A noble mind at work

I posed a question to readers in my Sunday Spokesman-Review books column, asking them to give me information from this month’s Book Club read, Ivan Doig’s novel “Dancing at the Rascal Fair.” It was: “What makes Rob Barclay think that he and his best friend, Angus McCaskill, can beat the champion sheep-shearer Frew brothers? What is, as Rob calls it, ‘the card in our hat’?”

Intrepid reader Jacques Lemieux of Kellogg was first up with his answer: “Rob Barclay’s ‘card in the hat’ is a set of high end, don’t need to be sharpened very often, sheep shears. His plan is for he and Angus to continue shearing while their opponents have to stop and sharpen their tools. The plan almost worked.”

It’s not surprising that Lemieux would get the right answer. Providing that you read carefully, you’ll find this passage on page 175:

“Rob stepped over to where his coat was hanging, reached under, and with a beam of triumph brought forth two gleaming sets of wool shears.
I had seen my share of wool shears before. But not these. Each of these shears had a pair of elongated triangular blades which faced each other with sharp expectancy, their bottoms linked in graceful loops of handle.’’

No, that Lemieux answered correctly wasn’t surprising. But would you believe that Lemieux posted his answer at 8:47 Sunday morning? Give the man a hand. As Edmund Burke once wrote, “Applause is the spur of noble minds.”