“He’s coming,” announced Billy, showing the dimples in both cheeks and Dusty Rhodes let his jaw drop.
“Who’s coming?” he asked but she dimpled enigmatically and jerked her curly head towards the road. They started up to look and as the white mule rounded the point Dusty Rhodes blinked his eyes uncertainly. After all his talk about the faithless and cowardly Wunpost here he was, coming up the road; and the memory of a canteen which he had left strapped upon a pack, rose up and left him cold. Talk as much as he would he could never escape the fact that he had gone off with Wunpost’s 21big canteen, and the one subject he had avoided–why he had not stopped to wait for him–was now likely to be thoroughly discussed. He glanced about furtively, but there was no avenue of escape and he started off down to the gate.
“Where you been all the time?” he shouted in accusing accents, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Yes, you have!” thundered Wunpost dropping down off his mule and striding swiftly towards him. “You’ve been lapping up the booze, over at Blackwater! I’ve a good mind to kill you, you old dastard!”
“Didn’t I tell you not to stop?” yelled Rhodes in a feigned fury. “You brought it all on yourself! I thought you’d gone back─”
“You did not!” shouted Wunpost waving his fists in the air, “you saw me behind you all the time. And if I’d ever caught up with you I’d have bashed your danged brains out, but now I’m going to let you live! I’m going to let you live so I can have a good laugh every time I see you go by–Old Dusty Rhodes, the Speed King, the Wild Ass of the Desert, the man that couldn’t stop to get rich! I was running along behind you trying to make you a millionaire but you wouldn’t even give me a drink! Look at that, what I was trying to show you!”
He whipped out a rock and slapped it into Rhodes’ hand but Dusty was blind with rage.
“No good!” he said, and chucked it in the dirt at which Wunpost stooped down and picked it up.
22“You’re a peach of a prospector,” he said with biting scorn and stored it away in his pocket.
“Let me look at that again,” spoke up Dusty Rhodes querulously but Wunpost had spied the ladies. He advanced to the porch, his big black hat in one hand, while he smoothed his towsled hair with the other, and the smile which he flashed Billy made her flush and then go pale, for she had neglected to change back to skirts. Every Sunday morning, and when they had visitors, she was required to don the true habiliments of her sex; but her joy at his return had left no room for thoughts of dress and she found herself in the overalls of a boy. So she stepped behind her mother and as Wunpost observed her blushes he addressed his remarks to Mrs. Campbell.