“But he is the entertainment. Supper comes after he’s through.”
Scipio stayed. He was not repaid, he thought. “A poor show,” was his comment as he went to bed. He came later to be very glad indeed that he had gone to that entertainment.
The next day found him seated in the Agency store, being warmly greeted by his friends the Indians. They knew him well; perhaps he understood them better than he had said. By Horacles he was not warmly greeted; perhaps Horacles did not wish to be understood—and then, Scipio, in his comings and goings through the reservation, had played with Horacles for the benefit of bystanders. There is no doubt whatever that Horacles did not understand Scipio. He was sorry to notice how the Agent, his employer, shook Scipio’s hand and invited him to come and stop with him till he was fit to return to his work. And Scipio accepted this invitation. He sat him down in the store, and made himself at home. Legs stretched out on one chair, crutch within reach, hands comfortably clasped round the arms of the chair he sat in, head tilted back, eyes apparently studying the goods which hung from the beams overhead, he visibly sniffed the air.
“Smell anything you don’t like?” inquired the clerk, tartly—and unwisely.
“Nothin’ except you, Horacles,” was the perfectly amiable rejoinder.—“It’s good,” Scipio then confessed, “to be smellin’ buckskin and leather and groceries instead of ether and iodoform.”
“Guess you were pretty sick,” observed the clerk, with relish.
“Yes. Oh, yes. I was pretty sick. That’s right. Yes.” Scipio had continued through these slowly drawled remarks to look at the ceiling. Then his glance dropped to the level of Horacles, and keenly fixed that unconscious youth’s plump little form, pink little face, and mean little mustache. Behind one ear stuck a pen, behind the other a pencil, as the assistant clerk was arranging some tins of Arbuckle’s Arioso coffee. Then Scipio took aim and fired: “So you’re going to quit your job?”
Horacles whirled round. “Who says so?”
The chance shot—if there ever is such a thing, if such shots are not always the result of visions and perceptions which lie beyond our present knowledge—this chance shot had hit.
“First I’ve heard of it,” then said Horacles sulkily. “Guess you’re delirious still.” He returned to his coffee, and life grew more interesting than ever to Scipio.