Luck did not say a word to either; but Andy, noting the smile of
sympathy, gave him a keenly attentive glance as he came up to that end of
the table to empty a corner pocket. He fished out the four and the nine,
juggled them absently in his hand, and turned and looked at Luck again,
straight and close. Luck once more smiled his smile.
"No, I don't believe you know me, brother," he said, answering Andy's
unspoken thought. "I'd have remembered you if I'd ever met you. You may
have seen me in a picture somewhere."
"By gracious, are you the little fellow that drove a stage coach and six
horses down off a grade--"
"That's my number, old-timer." Luck's smile widened to a grin. That had
been a hair-lifting scene, and Andy Green was not the first stranger to
walk up and ask him if he had driven that stage coach and six horses down
off a mountain grade into a wide gulch to avoid being held up and the
regulation box of gold stolen. It was probably the most spectacular thing
Luck had ever done. "Got down that bank fine as silk," he volunteered
companionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene,
by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown over with
weeds, and like to have broken my fool neck. How's that for luck?" He
took the cigar from his lips and smiled again with half-closed, measuring
eyes. "Yes, sir, I just plumb spoiled one perfectly good Concord coach,
and would have been playing leading corpse at a funeral, believe me, if I
hadn't strapped myself to the seat for that drive off the grade. As it
was, I hung head down and cussed till one of the boys cut me loose. Where
did you see the picture?"
"Me? Up in the Falls. Say, I'm glad to meet you. Luck Lindsay's your
name, ain't it? I remember you were called that in the picture. Mine's
Green, Andy Green,--when folks don't call me something worse. And this is
Miguel Rapponi, a whole lot whiter than he sounds. What, for Lordy sake,
you wasting time on this little old hasbeen burg for? Take it from me,
there ain't anything left here but dents in the road and a brimstone
smell. We're all plumb halter-broke and so tame we--"
"You look all right to me, brother," Luck told him in that convincing
tone he had.
"Well, same to you," Andy retorted with a frank heartiness he was not in
the habit of bestowing upon strangers. "I feel as if I'd worked with you.
Pink was with me when we saw that picture, and we both hollered 'Go to
it!' right out loud, when you gathered up the ribbons and yanked off the
brake and went off hell-popping and smiling back over your shoulder at
us. It was your size and that smile of yours that made me remember you.
You looked like a kid when you mounted to the boot; and you drove down
off smiling, and you had one helanall of a trip, and you drove off that
grade looking like you was trying to commit suicide and was smiling still
when you pulled up at the post-office. By gracious, I--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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