An hour afterwards he returned to Mrs. Clunie’s to have a look at the horses he had stabled. To his great surprise and annoyance he found the place empty of all but his own and Mrs. Clunie’s animals. Surmising that the half-breeds had “put one over on him” he started down town, hot foot and hot of head. He took the back way through Chinatown, as he knew Jim had a habit of frequenting the most unusual places when on the rampage.
His journey, for a time, proved without adventure.
Had he taken the way of Main Street, or further over 228 still, toward the poorer class of shacks and dwellings, it might have been more interesting for him, for Jim’s insatiable love of a change was being indulged to its full and he was busy making quite a good fellow of himself with all the orphans and poverty-stricken widows he could find.
It was he, and not the half-breeds, who had taken his horses from Mrs. Clunie’s barn. What he did with them after he took them was not clear to himself then, for his memory merely served him in flashes. But all of it returned to him later, in startling realism.
He found himself on top of a wagon-load of sacked potatoes, driving a good team of heavy horses townward, with his own mare leisurely ambling behind, unhitched––following him as a dog would.
He had no use for sacked potatoes at that particular moment, so he bethought himself how best to get rid of them. As usual, he set about to do a good turn where it was most needed.
From one end of the little country town to the other he went, stopping at the door of every family he knew of where the produce would prove of value, and off he unloaded one, or two, or three sacks, as he thought they might be required; refusing to betray the source of supply further than that they were a gift which the Lord was providing.
It was thus that Phil finally found him, and quite unabashed was that lanky, dust-browned individual.
“Can you no’ let a man be?” he remonstrated. “When I’m playin’ the deevil, you admonish me, and when I’m tryin’ to do a good turn, you’re beside me, silent and stern as a marble monument.
“Man, Phil, ye mak’ me feel like the immortal Robert Louis Stevenson must have felt when he wrote ‘My Shadow.’”