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Separ’s Vigilante
by
Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently reminded him of politics. “Wall Street,” he was explaining to the agent, “has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they’re moving on. Feeding along to Chicago. We want–” Here he noticed me and, dragging his gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.
“Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,” I remarked.
“Lose you, he meant. The kid gets his words twisted.”
“Didn’t know you were a father, Mr. McLean,” simpered the agent.
Lin fixed his eye on the man. “And you don’t know it now,” said he. Then he removed his eye. “Let’s grub,” he added to me. My friend did not walk to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast. “Billy is a good kid,” he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds in the dust. Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter dwelling with him, heavy and real. “He’s dead stuck on being a cow-puncher,” he presently said.
“Some day–” I began.
“He don’t want to wait that long,” Lin said, and smiled affectionately. “And, anyhow, what is ‘some day’? Some day we punchers will not be here. The living will be scattered, and the dead–well, they’ll be all right. Have yu’ studied the wire fence? It’s spreading to catch us like nets do the salmon in the Columbia River. No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,” stated Mr. McLean, sententiously; and his words made me sad, though I know that progress cannot spare land and water for such things. “But Billy,” Lin resumed, “has agreed to school again when it starts up in the fall. He takes his medicine because I want him to.” Affection crept anew over the cow-puncher’s face. “He can learn books with the quickest when he wants, that Bear Creek school-marm says. But he’d ought to have a regular mother till–till I can do for him, yu’ know. It’s onwholesome him seeing and hearing the boys–and me, and me when I forget!–but shucks! how can I fix it? Billy was sure enough dropped and deserted. But when I found him the little calf could run and notice like everything!”
“I should hate your contract, Lin,” said I. “Adopting’s a touch-and-go business even when a man has a home.”
“I’ll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was mine. I’m a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got him. He likes me: I think he does. I’ve had to lick him now and then, but Lord! his badness is all right–not sneaky. I’ll take him hunting next month, and then the foreman’s wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry’ll make his Virginia man foreman–and he’s got no woman to look after Billy, yu’ see.”
“He’s asking one hard enough,” said I, digressing.
“Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting–” said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open, hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at me again, he said: “Don’t you get off any more truck about eldest son and that, will yu’, friend? The boys are joshing me now–not that I care for what might easy enough be so, but there’s Billy. Maybe he’d not mind, but maybe he would after a while; and I am kind o’ set on–well–he didn’t have a good time till he shook that home of his, and I’m going to make this old bitch of a world pay him what she owes him, if I can. Now you’ll drop joshing, won’t yu’?” His forehead was moist over getting the thing said and laying bare so much of his soul.
“And so the world owes us a good time, Lin?” said I.
He laughed shortly. “She must have been dead broke, then, quite a while, you bet! Oh no. Maybe I used to travel on that basis. But see here” (Lin laid his hand on my shoulder), “if you can’t expect a good time for yourself in reason, you can sure make the kids happy out o’ reason, can’t yu’?”