Maybe a shooting-match mit prizes--I pay for them--pretty soon after you come. Und joodgement--und joodgement. Here comes that train. Haf you well understand?"Upon this the two shook hands, looking square friendship in each other's eyes. The east-bound, long quiet and dark beneath its flowing clots of smoke, slowed to a halt. A few valises and legs descended, ascended, herding and hurrying; a few trunks were thrown resoundingly in and out of the train; a woolly, crooked old man came with a box and a bandanna bundle from the second-class car; the travellers of a thousand miles looked torpidly at him through the dim, dusty windows of their Pullman, and settled again for a thousand miles more. Then the east-bound, shooting heavier clots of smoke laboriously into the air, drew its slow length out of Nampa, and away.
"Where's that stage?" shrilled the woolly old man. "That's what I'm after.""Why, hello!" shouted Vogel. "Hello, Uncle Pasco! I heard you was dead."Uncle Pasco blinked his small eyes to see who hailed him. "Oh!" said he, in his light, crusty voice. "Dutchy Vogel. No, I ain't dead. You guessed wrong. Not dead. Help me up, Dutchy."A tolerant smile broadened Vogel's face. "It was ten years since I see you," said he, carrying the old man's box.
"Shouldn't wonder. Maybe it'll be another ten till you see me next." He stopped by the stage step, and wheeling nimbly, surveyed his old-time acquaintance, noting the good hat, the prosperous watch-chain, the big, well-blacked boots. "Not seen me for ten years. Hee-hee! No. Usen't to have a cent more than me. Twins in poverty. That's how Dutchy and me started. If we was buried to-morrow they'd mark him 'Pecunious' and me 'Impecunious.' That's what. Twins in poverty.""I stick to von business at a time, Uncle," said good-natured, successful Max.
A flicker of aberration lighted in the old man's eye. "H'm, yes," said he, pondering. "Stuck to one business. So you did. H'm." Then, suddenly sly, he chirped: "But I've struck it rich now." He tapped his box.
"Jewelry," he half-whispered. "Miners and cow-boys.""Yes," said Vogel. "Those poor, deluded fellows, they buy such stuff."And he laughed at the seedy visionary who had begun frontier life with him on the bottom rung and would end it there. "Do you play that concertina yet, Uncle?" he inquired.
"Yes, yes. I always play. It's in here with my tooth-brush and socks."Uncle Pasco held up the bandanna. "Well, he's getting ready to start. Iguess I'll be climbing inside. Holy Gertrude!"This shrill comment was at sight of the school-master, patient within the stage. "What business are you in?" demanded Uncle Pasco.
"I am in the spelling business," replied the teacher, and smiled, faintly.
"Hell!" piped Uncle Pasco. "Take this."
He handed in his bandanna to the traveller, who received it politely. Max Vogel lifted the box of cheap jewelry; and both he and the boy came behind to boost the old man up on the stage step. But with a nettled look he leaped up to evade them, tottered half-way, and then, light as a husk of grain, got himself to his seat and scowled at the schoolmaster.
After a brief inspection of that pale, spectacled face, "Dutchy," he called out of the door, "this country is not what it was."But old Max Vogel was inattentive. He was speaking to the boy, Dean Drake, and held a flask in his hand. He reached the flask to his new superintendent. "Drink hearty," said he. "There, son! Don't be shy. Haf you forgot it is forbidden fruit after now?""Kid sworn off?" inquired Uncle Pasco of the school-master.
"I understand," replied this person, "that Mr. Vogel will not allow his cow-boys at the Malheur Agency to have any whiskey brought there.
Personally, I feel gratified." And Mr. Bolles, the new school-master, gave his faint smile.
"Oh," muttered Uncle Pasco. "Forbidden to bring whiskey on the ranch?
H'm." His eyes wandered to the jewelry-box. "H'm," said he again; and becoming thoughtful, he laid back his moth-eaten sly head, and spoke no further with Mr. Bolles.
Dean Drake climbed into the stage and the vehicle started.
"Goot luck, goot luck, my son!" shouted the hearty Max, and opened and waved both his big arms at the departing boy: He stood looking after the stage. "I hope he come back," said he. "I think he come back. If he come I r-raise him fifty dollars without any beard."
