Seth did not appear to notice anything. He surveyed the clearing with a certain appreciation. The vast timbers he beheld seemed of much more consequence to him than the man who lived by their destruction. However, he rode straight over to the fire and dismounted. "Howdy?" he said, while he loosened the cinches of his saddle. "What's brought you around?" asked Nevil, ungraciously enough. Seth turned toward the trees about him. "Pretty tidy patch," he observed. "We're wantin' big timbers up at the farm. Mebbe you'd notion a contrac'?" Nevil had noted the loosening of the cinches. He laughed shortly. "I'm not taking contracts, thanks. But I'll sell you wood which I cut at my pleasure." "Cord-wood?" Seth shook his head. "Guess we want timbers. Kind o' buildin' a corral around the farm." "Making a fort of it?" Nevil's blue eyes followed the upward curling wreath of smoke which dawdled on the still air above the fire. "Yup." "Fancy the Injuns are on the racket?" "Wal, 'tain't what they're doin' now. But ther' ain't no tellin', an' we're slack since the harvest. I 'lows the notion's tol'ble. Mebbe they'll be quiet some--now Rosebud's gone." There was a quiet emphasis on Seth's final speculation. "I heard she'd gone away for a bit." Nevil looked searchingly at this man whom he hated above all men. "Gone for good," Seth said, with an admirable air of indifference. "How?" Nevil suddenly sat up. Seth noted the fact without even glancing in his direction. "Wal, y' see she's got folks in England. And ther' is a heap o' dollars; an almighty heap. I reckon she'd be a millionairess in this country. Guess it takes a mighty heap o' bills to reckon a million in your country." This expansiveness was so unusual in the man of the plains that Nevil understood at once he had come purposely to speak of Rosebud. He wondered why. This was the first he had heard of Rosebud's good fortune, and he wished to know more. The matter had been kept from everybody. Even Wanaha had been kept in ignorance of it. Seth seated himself on a fallen tree-trunk, and now looked squarely into the wood-cutter's thin, mean face. "Y' see it's kind o' curious. I got that gal from the Injuns more'n six years back, as you'll likely remember. Her folks, her father an' her ma, was killed south o' the Reservations. Guess they were kind o' big folk in your country. An' ther' was a feller come along awhiles back all the way from England to find her. He was a swell law feller; he'd hit her trail, an' when he comes along he said as she owned 'states in your country, a whole heap. Guess she's to be treated like a queen. Dollars? Gee! She ken buy most everything. I 'lows they ken do it slick in your country."