The Sheriff of Badger Part 40

"Better."

"Well," said the boss, "we're moving to-day, Walsh. You don't seem to have found any of your stuff. It's certain you won't, where we're heading. So I reckon it'd save you trouble if you got moving."

Walsh eyed him expectantly.

"All right," he said at last. "You're the boss."

In this manner was discipline restored among the Anvil men.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

NEWS FROM BUFFALO JIM

Rub-a-dub-dub, Three men in a tub, The butcher, the baker, The candlestick maker; They all jumped out of a holler pertater.

Rub-a-dub-dub.

"Do you call them your prayers?" asked Lafe sternly. "I done told you to get to bed more'n a hour ago, son. I swan I can't figure what your ma's thinking of. Now, drag it."

The boy turned a confident grin on his sire and continued his march through the house, rub-a-dub-dubbing to the best that was in him. He was attired lightly in a chemise, and was accordingly able to give an unhampered ill.u.s.tration of how the candlestick maker and the other tradesmen emerged from the spud. Hetty had gone to prepare his bed; returning, she made a dive for the fugitive and bore him, struggling, to his unwelcome nest. There she was obliged to growl over him in imitation of a big old bear, before Lafe, Jr., became reconciled.

Johnson listened with scant patience to their further discourse inside the bedroom.

"That ain't the way to learn the boy his prayers," he interrupted.

"Bless _Mister_ Shortredge. Mister! That's a fine way for a li'l feller to pray, ain't it? Call him Jim or Buf'lo, Hetty. Call him Jim or Buf'lo. I reckon the Almighty don't know Jim as Mister."

"I guess the Almighty ain't such a close friend of his, anyhow, seeing as he's a friend of yours," retorted Mrs. Johnson.

Lafe revolved this in his mind. By the time he had hit upon an apt rejoinder, opportunity for its use had fled; but he made a mental note thereof, resolved to steer the talk around some day to the same theme.

Early next morning Jeff Hardin came up the trail, with a letter for Johnson. Letters are rare arrivals in that region and a certain formality attaches to their receipt. This one Lafe accepted with seeming unconcern, and having looked long at the handwriting and turned it over and over, he called his wife. To her Lafe opined that Buffalo must have written to him. Meanwhile Jeff loitered near, flicking the reins on his horse's back, intent on catching anything of interest that might crop up.

"He wouldn't never take a prize, Buf'lo wouldn't," said Lafe critically, "but this looks a bit shaky, even for him."

"Well, let's open it," Hetty suggested.

It took her husband at least ten minutes to scan the brief page, although famous for the ease with which he read and spelled; but this was due to the fact that Shortredge despised punctuation and had broad theories of capitals, into which the sense of the subject-matter did not enter at all. So there existed always a confusion as to where his sentences began and where they left off. But Johnson finished at last, and then he turned to Hetty with a hopeless air.

"Well, if that wouldn't knock you deader'n a rat. Here he owes me fifty-seven dollars already, and he's been owing it for nigh on a million years," he said, "yet he wants--"

He broke off, perceiving that Jeff lingered. "Won't you get down and visit, Jeff?" he asked.

"No-oo, I wouldn't choose to, thanks, Lafe," said Jeff; "I got to drift.

Did you say he owed you fifty-seven, Lafe? Well, adios, you two. Take care of yourself, Mrs. Johnson. Come on, boy, and I'll give you a ride as far as the spring."

Hardin continued his journey toward Badger, and told them there how Jim Shortredge had applied to Lafe Johnson for a loan of two hundred dollars, although he had been owing him close to a thousand for seven years.

"Well, what're you going to do about it?" said Hetty, when the courier had departed.

"Do about it? Forget it--that's what I'm going to do."

"We couldn't have him here with little Lafe round," Hetty went on reflectively. "It wouldn't be safe. No, we couldn't. Could we?"

"Well, I should reckon not. I should rather reckon not. Where'd we put him?"

