The Second Western Megapack. Zane Grey

flowed and forked; along the embered surface of the others ran red and blue shivers of iridescence. With legs and arms crooked and sprawled, the buccaroos brooded, staring into the glow with seldom-winking eyes, while deep inside the clay the spirit spoke quietly. Christmas Day was passing, but the sun shone still two good hours high. Outside, over the snow and pines, it was only in the deeper folds of the hills that the blue shadows had come; the rest of the world was gold and silver; and from far across that silence into this silence by the fire came a tinkling stir of sound. Sleighbells it was, steadily coming, too early for Bolles to be back from his school festival.

      The toy-thrill of the jingling grew clear and sweet, a spirit of enchantment that did not wake the stillness, but cast it into a deeper dream. The bells came near the door and stopped, and then Drake opened it.

      “Hello, Uncle Pasco!” said he. “Thought you were Santa Claus.”

      “Santa Claus! H’m. Yes. That’s what. Told you maybe I’d come.”

      “So you did. Turkey is due in—let’s see—ninety minutes. Here, boys! some of you take Uncle Pasco’s horse.”

      “No, no, I won’t. You leave me alone. I ain’t stoppin’ here. I ain’t hungry. I just grubbed at the school. Sleepin’ at Missouri Pete’s to-night. Got to make the railroad tomorrow.” The old man stopped his precipitate statements. He sat in his sledge deeply muffled, blinking at Drake and the buccaroos, who had strolled out to look at him, “Done a big business this trip,” said he. “Told you I would. Now if you was only givin’ your children a Christmas-tree like that I seen that feller yer schoolmarm doin’ just now—hee-hee!” From his blankets he revealed the well-known case. “Them things would shine on a tree,” concluded Uncle Pasco.

      “Hang ’em in the woods, then,” said Drake.

      “Jewelry, is it?” inquired the young Texas man.

      Uncle Pasco whipped open his case. “There you are,” said he. “All what’s left. That ring’ll cost you a dollar.”

      “I’ve a dollar somewheres,” said the young man, fumbling.

      Half-past Full, on the other side of the sleigh, stood visibly fascinated by the wares he was given a skilful glimpse of down among the blankets. He peered and he pondered while Uncle Pasco glibly spoke to him.

      “Scatter your truck out plain!” the buccaroo exclaimed, suddenly. “I’m not buying in the dark. Come over to the bunk-house and scatter.”

      “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. They waited, accordingly, and by-and-by the sleigh-bells jingled again. As they had come out of the silence, so did they go into it, their little silvery tinkle dancing away in the distance, faint and fainter, then, like a breath, gone.

      Uncle Pasco’s trinkets had audibly raised the men’s spirits. They remained in the bunkhouse, their laughter reaching Drake and Bolles more and more. Sometimes they would scuffle and laugh loudly.

      “Do you imagine it’s more leap-frog?” inquired the school-master.

      “Gambling,” said Drake. “They’ll keep at it now till one of them wins everything the rest have bought.”

      “Have they been lively ever since morning?”

      “Had a reaction about noon,” said Drake. “Regular home-sick spell. I felt sorry for ’em.”

      “They seem full of reaction,” said Bolles. “Listen to that!”

      It was now near four o’clock, and Sam came in, announcing dinner.

      “All ready,” said the smiling Chinaman.

      “Pass the good word to the bunk-house,” said Drake, “if they can hear you.”

      Sam went across, and the shouting stopped. Then arose a thick volley of screams and cheers.

      “That don’t sound right,” said Drake, leaping to his feet. In the next instant the Chinaman, terrified, returned through the open door. Behind him lurched Half-past Full, and stumbled into the room. His boot caught, and he pitched, but saved himself and stood swaying, heavily looking at Drake. The hair curled dense over his bull head, his mustache was spread with his grin, the light of cloddish humor and destruction burned in his big eye. The clay had buried the spirit like a caving pit.

      “Twas false jewelry all right!” he roared, at the top of his voice. “A good old jimmyjohn full, boss. Say, boss, goin’ to run our jimmyjohn off the ranch? Try it on, kid. Come over and try it on!” The bull beat on the table.

      Dean Drake had sat quickly down in his chair, his gray eye upon the hulking buccaroo. Small and dauntless he sat, a sparrow-hawk caught in a trap, and game to the end—whatever end.

      “It’s a trifle tardy to outline any policy about your demijohn,” said he, seriously. “You folks had better come in and eat before you’re beyond appreciating.”

      “Ho, we’ll eat your grub, boss. Sam’s cooking goes.” The buccaroo lurched out and away to the bunk-house, where new bellowing was set up.

      “I’ve got to carve this turkey, friend,” said the boy to Bolles.

      “I’ll do my best to help eat it,” returned the school-master, smiling.

      “Misser Dlake,” said poor Sam, “I solly you. I velly solly you.”

      IV

      “Reserve your sorrow, Sam,” said Dean Drake. “Give us your soup for a starter. Come,” he said to Bolles. “Quick.”

      He went into the dining-room, prompt in his seat at the head of the table, with the school-master next to him.

      “Nice man, Uncle Pasco,” he continued. “But his time is not now. We have nothing to do for the present but sit like every day and act perfectly natural.”

      “I have known simpler tasks,” said Mr. Bolles, “but I’ll begin by spreading this excellently clean napkin.”

      “You’re no schoolmarm!” exclaimed Drake; “you please me.”

      “The worst of a bad thing,” said the mild Bolles, “is having time to think about it, and we have been spared that.”

      “Here they come,” said Drake.

      They did come. But Drake’s alert strategy served the end he had tried for. The drunken buccaroos swarmed disorderly to the door and halted. Once more the new superintendent’s ways took them aback. Here was the decent table with lights serenely burning, with unwonted good things arranged upon it—the olives, the oranges, the preserves. Neat as parade drill were the men’s places, all the cups and forks symmetrical along the white cloth. There, waiting his guests at the far end, sat the slim young boss talking with his boarder, Mr. Bolles, the parts in their smooth hair going with all the rest of this propriety. Even the daily tin dishes were banished in favor of crockery.

      “Bashful of Sam’s napkins, boys?” said the boss. “Or is it the bald-headed china?”

      At this bidding they came in uncertainly. Their whiskey was ashamed inside. They took their seats, glancing across at each other in a transient silence, drawing their chairs gingerly beneath them. Thus ceremony fell unexpected upon the gathering, and for a while they swallowed in awkwardness what the swift, noiseless Sam brought them. He in a long white apron passed and re-passed with his things from his kitchen, doubly efficient and civil under stress of anxiety for his young master. In the pauses of his serving he watched from the background, with a face that presently caught the notice of one of them.

      “Smile, you almond-eyed highbinder,” said the buccaroo. And the Chinaman