“Reserve your sorrow, Sam,” said Dean Drake. “Give us your soup for a
starter. Come,” he said to Bolles. “Quick.”
He went into the dining-room, prompt in his seat at the head of the
table, with the school-master next to him.
“Nice man, Uncle Pasco,” he continued. “But his time is not now. We have
nothing to do for the present but sit like every day and act perfectly
natural.”
“I have known simpler tasks,” said Mr. Bolles, “but I'll begin by
spreading this excellently clean napkin.”
“You're no schoolmarm!” exclaimed Drake; “you please me.”
“The worst of a bad thing,” said the mild Bolles, “is having time to
think about it, and we have been spared that.”
“Here they come,” said Drake.
They did come. But Drake's alert strategy served the end he had tried
for. The drunken buccaroos swarmed disorderly to the door and halted.
Once more the new superintendent's ways took them aback. Here was the
decent table with lights serenely burning, with unwonted good things
arranged upon it--the olives, the oranges, the preserves. Neat as parade
drill were the men's places, all the cups and forks symmetrical along
the white cloth. There, waiting his guests at the far end, sat the slim
young boss talking with his boarder, Mr. Bolles, the parts in their
smooth hair going with all the rest of this propriety. Even the daily
tin dishes were banished in favor of crockery.
“Bashful of Sam's napkins, boys?” said the boss. “Or is it the
bald-headed china?”
At this bidding they came in uncertainly. Their whiskey was ashamed
inside. They took their seats, glancing across at each other in a
transient silence, drawing their chairs gingerly beneath them. Thus
ceremony fell unexpected upon the gathering, and for a while they
swallowed in awkwardness what the swift, noiseless Sam brought them.
He in a long white apron passed and re-passed with his things from his
kitchen, doubly efficient and civil under stress of anxiety for
his young master. In the pauses of his serving he watched from the
background, with a face that presently caught the notice of one of them.
“Smile, you almond-eyed highbinder,” said the buccaroo. And the Chinaman
smiled his best.
“I've forgot something,” said Half-past Full, rising. “Don't let 'em
skip a course on me.” Half-past left the room.
“That's what I have been hoping for,” said Drake to Bolles.
Half-past returned presently and caught Drake's look of expectancy. “Oh
no, boss,” said the buccaroo, instantly, from the door. “You're on to
me, but I'm on to you.” He slammed the door with ostentation and dropped
with a loud laugh into his seat.
“First smart thing I've known him do,” said Drake to Bolles. “I am
disappointed.”
Two buccaroos next left the room together.
“They may get lost in the snow,” said the humorous Half-past. “I'll just
show 'em the trail.” Once more he rose from the dinner and went out.
“Yes, he knew too much to bring it in here,” said Drake to Bolles. “He
knew none but two or three would dare drink, with me looking on.”
“Don't you think he is afraid to bring it in the same room with you at
all?” Bolles suggested.
“And me temperance this season? Now, Bolles, that's unkind.”
“Oh, dear, that is not at all what--”
“I know what you meant, Bolles. I was only just making a little merry
over this casualty. No, he don't mind me to that extent, except when
he's sober. Look at him!”
Half-past was returning with his friends. Quite evidently they had all
found the trail.
“Uncle Pasco is a nice old man!” pursued Drake. “I haven't got my gun
on. Have you?”
“Yes,” said Bolles, but with a sheepish swerve of the eye.
Drake guessed at once. “Not Baby Bunting? Oh, Lord! and I promised
to give you an adult weapon!--the kind they're wearing now by way of
full-dress.”
“Talkin' secrets, boss?” said Half-past Full.
The well-meaning Sam filled his cup, and this proceeding shifted the
buccaroo's truculent attention.
“What's that mud?” he demanded.
“Coffee,” said Sam, politely.
The buccaroo swept his cup to the ground, and the next man howled
dismay.
“Burn your poor legs?” said Half-past. He poured his glass over the
victim. They wrestled, the company pounded the table, betting hoarsely,
until Half-past went to the floor, and his plate with him.
