In
reality he was busy reducing a three-ton outfit to terms of cash at
forty dollars per hundred-weight. "Twenty-four hundred dollars for
thirty miles!" he cried. "What can I do?"
Frona shrugged her shoulders. "You'd better pay them the forty cents,"
she advised, "else they will take off their straps."
The man thanked her, but instead of taking heed went on with his
haggling. One of the Indians stepped up and proceeded to unfasten his
pack-straps. The tenderfoot wavered, but just as he was about to give
in, the packers jumped the price on him to forty-five cents. He smiled
after a sickly fashion, and nodded his head in token of surrender. But
another Indian joined the group and began whispering excitedly. A
cheer went up, and before the man could realize it they had jerked off
their straps and departed, spreading the news as they went that freight
to Lake Linderman was fifty cents.
Of a sudden, the crowd before the store was perceptibly agitated. Its
members whispered excitedly one to another, and all their eyes were
focussed upon three men approaching from up the trail. The trio were
ordinary-looking creatures, ill-clad and even ragged. In a more stable
community their apprehension by the village constable and arrest for
vagrancy would have been immediate. "French Louis," the tenderfeet
whispered and passed the word along.
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