“Think ——!” yelps Chuck, going to the door. “I’m going to enjoy the untainted air as long as I can.”
I rustles out my war-sack and puts on clean clothes. It’s liable to be some time before I gets a chance to change again. Chuck comes back after a while and sets down on the bunk, disconsolate-like, and plays “Just Before the Battle, Mother” on his mouth-organ. Pretty soon the old man yells to us.
We walks out, slow-like, and I climbs, painfully, into the seat with the old man. Chuck holds the team by the bits until we’re all set. Then he lets loose and hops aboard as we goes past. We whirls out of the yard and hits the road on the run. Sudden-like that equipage does a high dive on one side, and yours truly stands on his head in a mesquite bush.
When I gets through making a cactus pincushion of my cranium, I riseth up and looks around.
Down the road about fifty yards sets the old man, gazing off down the road, and cussing at a piece of line he’s still got in one hand. I hears a groan across the road, and Chuck’s head sticks up out of the brush. The old man gets up out of the road and painfully dusts off the seat of his pants. He plods up to us and looks us over.
“By cripes!” he snorts, “I ain’t suspicious of nobody on earth. I’m a man among men, and I don’t suspicion nobody, but if that wasn’t foul play I’ll eat the whole ranch. Now, I’ll haul you hombres to town in a lumber wagon.”
He plods on to the house, while I extracts cactus spines and cuss words from my carcass. Chuck limps over and rubs his hip.
“Light on a rock?” I asks, and he feels of his hip some more.
He reaches into his hip pocket, takes out an object and tosses it on the ground.
“Lit right on the darned thing!” he groans.