“Don’t know whar he is! If he’d tended stock instead of running about the prairie, packin’ off wimmin and children, he might have saved suthin’. He lost every hoof and hide, I’ll bet a cooky! Say, you,” to a passing boatman, “when are you goin’ to give us some grub? I’m hungry ’nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I’ll turn butcher when things is dried up, and save hides, horns, and taller.”
I could not but admire this indomitable energy, which under softer climatic influences might have borne such goodly fruit.
“Have you any idea what you’ll do, Wise?” I ask.
“Thar ain’t much to do now,” says the practical young man. “I’ll have to lay over a spell, I reckon, till things comes straight. The land ain’t worth much now, and won’t be, I dessay, for some time. Wonder whar the ole man’ll drive stakes next.”
“I meant as to your father and George, Wise.”
“Oh, the ole man and I’ll go on to Miles’s, whar Tom packed the old woman and babies last week. George’ll turn up somewhar atween this and Altascar’s, ef he ain’t thar now.”
I ask how the Altascars have suffered.
“Well, I reckon he ain’t lost much in stock. I shouldn’t wonder if George helped him drive ’em up the foothills. And his casa’s built too high. Oh, thar ain’t any water thar, you bet. Ah!” says Wise, with reflective admiration, “those Greasers ain’t the darned fools people thinks ’em. I’ll bet thar ain’t one swamped out in all ’er Californy.” But the appearance of “grub” cut this rhapsody short.
“I shall keep on a little farther,” I say, “and try to find George.”
Wise stared a moment at this eccentricity until a new light dawned upon him.