"Yuh damn', taffy colored cayuse!" he said fretfully. "This is as much
your funeral as mine--seeing yuh started out all so brisk to find that
pinto. Do yah suppose yuh could find a horse if he was staked ten feet
in front of your nose? Chances are, yuh couldn't. I reckon you'd have
trouble finding your way around the little pasture at the ranch--unless
the sun shone real bright and yuh had somebody to lead yuh!"
This was manifestly unjust and it was not like Weary; but this night's
mission was getting on his nerves. He leaned and shifted the
medicine-case again, and felt ruefully of his bruised leg. That also
was getting upon his nerves.
"Oh, Mamma!" he muttered disgustedly. "This is sure a sarcastic
layout; dope enough here to cure all the sickness in Montana--if a
fellow knew enough to use it--battering a hole in my leg you could
throw a yearling calf into, and me wandering wild over the hills like a
locoed sheepherder! Glory, you get a move on yuh, you knock-kneed,
buzzard-headed--" He subsided into incoherent grumbling and rode back
whence he came, up the gully's brim.
When the night was far gone and the slant of the Great Dipper told him
that day-dawn was near, he heard a horse nicker wistfully, away to the
right. Wheeling sharply, his spurs raking the roughened sides of
Glory, he rode recklessly toward the sound, not daring to hope that it
might be the pinto and yet holding his mind back from despair.
When he was near the place--so near that he could see a dim, formless
shape outlined against the sky-line,--Glory stumbled over a sunken rock
and fell heavily upon his knees. When he picked himself up he hobbled
and Weary cursed him unpityingly.
When, limping painfully, Glory came up with the object, the heart of
Weary rose up and stuck in his throat; for the object was a pinto horse
and above it bulked the squat figure of an irate old man.
"Hello, Dock," greeted Weary. "How do yuh stack up?"
"_Mon Dieu_, Weary Davitson, I feex yous plandy. What for do you dees
t'ing? I not do de harrm wis you. I not got de mooney wort' all dees
troubles what you makes. Dees horse, she lak for keel me also. She
buck, en keeck, en roon--_mon Dieu_, I not like dees t'ing."
"Sober, by thunder!" ejaculated Weary in an ecstatic half-whisper.
"Dock, you've got a chance to make a record for yourself to-night--if
we ain't too late," he added bodefully. "Do yuh know where we're
headed for?"
"I t'ink for de devil," retorted Old Dock peevishly.
"No sir, we aren't. We're going straight to camp, and you're going to
save old Patsy--you like Patsy, you know; many's the time you've tanked
up together and then fell on each other's necks and wept because the
good old times won't come again. He got poisoned on canned corn; the
Lord send he ain't too dead for you to cure him. Come on--we better
hit the breeze. We've lost a heap uh time."
"I not like dees rope; she not comforte. I have ride de bad horse when
you wass in cradle."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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