"Reserve your sorrow, Sam," said Dean Drake. "Give us your soup for a starter. Come," he said to Bolles. "Quick."He went into the dining-room, prompt in his seat at the head of the table, with the school-master next to him.
"Nice man, Uncle Pasco," he continued. "But his time is not now. We have nothing to do for the present but sit like every day and act perfectly natural.""I have known simpler tasks," said Mr. Bolles, "but I'll begin by spreading this excellently clean napkin.""You're no schoolmarm!" exclaimed Drake; "you please me.""The worst of a bad thing," said the mild Bolles, "is having time to think about it, and we have been spared that.""Here they come," said Drake.
They did come. But Drake's alert strategy served the end he had tried for. The drunken buccaroos swarmed disorderly to the door and halted.
Once more the new superintendent's ways took them aback. Here was the decent table with lights serenely burning, with unwonted good things arranged upon it--the olives, the oranges, the preserves. Neat as parade drill were the men's places, all the cups and forks symmetrical along the white cloth. There, waiting his guests at the far end, sat the slim young boss talking with his boarder, Mr. Bolles, the parts in their smooth hair going with all the rest of this propriety. Even the daily tin dishes were banished in favor of crockery.
"Bashful of Sam's napkins, boys?" said the boss. "Or is it the bald-headed china?"At this bidding they came in uncertainly. Their whiskey was ashamed inside. They took their seats, glancing across at each other in a transient silence, drawing their chairs gingerly beneath them. Thus ceremony fell unexpected upon the gathering, and for a while they swallowed in awkwardness what the swift, noiseless Sam brought them. He in a long white apron passed and re-passed with his things from his kitchen, doubly efficient and civil under stress of anxiety for his young master. In the pauses of his serving he watched from the background, with a face that presently caught the notice of one of them.
"Smile, you almond-eyed highbinder," said the buccaroo. And the Chinaman smiled his best.
"I've forgot something," said Half-past Full, rising. "Don't let 'em skip a course on me." Half-past left the room.
"That's what I have been hoping for," said Drake to Bolles.
Half-past returned presently and caught Drake's look of expectancy. "Oh no, boss," said the buccaroo, instantly, from the door. "You're on to me, but I'm on to you." He slammed the door with ostentation and dropped with a loud laugh into his seat.
"First smart thing I've known him do," said Drake to Bolles. "I am disappointed."Two buccaroos next left the room together.
"They may get lost in the snow," said the humorous Half-past. "I'll just show 'em the trail." Once more he rose from the dinner and went out.
"Yes, he knew too much to bring it in here," said Drake to Bolles. "He knew none but two or three would dare drink, with me looking on.""Don't you think he is afraid to bring it in the same room with you at all?" Bolles suggested.
"And me temperance this season? Now, Bolles, that's unkind.""Oh, dear, that is not at all what--"
"I know what you meant, Bolles. I was only just making a little merry over this casualty. No, he don't mind me to that extent, except when he's sober. Look at him!"Half-past was returning with his friends. Quite evidently they had all found the trail.
"Uncle Pasco is a nice old man!" pursued Drake. "I haven't got my gun on.
Have you?"
"Yes," said Bolles, but with a sheepish swerve of the eye.
Drake guessed at once. "Not Baby Bunting? Oh, Lord! and I promised to give you an adult weapon!--the kind they're wearing now by way of full-dress.""Talkin' secrets, boss?" said Half-past Full.
The well-meaning Sam filled his cup, and this proceeding shifted the buccaroo's truculent attention.
"What's that mud?" he demanded.
"Coffee," said Sam, politely.
The buccaroo swept his cup to the ground, and the next man howled dismay.
"Burn your poor legs?" said Half-past. He poured his glass over the victim. They wrestled, the company pounded the table, betting hoarsely, until Half-past went to the floor, and his plate with him.
"Go easy," said Drake. "You're smashing the company's property.""Bald-headed china for sure, boss!" said a second of the brothers Drinker, and dropped a dish.
"I'll merely tell you," said Drake, "that the company don't pay for this china twice.""Not twice?" said Half-past Full, smashing some more. "How about thrice?""Want your money now?" another inquired.
A riot of banter seized upon all of them, and they began to laugh and destroy.
"How much did this cost?" said one, prying askew his three-tined fork.
"How much did you cost yourself?" said another to Drake.
"What, our kid boss? Two bits, I guess."
"Hyas markook. Too dear!"
They bawled at their own jokes, loud and ominous; threat sounded beneath their lightest word, the new crashes of china that they threw on the floor struck sharply through the foreboding din of their mirth. The spirit that Drake since his arrival had kept under in them day by day, but not quelled, rose visibly each few succeeding minutes, swelling upward as the tide does. Buoyed up on the whiskey, it glittered in their eyes and yelled mutinously in their voices.
"I'm waiting all orders," said Bolles to Drake.
