“Y’u cert’nly have,” the remorseless friend pursued. “I reckon he must have had a plumb happy time watchin’ y’u still-hunt them newspapers. Now who’d ever have foretold you would afford Horacles enjoyment?”
In a weak voice Scipio essayed to fight it off. “Don’t you try to hoodwink me with any of your frog lies.”
“No need,” said the Virginian. “From the door as I came in I saw him at his desk lookin’ at y’u easy-like. ’Twas a right quaint pictyeh—him smilin’ at the desk, and your nose tight agaynst the Omaha Bee. I thought first y’u didn’t have a handkerchief.”
“I wonder if he has me beat?” muttered poor Scipio.
The Virginian now had a word of consolation. “Don’t y’u see,” he again pointed out, “that no newspaper could have helped you? If it could why did he go away to Washington without tellin’ you? He don’t look for you to deal with troubles he don’t mention to you.”
“I wonder if Horacles has me beat?” said Scipio once more.
The Virginian standing by the seated, brooding man clapped him twice on the shoulders, gently. It was enough. They were very fast friends.
“I know,” said Scipio in response. “Thank y’u. But I’d hate for him to have me beat.”
It was the doctor who now furnished information that would have relieved any reasonable man from a sense of failure. The doctor was excited because his view of our faith in Indian matters was again justified by a further instance.
“Oh, yes!” he said. “Just give those people at Washington time, and every step they’ve taken from the start will be in the mud puddle of a lie. Uncle’s in the game all right. He’s been meditating how to serve his country and increase his income. There’s a railroad at the big end of his notion, but the entering wedge seems only to be a new store down in the corner of this reservation. You see, it has been long settled by the sacredest compacts that two stores shall be enough here—the Post-trader’s and the Agent’s—but the dear Indians need a third, Uncle says. He has told the Senate and the Interior Department and the White House that a lot of them have to travel too far for supplies. So now Washington is sure the Indians need a third store. The Post-trader and the Agent are stopping at the Post to-night. They got East too late to hold up the job. If Horacles opens that new store, the Agent might just as well shut up his own.”