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He laid it down, hiding his face again in his hands. "Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb, hur knows?" He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his. "Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired." He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him. It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke.
With this, he waved his metal wand, and in the circle suddenly appeared a thin little man, very old and skinny, who was seated on a wicker stool before a wicker table. He wore great spectacles which were fastened before his eyes by means of a ribbon that passed around his head and was tied in a bow at the neck.
"Come on up the street with me," I said; "I want to tell you something." When we were about a block off I said, "You listen here, kiddo. I don't want you to be shouting about belt-axes and jack-knives and things like that in front of Skinny McCord. I'm telling you that and I want you to remember it. And I've got good reasons, too. Scouts aren't made out of belt-axes and jack-knives and badges.
It was hot, late June, the time between cutting the first crop of alfalfa and gathering, from the open range, the beef steers ready for the summer market. Regardless of the heat Skinny had ridden hard and his horse was a lather of sweat. A number of cowboys lounged, indolently, in the shade of the bunk-house, smoking cigarettes and contentedly enjoying the hour of rest after the noon-day dinner.
I said, "Yes, you did it; try to be quiet and get rested now. Can't you see he's all right?" "I held him up till you came," he panted; "I'm a hero. I want to go and be all by myself, I do." I said, "Hsh, Skinny, listen " "He called me!" Skinny shouted; "he called me out loud!" "I know," I said, "and you went. Sure, you're a hero." But of course, I knew the fellow never called him at all.
Seeking Nippers, I came upon him haltingly reading my diary aloud to an amused circle of cattlemen, in his quarters aft. "Give me that book back!" I demanded. He ignored me. "Give him a rap in the kisser, Skinny!" I drew back, aiming a blow at Nippers.
"Then let him stop a-callin' me 'Skinny," was the last outbreak of the injured lean one, and his antagonist confessed "I won't say nothin' to you no more if you stop grinning 'Flathead' at me."
A couple of skinny cones project from the sides of his head, with a wee shiny bead of an eye set in the apex of each; and these cones turn bodily like pivot-guns and point every-which-way, and they are independent of each other; each has its own exclusive machinery. Natives must not be out after the curfew bell without a pass. In Natal there are ten blacks to one white.
Somehow I kind of liked him I couldn't help it. All of a sudden I heard a fellow shout, "There he is!" And then everbody around the camp-fire set up a howl. Skinny was standing in the dark away from the fire, just as if he was afraid to come in among the fellows. His uniform was all wrinkled and stained and he looked even worse than he did other times.
"She had on one of them blue tailor-made things with a lid to match, and a long feather in it," the cabby answered obligingly. "She was pretty as a as a she was a beaut, Cap, sort of skinny, and had all sorts of hair on her head brownish, goldish sort of hair. She was about twenty-two or three, maybe, and and Cap, she was the goods, that's all."
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