“Go easy,” said Drake. “You're smashing the company's property.”
“Bald-headed china for sure, boss!” said a second of the brothers
Drinker, and dropped a dish.
“I'll merely tell you,” said Drake, “that the company don't pay for this
china twice.”
“Not twice?” said Half-past Full, smashing some more. “How about
thrice?”
“Want your money now?” another inquired.
A riot of banter seized upon all of them, and they began to laugh and
destroy.
“How much did this cost?” said one, prying askew his three-tined fork.
“How much did you cost yourself?” said another to Drake.
“What, our kid boss? Two bits, I guess.”
“Hyas markook. Too dear!”
They bawled at their own jokes, loud and ominous; threat sounded beneath
their lightest word, the new crashes of china that they threw on the
floor struck sharply through the foreboding din of their mirth. The
spirit that Drake since his arrival had kept under in them day by day,
but not quelled, rose visibly each few succeeding minutes, swelling
upward as the tide does. Buoyed up on the whiskey, it glittered in their
eyes and yelled mutinously in their voices.
“I'm waiting all orders,” said Bolles to Drake.
“I haven't any,” said Drake. “New ones, that is. We've sat down to see
this meal out. Got to keep sitting.”
He leaned back, eating deliberately, saying no more to the buccaroos;
thus they saw he would never leave the room till they did. As he had
taken his chair the first, so was the boy bound to quit it the last. The
game of prying fork-tines staled on them one by one, and they took to
songs, mostly of love and parting. With the red whiskey in their eyes
they shouted plaintively of sweethearts, and vows, and lips, and meeting
in the wild wood. From these they went to ballads of the cattle-trail
and the Yuba River, and so inevitably worked to the old coast song, made
of three languages, with its verses rhymed on each year since the first
beginning. Tradition laid it heavy upon each singer in his turn to keep
the pot a-boiling by memory or by new invention, and the chant went
forward with hypnotic cadence to a tune of larkish, ripping gayety. He
who had read over his old stained letters in the homesick afternoon had
waked from such dreaming and now sang:
“Once jes' onced in the year o' 49,
I met a fancy thing by the name o' Keroline;
I never could persuade her for to leave me be;
She went and she took and she married me.”
His neighbor was ready with an original contribution:
“Once, once again in the year o' '64,
By the city of Whatcom down along the shore--
I never could persuade them for to leave me be--
A Siwash squaw went and took and married me.”
“What was you doin' between all them years?” called Half-past Full.
“Shut yer mouth,” said the next singer:
“Once, once again in the year o' 71
['Twas the suddenest deed that I ever done)--
I never could persuade them for to leave me be--
A rich banker's daughter she took and married me.”
“This is looking better,” said Bolles to Drake.
“Don't you believe it,” said the boy.
Ten or a dozen years were thus sung.
“I never could persuade them for to leave me be” tempestuously brought
down the chorus and the fists, until the drunkards could sit no more,
but stood up to sing, tramping the tune heavily together. Then, just as
the turn came round to Drake himself, they dashed their chairs down and
herded out of the room behind Half-past Full, slamming the door.
Drake sat a moment at the head of his Christmas dinner, the fallen
chairs, the lumpy wreck. Blood charged his face from his hair to his
collar. “Let's smoke,” said he. They went from the dinner through the
room of the great fireplace to his office beyond.
“Have a mild one?” he said to the schoolmaster.
“No, a strong one to-night, if you please.” And Bolles gave his mild
smile.
“You do me good now and then,” said Drake.
“Dear me,” said the teacher, “I have found it the other way.”
All the rooms fronted on the road with doors--the old-time agency doors,
where the hostiles had drawn their pictures in the days before peace had
come to reign over this country. Drake looked out, because the singing
had stopped and they were very quiet in the bunk-house. He saw the
Chinaman steal from his kitchen.
“Sam is tired of us,” he said to Bolles.
“Tired?”
“Running away, I guess. I'd prefer a new situation myself. That's where
you're deficient, Bolles. Only got sense enough to stay where you happen
to be. Hello. What is he up to?”
