A sharp gust of wind suddenly deposited the latter’s ancient battered hat in the gutter and made merry sport with his venerable wisps of hair and gray beard. Stooping to recover his headgear, he lost his balance and pitched heavily forward. He struggled to his feet again with difficulty and leaned for a space, all covered with dust, up against the wall of the Chinese restaurant, his breath coming and going with wheezy asthmatical sobs.
Ellis presently drew up alongside and contemplated the unlovely but pitiable spectacle with a slightly compassionate grin.
“Hello, Dad,” he remarked. “Where d’yu’ get it? Been celebratin’ along with Bob Tucker, I guess. Well, old gentleman, yu’ got outa that mix-up all hunkadory, an’ I was glad of it.”
But the old man only rocked perilously on his heels, regarded his interlocutor somberly awhile with liquor-blurred eyes, and resolutely held his peace.
Momentarily nonplussed at the other’s silence, the Sergeant continued in tones half playful, half serious:
“Come, old Kafoozleum; yu’ ain’t very grateful, it seems. Life an’ liberty’s somethin’, anyhow, an’ it’s more than teams an’ wagons—or booze. For now, see here; look! This is th’ straight goods—if yu’d ever gone up in th’ Ghost River bush, along with them two fellers, either yu’ or th’ nitchie, they’d a-seen to it as neither o’ yu’ come out of it alive again to, perhaps, get a-talkin’ afterwards. Yu’ can take yore oath o’ that.”
“An’ I hadn’t bin diddled out o’ me outfit,” piped old Bryan doggedly, with the hopeless, unreasoning obstinacy of the aged. “I’d a-bin away from yu’ all—a-livin’ quiet on some little ol’ homestead. But—yu’ corralled me team an’ wagon, lad. I’m little better’n a hobo now.”
Surprise, not unmixed with amusement at this somewhat illogical outburst, rendered Ellis speech- less for the moment.
“But they wasn’t yore team an’ wagon, Dad,” he said. “Th’ Law—” And then he stopped, recognizing the absurdity of ever attempting to argue under such conditions. A great pity, though, for the old, broken man, welled up in his heart.
“Here, here,” he began, not unkindly. “Don’t get a-talkin’ foolish, now, Hiram.”