The Jimmyjohn Boss, and Other Stories by Owen Wister (the best novels to read TXT) 📗

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.”