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"What's the matter, Pete?" asked Shorty, as the boy came up, breathless from his long run. "Rebels out there?" "No," gasped Pete. "I was hunting out there for a deer, or a elk, or a bear, when suddenly I come acrost the queerest kind of an animal. It looked more like a hog than anything else, yet it wasn't a hog, for it was thinner'n a cat.
They drove me acrost the river yesterday, and promised to shoot me if I dast show myself again. I sneaked over in a skiff last night and got here to get my two pistols and some money and trinkets we'd hid out. I was goin' to cross again to-night and wait for you and the wagons." "My God! and this is the nineteenth century in a land of liberty!"
'Tain't not arf so bloomin' dusty neither. He buried his nose in a clump of scentless white violets. No one had come to tell the flowers that the season of their strength was long past, and they had bloomed merrily in the twilight of the pines. 'This is something like, he said luxuriously. 'Wot a 'evinly clear drop for a bullet acrost! How much d'you make it, Mulvaney? 'Seven hunder.
"Why did you leave your happy 'ome and your children wot loved you?" The potman let off a whistle that you could have 'eard acrost the river, and as for me, I thought I should ha' dropped. To have a woman standing sobbing and taking my character away like that was a'most more than I could bear. "Did he run away from you?" ses the potman. "Ye-ye-yes," she ses.
Leander was still irritable over his loss. "I set him down with his grub and blankets, and I watched him footing it acrost the dam. He done it real handsome, steady on his pins. Then he set down and waited, kind o' dreaming, like he used to, settin' on the choppin'-block. I hailed him. 'What's the matter? I says.
"I run full half a mile jest before I came acrost to see you, chasin' 'em out," said the Cap'n, gloomily, "and I'll bet they was back in there before I got to the first bars on my way over here." P.T., feeling the stimulus of the liver, crooked his neck and crowed spiritedly. Then he scratched the side of his head with one toe, shook himself, and squatted down contentedly in the sun.
"Nate got up and tiptoed acrost the room. He was in his stockin' feet, so he didn't make a sound. He reached into the corner and took out his old duck gun. It was loaded, both barrels. Nate cocked the gun and crept down the back stairs.
Can't you remember when you and me set on the gate of the big pasture, with our rifles acrost our knees, and waited for them sheepmen to come up and try to get them sheep through us? Did they get through? No; no one had us buffaloed. That was when you and me was men, Curly. "What have we done now? We let this damn hypocrite, Dave Wisner, get the best of us all the way down the line.
The inspiration returned no more, and Laurelia experienced a sense of loss. "Some time, Lee-yander, ef ye war ter kem acrost that chune agin, try ter set it in yer remembrance, an' play it whenst ye kem home," she said, wistfully, at last, as if this errant melody were afloat somewhere in the vague realms of sound, where one native to those haunts might hope to encounter it anew.
The terms wasn't reely set till Thursday morning, but we knew they would be, and so all Wednesday night we was movin' acrost the river, and it kept up all next day, day before yesterday. You'd ought to 'a' been here then; you wouldn't wonder at my comin' down on you like a thousand of brick jest now, takin' you for a mobocrat.
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