Drake looked moodily at the fire. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” said he. “I've prospered. For a nineteen-year-old I've hooked my claw fairly deep here and there. As for to-day—why, that's in the game too. It was their deal. Could they have won it on their own play? A joker dropped into their hand. It's my deal now, and I have some jokers myself. Go to sleep, Bolles. We've a ride ahead of us.”
The boy rolled himself in his blanket skillfully. Bolles heard him say once or twice in a sort of judicial conversation with the blanket—“and all in the house—but we were not all in the house. Not all. Not a full house—” His tones drowsed comfortably into murmur, and then to quiet breathing. Bolles fed the fire, thatched the unneeded wind-break (for the calm, dry night was breathless), and for a long while watched the moon and a tuft of the sleeping boy's hair.
“If he is blamed,” said the school-master, “I'll never forgive myself. I'll never forgive myself anyhow.”
A paternal, or rather maternal, expression came over Bolles's face, and he removed his large, serious glasses. He did not sleep very well.
The boy did. “I'm feeling like a bird,” said he, as they crossed through the mountains next morning on a short cut to the Owybee. “Breakfast will brace you up, Bolles. There'll be a cabin pretty soon after we strike the other road. Keep thinking hard about coffee.”
“I wish I could,” said poor Bolles. He was forgiving himself less and less.
Their start had been very early; as Drake bid the school-master observe, to have nothing to detain you, nothing to eat and nothing to pack, is a great help in journeys of haste. The warming day, and Indian Creek well behind them, brought Drake to whistling again, but depression sat upon the self-accusing Bolles. Even when they sighted the Owyhee road below them, no cheerfulness waked in him; not at the nearing coffee, nor yet at the companionable tinkle of sleigh-bells dancing faintly upward through the bright, silent air.
“Why, if it ain't Uncle Pasco!” said Drake, peering down through a gap in the foot-hill. “We'll get breakfast sooner than I expected. Quick! Give me Baby Bunting!”
“Are you going to kill him?” whispered the school-master, with a beaming countenance. And he scuffled with his pocket to hand over his hitherto belittled weapon.
Drake considered him. “Bolles, Bolles,” said he, “you have got the New England conscience rank. Plymouth Rock is a pudding to your heart. Remind me to pray for you first spare minute I get. Now follow me close. He'll be much more useful to us alive.”