“I’ll tell you what I think will happen now,” broke in a tall young man who had sauntered up and had been listening.
No one asked any questions. Amazeen bored his cane deeper with indignant twistings, as he reflected on the situation.
“I reckon she’ll give in to the Judge at last and marry King Bradish.” The lounger spoke with tone of conviction.
Buck and Amazeen slowly turned their heads and stared at each other with a singular look of mutual intelligence. Amazeen’s lips were set in a straight line above his bristly brush of short chin beard. There was a flicker of malice in Uncle Buck’s gray eyes, glittering under their tufted brows.
When they had established a thorough understanding by means of a prolonged stare, they simultaneously struggled to their feet and started around the store. At the foot of the outside stairway they paused and looked at each other again.
“Ain’t nobody else up there with him, is there?” asked Amazeen.
“No one ain’t gone up sence he opened shop,” replied Buck. “He got down early.”’
“I don’t blame him,” snorted Amazeen. “What with el’phunt and hosses and hoorah, and yard full and Hime hollerin’ ’round as though he was front of his show tent, and that ding parrot of his squawkin’, ‘Crack ’em down, gents; the old army game!’ I reckon the Squire couldn’t git away any too early. Now———-” he paused, and the two men looked at each other a long time, wrinkling their brows.
“If we try to plunk the news about Bradish and ‘Rissy Mayo to him at the fust-off, he’ll shet us up by yappin’ out that he won’t listen to slander. He handles ev’rything that’s spicy news just that way,” observed Buck, dubiously.
The young man who dropped the remark about Bradish lounged around the corner and stood eyeing the stairway, incertitude written large on his vapid countenance.