Sam had gone beside a window of the bunkhouse and was listening there,
flat like a shadow. Suddenly he crouched, and was gone among the sheds.
Out of the bunk-house immediately came a procession, the buccaroos still
quiet, a careful, gradual body.
Drake closed his door and sat in the chair again. “They're escorting
that jug over here,” said he. “A new move, and a big one.”
He and Bolles heard them enter the next room, always without much noise
or talk--the loudest sound was the jug when they set it on the floor.
Then they seemed to sit, talking little.
“Bolles,” said Drake, “the sun has set. If you want to take after Sam--”
But the door of the sitting-room opened and the Chinaman himself came
in. He left the door a-swing and spoke clearly. “Misser Dlake,” said he,
“slove bloke” (stove broke).
The superintendent came out of his office, following Sam to the kitchen.
He gave no look or word to the buccaroos with their demijohn; he merely
held his cigar sidewise in his teeth and walked with no hurry through
the sitting-room. Sam took him through to the kitchen and round to a
hind corner of the stove, pointing.
“Misser Dlake,” said he, “slove no bloke. I hear them inside. They going
kill you.”
“That's about the way I was figuring it,” mused Dean Drake.
“Misser Dlake,” said the Chinaman, with appealing eyes, “I velly solly
you. They no hurtee me. Me cook.”
“Sam, there is much meat in your words. Condensed beef don't class with
you. But reserve your sorrows yet a while. Now what's my policy?” he
debated, tapping the stove here and there for appearances; somebody
might look in. “Shall I go back to my office and get my guns?”
“You not goin' run now?” said the Chinaman, anxiously.
“Oh yes, Sam. But I like my gun travelling. Keeps me kind of warm. Now
if they should get a sight of me arming--no, she's got to stay here till
I come back for her. So long, Sam! See you later. And I'll have time to
thank you then.”
Drake went to the corral in a strolling manner. There he roped the
strongest of the horses, and also the school-master's. In the midst of
his saddling, Bolles came down.
“Can I help you in any way?” said Bolles.
“You've done it. Saved me a bothering touch-and-go play to get you out
here and seem innocent. I'm going to drift.”
“Drift?”
“There are times to stay and times to leave, Bolles; and this is a case
of the latter. Have you a real gun on now?”
Poor Bolles brought out guiltily his.22 Smith & Wesson. “I don't seem to
think of things,” said he.
“Cheer up,” said Drake. “How could you thought-read me? Hide Baby
Bunting, though. Now we're off. Quietly, at the start. As if we were
merely jogging to pasture.”
Sam stood at his kitchen door, mutely wishing them well. The horses were
walking without noise, but Half-past Full looked out of the window.
“We're by, anyhow,” said Drake. “Quick now. Burn the earth.” The
horse sprang at his spurs. “Dust, you son of a gun! Rattle your hocks!
Brindle! Vamoose!” Each shouted word was a lash with his quirt. “Duck!”
he called to Bolles.
Bolles ducked, and bullets grooved the spraying snow. They rounded a
corner and saw the crowd jumping into the corral, and Sam's door empty
of that prudent Celestial.
“He's a very wise Chinaman!” shouted Drake, as they rushed.
“What?” screamed Bolles.
“Very wise Chinaman. He'll break that stove now to prove his innocence.”
“Who did you say was innocent?” screamed Bolles.
“Oh, I said you were,” yelled Drake, disgusted; and he gave over this
effort at conversation as their horses rushed along.
V
It was a dim, wide stretch of winter into which Drake and Bolles
galloped from the howling pursuit. Twilight already veiled the base of
Castle Rock, and as they forged heavily up a ridge through the caking
snow, and the yells came after them, Bolles looked seriously at Dean
Drake; but that youth wore an expression of rising merriment. Bolles
looked back at the dusk from which the yells were sounding, then forward
to the spreading skein of night where the trail was taking him and the
boy, and in neither direction could he discern cause for gayety.
“May I ask where we are going?” said he.
“Away,” Drake answered. “Just away, Bolles. It's a healthy resort.”
