I drank my buttermilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible had ordered the most filling and sustaining liquid in the saloon. For all his unprepossessing appearance and peculiar moral notions, my new acquaintance seemed to have a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness. He swallowed his whiskey and called for a quart pot of light beer which he sipped slowly. “That’s the trick of it, Hodge. Avoid the second shot. If you can.” He sipped again. “Now what?” “What?” I repeated. “Now what are you going to do? What’s your aim in life anyway?” “None—now. I ... wanted to learn. To study.” He frowned. “Out of books?” “How else?” “Books is mostly written and printed in foreign countries.” “There might be more written here if more people had time to learn.” Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the back of his hand. “Might and mightnt. Oh, some of my best friends are book-readers, don’t get me wrong, boy.” “I’d thought,” I burst out, “I’d thought to try Columbia College. To offer—to beg to be allowed to do any kind of work for tuition.” “Hmm. I doubt it would have worked.” “Anyway I can’t go now, looking like this.” “Might be as well. We need fighters, not readers.” “‘We?’ ” He did not explain. “Well, you could always take the advice our friend here gave me and indent. A young healthy lad like you could get yourself a thousand or twelve hundred dollars—” “Sure. And be a slave for the rest of my life.” “Oh, indenting aint slavery. It’s better. And worse. For one thing the company buys you won’t hold you after you arent worth your keep. Not that long, on account of bookkeeping; they lose when they break even. So they cancel your indenture without a cent payment. Course theyll take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your corpse, but that’s a long time away for you.” An inconceivably long time. The medical holdback was the least of my distaste, though it had played a large part in the discussions at home. My mother had heard that cadavers for dissection were shipped to foreign medical schools like so much cargo. She was shocked not so much at the thought of the scientific use of her dead body as at its disposal outside the United States. “Yes,” I said. “A long time away. So I wouldnt be a slave for life; just thirty or forty years. Till I wasnt any good to anyone, including myself.” He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer. “Youre a gloomy gus, Hodge. Taint’s bad’s that. Indenting’s pretty strictly regulated. That’s the idea anyway. I aint saying the big companies don’t get away with a lot. You can’t be made to work over sixty hours a week. Ten hours a day. With twelve hundred dollars you could get all the education you want in your spare time and then turn your learning to account by making enough to buy yourself free.”