All day long and as far as he
could find anything to do in the night, he worked. He mended
everything about both farms, rebuilt all the fences and as a never-
failing resource, he cut wood. He cut so much that he began to
realize that it would get too dry and the burning of it would
become extravagant, so he stopped that and began making some
changes he had long contemplated. During fur time he set his line
of traps on his side of the river and on the other he religiously
set Jimmy's.
But he divided the proceeds from the skins exactly in half, no
matter whose traps caught them, and with Jimmy's share of the money
he started a bank account for Mary. As he could not use all of them
he sold Jimmy's horses, cattle and pigs. With half the stock gone
he needed only half the hay and grain stored for feeding. He
disposed of the chickens, turkeys, ducks, and geese that Mary
wanted sold, and placed the money to her credit. He sent her a
beautiful little red bank book and an explanation of all these
transactions by Dolan. Mary threw the book across the room because
she wanted Dannie to keep her money himself, and then cried herself
to sleep that night, because Dannie had sent the book instead of
bringing it. But when she fully understood the transactions and
realized that if she chose she could spend several hundred dollars,
she grew very proud of that book.
About the empty cabins and the barns, working on the farms, wading
the mud and water of the river bank, or tingling with cold on the
ice went two Dannies.
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