“Don’t shoot Timberline,” I said. “He’s come to show us sheep.”
Scipio sat staring stupefied at the figure by the embers, and then he slowly turned his head round to me, and I thought he was going to pour out one of those long, corrosive streams of comment that usually burst from him when he was enough surprised. But he was too much surprised. “His name is Henry Hall,” he said to me very mildly. “I’ve just remembered it.”
The patient figure by the embers rose. “There’s sheep in the Washakie Needles. Lots and lots and lots. I seen ’em myself in the spring. I can take you right to ’em. Don’t make me go back and be stock-tender.” He recited all this in a sort of rising wail until the last sentence, in which the entreaty shook his voice.
“Washakie Needles is the nearest likely place,” muttered Scipio.
“If you don’t get any, you needn’t to pay me any,” urged the boy; and he stretched out an arm to mark his words and his prayer.
We sat in our beds and he stood waiting by the embers to hear his fate, while nothing made a sound but Broke Axle.
“Why not?” I said. “We were talking of a third man.”
“A man,” said Scipio. “Yes.”
“I can cook, I can pack, I can cook good bread, and I can show you sheep, and if I don’t you needn’t to pay me a cent,” entreated the boy.
“He sure means what he says,” Scipio commented. “It’s your trip.”