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This free, joking way of Bartley's was one of the things that made him popular; he passed the time of day, and was give and take right along, as his admirers expressed it, from the first, in a community where his smartness had that honor which gives us more smart men to the square mile than any other country in the world.
She prophesied Bartley's return, and fixed it in her own mind for this hour and that. "Now, in the morning, I shall wake and find him standing by the bed. No, at night he will come in and surprise us at dinner." She cheated herself with increasing faith at each renewal of her hopes.
Bartley appeared to reflect. Wishful really wanted to sell the gray, describing him as the best horse he owned to awaken Bartley's interest. The best horse in the corral was the big bay cow-horse; but Wishful had no idea that Bartley knew that. "Would you put a price on the gray?" queried Bartley. "Why, sure! You can have him, for a hundred and twenty-five."
Beyond and about was a dusky wall through which loomed queer shapes that seemed to move and change until, approached, they became junipers. Bartley's gaze became fixed upon the road. That, at least, was a reality. He reached back and untied his coat and swung into it. An early star flared over the southern hills. He wondered if he had passed the water-hole.
Bartley's only chance, and that a pretty slim one, lay in getting free from the grip of those arms. He used his knee effectively. Hull grunted and staggered back. Bartley jumped forward and bored in, knocking Hull off his feet. The cow-puncher struck the ground, rolled over, and was up and coming like a cyclone.
Bartley's heart gave a bound, and he broke out into an immense laugh of relief, and clapped Halleck on the shoulder. "You looked deucedly as it' you wouldn't, old man! By George, you had on such a dismal, hang-dog expression that I didn't know but you'd come to borrow money of me, and I'd made up my mind not to let you have it!
"Well, sir, what do you want?" demanded the agent. Then, with rising temper, "What is it? Are you deaf? Are you dumb? You can't expect to stand there all night!" The policeman outside the rail laid his hand on Bartley's shoulder: "Move on, my friend." He obeyed, and reeled away in a fashion that confirmed the policeman's suspicions.
The picnic was to be in a pretty glen three or four miles north of the village, where there was shade on a bit of level green, and a spring bubbling out of a fern-hung bluff: from which you looked down the glen over a stretch of the river. Marcia had planned that they were to drive thither in a four-seated carryall, but the addition of Bartley's guests disarranged this.
Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or to his favourite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy-rid, sick of perpetual boy. Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
My point of view is different, but I shall not insist upon it; and I wish to withdraw and and apologize for any hasty expressions I may have used." "All right," said Bartley, with a wicked grin. He had triumphed; but his triumph was one to leave some men with an uneasy feeling, and there was not altogether a pleasant taste in Bartley's mouth.
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