CHAPTER VIII
WILD BILL THINKS HARD––AND HEARS NEWS
Wild Bill stretched himself drowsily. It was noon. He knew that by the position of the patch of sunlight on the floor, which he gazed at with blinking eyes. Presently he reached out his long arms and clasped his hands behind his head. He lay there on his stretcher bed, still very sleepy, but with wakefulness gaining ascendancy rapidly. He had completed two successive nights of “sentry-go” over Scipio’s twins, never reaching his blankets until well after sun-up.
For some minutes he enjoyed the delicious idleness of a still brain. Then, at last, it stirred to an activity which once again set flowing all the busy thought of his long night’s vigil. Further rest became impossible to a man of his temperament, and he sprang from his blankets and plunged his face into a bucket of fresh water which stood on an adjacent bench. In five minutes he was ready for the business of the day.
It was to be a day of activity. He felt that. Yet he had made no definite plans. Only all his thoughts of the previous night warned him that something must be done, and that it was “up to him to get busy.”
A long wakeful night is apt to distort many things of paramount interest. But the morning light generally reduces them to their proper focus. Thus it is with people who are considered temperamental. But Bill had no such claims. He was hard, unimaginative, and of keen decision. And overnight he had arrived at one considerable decision. How he had arrived at it he hardly knew. Perhaps it was one of those decisions that cannot be helped. Certain it was that it had been arrived at through no definite course of reasoning. It had simply occurred to him and received his approval at once. An approval, which, once given, was rarely, if ever, rescinded. This was the man.
He had first thought a great deal about Scipio. He felt that the time had come when his fate must be closely inquired into. The blundering efforts of Sunny Oak were so hopelessly inadequate in the care of the children, that only the return of their father could save them from some dire domestic catastrophe.
Sunny apparently meant well by them. But Bill hated well-meaning people who disguised their incompetence under the excellence of their intentions. Besides, in this case it was so useless. These two children were a nuisance, he admitted, but they must not be allowed to suffer through Sunny’s incompetence. No, their father must be found.