"How high shall I pay for her?" he asked.
"Any price.
You've got to get her, that's the point.
Drive a sharp bargain so as not to excite suspicion, but buy her.
Then you deliver her to that address up in Sonoma County.
The man's the caretaker on a little ranch I have there. Tell him he's to take whacking good care of her.
And after that forget all about it.
Don't tell me the name of the man you buy her from.
Don't tell me anything about it except that you've got her and delivered her.
Savvee?"
But the week had not passed, when Daylight noted the flash in Dede's eyes that boded trouble.
"Something's gone wrong—what is it?" he asked boldly.
"Mab," she said. "The man who bought her has sold her already.
If I thought you had anything to do with it—"
"I don't even know who you sold her to," was Daylight's answer.
"And what's more, I'm not bothering my head about her.
She was your mare, and it's none of my business what you did with her.
You haven't got her, that's sure and worse luck.
And now, while we're on touchy subjects, I'm going to open another one with you.
And you needn't get touchy about it, for it's not really your business at all."
She waited in the pause that followed, eyeing him almost suspiciously.
"It's about that brother of yours.
He needs more than you can do for him.
Selling that mare of yours won't send him to Germany.
And that's what his own doctors say he needs—that crack German specialist who rips a man's bones and muscles into pulp and then molds them all over again.
Well, I want to send him to Germany and give that crack a flutter, that's all."
"If it were only possible" she said, half breathlessly, and wholly without anger.
"Only it isn't, and you know it isn't.
I can't accept money from you—"
"Hold on, now," he interrupted.
"Wouldn't you accept a drink of water from one of the Twelve Apostles if you was dying of thirst?
Or would you be afraid of his evil intentions"—she made a gesture of dissent "—or of what folks might say about it?"
"But that's different," she began.
"Now look here, Miss Mason.
You've got to get some foolish notions out of your head.
This money notion is one of the funniest things I've seen.
Suppose you was falling over a cliff, wouldn't it be all right for me to reach out and hold you by the arm?
Sure it would.
But suppose you ended another sort of help—instead of the strength of arm, the strength of my pocket?
That would be all and that's what they all say.
But why do they say it.
Because the robber gangs want all the suckers to be honest and respect money.
If the suckers weren't honest and didn't respect money, where would the robbers be?
Don't you see?
The robbers don't deal in arm-holds; they deal in dollars.
Therefore arm-holds are just common and ordinary, while dollars are sacred—so sacred that you didn't let me lend you a hand with a few.
"Or here's another way," he continued, spurred on by her mute protest. "It's all right for me to give the strength of my arm when you're falling over a cliff.
But if I take that same strength of arm and use it at pick-and-shovel work for a day and earn two dollars, you won't have anything to do with the two dollars.
Yet it's the same old strength of arm in a new form, that's all.
Besides, in this proposition it won't be a claim on you.