If, perchance, this did not happen, Canby had a system of his own for eliminating settlers. It was quite as efficacious as open warfare, though it took longer and was open to the objection that sometimes it enabled them to stay long enough to plow up eighty acres or so which went to weeds when they abandoned it.
Canby had no personal feeling against Wallie and, after meeting him, decided he would use the more lawful and humane method of ridding himself of him. Instead of running him off by threats and violence he would merely starve him out, and Wallie's bank balance indicated that Canby was in a fair way to accomplish his purpose.
Several happenings had made Wallie suspect something of Canby's purpose, and the same latent quality which had made Wallie trudge doggedly after his cow and horse until he had worn out their perversity always made him tell himself grimly that he was going to stick until he had his crop in and harvested if he laid down, a skeleton, and died beside one of his own haystacks.
Mostly, however, he was so busy with his cooking, feeding his livestock, getting wood and water, to say nothing of piling rocks and grubbing sagebrush that he had no time to brood over Canby and the wrongs he had done him. He had learned from McGonnigle that his locoed horses would grow worse instead of better and eventually would have to be shot, and that person had imparted the discouraging information also that not only could he expect no milk from his cow until her calf arrived in January but Jerseys were a breed not commonly selected for beef cattle.
Wallie had thought that his aunt would surely relent to the extent of writing him a Christmas letter but, yesterday, after riding eight miles to look in the bluing box nailed to a post by the roadside, he had found that it had contained only a circular urging him to raise mushrooms in his cellar.
Helene Spenceley, too, might have sent him a Christmas card or something. He had seen her only twice since the sale, and each time she had whizzed past him in Canby's machine on the way to Prouty. The sight had given him a curious feeling which he had tried to analyze but had been unable to find a satisfactory name for it.
Altogether, Wallie felt very lonely and forlorn and forgotten this Christmas morning as he lay in a knot under the soogan, listening to the wind twanging the stove-pipe wire and contemplating his present and future.
He had discovered that by craning his neck slightly when in a certain position he could look through a crack and see the notch in the mountain, below which was the Spenceley ranch, according to Pinkey. He was prompted to do so now, but an eyeful of snow discouraged his observation, so he decided that he would get up, feed his animals and, after breakfast, wash his shirt and a few towels by way of recreation.