Ten miles were travelled before either spoke again. The drunken
buccaroos yelled hot on their heels at first, holding more obstinately
to this chase than sober ruffians would have attempted. Ten cold, dark
miles across the hills it took to cure them; but when their shootings,
that had followed over heights where the pines grew and down through
the open swales between, dropped off, and died finally away among the
willows along the south fork of the Malheur, Drake reined in his horse
with a jerk.
“Now isn't that too bad!” he exclaimed.
“It is all very bad,” said Bolles, sorry to hear the boy's tone of
disappointment.
“I didn't think they'd fool me again,” continued Drake, jumping down.
“Again?” inquired the interested Bolles.
“Why, they've gone home!” said the boy, in disgust.
“I was hoping so,” said the school-master.
“Hoping? Why, it's sad, Bolles. Four miles farther and I'd have had them
lost.”
“Oh!” said Bolles.
“I wanted them to keep after us,” complained Drake. “Soon as we had a
good lead I coaxed them. Coaxed them along on purpose by a trail they
knew, and four miles from here I'd have swung south into the mountains
they don't know. There they'd have been good and far from home in the
snow without supper, like you and me, Bolles. But after all my trouble
they've gone back snug to that fireside. Well, let us be as cosey as we
can.”
He built a bright fire, and he whistled as he kicked the snow from his
boots, busying over the horses and the blankets. “Take a rest,” he said
to Bolles. “One man's enough to do the work. Be with you soon to share
our little cottage.” Presently Bolles heard him reciting confidentially
to his horse, “Twas the night after Christmas, and all in the
house--only we are not all in the house!” He slapped the belly of his
horse Tyee, who gambolled away to the limit of his picket-rope.
“Appreciating the moon, Bolles?” said he, returning at length to the
fire. “What are you so gazeful about, father?”
“This is all my own doing,” lamented the school-master.
“What, the moon is?”
“It has just come over me,” Bolles continued. “It was before you got in
the stage at Nampa. I was talking. I told Uncle Pasco that I was glad no
whiskey was to be allowed on the ranch. It all comes from my folly!”
“Why, you hungry old New England conscience!” cried the boy, clapping
him on the shoulder. “How in the world could you foresee the crookedness
of that hoary Beelzebub?”
“That's all very well,” said Bolles, miserably. “You would never have
mentioned it yourself to him.”
“You and I, Bolles, are different. I was raised on miscellaneous
wickedness. A look at my insides would be liable to make you say your
prayers.”
The school-master smiled. “If I said any prayers,” he replied, “you
would be in them.”
Drake looked moodily at the fire. “The Lord helps those who help
themselves,” said he. “I've prospered. For a nineteen-year-old I've
hooked my claw fairly deep here and there. As for to-day--why, that's
in the game too. It was their deal. Could they have won it on their own
play? A joker dropped into their hand. It's my deal now, and I have some
jokers myself. Go to sleep, Bolles. We've a ride ahead of us.”
The boy rolled himself in his blanket skillfully. Bolles heard him say
once or twice in a sort of judicial conversation with the blanket--“and
all in the house--but we were not all in the house. Not all. Not a full
house--” His tones drowsed comfortably into murmur, and then to quiet
breathing. Bolles fed the fire, thatched the unneeded wind-break (for
the calm, dry night was breathless), and for a long while watched the
moon and a tuft of the sleeping boy's hair.
“If he is blamed,” said the school-master, “I'll never forgive myself.
I'll never forgive myself anyhow.”
A paternal, or rather maternal, expression came over Bolles's face, and
he removed his large, serious glasses. He did not sleep very well.
The boy did. “I'm feeling like a bird,” said he, as they crossed through
the mountains next morning on a short cut to the Owybee. “Breakfast will
brace you up, Bolles. There'll be a cabin pretty soon after we strike
the other road. Keep thinking hard about coffee.”
“I wish I could,” said poor Bolles. He was forgiving himself less and
less.
