"Did you crack their heads hard, boy?" she asked.
* * * * *
From Mary's house Sam went to his own. On the gravel path an idea had come
to him. He went into the house and, sitting down at the kitchen table with
pen and ink, began writing. In the sleeping room back of the parlour he
could hear Windy snoring. He wrote carefully, erasing and writing again.
Then, drawing up a chair before the kitchen fire, he read over and over
what he had written, and putting on his coat went through the dawn to the
house of Tom Comstock, editor of the _Caxton Argus_, and roused him out of
bed.
"I'll run it on the front page, Sam, and it won't cost you anything,"
Comstock promised. "But why run it? Let the matter drop."
"I shall just have time to pack and get the morning train for Chicago,"
Sam thought.
Early the evening before, Telfer, Wildman, and Freedom Smith, at Valmore's
suggestion, had made a visit to Hunter's jewelry store. For an hour they
bargained, selected, rejected, and swore at the jeweller. When the choice
was made and the gift lay shining against white cotton in a box on the
counter Telfer made a speech.
"I will talk straight to that boy," he declared, laughing.
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