Big Medicine stood for a time in silence, whittling away, as if for dear life, on the curly knot. Dreamy gusts of perfumed heat swept by from adjacent clover and wheat fields, where the blooms hung thick; little whirlwinds played in the dust at their feet as little whirlwinds always do in summer; and far away, faint, and made tenderly musical by distance, were heard the notes of a country dinner-horn. Big Medicine's ample chest swelled, and swelled, and then he burst at the mouth with a mighty bass laugh, that went battling and echoing round the place. Mr. Golding laughed too, in his own quiet, gentlemanly way. They looked at each other and laughed, then looked off toward the swamps and laughed. Big Medicine put his hands in his pockets almost up to the elbows, and leaned back and laughed out of one corner of his mouth while holding his pipe in the other. "I say, mister," said he at length, "a'n't you railly got but six hundred and twenty-five an' a half?" "Just that much to a cent, and no more," replied Mr. Golding, with a comical smile and bow. Big Medicine took his pipe from his mouth, gave the walnut knot he had dropped a little kick and guffawed louder and longer than before. To have been off at a little distance watching them would have convinced any one that Mr. Golding was telling some rare anecdote, and that Big Medicine was convulsed with mirth, listening. "Well I'm derned if 'taint quare," cried the latter, wringing himself into all sorts of grotesque attitudes in the ecstasy of his amusement. "You outbid me half a dollar and then didn't have the half a dollar neither! Wha, wha, wha-ee!" and his cachinnations sounded like rolling of moderate thunder. At the end of this he took out a greasy wallet and paid Mr. Golding the required amount in silver coin. His chagrin had vanished before the stranger's quiet way of making friends. A week passed over Jimtown. A week of as rare June weather as ever lingered about the cool places of the woods, or glimmered over the sweet clover fields all red with a blush of bloom, where the field larks twittered and the buntings chirped, and where the laden bees rose heavily to seek their wild homes in the hollows of the forests. By this time it was generally known in Jimtown that Mr. Golding would soon receive a stock of goods with which to open a "store" in the old corner brick; but Big Medicine knew more than any of his neighbors, for he and Golding had formed a partnership to do business under the "name and style" of Cook & Golding. This Abner Golding had lately been a wealthy retail man in Cincinnati, and had lost everything by the sudden suspension of a bank wherein the bulk of his fortune was on deposit. His creditors had made a run on him and he had been able to save just the merest remnant of his goods, and a few hundred dollars in money. Thus he came to Jimtown to begin life and business anew.