The stage had not trundled so far on its Silver City road but that a whistle from Nampa station reached its three occupants. This was the branch train starting back to Boise with Max Vogel aboard; and the boy looked out at the locomotive with a sigh.
"Only five days of town," he murmured. "Six months more wilderness now.""My life has been too much town," said the new school-master. "I am looking forward to a little wilderness for a change."Old Uncle Pasco, leaning back, said nothing; he kept his eyes shut and his ears open.
"Change is what I don't get," sighed Dean Drake. In a few miles, however, before they had come to the ferry over Snake River, the recent leave-taking and his employer's kind but dominating repression lifted from the boy's spirit. His gray eye wakened keen again, and he began to whistle light opera tunes, looking about him alertly, like the sparrow-hawk that he was. "Ever see Jeannie Winston in 'Fatinitza'?" he inquired of Mr. Bolles.
The school-master, with a startled, thankful countenance, stated that he had never.
"Ought to," said Drake.
"You a man? that can't be true!
Men have never eyes like you."
That's what the girls in the harem sing in the second act. Golly whiz!"The boy gleamed over the memory of that evening.
"You have a hard job before you," said the school-master, changing the subject.
"Yep. Hard." The wary Drake shook his head warningly at Mr. Bolles to keep off that subject, and he glanced in the direction of slumbering Uncle Pasco. Uncle Pasco was quite aware of all this. "I wouldn't take another lonesome job so soon," pursued Drake, "but I want the money. I've been working eleven months along the Owyhee as a sort of junior boss, and I'd earned my vacation. Just got it started hot in Portland, when biff! old Vogel telegraphs me. Well, I'll be saving instead of squandering. But it feels so good to squander!""I have never had anything to squander," said Bolles, rather sadly.
"You don't say! Well, old man, I hope you will. It gives a man a lot he'll never get out of spelling-books. Are you cold? Here." And despite the school-master's protest, Dean Drake tucked his buffalo coat round and over him. "Some day, when I'm old," he went on, "I mean to live respectable under my own cabin and vine. Wife and everything. But not, anyway, till I'm thirty-five."He dropped into his opera tunes for a while; but evidently it was not "Fatinitza" and his vanished holiday over which he was chiefly meditating, for presently he exclaimed: "I'll give them a shooting-match in the morning. You shoot?"Bolles hoped he was going to learn in this country, and exhibited a Smith & Wesson revolver.
Drake grieved over it. "Wrap it up warm," said he. "I'll lend you a real one when we get to the Malheur Agency. But you can eat, anyhow. Christmas being next week, you see, my programme is, shoot all A.M. and eat all P.M. I wish you could light on a notion what prizes to give my buccaroos.""Buccaroos?" said Bolles.
"Yep. Cow-punchers. Vaqueros. Buccaroos in Oregon. Bastard Spanish word, you see, drifted up from Mexico. Vogel would not care to have me give 'em money as prizes."At this Uncle Pasco opened an eye.
"How many buccaroos will there be?" Bolles inquired.
"At the Malheur Agency? It's the headquarters of five of our ranches.
There ought to be quite a crowd. A dozen, probably, at this time of year."Uncle Pasco opened his other eye. "Here, you!" he said, dragging at his box under the seat. "Pull it, can't you? There. Just what you're after.
There's your prizes." Querulous and watchful, like some aged, rickety ape, the old man drew out his trinkets in shallow shelves.
"Sooner give 'em nothing," said Dean Drake.
"What's that? What's the matter with them?"
"Guess the boys have had all the brass rings and glass diamonds they want.""That's all you know, then. I sold that box clean empty through the Palouse country last week, 'cept the bottom drawer, and an outfit on Meacham's hill took that. Shows all you know. I'm going clean through your country after I've quit Silver City. I'll start in by Baker City again, and I'll strike Harney, and maybe I'll go to Linkville. I know what buccaroos want. I'll go to Fort Rinehart, and I'll go to the Island Ranch, and first thing you'll be seeing your boys wearing my stuff all over their fingers and Sunday shirts, and giving their girls my stuff right in Harney City. That's what.""All right, Uncle. It's a free country."
"Shaw! Guess it is. I was in it before you was, too. You were wet behind the ears when I was jammin' all around here. How many are they up at your place, did you say?""I said about twelve. If you're coming our way, stop and eat with us.""Maybe I will and maybe I won't." Uncle Pasco crossly shoved his box back.
"All right, Uncle. It's a free country," repeated Drake.
