Ten miles were travelled before either spoke again. The drunken buccaroos yelled hot on their heels at first, holding more obstinately to this chase than sober ruffians would have attempted. Ten cold, dark miles across the hills it took to cure them; but when their shootings, that had followed over heights where the pines grew and down through the open swales between, dropped off, and died finally away among the willows along the south fork of the Malheur, Drake reined in his horse with a jerk.
'Now isn't that too bad!' he exclaimed.
'It is all very bad,' said Bolles, sorry to hear the boy's tone of disappointment.
'I didn't think they'd fool me again,' continued Drake, jumping down.
'Again?' inquired the interested Bolles.
'Why, they've gone home!' said the boy, in disgust.
'I was hoping so,' said the school-master.
'Hoping? Why, it's sad, Bolles. Four miles farther and I'd have had them lost.'
'Oh!' said Bolles.
'I wanted them to keep after us,' complained Drake. 'Soon as we had a good lead I coaxed them. Coaxed them along on purpose by a trail they knew, and four miles from here I'd have swung south into the mountains they don't know. There they'd have been good and far from home in the snow without supper, like you and me, Bolles. But after all my trouble they've gone back snug to that fireside. Well, let us be as cosey as we can.'
He built a bright fire, and he whistled as he kicked the snow from his boots, busying over the horses and the blankets. 'Take a rest,' he said to Bolles. 'One man's enough to do the work. Be with you soon to share our little cottage.' Presently Bolles heard him reciting confidentially to his horse, 'Twas the night after Christmas, and all in the house—only we are not all in the house!' He slapped the belly of his horse Tyee, who gambolled away to the limit of his picket-rope.
'Appreciating the moon, Bolles?' said he, returning at length to the fire. 'What are you so gazeful about, father?'
'This is all my own doing,' lamented the school-master.
'What, the moon is?'
'It has just come over me,' Bolles continued. 'It was before you got in the stage at Nampa. I was talking. I told Uncle Pasco that I was glad no whiskey was to be allowed on the ranch. It all comes from my folly!'
'Why, you hungry old New England conscience!' cried the boy, clapping him on the shoulder. 'How in the world could you foresee the crookedness of that hoary Beelzebub?'
'That's all very well,' said Bolles, miserably. 'You would never have mentioned it yourself to him.'
'You and I, Bolles, are different. I was raised on miscellaneous wickedness. A look at my insides would be liable to make you say your prayers.'
The school-master smiled. 'If I said any prayers,' he replied, 'you would be in them.'
Drake looked moodily at the fire. 'The Lord helps those who help themselves,' said he. 'I've prospered. For a nineteen-year-old I've hooked my claw fairly deep here and there. As for to-day—why, that's in the game too. It was their deal. Could they have won it on their own play? A joker dropped into their hand. It's my deal now, and I have some jokers myself. Go to sleep, Bolles. We've a ride ahead of us.'
The boy rolled himself in his blanket skillfully. Bolles heard him say once or twice in a sort of judicial conversation with the blanket—'and
