Medical students -- Juvenile fiction; Mines and mineral resources -- Juvenile fiction
"Hello, Ross!" Leslie called in a voice which he tried to make
matter-of-fact, but which bubbled over with jubilation. "I stopped in
at the post-office and got your word and a letter from dad. It's only
a month old! He thinks we're mewed up over here, you know, working your
claims. And he says he and Sue want me to come home as soon as I get
this letter. He says if I'm willing to work he'll give me better
wages than I can get anywhere else! He doesn't know yet," here Leslie
grinned broadly, "that I want to do now the very thing he has fought
all my life to make me do--go to school. That doctor business has
sort of sunk in. But say, Ross, here's a thing that bothers me." Leslie
pulled the letter from his pocket and read:
"'A few days ago I got hold of the fourth man that ran my sheep off into
the river two years ago. The fellow came and gave himself up to me.'"
The reader looked up tentatively. "Ross, if it was Weston dad would have
said----"
Ross's hand descended on the other's shoulder in a mighty whack as he
shouted: "It isn't Weston. Now you listen and give me an inning on the
talk!"
For half an hour they stood outside the shack while Ross got his
inning--Sandy's hand, the work, Weston's strange actions were all
reviewed hurriedly and listened to excitedly. Then, seeing Weston
approaching, the boys went inside.
Weston crossed the valley slowly, looking down at something which he held
in the palm of his hand, something in a small gilt frame that he slipped
into his breast pocket when he entered the shack.
Completely absorbed in his own thoughts--cheerful thoughts too,
apparently--he went directly to his bunk, and began gathering his few
possessions together not noticing that the group had been augmented by
Leslie.
"I guess," he explained abstractedly, "that I'll go on at once--I'm
going to Oklahoma and not Missouri." Then he looked over his shoulder at
the sheep-herder, adding abstractedly: "Waymart says I ain't the fourth,
and never was. He's been makin' up his mind to tell me this good while."
The blank expression on the sheep-herder's face brought Weston back to
a sense of his surroundings.
"I forgot," he muttered turning to Ross, who stood beside the bunk, "that
you may not know about this Quinn business."
Leslie stepped forward quickly, but paused as he saw Weston was oblivious
of his presence.
"I know a good deal about it," exclaimed Ross impulsively, "and I wish
I knew the rest--your part of it."
Weston leaned against the bunk, his back toward the silent room, his eyes
downcast. He made the explanation with visible reluctance.
"You see, Doc, I used to drink; and when I had two or three glasses down,
I'd go out of my head; and when I had come to myself again I wouldn't
know a blooming thing that had happened while I was drunk. But all the
time I could ride straight and talk straight and shoot straight."
He paused to moisten his lips. Leslie came a step nearer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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