Part 6 (2/2)

Darrell, after several vain attempts, managed to clamber aboard. He gathered up the reins, and, with exaggerated care, drove into the middle of the street.

Then suddenly he rose to his feet, uttered an ear-piercing exultant yell, hurled the reins at the horse's head and began to beat the animal with his whip. The horse, startled, bounded forward. The buggy jerked.

Darrell sat down violently, but was at once on his feet, plying the whip. The crazed man and the crazed horse disappeared up the street, the buggy careening from side to side, Darrell yelling at the top of his lungs. The stableman watched him out of sight.

”Roaring d.i.c.k of the Woods!” said he thoughtfully at last. He thrust his hand in his pocket and took out the wad of greenbacks, contemplated them for a moment, and thrust them back. He caught Tally's eye. ”Funny what different ideas men have of a time,” said he.

”Do this regular?” inquired Tally dryly.

”Every year.”

Bob got his breath at last.

”Why!” he cried. ”What'll happen to him! He'll be killed sure!”

”Not him!” stated the stableman emphatically. ”Not d.i.c.ky Darrell! He'll smash up good, and will crawl out of the wreck, and he'll limp back here in just about one half-hour.”

”How about the horse and buggy?”

”Oh, we'll catch the horse in a day or two--it's a spoiled colt, anyway--and we'll patch up the buggy if she's patchable. If not, we'll leave it. Usual programme.”

The stableman and Tally lit their pipes. n.o.body seemed much interested now that the amus.e.m.e.nt was over. Bob owned a boyish desire to follow the wake of the cyclone, but in the presence of this imperturbability, he repressed his inclination.

”Some day the d.a.m.n fool will bust his head open,” said the liveryman, after a ruminative pause.

”I shouldn't think you'd rent him a horse,” said Bob.

”He pays,” yawned the other.

At the end of the half-hour the liveryman dove into his office for a coat, which he put on. This indicated that he contemplated exercising in the sun instead of sitting still in the shade.

”Well, let's look him up,” said he. ”This may be the time he busts his fool head.”

”Hope not,” was Tally's comment; ”can't afford to lose a foreman.”

But near the outskirts of town they met Roaring d.i.c.k limping painfully down the middle of the road. His hat was gone and he was liberally plastered with the soft mud of early spring.

Not one word would he vouchsafe, but looked at them all malevolently.

His intoxication seemed to have evaporated with his good spirits. As answer to the liveryman's question as to the whereabouts of the smashed rig, he waved a comprehensive hand toward the suburbs. At insistence, he snapped back like an ugly dog.

”Out there somewhere,” he snarled. ”Go find it! What the h.e.l.l do I care where it is? It's mine, isn't it? I paid you for it, didn't I? Well, go find it! You can have it!”

He tramped vigorously back toward the main street, a grotesque figure with his red-brown hair tumbled over his white, nervous countenance of the pointed chin, with his hooked nose, and his twinkling chipmunk eyes.

”He'll hit the first saloon, if you don't watch out,” Bob managed to whisper to Tally.

But the latter shook his head. From long experience he knew the type.

His reasoning was correct. Roaring d.i.c.k tramped doggedly down the length of the street to the little frame depot. There he slumped into one of the hard seats in the waiting-room, where he promptly slept. Tally sat down beside him and withdrew into himself. The twilight fell. After an apparently interminable interval a train rumbled in. Tally shook his companion. The latter awakened just long enough to stumble aboard the smoking car, where, his knees propped up, his chin on his breast, he relapsed into deep slumber.

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