After a while they grew more resigned in their langwidge; but after we had driven down to town without finding him, Hammy sez, "In sooth 't is bitter truth that all the world's a stage; yet Fate, however cruel, never decreed that I should play the second season, as servile server to a worn out mine—my health is all right again, an' I'm goin' back where a feller gets paid decent wages for makin' a fool of himself."
Suddenly Locals gave a yell of joy and shouted, "My fortune's made! I can take this thing and have a runaway boy and a lost orphan and a rich uncle and a villanous cousin, and write the novel of the age about it."
"No, no!" sez Hammy, catchin' the excitement, "tragedy—make it a tragedy. It is for the stage! Think of them lost without food and the balloon coming into sight! Think of the scenic effects, the low music as the orphan kneels in the middle of the stage and prays that the balloon may bring them food; and then have the villanous cousin in the balloon—"
Well, they purt' nigh fought about it, and they were still at it when I left them. The tingle of spring in the air made me wild to get back to the range again. I thought of little Barbie and what a great girl she must be by this time. I thought of the big-eyed winter calves huggin' up to their mothers and wonderin' what it all meant. I thought of old Mount Savage, and all of a sudden somethin' seemed pullin' at my breast like a rope, an' I drew down my winter wages, an' set out for the no'th, eager as a hound pup on his first hunt.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
DRESS REFORM AT THE DIAMOND DOT
I've heard it called Christian fortitude, an' I've heard it called Injun stoickcism, an' I've heard it called bulldog grit; but it's a handy thing to have, no matter what it is. I mean the thing that keeps a feller good company when the' 's a hurtin' in his heart that he never quite forgets. A little child away from home an' just sick to go back, a man who has to grit his teeth an'—but no, the first expresses the feelin' better—a child, homesick, but keepin' a stiff upper lip; and it don't make much difference what the age, that's a condition 'at nobody ever outgrows.
Well, all the years I'd been away the' was a little empty sore spot in my heart that I couldn't quite forget; but I never aired it none, an' I don't believe I knew myself how big it was, until I left Slocum's Luck behind me an' headed for the Diamond Dot. Then I spread a grin on my face that nothin' wouldn't wipe off, an' I stepped so high an' light that I was like a nervous man goin' barefoot through a thistle patch. I was headed for home; an' even a mule that gets dressed down regular with the neck-yoke gives a little simmer of joy when he's headed toward home, while a dog,—well, a dog will just naturally joyful himself all over when the trail doubles back on itself, an' a dog ain't no parlor loafer, neither, if I'm any judge.
Why, for two years I hadn't polished a saddle, an' I whistled like a boy when I pictured to myself the feel of a hoss under me. The' 's somethin' about feelin' a hoss's strength slide into your legs an' up through your body that must be a good deal like the sensation a saint enjoys the first fly he takes with his new wings. A little pop-eyed drug merchant was out here on a tour oncet, an' he asked me the usual list of blame-fool questions, about what we et an' where we washed an' if it didn't make us ache to sleep on the hard ground, an so on. When I had made answers to his queries accordin' to the amount of information I thought it wise to load him with, he shakes his head solemn like an' sez, "I do not see where you get any compensation for such a life as this."