Their start had been very early; as Drake bid the school-master observe,
to have nothing to detain you, nothing to eat and nothing to pack, is a
great help in journeys of haste. The warming day, and Indian Creek well
behind them, brought Drake to whistling again, but depression sat upon
the self-accusing Bolles. Even when they sighted the Owyhee road below
them, no cheerfulness waked in him; not at the nearing coffee, nor
yet at the companionable tinkle of sleigh-bells dancing faintly upward
through the bright, silent air.
“Why, if it ain't Uncle Pasco!” said Drake, peering down through a gap
in the foot-hill. “We'll get breakfast sooner than I expected. Quick!
Give me Baby Bunting!”
“Are you going to kill him?” whispered the school-master, with a beaming
countenance. And he scuffled with his pocket to hand over his hitherto
belittled weapon.
Drake considered him. “Bolles, Bolles,” said he, “you have got the
New England conscience rank. Plymouth Rock is a pudding to your heart.
Remind me to pray for you first spare minute I get. Now follow me close.
He'll be much more useful to us alive.”
They slipped from their horses, stole swiftly down a shoulder of the
hill, and waited among some brush. The bells jingled unsuspectingly
onward to this ambush.
“Only hear 'em!” said Drake. “All full of silver and Merry Christmas.
Don't gaze at me like that, Bolles, or I'll laugh and give the whole
snap away. See him come! The old man's breath streams out so calm. He's
not worried with New England conscience. One, two, three” Just before
the sleigh came opposite, Dean Drake stepped out. “Morning, Uncle!” said
he. “Throw up your hands!”
Uncle Pasco stopped dead, his eyes blinking. Then he stood up in the
sleigh among his blankets. “H'm,” said he, “the kid.”
“Throw up your hands! Quit fooling with that blanket!” Drake spoke
dangerously now. “Bolles,” he continued, “pitch everything out of the
sleigh while I cover him. He's got a shot-gun under that blanket. Sling
it out.”
It was slung. The wraps followed. Uncle Pasco stepped obediently down,
and soon the chattels of the emptied sleigh littered the snow. The old
gentleman was invited to undress until they reached the six-shooter that
Drake suspected. Then they ate his lunch, drank some whiskey that he had
not sold to the buccaroos, told him to repack the sleigh, allowed him
to wrap up again, bade him take the reins, and they would use his
six-shooter and shot-gun to point out the road to him.
He had said very little, had Uncle Pasco, but stood blinking, obedient
and malignant. “H'm,” said he now, “goin' to ride with me, are you?”
He was told yes, that for the present he was their coachman. Their
horses were tired and would follow, tied behind. “We're weary, too,”
said Drake, getting in. “Take your legs out of my way or I'll kick off
your shins. Bolles, are you fixed warm and comfortable? Now start her up
for Harper ranch, Uncle.”
“What are you proposing to do with me?” inquired Uncle Pasco.
“Not going to wring your neck, and that's enough for the present.
Faster, Uncle. Get a gait on. Bolles, here's Baby Bunting. Much obliged
to you for the loan of it, old man.”
Uncle Pasco's eye fell on the 22-caliber pistol. “Did you hold me up
with that lemonade straw?” he asked, huskily.
“Yep,” said Drake. “That's what.”
“Oh, hell!” murmured Uncle Pasco. And for the first time he seemed
dispirited.
“Uncle, you're not making time,” said Drake after a few miles. “I'll
thank you for the reins. Open your bandanna and get your concertina.
Jerk the bellows for us.”
“That I'll not!” screamed Uncle Pasco.
“It's music or walk home,” said the boy. “Take your choice.”
Uncle Pasco took his choice, opening with the melody of “The Last Rose
of Summer.” The sleigh whirled up the Owyhee by the winter willows, and
the levels, and the meadow pools, bright frozen under the blue sky.
Late in this day the amazed Brock by his corrals at Harper's beheld
arrive his favorite, his boy superintendent, driving in with the
schoolmaster staring through his glasses, and Uncle Pasco throwing
out active strains upon his concertina. The old man had been bidden to
bellows away for his neck.
Drake was not long in explaining his need to the men. “This thing must
be worked quick,” said he. “Who'll stand by me?”
