Drake took a fresh cigar, and threw his legs over the chair arm.
“I think you smoke too much,” said Bolles, whom three days had made
familiar and friendly.
“Yep. Have to just now. That's what! as Uncle Pasco would say. They are
a half-breed lot, though,” the boy continued, returning to the buccaroos
and their recent visit. “Weaken in the face of a straight bluff, you
see, unless they get whiskey-courageous. And I've called 'em down on
that.”
“Oh!” said Bolles, comprehending.
“Didn't you see that was their game? But he will not go after it.”
“The flesh is all they seem to understand,” murmured Bolles.
Half-past Full did not go to Harney City for the tabooed whiskey, nor
did any one. Drake read his buccaroos like the children that they were.
After the late encounter of grit, the atmosphere was relieved of storm.
The children, the primitive, pagan, dangerous children, forgot all about
whiskey, and lusted joyously for Christmas. Christmas was coming! No
work! A shooting-match! A big feed! Cheerfulness bubbled at the Malheur
Agency. The weather itself was in tune. Castle Rock seemed no longer
to frown, but rose into the shining air, a mass of friendly strength.
Except when a rare sledge or horseman passed, Mr. Bolles's journeys to
the school were all to show it was not some pioneer colony in a new,
white, silent world that heard only the playful shouts and songs of the
buccaroos. The sun overhead and the hard-crushing snow underfoot filled
every one with a crisp, tingling hilarity.
Before the sun first touched Castle Rock on the morning of the feast
they were up and in high feather over at the bunk-house. They raced
across to see what Sam was cooking; they begged and joyfully swallowed
lumps of his raw plum-pudding. “Merry Christmas!” they wished him, and
“Melly Clismas!” said he to them. They played leap-frog over by the
stable, they put snow down each other's backs. Their shouts rang round
corners; it was like boys let out of school. When Drake gathered them
for the shooting-match, they cheered him; when he told them there were
no prizes, what did they care for prizes? When he beat them all the
first round, they cheered him again. Pity he hadn't offered prizes! He
wasn't a good business man, after all!
The rounds at the target proceeded through the forenoon, Drake the
acclaimed leader; and the Christmas sun drew to mid-sky. But as its
splendor in the heavens increased, the happy shoutings on earth began
to wane. The body was all that the buccaroos knew; well, the flesh comes
pretty natural to all of us--and who had ever taught these men about
the spirit? The further they were from breakfast the nearer they were
to dinner; yet the happy shootings waned! The spirit is a strange thing.
Often it dwells dumb in human clay, then unexpectedly speaks out of the
clay's darkness.
It was no longer a crowd Drake had at the target. He became aware that
quietness had been gradually coming over the buccaroos. He looked, and
saw a man wandering by himself in the lane. Another leaned by the stable
corner, with a vacant face. Through the windows of the bunk-house
he could see two or three on their beds. The children were tired of
shouting. Drake went in-doors and threw a great log on the fire. It
blazed up high with sparks, and he watched it, although the sun shown
bright on the window-sill. Presently he noticed that a man had come in
and taken a chair. It was Half-past Full, and with his boots stretched
to the warmth, he sat gazing into the fire. The door opened and another
buckaroo entered and sat off in a corner. He had a bundle of old
letters, smeared sheets tied trite a twisted old ribbon. While his
large, top-toughened fingers softly loosened the ribbon, he sat with his
back to the room and presently began to read the letters over, one
by one. Most of the men came in before long, and silently joined the
watchers round the treat fireplace. Drake threw another log on, and in
a short time this, too, broke into ample flame. The silence was long;
a slice of shadow had fallen across the window-sill, when a young man
spoke, addressing the logs:
“I skinned a coon in San Saba, Texas, this day a year.”
At the sound of a voice, some of their eyes turned on the speaker, but
turned back to the fire again. The spirit had spoken from the clay,
aloud; and the clay was uncomfortable at hearing it.
After some more minutes a neighbor whispered to a neighbor, “Play you a
game of crib.”
The man nodded, stole over to where the board was, and brought it across
the floor on creaking tip-toe. They set it between them, and now and
then the cards made a light sound in the room.
“I treed that coon on Honey,” said the young man, after a while--“Honey
Creek, San Saba. Kind o' dry creek. Used to flow into Big Brady when it
rained.”
The flames crackled on, the neighbors still played their cribbage. Still
was the day bright, but the shrinking wedge of sun had gone entirely
from the window-sill. Half-past Full had drawn from his pocket a
mouthorgan, breathing half-tunes upon it; in the middle of “Suwanee
River” the man who sat in the corner laid the letter he was beginning
upon the heap on his knees and read no more. The great genial logs lay
glowing, burning; from the fresher one the flames flowed and forked;
along the embered surface of the others ran red and blue shivers of
iridescence. With legs and arms crooked and sprawled, the buccaroos
brooded, staring into the glow with seldom-winking eyes, while deep
inside the clay the spirit spoke quietly. Christmas Day was passing,
but the sun shone still two good hours high. Outside, over the snow
and pines, it was only in the deeper folds of the hills that the blue
shadows had come; the rest of the world was gold and silver; and from
far across that silence into this silence by the fire came a tinkling
stir of sound. Sleighbells it was, steadily coming, too early for Bolles
to be back from his school festival.
