The Jimmyjohn Boss, and Other Stories, Owen Wister [easy novels to read txt] 📗

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.

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