The Jimmyjohn Boss | Page 6

more than me. Twins in poverty. That's how Dutchy and
me started. If we was buried to-morrow they'd mark him 'Pecunious'
and me 'Impecunious.' That's what. Twins in poverty."
"I stick to von business at a time, Uncle," said good-natured, successful
Max.

A flicker of aberration lighted in the old man's eye. "H'm, yes," said he,
pondering. "Stuck to one business. So you did. H'm." Then, suddenly
sly, he chirped: "But I've struck it rich now." He tapped his box.
"Jewelry," he half-whispered. "Miners and cow-boys."
"Yes," said Vogel. "Those poor, deluded fellows, they buy such stuff."
And he laughed at the seedy visionary who had begun frontier life with
him on the bottom rung and would end it there. "Do you play that
concertina yet, Uncle?" he inquired.
"Yes, yes. I always play. It's in here with my tooth-brush and socks."
Uncle Pasco held up the bandanna. "Well, he's getting ready to start. I
guess I'll be climbing inside. Holy Gertrude!"
This shrill comment was at sight of the school-master, patient within
the stage. "What business are you in?" demanded Uncle Pasco.
"I am in the spelling business," replied the teacher, and smiled, faintly.
"Hell!" piped Uncle Pasco. "Take this."
He handed in his bandanna to the traveller, who received it politely.
Max Vogel lifted the box of cheap jewelry; and both he and the boy
came behind to boost the old man up on the stage step. But with a
nettled look he leaped up to evade them, tottered half-way, and then,
light as a husk of grain, got himself to his seat and scowled at the
schoolmaster.
After a brief inspection of that pale, spectacled face, "Dutchy," he
called out of the door, "this country is not what it was."
But old Max Vogel was inattentive. He was speaking to the boy, Dean
Drake, and held a flask in his hand. He reached the flask to his new
superintendent. "Drink hearty," said he. "There, son! Don't be shy. Haf
you forgot it is forbidden fruit after now?"
"Kid sworn off?" inquired Uncle Pasco of the school-master.

"I understand," replied this person, "that Mr. Vogel will not allow his
cow-boys at the Malheur Agency to have any whiskey brought there.
Personally, I feel gratified." And Mr. Bolles, the new school-master,
gave his faint smile.
"Oh," muttered Uncle Pasco. "Forbidden to bring whiskey on the ranch?
H'm." His eyes wandered to the jewelry-box. "H'm," said he again; and
becoming thoughtful, he laid back his moth-eaten sly head, and spoke
no further with Mr. Bolles.
Dean Drake climbed into the stage and the vehicle started.
"Goot luck, goot luck, my son!" shouted the hearty Max, and opened
and waved both his big arms at the departing boy: He stood looking
after the stage. "I hope he come back," said he. "I think he come back.
If he come I r-raise him fifty dollars without any beard."
II
The stage had not trundled so far on its Silver City road but that a
whistle from Nampa station reached its three occupants. This was the
branch train starting back to Boise with Max Vogel aboard; and the boy
looked out at the locomotive with a sigh.
"Only five days of town," he murmured. "Six months more wilderness
now."
"My life has been too much town," said the new school-master. "I am
looking forward to a little wilderness for a change."
Old Uncle Pasco, leaning back, said nothing; he kept his eyes shut and
his ears open.
"Change is what I don't get," sighed Dean Drake. In a few miles,
however, before they had come to the ferry over Snake River, the
recent leave-taking and his employer's kind but dominating repression
lifted from the boy's spirit. His gray eye wakened keen again, and he
began to whistle light opera tunes, looking about him alertly, like the

sparrow-hawk that he was. "Ever see Jeannie Winston in 'Fatinitza'?"
he inquired of Mr. Bolles.
The school-master, with a startled, thankful countenance, stated that he
had never.
"Ought to," said Drake.
"You a man? that can't be true! Men have never eyes like you."
That's what the girls in the harem sing in the second act. Golly whiz!"
The boy gleamed over the memory of that evening.
"You have a hard job before you," said the school-master, changing the
subject.
"Yep. Hard." The wary Drake shook his head warningly at Mr. Bolles
to keep off that subject, and he glanced in the direction of slumbering
Uncle Pasco. Uncle Pasco was quite aware of all this. "I wouldn't take
another lonesome job so soon," pursued Drake, "but I want the money.
I've been working eleven months along the Owyhee as a sort of junior
boss, and I'd earned my vacation. Just got it started hot in Portland,
when biff! old Vogel