He had Wood in to supper with him in his car, Boston did, the darky cooking it; and 130 Wood said––except it begun with their having pickled green plums, and some sort of messed-up stuff that tasted like spoilt salt fish and made him feel sickish––it was the best supper he ever eat. Each of ’em had a bottle of iced wine, he said; and he said they topped off with coffee that only wanted milk to make it a real wonder, and a drink like rock-and-rye, but chalks better, and such seegars as he’d never smoked in his born days.
All the time they was hashing––and Wood said he reckoned they was at it a’most a full hour––Boston kept a-telling what a hell of a one (that was the sort of careless way Wood put it) he was at big-game hunting; but Wood judged––taking all his talk together––the only thing he’d ever really shot bigger’n a duck or a pa’tridge was a deer the dogs had chased into a pond for him so it hadn’t no chance. But it wasn’t none of Wood’s business to stop a director’s nephew from blowing if he felt like it, and so he just let him fan away. Bears wasn’t bad sport, he said, and he didn’t mind filling in time 131 with ’em if he couldn’t get nothing better; but what he’d come to Palomitas for ’special, he said, was mountain-lions––he seemed to have it in his head he’d find ’em walking all over the place, same as cats––and he wanted to know if any’d lately been seen.
Wood told him them animals wasn’t met with frequent in them parts (and they wasn’t, for a fact, and hadn’t been for about a hunderd years, likely) and maybe he’d do better to set his mind on jack-rabbits––which there was enough of out in the sage-brush, Wood told him, to load his car. And then he looked so real down disappointed, seeming to think jack-rabbits wasn’t anyways satisfactory, Wood said he told him there was chances some of the boys over at the Forest Queen––they being all the time out in the mountains looking for prospects––might put him on to finding a bear, anyway; and it wouldn’t do no harm to go across to the Queen and ask. And so over the both of ’em come.
It was Wood’s mistake bringing that green-corduroyed pill right in among the boys without 132 giving notice, and Wood owned up it was later––allowing he’d a-been more careful if the rock-and-rye stuff on top of the wine, not being used to either of ’em, hadn’t loaded him more’n he knowed about at the time. Boston didn’t seem to be much loaded, likely having the habit of taking such drinks and so being able to carry ’em; but he was that high-horsey––putting on his eye-glasses and staring ’round the place same as if he’d struck a menagerie and the boys was beasts in cages––all hands was set spiteful to him right off.
Things was running about as usual at the Queen: most of the boys setting around the table and Santa Fé dealing; a few of ’em standing back of the others looking on; two or three getting drinks at the bar and talking to Blister; and the girls kicking their heels on the benches, waiting till it come time to start up dancing in the other room. The only touch out of the common was the way the Sage-Brush Hen had fixed herself––she being rigged up in the same white duds she’d wore when Hart’s aunt come to town, and looking so real cute and pretty in ’em, and acting demure to suit, nobody’d ever a-sized her for the gay old licketty-split Hen she was.
“STARING ’ROUND THE PLACE SAME AS IF HE’D STRUCK A MENAGERIE”
It was between deals when Wood and Boston come in, and Santa Fé got up from the table and crossed over to ’em––Charley always was that polite you’d a-thought he was a fish-hook with pants on––and told Boston he hoped he seen him well, and was glad he’d come along. Then Wood told how he was after mountain-lions, and wasn’t likely to get none; and Charley owned up they was few, and what there was of ’em was so sort of scattered the chances for finding ’em was poor.