a single thing since
the puppy was poisoned."

The procession had paused, and the piercingly bright eyes of each one of
the little Mexicans seemed also to be asking why. Mary suddenly had to
acknowledge to herself that there wasn't any good reason to prevent.
Because one brother was desperately unhappy was no reason why she should
cloud the enjoyment of the other one by refusing him something on which
he had set his heart.

Norman could not understand the lightning change in her, but he
followed joyfully when she answered with a brief, "Well, come on," and
led the way around to the south door of Jack's room, and called his
attention to the embryo menagerie outside.

To her surprise, for the first time since the surgeons' last visit, Jack
laughed. It was an amusing group, the wild-cat in the chicken-coop with
its body-guard of dirty, grinning little Mexicans, and Norman circling
excitedly around them, explaining that Lupe asked a dollar for it, but
that he could only give fifty cents, and for Jack to make him
understand.

Jack did make him understand, and conducted the trade to Norman's entire
satisfaction. Then recognizing Lupe as one of the boys he had seen
around the office, he began to question him in Mexican about the mines
and the men. Then it developed that Lupe was the son of one of the men
who had been saved by Jack's quick warning, and when the boy repeated
what some of the miners had said about him, Jack grew red and did not
translate it all. The part he did translate was to the effect that the
men wanted him back at the mine. They were having trouble with the "fat
boss," their name for the new manager.

The little transaction and talk with the boys seemed to cheer Jack up so
much that Mary mentally apologized to the wild-cat for her inhospitable
reception, and electrified Norman by an offer to help him build a more
suitable cage for it than the coop in which it was confined. Norman, who
had unbounded faith in Mary's ability as a carpenter, accepted her offer
joyfully. She wasn't like some girls he had known. When she drove a nail
it held things together, and whatever she built would be strong enough
to hold any beast he might choose to put in it.

[ILLUSTRATION "WHEN SHE DROVE A NAIL IT HELD THINGS TOGETHER."]

"Now, if I could get a couple of coyotes and a badger and a fox or two,"
he remarked, "I'd be fixed."

Mary, who was sorting over a pile of old boards back of the woodshed,
paused in alarm.