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For Drybone soil, you see, was still government soil, not yet handed over to Wyoming; and only government could arrest there, and only for government crimes. But government had gone, and seldom worried Drybone! The spot was a postage-stamp of sanctuary pasted in the middle of Wyoming's big map, a paradise for the Four-ace Johnstons. Only, you must not steal a horse.
Blew in at Cheyenne till he went broke, and worked over on to the Platte. Rode for the C. Y. Outfit most a year, and quit. Blew in at Buffalo. Rode for Balaam awhile on Butte Creek. Broke his leg. Went to the Drybone Hospital, and when the fracture was commencing to knit pretty good he broke it again at the hog-ranch across the bridge. Next time you're in Cheyenne get Dr.
Like brothers they had shared each others' vouchers until responsibility had melted from their brains and the whiskey was finished. Then, no longer entertained and growing weary of Drybone, they had remembered nothing but their distant beds. Each had mounted his pony, holding trustingly to the saddle, and thus, unguided, the experienced ponies had taken them right.
"Excuse me. There was to be a wagon sent here." "For the telegraph-mender? Yes, sir. It came Tuesday. You're to find the pole-wagon at Drybone." This news was good, and all that he wished to know. He could drive out and escape a night at the Hotel Brunswick. But he lingered, because Jessamine spoke so pleasantly to him. He had heard of her also.
The Drybone road was a broad trail, a worn strip of bareness going onward over the endless shelvings of the plain, visible even in this light; and presently, moving upon its grayness on a hill in front of them, they made out the wagon. They hastened and overtook it. "Put your carbine down," said McLean to Lusk. "It's not robbers. It's your wife I'm bringing you." He spoke very quietly.
All night long he took it, while his passenger, helpless and sleepless inside the lurching stage, sat as upright as she possibly could; nor did the voices that she heard at Drybone reassure her.
Then, searching Drybone outside and in for any more incapable of following, they brought them, and the dray was piled. Limber Jim called for another drink and, with his cigar between his teeth, cracked his long bull-whacker whip.
"Well," said Jessamine, "there's a man coming to-day to mend the government telegraph-line between Drybone and McKinney. Maybe he would take you back as far as Box Elder, if you want to go very much. Shall I ask him?" Billy was disappointed at this cordial seconding of his mood. He did not make a direct rejoinder. "I guess I'll go outside now," said he, with a threat in his tone.
The Governor thought that perhaps he was tired, that perhaps this evening he must forego the pleasure. "It may be wiser. In your position it may be advisable," said the coroner. "They're getting on rollers over there. We do not like trouble in Drybone, but trouble comes to us as everywhere." "Shooting," suggested his Excellency, recalling his hospital practice.
Above, on the hill, the graveyard quietly chronicled this new epoch of Drybone. So-and-so was seldom killed very far out of town, and of course scalping had disappeared. "Sacred to the memory of Four-ace Johnston, accidently shot, Sep. 4, 1885." Perhaps one is still there unaltered: "Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Ryan's babe. Aged two months."
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