“Don’t y’u!” Scipio begged. “I’d sooner believe y’u done it to me.”
“I can show you sheep.” It was the boy again. We had not noticed him come from the corral to our wagon, by which he now stood. His eyes were now eagerly fixed upon me; as they looked into mine they seemed almost burning with some sort of appeal.
“Hello, Timberline!” said Scipio, not at all unkindly. “Still holding your job here? Well, you better stick to it. You’re inclined to drift some.”
He touched the horses, and we left the boy standing and looking after us, lonely and baffled. But when a joke was born in Scipio it must out:
“Say, Timberline,” he called back, “better insure your clothes. Y’u couldn’t replace ’em.”
“I’m no two-bit man,” retorted the boy with anger--that pitiful anger which feels a blow but cannot give one.
We drove away along the empty stage-road, with the mountains and the dying storm, in which a piece of setting sun would redly glow and vanish, making our leftward horizon, and to our right the great undulations of a world so large as to seem the universe itself. The air was wet still, and full of the wet sage-brush smell, and the ground was wet, but it could not be so long in this sandy region. Three hours would see us to the next house, unless we camped short of this upon Broke Axle Creek.
“Why Timberline?” I asked after several miles.
“Well, he came into this country the long, lanky, innocent kid like you saw him, and he’d always get too tall in the legs for his latest pair of pants. They’d be half up to his knees. So we called him that. Guess he’s most forgot his real name.”
This much talk did for us for two or three miles more.
“Red’ll do it, too,” I answered. “Only you see green then, I think. And there are others.”
“H’m,” observed Scipio. “Most as queer as chemistry. D’ y’u know chemistry?”
“Just the embalmin’ side. Didn’t y’u know I assisted an undertaker wunst in Kansas City?”
“What’s that?” I interrupted sharply, for something out in the darkness had jumped.
“Does a stray steer scare you like that to-night? Now, that embalmin’ trick give me a notion I’ll work out some time. What do you miss worst in camp grub?”
“That’s you. Well, I’m going to invent embalmed eggs--somehow.”
“Hope you do,” said I. “Do you believe I’m going to get sheep this time? It’s all I came for.”