All of them would, and he took ten, with the faithful Brock. Brock would
not allow Gilbert to go, because he had received another mule-kick in
the stomach. Nor was Bolles permitted to be of the expedition. To all
his protests, Drake had but the single word: “This is not your fight,
old man. You've done your share with Baby Bunting.”
Thus was the school-master in sorrow compelled to see them start back
to Indian Creek and the Malheur without him. With him Uncle Pasco would
have joyfully exchanged. He was taken along with the avengers. They
would not wring his neck, but they would play cat and mouse with him and
his concertina; and they did. But the conscience of Bolles still toiled.
When Drake and the men were safe away, he got on the wagon going for the
mail, thus making his way next morning to the railroad and Boise, where
Max Vogel listened to him; and together this couple hastily took train
and team for the Malheur Agency.
The avengers reached Indian Creek duly, and the fourth day after his
Christmas dinner Drake came once more in sight of Castle Rock.
“I am doing this thing myself, understand,” he said to Brock. “I am
responsible.”
“We're here to take your orders,” returned the foreman. But as the
agency buildings grew plain and the time for action was coming, Brock's
anxious heart spoke out of its fulness. “If they start in to--to--they
might--I wish you'd let me get in front,” he begged, all at once.
“I thought you thought better of me,” said Drake.
“Excuse me,” said the man. Then presently: “I don't see how anybody
could 'a' told he'd smuggle whiskey that way. If the old man [Brock
meant Max Vogel] goes to blame you, I'll give him my opinion straight.”
“The old man's got no use for opinions,” said Drake. “He goes on
results. He trusted me with this job, and we're going to have results
now.”
The drunkards were sitting round outside the ranch house. It was
evening. They cast a sullen inspection on the new-comers, who returned
them no inspection whatever. Drake had his men together and took them
to the stable first, a shed with mangers. Here he had them unsaddle.
“Because,” he mentioned to Brock, “in case of trouble we'll be sure of
their all staying. I'm taking no chances now.”
Soon the drunkards strolled over, saying good-day, hazarding a few
comments on the weather and like topics, and meeting sufficient answers.
“Goin' to stay?”
“Don't know.”
“That's a good horse you've got.”
“Fair.”
But Sam was the blithest spirit at the Malheur Agency. “Hiyah!” he
exclaimed. “Misser Dlake! How fashion you come quick so?” And the
excellent Chinaman took pride in the meal of welcome that he prepared.
“Supper's now,” said Drake to his men. “Sit anywhere you feel like.
Don't mind whose chair you're taking--and we'll keep our guns on.”
Thus they followed him, and sat. The boy took his customary perch at the
head of the table, with Brock at his right. “I miss old Bolles,” he told
his foreman. “You don't appreciate Bolles.”
“From what you tell of him,” said Brock, “I'll examine him more
careful.”
Seeing their boss, the sparrow-hawk, back in his place, flanked with
supporters, and his gray eye indifferently upon them, the buccaroos grew
polite to oppressiveness. While Sam handed his dishes to Drake and
the new-comers, and the new-comers eat what was good before the old
inhabitants got a taste, these latter grew more and more solicitous.
They offered sugar to the strangers, they offered their beds; Half-past
Full urged them to sit companionably in the room where the fire was
burning. But when the meal was over, the visitors went to another room
with their arms, and lighted their own fire. They brought blankets from
their saddles, and after a little concertina they permitted the nearly
perished Uncle Pasco to slumber. Soon they slumbered themselves, with
the door left open, and Drake watching. He would not even share vigil
with Brock, and all night he heard the voices of the buccaroos, holding
grand, unending council.
When the relentless morning came, and breakfast with the visitors again
in their seats unapproachable, the drunkards felt the crisis to be a
strain upon their sobered nerves. They glanced up from their plates, and
down; along to Dean Drake eating his hearty porridge, and back at one
another, and at the hungry, well-occupied strangers.
“Say, we don't want trouble,” they began to the strangers.
“Course you don't. Breakfast's what you're after.”
