Читать книгу Hands Up! онлайн

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"Excuse me, gents," he said. "Lunch is pretty nearly through. If you don't——"

"Oh, they always save me my lunch," began Scotty.

"I told the pro-prietor that you were wanting lunch, sir——" to me.

"We'll get," said Scotty, and waved his arm like a man herding hens, seemed to bundle us out of the room, looking at the newcomer sternly, as if he would bid him keep his eyes off the treasured instrument.

We had come to the platform steps at the end of the depôt buildings, the cowboy who had been so solicitous about my lunch a little in advance.

"What this?" he cried, looking across toward the hotel. There we stood and stared. The hay-beard person who was "in town" to have a "good time" was gathering up the reins of a very excited horse, a horse standing in the shafts of a light buck-board like a hound in leash. From far off as we stood even, we could see by the gestures of hay-beard, he sitting on the seat with legs out-thrust, that he was grandiloquently inebriated. A man ran out of the hotel door, dashed across the verandah, and snatched for the horse's head. The horse swerved away. The man who had tried to catch its head vaulted over the rail; but his feet sank so deep in the sand that he half fell. As he did so hay-beard gave the whip a wild sweep, yelled, wheeled away from the hotel, and fiercely urged the horse. It plunged through the sand, found firmer footing on the waggon-road that twined past the hotel and up to the railway track, which it crossed on planks laid between the lines. Up came the buck-board, hay-beard wielding the long lash of the whip. He drove splendidly—too splendidly. There was too much drunken swagger about it. He caught sight of us as he swept along the waggon-road, waved a mocking arm to us, wheeled the buck-board abruptly at the bend on to the track and—well! The next thing we saw was the horse galloping across the track with a shaft hanging to left, a shaft to right; the buck-board overturned; hay-beard on his chest, legs in air, chin sticking out like one swimming, still clutching the reins. Then he went head over heels at the sloping planks that led up to the track and rolled over and over there. The horse simply crossed the track, wheeled about, flung its head up and, turning round, trotted back to the hotel verandah—and stood there.