For a fact, Hart’s nephew did manage well at mule-driving. It was one of the blame few things that fool knowed how to do. Denver Jones allowed it was because he was related to ’em––on the father’s side.
“Just for this once, Mr. Hill,” said the Hen, speaking coaxy. And she got her head round a little––so Hart’s nephew couldn’t see what she was doing––and give Hill a wink to come into the game.
Hill didn’t know what in the world the Hen was up to––nobody ever did know what that Hen was up to when once she got started––but he reckoned he could take it back in the morning if he didn’t think what she wanted would answer, so in he come: telling Hart’s nephew he might have the coach to do anything (Hill was a kind of a careless talker) he damn pleased with; and saying he’d have it hitched up and ready down at the deepo next morning, same as usual, so he could start right off when the Denver train come in.
When things was settled, all quick that way, Hart’s nephew took to squirming––he seeing, drunk as he was, he’d bit off a blame sight more’n he cared to chew. But with the Hen right after him––and Hill and all the rest of the boys backing her, they being sure she’d dandy cards up her sleeve for the queer 57 game she was playing––he couldn’t make nothing by all his squirms. The boys got at him and told him anybody could see he was afraid; and the Hen got at him and told him anybody could see he wasn’t, and she said she knew he was about the bravest man alive; and Hill got at him and told him the road had improved so, lately, the nearest to road-agents you ever seen on it was burros and cotton-tail rabbits; and all of ’em together kept getting more drinks in him right along. So the upshot of it was: first Hart’s nephew stopped his squirming; and then he took to telling what a holy wonder he was at mule-driving; and then he went to blowing the biggest kind––till he got so he couldn’t talk no longer––about what he’d do in the shooting line if any road-agents come around trying their monkey-shine hold-ups on him! So it ended, good enough, by their getting him fixed tight in his hole.
The boys kept things going with him pretty late that night, and when he showed up in the morning at the deepo––a delegation seeing to it he got there, and Hill having the 58 coach all ready for him––he still had on him a fairly sizable jag. But he’d sobered up enough––having slept quite a little, and soaked his head at the railroad tank––to want to try all he knew how to spill himself out of his job. It took all the Hen could do––the Hen had got up early and come down to the deepo a-purpose to attend to him––and all the boys could do helping her, to get him up on that coach-box and boosted off out of town.
He was that nervous he was shaking all over; and what made him nervouser was having no passengers––nobody for Santa Fé having come in on the Denver train. It was just a caution to see his shooting outfit! The box of the coach looked like it was a gun-shop––being piled up with two Winchesters and a double-barrelled shot-gun (the shot-gun, he said, was to cripple anybody he didn’t think it was needful to kill); and beside that he had a machete some Mexican lent him hooked on to his belt, and along with it a brace of derringers and two forty-fives. Hill was the only one who didn’t 59 laugh fit to kill himself over that layout. Hill said Hart’s nephew done just right to take along all the guns he could get a-hold of; and Hill said he’d attended to the proper loading of every one of them weepons himself.
At last––with all the boys laughing away and firing fool talk at him, and the Hen keeping him up to the collar by going on about how brave he was––he did manage to whip up his mules and start off. Sick was no name for him––and he was so scared stiff he looked like he was about ready to cry. After he’d got down the slope, and across the bridge over the Rio Grande, and was walking his mules on that first little stretch of sandy road on the way to La Cañada, we could see him reaching down and fussing over his layout of guns.
For a cold fact, there was a right smart chance that Hart’s nephew––and ’specially because his fool luck made most things come to him contrary––really might run himself into a hold-up; and, if he did, it was like as not his chips might get called in. For all 60 Hill’s funny talk about meeting nothing worse’n burros and cotton-tail rabbits, that road was a bad road––and things was liable to occur. Hill himself was taking his chances, and he blame well knowed it, every day. But it was the sense of the meeting that if a hold-up of that coach attended by fatalities was coming, it couldn’t come at a better time than when Hart’s nephew was on the box––the feeling being general that Hart’s nephew was one that could be spared. I guess Bill Hart felt just the same about it as the rest of us––leastways, he didn’t strain himself any trying to keep his nephew home.