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I'll let one of you out of the window and the other must stay here and help to fight." Mitch said, "You go, Skeet, you're a faster runner than me, and maybe he'll hop after you, whoever he is. I'll stay here and take a bed-slat and brain him as he comes up the stairway." "No," says I, "I think it's more dangerous to stay than to go let's draw straws to see who goes."
They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig. For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow.
"But can you ?" I was beginning, when Skeet stopped me, leaning around her companion, bristling at me like a snub-nosed terrier. "If you want to make a hit with Barbie, cut out the reminiscences. She does loathe being reminded that she was once an infant phenom." I glanced at my dark eyed girl; she bent her head affirmatively.
His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet was licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken ribs. "That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here."
Cora and Ernestine, a well bred pair of Inas, without her pep, perhaps a shade less good looking, made their replies with none of the usual flutter of feminine curiosity and excitement, then went on in the living room. Skeet of course was as practical and brief as a sensible boy. "I don't know whether she's fit to see you," she said when I spoke of her mother.
She wouldn't have been capable of Skeet's rudeness, but plainly Skeet had not overstated her real feeling. I had hardly begun an apology when the dancers rushed back to the table with the information that there was no more than time to make the Los Angeles train; there was an instant grasping of wraps, hasty good-bys, and the party began breaking up with a bang.
Why, say, more'n once I've staked him to the price of a twenty-cent lodgin', and the only way I ever got any of it back was by tippin' him off to this vacancy on the coffee urn at the dairy lunch. Used to be copy boy on the Sunday, Skeet did; but that was 'way back. It didn't last long either; for he was just as punk a performer at that as he ever was at any of the other things he's tackled.
While he went wild with happiness when Thornton touched him or spoke to him, he did not seek these tokens. Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove her nose under Thornton's hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig, who would stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck was content to adore at a distance.
"Gee," said Mitch, "what wouldn't you give to sleep on her? We could sleep on the deck. Let's wait and ask the captain." We waited around for about an hour. But the captain didn't appear. Then Mitch says: "Come on, Skeet, we're hired, we belong on this boat, we have a right to get on her, let's climb around there up to the deck." So we watched so nobody could see us.
"I'm not walking off with them they're walking off with me," Barbara laughed at her. "Shameless one!" Skeet drawled. "I see you let Mr. Cummings have a day off aren't you the kind little boss to 'em!" I just raised my brows at Barbara, and she explained a bit hastily, "Skeet thinks she has to be silly over the fact that Mr. Cummings has gone up to town, I suppose."
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