Part 3

“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.