Lafe was highly indignant for the remainder of the forenoon. What sort of an idiot did Buffalo take him to be, anyhow? It was all very well for a man to use his friend's money and time as his own so long as both were single, but when a man married, his family had first claim. If Jim could not get that through his head without having it pounded in, Lafe was sorry, but he would have to make it clear, notwithstanding. Send him fifty dollars--had Hetty ever in her life heard anything to equal that?

Here was a feller who could easily earn seventy-five dollars a month--a thick, stout man--and just because he was a trifle sick, he had to send off to borrow and to ask if he could visit. It was weak-kneed, Lafe called it. He had really never suspected this propensity in Shortredge.

"Many's the time I've helped him out," he said, reverting to the subject after dinner, "and what do I get? A man owes it to a friend before he gets married, Hetty. Afterwards, he--"

"He what?"

"Well, he ain't got any friends," said her husband.

His irritation continued throughout the afternoon and he brusquely refused to take his son up in front when he rode away to Horne's headquarters. It was growing dark when he returned and the cattle were drifting up the Canon to water. Johnson noticed each cow and calf with a shrewd eye, and determined to spread more salt in the morning. His son came galloping to meet him, and Lafe swung the boy to the fork of the saddle. He was still moody, however, and his wife observed that he did not eat with his customary appet.i.te. Finally he pushed the plate from him.

"I declare that stew's no fit food for a man, Hetty. Can't we never have nothing else?"

"You've had stew twice in three weeks. That's what you've had," Hetty returned, bridling. "What's got into you, anyhow? You're worse than a big ol' bear."

"Ugh-ugh-ugh-ugh!" her son growled, making a persistent effort to worry his father's leg with his teeth. Lafe pried his offspring loose and set him on his knee. The boy wrestled and thumped him, and gradually Lafe softened under the play.

"I mind once, me and Buf'lo went for eleven days on jerky and tobacco; more tobacco than jerky," he said, considering his son with a smile.

"Nothing ever seemed to hurt us in them days, me and Buf'lo. Down in the Baccanochi, it was, where we went for some cattle. And of all the sorry steers, you never seen the like, Hetty. Honest, they couldn't throw a shadow. But we got some beef there. I ain't never tasted beef like it since--no, ma'am."

"Ho, haven't you?" Hetty sniffed.

His usual even spirits seemed to return during the after-supper smoke.

He sat on the porch and listened to the cows lowing contentedly around the tanks. Some animal went light-footed through the underbrush of the slope opposite, and Lafe, Jr., was morally certain it was a wildcat; but, then, he never failed to detect bears and wolves and mountain lions in the least stirring of a twig. The dark deepened and a coyote yelped against the Canon's walls. The baby announced his intention of catching the prowler on the morrow with a pinch of salt, and by the exercise of cunning and stealth.

Hetty came out on the porch to fill the canteen and to warn little Lafe that bedtime was close upon him. The boy denied it vehemently.

"I mind once, when me and Buf'lo were sleeping at the ol' Palomino," her husband told her; "just a night like to this it was, and a couple of line riders come along with a deck of cards--"

"That's all you need to say," Hetty said. "You never did understand the game."

Shortly afterward she took the child from his father and put him to bed, Lafe, Jr., howling that he was wide awake and nothing under heaven would make him go. Yet he was asleep in a twinkling. His mother tiptoed out of the room. When she reached the porch, she gave vent to the long sigh a tired woman will give when the day's work is done and she can relax, and she began to rock in the wicker-chair. Her husband was walking meditatively near a tall cottonwood. He appeared to be pacing off the ground.

"What're you doing?" she called.

"Nothing. Nothing much." But when she joined him, he coughed and looked foolish.

"Now," said Hetty, locking both arms about one of his and leaning against him, "tell me."

"Why," Lafe said, "I was just sort of studying how a tent would fit here right snug. It's a slick place for a tent."