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Then they ate his lunch, drank some whiskey that he had not sold to the buccaroos, told him to repack the sleigh, allowed him to wrap up again, bade him take the reins, and they would use his six-shooter and shot-gun to point out the road to him. He had said very little, had Uncle Pasco, but stood blinking, obedient and malignant. "H'm," said he now, "goin' to ride with me, are you?"
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. "I haven't any," said Drake. "New ones, that is. We've sat down to see this meal out. Got to keep sitting." He leaned back, eating deliberately, saying no more to the buccaroos; thus they saw he would never leave the room till they did.
It had been his demijohn, and when the shot struck it he blinked nervously. "You ornery old mink!" said Drake, looking at him. "You keep to the jewelry business hereafter." The buccaroos grinned again. It was reassuring to witness wrath turn upon another. "You want to hold your jobs?" Drake resumed to them. "You can trust yourselves?" "Yes, sir," said Half-past Full.
"He have joodgement." Thus the huge, jovial Teuton took command, but found Drake had left little for him to do. The buccaroos were dispersed at Harper's, at Fort Rinehart, at Alvord Lake, towards Stein's peak, and at the Island Ranch by Harney Lake.
The young superintendent set at work to ranch-work this afternoon of Brock's leaving, and the buccaroos made his acquaintance one by one and stared at him. Villany did not sit outwardly upon their faces; they were not villains; but they stared at the boy sent to control them, and they spoke together, laughing. Drake took the head of the table at supper, with Bolles on his right.
Suddenly he crouched, and was gone among the sheds. Out of the bunk-house immediately came a procession, the buccaroos still quiet, a careful, gradual body. Drake closed his door and sat in the chair again. "They're escorting that jug over here," said he. "A new move, and a big one."
The rounds at the target proceeded through the forenoon, Drake the acclaimed leader; and the Christmas sun drew to mid-sky. But as its splendor in the heavens increased, the happy shoutings on earth began to wane. The body was all that the buccaroos knew; well, the flesh comes pretty natural to all of us and who had ever taught these men about the spirit?
"Brass will look just the same anywhere," said Drake. "Brass!" screamed Uncle. "Brass your eye!" But the buccaroos, plainly glad for distraction, took the woolly old scolding man with them. Drake shouted that if getting cheated cheered them, by all means to invest heavily, and he returned alone to his fire, where Bolles soon joined him.
Dean Drake smoked for a while; then a knock came at the door. Five buccaroos entered and stood close, as is the way with the guilty who feel uncertain. "We were thinking as maybe you'd let us go over to town," said Half-past Full, the spokesman. "When?" "Oh, any day along this week." "Can't spare you till after Christmas." "Maybe you'll not object to one of us goin'?"
"I'll lend you a real one when we get to the Malheur Agency. But you can eat, anyhow. Christmas being next week, you see, my programme is, shoot all A.M. and eat all P.M. I wish you could light on a notion what prizes to give my buccaroos." "Buccaroos?" said Bolles. "Yep. Cow-punchers. Vaqueros. Buccaroos in Oregon. Bastard Spanish word, you see, drifted up from Mexico.
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