“Let him go, boys,” quoth Charley, coloring, but making no move. “I’ll send him his guns sometime; but he’s forfeited his pay. If he wants to have things that way, good enough. We’re better off without him.”
The men grunted, satisfied; nobody liked the unruly, foul-mouthed Yank. Soon he disappeared over a rise and he was not seen again by Davy for a year.
The camp that evening seemed much pleasanter without the presence of Yank. With him absent and with plenty of buffalo meat on hand, the men laughed and joked to even an unusual extent. It was a carefree camp.
“Here are your guns, Joel,” said Charley, returning them. “Guess I can trust you with them now. Well, we’re a short train, with two men shy. I’d rather lose Yank than Sailor Bill; but they’re both gone. Kentuck, you’re promoted to assistant wagon boss; and I’ll have to turn your team over to Dave, here. They’re well broken and I reckon he can drive them. How about it, Dave?”
Davy was somewhat flustered. He to be a bull whacker? Hurrah!
“I’ll try,” he stammered.
“Sure you will; and you’ll make good. Fact is, those bulls drive themselves. But you can learn a heap, anyway. All right. You take Kentuck’s outfit in the morning and go ahead. The boys will help you if you get in trouble. I can’t spare Joel; he’s too good a man in the lead, and we need him there.”
That night Davy could scarcely go to sleep. He was excited. He wondered if he really could “make good” as a bull whacker. He had practised with the whip and could “throw” it pretty well, although it was a long lash for a boy. But he had found out that to wield a bull whip and “pop” it required a certain knack rather than mere strength; and, besides, the bull teams behind kept up with the wagons before as a matter of habit. Of course, corralling and yoking were the chief difficulties. But he had watched closely what the men did every day, and he thought that he knew how, at least. At any rate, he was bound to try. To handle twelve oxen seemed to him a bigger job than being a messenger.
It was a proud Dave who, early in the morning, after breakfast, at the cry “Catch up, men! Catch up!” shouldered his yoke and the two bows, and sturdily trotted for the corral. He knew how to begin. The proper method was to lay the heavy yoke across one shoulder with the bows hanging from your arm. One pin was carried in your mouth, the other in your hand. The ends of the bows passed up through the yoke, so that only one end needed a pin thrust through above the yoke to hold it; the other end stayed of itself.
Davy felt that the men were watching him out of the corners of their eyes. He heard somebody say, aside, bantering: “Look out, boys, or that kid will beat us!” Of course he could not do that! Not yet. But Charley called to him from the forward gap, where somebody must stand to keep the cattle in: “The wheel team first, Dave. You know them, do you? A pair of big roans.”