“He picked it up on his way home,” says Muley. “That’s settled.”
“Did Archibald Ames get his local color?” I asks, and Telescope shakes his head. “Archibald Ames didn’t wait for nothing. He even hired somebody to drive him to Silver Bend. I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he told me to go to a place where they don’t cut holes in the ice.”
“You’ll miss them meals in bed,” sympathizes Chuck, wiggling his ears, and ducks outdoors just in time.
A boot-jack splintered on the door behind him.
“Well, it ended all right anyway,” grunts Muley. “How’d yuh say yuh hurt that leg, Telescope?”
Telescope peeks out of the door, and then limps back to me and Muley.
“I didn’t go to Bowers’ that first day the stage was robbed,” he whispers. “Don’t breathe it to a soul. I wouldn’t have Chuck hear it for a million.”
We holds up our right hands.
“Well,” says he, “that cottonwood snag they made me climb didn’t have no bark on it, and when I started down I slid too fast. Sabe?”
“Chuck was right!” I snorts. “He sure told the truth that time.”