“That there ain’t nobody at Oracle that he wants to see—or that he don’t want to see him—whichever way you like to say it.”
“There you go again,” said Bob. “Can’t talk more’n a minute on any subject without hintin’ that somethin’ is wrong. The boy is all right, I tell you.”
“Well, Holy Cats! who said he wasn’t?” cried Thad. “I wouldn’t hold it against him much if he never went to Oracle or nowhere else; jest stuck in this here cañon ’til he died, hidin’ out in the brush somewhere every time anybody strange showed up nearer than George Wheeler’s. You an’ me has both suffered from the same sort of sickness more’n once, or I’m a-losin’ my memory. You’re allus makin’ out that I’m thinkin’ evil when I’m only jest tryin’ to look at things as they actually are. If I’d intimated that the boy was a hoss-thief or a claim-jumper or somethin’ like that, you’d have reason to climb on to me, but I’m likin’ him an’ believin’ in him as much as ever you or anybody else ever dared to.”
Bob grinned.
“It’s funny how we’re all agreed on that, ain’t it? He is sure a likable cuss. I was a-warnin’ him the other day about handlin’ his powder. ‘You don’t want to forgit, son,’ says I, ‘that there’s enough in one of them sticks to blow you so high that you’d think you was one of them heavenly bodies up yonder.’ He laughed an’ says, says he, ‘That bein’ the case, it would be mighty comfortin’ to know there was no one to dock me for the time I was up in the air, wouldn’t it?’”
“Huh!” grunted Thad, “that’s an old one.”
“Sure it’s an old one,” retorted Bob, “but nobody can’t say it ain’t a good one; and I’m here to maintain that you can tell a heap more about a man by the jokes he laughs at than you can by the religions he claims to believe in.”
“Yes,” retorted Thad grimly, “I’ve allus took notice, too, that them that’s all the time seein’ evil in whatever anybody does is dead immortal certain to be havin’ a lot of their own doin’s that need to be kept in the dark. As for this game of lookin’ for some sort of insinuations in everything a body says, it’s like a lookin’ glass—what you see is mostly yourself. That’s what I’m meanin’.”
“Hugh is a good boy all right,” said Bob.
“He’s all of that and then some,” said Thad.