The toy-thrill of the jingling grew clear and sweet, a spirit of
enchantment that did not wake the stillness, but cast it into a deeper
dream. The bells came near the door and stopped, and then Drake opened
it.
“Hello, Uncle Pasco!” said he. “Thought you were Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus! H'm. Yes. That's what. Told you maybe I'd come.”
“So you did. Turkey is due in--let's see--ninety minutes. Here, boys!
some of you take Uncle Pasco's horse.”
“No, no, I won't. You leave me alone. I ain't stoppin' here. I ain't
hungry. I just grubbed at the school. Sleepin' at Missouri Pete's
to-night. Got to make the railroad tomorrow.” The old man stopped his
precipitate statements. He sat in his sledge deeply muffled, blinking
at Drake and the buccaroos, who had strolled out to look at him, “Done a
big business this trip,” said he. “Told you I would. Now if you was only
givin' your children a Christmas-tree like that I seen that feller yer
schoolmarm doin' just now--hee-hee!” From his blankets he revealed the
well-known case. “Them things would shine on a tree,” concluded Uncle
Pasco.
“Hang 'em in the woods, then,” said Drake.
“Jewelry, is it?” inquired the young Texas man.
Uncle Pasco whipped open his case. “There you are,” said he. “All what's
left. That ring'll cost you a dollar.”
“I've a dollar somewheres,” said the young man, fumbling.
Half-past Full, on the other side of the sleigh, stood visibly
fascinated by the wares he was given a skilful glimpse of down among the
blankets. He peered and he pondered while Uncle Pasco glibly spoke to
him.
“Scatter your truck out plain!” the buccaroo exclaimed, suddenly. “I'm
not buying in the dark. Come over to the bunk-house and scatter.”
“Brass will look just the same anywhere,” said Drake.
“Brass!” screamed Uncle. “Brass your eye!”
But the buccaroos, plainly glad for distraction, took the woolly old
scolding man with them. Drake shouted that if getting cheated cheered
them, by all means to invest heavily, and he returned alone to his fire,
where Bolles soon joined him. They waited, accordingly, and by-and-by
the sleigh-bells jingled again. As they had come out of the silence,
so did they go into it, their little silvery tinkle dancing away in the
distance, faint and fainter, then, like a breath, gone.
Uncle Pasco's trinkets had audibly raised the men's spirits. They
remained in the bunkhouse, their laughter reaching Drake and Bolles more
and more. Sometimes they would scuffle and laugh loudly.
“Do you imagine it's more leap-frog?” inquired the school-master.
“Gambling,” said Drake. “They'll keep at it now till one of them wins
everything the rest have bought.”
“Have they been lively ever since morning?”
“Had a reaction about noon,” said Drake. “Regular home-sick spell. I
felt sorry for 'em.”
“They seem full of reaction,” said Bolles. “Listen to that!”
It was now near four o'clock, and Sam came in, announcing dinner.
“All ready,” said the smiling Chinaman.
“Pass the good word to the bunk-house,” said Drake, “if they can hear
you.”
Sam went across, and the shouting stopped. Then arose a thick volley of
screams and cheers.
“That don't sound right,” said Drake, leaping to his feet. In the next
instant the Chinaman, terrified, returned through the open door. Behind
him lurched Half-past Full, and stumbled into the room. His boot caught,
and he pitched, but saved himself and stood swaying, heavily looking at
Drake. The hair curled dense over his bull head, his mustache was spread
with his grin, the light of cloddish humor and destruction burned in his
big eye. The clay had buried the spirit like a caving pit.
“Twas false jewelry all right!” he roared, at the top of his voice. “A
good old jimmyjohn full, boss. Say, boss, goin' to run our jimmyjohn off
the ranch? Try it on, kid. Come over and try it on!” The bull beat on
the table.
Dean Drake had sat quickly down in his chair, his gray eye upon the
hulking buccaroo. Small and dauntless he sat, a sparrow-hawk caught in a
trap, and game to the end--whatever end.
“It's a trifle tardy to outline any policy about your demijohn,” said
he, seriously. “You folks had better come in and eat before you're
beyond appreciating.”
“Ho, we'll eat your grub, boss. Sam's cooking goes.” The buccaroo
lurched out and away to the bunk-house, where new bellowing was set up.
“I've got to carve this turkey, friend,” said the boy to Bolles.
“I'll do my best to help eat it,” returned the school-master, smiling.
“Misser Dlake,” said poor Sam, “I solly you. I velly solly you.”