by Various
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 upo
n 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?"