men were out on the road driving the black horse.  He went well enough, and seemed afraid of nothing.  “There’s not much the matter with this animal except the tail and the cribbing, I guess,” said the doctor.  “As for the tail, that is simply a question of ornament and taste.  The cribbing is more serious, of course, but I guess Sam Tucker won’t be in any danger of his life.”  They had not gone far before the doctor drew up before a farmhouse on the left.  A man with a serious face, thin and wiry, was coming around the house with a wheelbarrowful of potatoes.  “Hullo, Sam!” called Doctor Gordon.  The man left his barrow and came alongside.  James could see that he had a keen eye upon the horse.  “Fine morning,” said the doctor.