Business at the Ferry had shrunk since the railroad went through. The house-staff consisted of Jimmy Breen, a Chinese cook of the bony, tartar breed, sundry dogs, and a large bachelor cat that mooned about the empty piazzas. In a young farming country, hungry for capital, Jimmy could not do a cash business, but everything was grist that came to his mill; and he was quick to distinguish the perennial dead beat from a genuine case of hard luck.
“That's a good axe ye have there,” pointing suggestively to a new one sticking out of the rear baggage of an emigrant outfit. “Ye better l'ave that with me for the dollar that's owing me. If ye have money to buy new axes ye can't be broke entirely.” Or: “Slip the halter on that calf behind there. The mother hasn't enough to keep it alive. There's har'ly a dollar's wort' of hide on its bones, but I'll take it to save it droppin' on the road.” Or, he would try sarcasm: “Well, we'll be shuttin' her down in the spring. Then ye can go round be Walter's Ferry and see if they'll trust ye there.” Or: “Why wasn't ye workin' on the Ditch last winter? Settin' smokin' your poipe in the tules, the wife and young ones packin' sagebrush to kape ye warm!”
On the morning after their distinguished arrival, Jimmy's guests came down late to a devastated breakfast-table. Little heaps of crumbs here and there showed where earlier appetites had had their destined hour and gone their way. At an impartial distance from the top and the foot of the table stood the familiar group of sauce and pickle bottles, every brand dear to the cowboy, including the “surrup-jug” adhering to its saucer. There was a fresh-gathered bunch of wild phlox by Moya's plate in a tumbler printed round the edge with impressions of a large moist male thumb.
“Catchee plenty,” the Chinaman grinned, pointing to the plain outside where the pale sage-brush quivered stiffly in the wind. “Bymbye plenty come. Pretty col' now.”
“You'll be getting a large hump on yourself, Han, me boy. 'T is a cash crowd we have here—and a lady, by me sowl!” Thus Jimmy exhorted his household. Times were looking up. They would be a summer resort before the Ditch went through; it should be mentioned in the Ditch company's prospectus. Jimmy had put his savings into land-office fees and had a hopeful interest in the Ditch.
A spur in the head is worth two in the heel. Without a word from “the boss” Han had found time to shave and powder and polish his brown forehead and put on his whitest raiment over his baggiest trousers. There was loud panic among the fowls in the corral. The cat had disappeared; the jealous dogs hung about the doors and were pushed out of the way by friends of other days.
Seated by the office fire, Paul was conferring with Jimmy, who was happy with a fresh pipe and a long story to tell to a patient and paying listener. He rubbed the red curls back from his shining forehead, took the pipe from his teeth, and guided a puff of smoke away from his auditor.
“I seen him settin' over there on his blankets,”—he pointed with his pipe to the opposite shore plainly visible through the office windows,—“but he niver hailed me, so I knowed he was broke. Some, whin they're broke, they holler all the louder. Ye would think they had an appointment wit' the Governor and he sint his car'iage to meet them. But he was as humble, he was, as a yaller dog.—Out! Git out from here—the pack of yez! Han, shut the dure an' drive thim bloody curs off the piazzy. They're trackin' up the whole place.—As I was sayin', sor, there he stayed hunched up in the wind, waitin' on the chanst of a team comin', and I seen he was an ould daddy. I stud the sight of him as long as I cud, me comin' and goin'. He fair wore me out. So I tuk the boat over for 'im. One of his arrums he couldn't lift from the shoulder, and I give him a h'ist wit' his bundle. Faith, it was light! 'Twinty years a-getherin',' he cackles, slappin' it. 'Ye've had harrud luck,' I says. ''T is not much of a sheaf ye are packin' home.' 'That's as ye look at it,' he says.
“I axed him what way was he goin'. He was thinking to get a lift as far as Oriana, if the stages was runnin' on that road. 'Then ye 'll have to bide here till morning,' I says, 'for ye must have met the stage goin' the other way.' 'I met nothing,' says he; 'I come be way of the bluffs,'—which is a strange way for one man travelin' afoot.
“The grub was on the table, and I says, 'Sit by and fill yourself up.' His cheeks was fallin' in wit' the hunger. With that his poor ould eye begun to water. 'Twas one weak eye he had that was weepin' all the time. 'I've got out of the habit of reg'lar aitin',' he says. 'It don't take much to kape me goin'.' 'Niver desave yourself, sor! 'T is betther feed three hungry men than wan “no occasion.”' His appetite it grew on him wit' every mouthful. There was a boundless emptiness to him. He lay there on the bench and slep' the rest of the evening, and I left him there wit' a big fire at night. And the next day at noon we h'isted him up beside of Joe Stratton. A rip-snorter of a wind was blowin' off the Silver City peaks. His face was drawed like a winter apple, but he wint off happy. I think he was warm inside of himself.”