“I’ll bet they haven’t got so far away but what we’ll hear from ’em again,” sez Tank.
“The thing for us to do is to start back to the Diamond Dot,” sez I.
“We shall stay here, an’ see what happens,” sez Horace, lightin’ his pipe. His eyes were dancin’ an’ he was all puffed up. I didn’t say any more. I just looked at him. He was the same old Horace, side-burns an’ all; but still the’ was enough difference for me to begin to regret havin’ give him the treatment. I had cured his nerve so complete it seemed likely to boss the whole crowd of us into trouble.
[CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO—A PROGRESSIVE HUNT]
The Friar sez it’s all rot about men bein’ better for havin’ sowed their wild oats when young. He sez ’at it’s utter foolishness to sow any crop ya don’t want to harvest; but I dunno. I don’t mind havin’ a colt try to turn himself inside out with me on its back; but I’m some prejudiced again’ an old hoss which is likely to pitch when I’ve got other business to attend to. When a young hoss is mean, why, ya can reason it out of him; but when an old hoss turns bad, you might just as well put the outlaw label on him an’ turn him adrift.
We couldn’t do a thing with Horace after he’d taken his shot at the feller who potted one of Olaf’s cows. Ol’ Tank Williams was huge in size an’ had a ponderous deep voice which rumbled around in him like a bulldog croakin’ in a barrel; an’ he decided that it was his duty to be firm with Horace, seein’ the way ’at he had bluffed him when we went on that trip for the nerves; so the follerin’ mornin’ he put a scowl on his face, grabbed Horace by the chest of his shirt, lifted him so ’at nothin’ but the tips of his toes touched, an’ sez: “Look here, you little whippersnapper, we agreed to go where you said an’ stay as long as you said; but we meant on a game-huntin’ trip. You haven’t any idee what you’re up again’ out here, an’ you got to give in an’ come back with us.”
Tank’s free eye rolled about in his head, runnin’ wilder ’n I’d ever seen it; but Horace wasn’t as much phazed as if a fly had bit him. He scowled down his eyebrows, an’ piped out in his squeaky tenor: “Take your hand off me, Tank—and take it off now.”
“I’ve a notion to raise it up an’ squash ya,” sez Tank.
“Yes,” sez Horace, without blinkin’ a winker, “you’ve got notions all right; but they lie so far to the interior of ya that they generally weaken before they find their way out. Take your hand off me.”
Well, Tank was beat. He gave Horace a shove, but Horace was light on his feet, an’ he never lost his balance. He just danced backward until he had his brakes set, an’ then he fetched up in front o’ the fire, put his fists on his hips, an’ stared up at Tank haughty.