BOB HOLDS HIS RED HAID HIGH
At the corner of the street Bob came upon Tom Reeves and an old Leadville miner in argument. Tom made the high sign to Dillon.
“What’s all the rumpus about?” he wanted to know.
“Jake Houck was seen crossin’ the park. He got into the sage.”
“Sho! I’ll bet the hole of a doughnut he ain’t been seen. If you was to ask me I’d say he was twenty-five miles from here right now, an’ not lettin’ no grass grow under his feet neither. I been talkin’ to old wooden head here about the railroad comin’ in.” Tom’s eyes twinkled. His friend guessed that he was trying to get a rise out of the old-timer. “He’s sure some mossback. I been tellin’ him the railroad’s comin’ through here an’ Meeker right soon, but he can’t see it. I reckon the toot of an engine would scare him ’most to death.”
“Don’t get excited about that railroad, son,” drawled the former hard-rock driller, chewing his cud equably. “I rode a horse to death fifteen years ago to beat the choo-choo train in here, an’ I notice it ain’t arriv yet.”
Bob left them to their argument. He was not just now in a mood for badinage. He moved up the street past the scattered suburbs of the little frontier town. Under the cool stars he wanted to think out what had just taken place.
Had he fainted from sheer fright when the gun blazed at him? Or was Blister’s explanation a genuine one? He had read of men being thrown down and knocked senseless by the atmospheric shock of shells exploding near them in battle. But this would not come in that class. He had been actually struck. The belt buckle had been driven against his flesh. Had this hit him with force enough actually to drive the breath out of him? Or had he thought himself wounded and collapsed because of the thought?
It made a great deal of difference to him which of these was true, more than it did to the little world in which he moved. Some of the boys might guy him good-naturedly, but nobody was likely to take the matter seriously except himself. Bob had begun to learn that a man ought to be his own most severe critic. He had set out to cure himself of cowardice. He would not be easy in mind so long as he still suspected himself of showing the white feather.
He leaned on a fence and looked across the silvery sage to a grove of quaking asp beyond. How long he stood there, letting thoughts drift through his mind, he did not know. A sound startled him, the faint swish of something stirring. He turned.