“Oh, well, you'd have got gay. A man gets gay.”
“Sure.”
“Mr. Drake,” said Half-past Full, sweating with his effort, “we were
sorry while we was a-fogging you up.”
“Yes,” said Drake. “You must have been just overcome by contrition.”
A large laugh went up from the visitors, and the meal was finished
without further diplomacy.
“One matter, Mr. Drake,” stammered Half-past Full, as the party rose.
“Our jobs. We're glad to pay for any things what got sort of broke.”
“Sort of broke,” repeated the boy, eyeing him. “So you want to hold your
jobs?”
“If--” began the buccaroo, and halted.
“Fact is, you're a set of cowards,” said Drake, briefly. “I notice
you've forgot to remove that whiskey jug.” The demijohn still stood
by the great fireplace. Drake entered and laid hold of it, the crowd
standing back and watching. He took it out, with what remained in its
capacious bottom, set it on a stump, stepped back, levelled his gun, and
shattered the vessel to pieces. The whiskey drained down, wetting the
stump, creeping to the ground.
Much potency lies in the object-lesson, and a grin was on the faces of
all present, save Uncle Pasco's. It had been his demijohn, and when the
shot struck it he blinked nervously.
“You ornery old mink!” said Drake, looking at him. “You keep to the
jewelry business hereafter.”
The buccaroos grinned again. It was reassuring to witness wrath turn
upon another.
“You want to hold your jobs?” Drake resumed to them. “You can trust
yourselves?”
“Yes, sir,” said Half-past Full.
“But I don't trust you,” stated Drake, genially; and the buccaroos'
hopeful eyes dropped. “I'm going to divide you,” pursued the new
superintendent. “Split you far and wide among the company's ranches.
Stir you in with decenter blood. You'll go to White-horse ranch, just
across the line of Nevada,” he said to Half-past Full. “I'm tired of the
brothers Drinker. You'll go--let's see--”
Drake paused in his apportionment, and a sleigh came swiftly round the
turn, the horse loping and lathery.
“What vas dat shooting I hear joost now?” shouted Max Vogel, before he
could arrive. He did not wait for any answer. “Thank the good God!” he
exclaimed, at seeing the boy Dean Drake unharmed, standing with a gun.
And to their amazement he sped past them, never slacking his horse's
lope until he reached the corral. There he tossed the reins to the
placid Bolles, and springing out like a surefooted elephant, counted his
saddle-horses; for he was a general. Satisfied, he strode back to the
crowd by the demijohn. “When dem men get restless,” he explained to
Drake at once, “always look out. Somebody might steal a horse.”
The boy closed one gray, confidential eye at his employer. “Just my
idea,” said he, “when I counted 'em before breakfast.”
“You liddle r-rascal,” said Max, fondly, “What you shoot at?”
Drake pointed at the demijohn. “It was bigger than those bottles at
Nampa,” said he. “Guess you could have hit it yourself.”
Max's great belly shook. He took in the situation. It had a flavor that
he liked. He paused to relish it a little more in silence.
“Und you have killed noding else?” said he, looking at Uncle Pasco, who
blinked copiously. “Mine old friend, you never get rich if you change
your business so frequent. I tell you that thirty years now.” Max's hand
found Drake's shoulder, but he addressed Brock. “He is all what you tell
me,” said he to the foreman. “He have joodgement.”
Thus the huge, jovial Teuton took command, but found Drake had left
little for him to do. The buccaroos were dispersed at Harper's, at Fort
Rinehart, at Alvord Lake, towards Stein's peak, and at the Island Ranch
by Harney Lake. And if you know east Oregon, or the land where Chief
E-egante helped out Specimen Jones, his white soldier friend, when the
hostile Bannocks were planning his immediate death as a spy, you will
know what wide regions separated the buccaroos. Bolles was taken into
Max Vogel's esteem; also was Chinese Sam. But Max sat smoking in the
office with his boy superintendent, in particular satisfaction.
“You are a liddle r-rascal,” said he. “Und I r-raise you fifty dollars.”