“Ain’t y’u going to look at my leg?” was all the reply that Scipio made.
The doctor laughed. It was to examine the leg that he had come, and he had forgotten all about it. “You can forget all about it, too,” he told Scipio when he had finished. “Go back to Sunk Creek when you like. Go back to full work next week, say. Your wicked body is sound again. A better man would unquestionably have died.”
But the cheery doctor could not cheer the unreasonable Scipio. In the morning the complacent little Horacles made known to all the world his perfected arrangements. Directly the Agent had safely turned his back and gone to Washington, his disloyal clerk had become doubly busy. He had at once perceived that this was a comfortable time for him to hurry his new rival store into readiness and be securely established behind its counter before his betrayed employer should return. In this last he might not quite succeed; the Agent had come back a day or two sooner than Horacles had calculated, but it was a trifle; after all, he had carried through the small part of his uncle’s scheme which he had been sent here to do. Inside that building in the far corner of the reservation, once rumored to be connected with the Quartermaster’s department, he would now sell luxuries and necessities to the Indians at a price cheaper than his employer’s, and his employer’s store would henceforth be empty of customers. Perhaps the sweetest moment that Horacles had known for many weeks was when he said to Scipio:—
“I’m writing Uncle about it to-day.”
That this should have gone on under his nose while he sat searching the papers was to Scipio utterly unbearable. His mind was in a turmoil, feeling about helplessly but furiously for vengeance; and the Virginian’s sane question—What could he have done to stop it if he had discovered it?—comforted him not at all. They were outside the store, sitting under a tree, waiting for the returning Agent to appear. But he did not come, and the suspense added to Scipio’s wretchedness.
“He put me in charge,” he kept repeating.
“The driver ain’t responsible when a stage is held up,” reasoned the Virginian.
Scipio hardly heard him. “He put me in charge,” he said. Then he worked round to Horacles again. “He ain’t got strength. He ain’t got beauty. He ain’t got riches. He ain’t got brains. He’s just got sense enough for parlor conjuring tricks—not good ones, either. And yet he has me beat.”
“He’s got an uncle in the Senate,” said the Virginian.
The disconsolate Scipio took a pull at his cigar,—he had taken one between every sentence. “Damn his false teeth.”