him.
“Now look here, Nate,” Wirt Sewell had told him a day or so after he had started this schedule. “Jeff's got work to do at the tin shop, and he has to do it after school. A boy can't spend all his free time riding horseback and doing as he pleases.”
Nathan had fixed his dark stare on Wirt and said, “Jeff's my boy. I figure I've got a say in what he can do and what he can't.”
“He's living under my roof!” Wirt said angrily.
“I can take him out from under your roof. Is that what you and Beulah want?”
Wirt Sewell had melted like wax. He had blinked in disbelief and the features of his face seemed to run together. That had been the last Nathan had heard about Jeff's working in the tin shop.
Now Nathan waited with the horses at the watering trough in front of Baxter's store. Pretty soon he saw Jeff coming toward him, up the dusty side street from the clapboard schoolhouse.
This was the moment that Nathan waited for, that first sight of his son coming to meet him. The first day or two there had been other boys with him, excited and green with envy when they saw that glossy bay that Jeff could ride whenever he felt like it. It had given Nathan a warm feeling of pleasure to see his son sitting proud as a prince on that horse while the other boys danced like excited urchins around his feet.
But the other boys had stopped coming. Sometimes the Wintworth boy would come with Jeff as far as Jed Harper's bank, but he would turn off there and head for home without giving the horse or Nathan a second glance.
Nathan Blaine was not blind; he knew what had happened. He did not know how his reputation had reached all the way to Plainsville, but he did know that it had. He could tell by the uneasy way people sidled away from him. He suspected that Beulah Sewell had started the gossip herself without a speck of evidence, but there was no way of proving it. Anyway, he didn't give a damn what these people thought about him. And neither did Jeff.
The boy was a Blaine. He didn't need anybody to lean on.
But as Nathan waited by the watering trough he thought that there was not quite the spring to the boy's step that there had been before. He looked lonesome, plodding barefoot in the deep red dust of the street.
“You look like you had a hard day,” Nathan said, grinning faintly.
“It was all right.”
“Would you like to ride up to Crowder's Creek with me?”
“I don't care,” Jeff said, stroking the bay's glossy neck.
At that moment Nathan could see so much of Lilie in the boy that his arms ached to reach out and hold his son hard against him. But, of course, a twelve-year-old boy would never stand for a thing like that.
At that moment Nathan had a flash of inspiration. He said, “What do you say we let the horses stand a while? I just thought of some business I have to take care of.”
The boy looked completely crestfallen until his pa said gently, “You come along, Jeff. The business has to do with you.”
Nathan stepped up to the plank walk and Jeff followed, puzzled. Side by side they walked along the store fronts, and they could have been the only two people in the world for all the attention they paid the curious eyes that followed them from behind plate-glass windows. Nathan stopped in front of Matt Fuller's saddle shop, which was mostly a harness shop now that squatter trade had taken over the town.
Jeff's eyes widened as his pa turned in and motioned for him to follow. They walked into a rich smell of tanned leather. On the walls of Fuller's shop there hung horse collars of all sizes, and all kinds of leather harnesses and rigging. The floor was littered with scraps of leather and wood shavings; two naked saddletrees stood on a bench, and there were boot lasts and knives and all kinds of tools for the cutting and trimming and dressing and tooling of leather.
When they walked into the shop a bell over the front door jangled and Matt Fuller came up front to see what they wanted.
“I want some boots made,” Nathan said.
Matt squinted over the steel rims of his spectacles. He was a wrinkled, white-haired little man who had been up in years when he first came to Plainsville fifteen years ago. But his hands were still good and strong and he was a fine leather worker when he got hold of a job that pleased him.
“You want 'em made like the ones you're wearin'?” Matt said. When Nathan said yes, the old man took his arm and led him over to where the light was better and studied the boots carefully.
“In front,” Nathan said, “I want them to come about an inch short of the knee, right where the shin bone ends. The back should be cut about an inch lower. The vamps must be made of the thinnest, most pliable leather, and the tops of your best kid.”
“I ain't blind,” the old man snapped. “T can see bow they're made. Well, you'll have to let me measure your foot. And if you want fancy stitchin' or colored insets, that'll cost you extra.”
“I guess the fixin's will be up to the boy,” Nathan said quietly. “The boots are for him.”
The old saddlemaker snapped his head around, peering incredulously at Nathan. “Bench-made boots? For that boy?”
Jeff could hardly believe that he had heard his pa correctly. Boots of that kind were very expensive, and he had never known a boy his age having a pair made just for him. Such extravagance would appall the citizens of Plainsville. Quality boots were made to last for years; all except the thin soles, of course, which had to be replaced from time to time.
Matt Fuller snapped, “I ain't in no mood for foolishness, mister. A boy like him would grow out of his boots in no time. Then what'll you do?”
