you ever seen a shooting mix-up in Medicine Bend?” demanded Dancing in a tone of calculated indifference.
“No,” answered Bucks in decided but off-hand manner, “I never saw a shooting mix-up anywhere.”
“Never got shot up just for fun?” persisted Dancing. “Do you know,” he continued without waiting for an answer, “who that polite man was, the last one you shouldered out of here?” Dancing pointed as he spoke to the corner from which Levake had risen, but the operator, straightening out the papers before him, did not look around.
“No, Bill, I don’t know anybody here. You see I am a stranger.”
“I see you are a stranger,” echoed Dancing. “Let me tell you something, then, will you?”
“Tell it quick, Bill.”
“There is no cemetery in this town.”
“I have understood it is very healthy, Bill,” returned the operator.
“Not for everybody.” Bill Dancing paused to let the words sink in, as his big eyes fixed upon the young operator’s eyes. “Not for everybody–sometimes not for strangers. Strangers have to get used to it. There is a river here,” added the lineman sententiously. “It’s pretty swift, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you have got to be careful how you do things out in this country.”
“But, Bill,” persisted the lad, “if there is going to be any business done in this office we have got to have order, haven’t we?” The lineman snorted and the operator saw that his appeal had fallen flat. “My batteries, Bill,” he added, changing the subject, “are no good at all. I sent for you because I want you to go over them now, to-night, and start me right. What are you going to do?”
Dancing had begun to poke at the ashes in the stove. “Build a fire,” he returned, looking about for material. He gathered up what waste paper was at hand, pushed it into the stove, and catching up the way-bills from the desk, threw them in on the paper and began to feel in his wet pockets for matches.
“Hold on,” cried Bucks. “What do you mean? You must be crazy!” he exclaimed, running to the stove and pulling the way-bills out.
“Not half so crazy as you are,” replied Dancing undisturbed. “I’m only trying to show you how crazy you are. Burning up way-bills isn’t a circumstance to what you did just now. You are the looniest operator I ever saw.” As he looked at Bucks he extended his finger impressively. “When you laid your hand on that man’s shoulder to-night–the one sitting on your stool–I wouldn’t have given ten cents for your life.”
Bucks regarded him with astonishment. “Why so?”
“He’s the meanest man between here and Fort Bridger,” asserted Dancing. “He’d think no more of shooting you than I would of scratching a match.” Bucks stared at the comparison. “He is the worst scoundrel in this country and partners with Seagrue and John Rebstock in everything that’s going on, and even they are afraid of him.”
Dancing stopped for breath. “Talk about my making a fire out of way-bills! When I saw you lay your hand on that man, I stopped breathing–can’t breathe just right yet,” he muttered, pulling at his shirt collar. “Do you know why you didn’t get killed?”
“Why, no, Bill, not exactly,” confessed Bucks in embarrassment.
“Because Levake was out of cartridges. I heard him tell Rebstock so when they walked past me.”
“Thank you for posting me. How should I know he was Seagrue’s partner, or who Rebstock is? Let’s make a bargain. I will be more careful in clearing out the office, and you be more careful about building fires. There’s wood in the baggage-room. I couldn’t get out to get it for fear the crowd would steal the tickets.”
“Well, you are ‘out’ four dollars and sixty cents charges on the cartridges,” continued Dancing, “and you had better say nothing about it. If you ever ask Levake for the money he will kill you.”
Bucks looked rebellious. “It’s only right for him to pay the charges. I shall ask him for them the next time I see him. And what is more he will have to pay, I don’t care whose partner he is.”
Dancing now regarded the operator with unconcealed impatience. “I suppose there are more where you came from,” he muttered. “They will need a lot of them here, if they carry on like that. How old are you?” he demanded of Bucks abruptly.
“Seventeen.”
“How long have you been in this country?”
Bucks looked at the clock. “About five hours, Bill.”
“Reckon time close, don’t you?”
“Have to, Bill, in the railroad business.”
Dancing reflected a moment. “Five hours,” he repeated. “If you don’t get killed within the next five you may live to be a useful citizen of Medicine Bend. Where are you from, and how did you happen to come away out here on the plains?”
“I am from Pittsburgh. I had to quit school and go to work.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Well, I didn’t go–”
“Quit before you went, did you?”
“I mean, I was preparing for Van Dyne College. One of my brothers teaches there. I couldn’t start there after I lost my father–he was killed in the Wilderness Campaign, Bill. But when I can earn money enough, I am going back to Van Dyne and take an engineering course.”
“Got it all figured out, have you?”
“Then I heard they were building the Union Pacific, and I knew something about telegraphing–Jim Foster and I had a line from the house to the barn.”
“Had a line from the house to the barn, eh?” chuckled Dancing.
“So I bought a railroad ticket to Des Moines from Pittsburgh and staged it to Omaha, and General Park gave me a job right away and sent me out on the first train to take this office, nights. I didn’t even know where Medicine Bend was.”
“Don’t believe you know yet. Now that’s right, I don’t believe you know yet. You’re a good boy, but you talk too much.”
“How old are you, Bill?”
“I am twenty.”
“Twenty!” echoed Bucks, as if that were not very much, either.
“Twenty!” repeated the lineman. “But,” he added, drawing himself up in his tremendous stature, with dignity, “I have been on the plains driving wagons and building telegraph lines for seven years–”
“Seven years!” echoed Bucks, now genuinely admiring his companion.
“My father was a Forty-niner. I was a line foreman when I was seventeen, for Edward Creighton, and we put the first telegraph line through from the Missouri River to the Pacific,” continued Dancing, ready to back his words with blows if necessary.
“You
