"
"And you say--"
"Yes, Sam. Everybody seen 'em drive away together in a buckboard,
with a big bundle, like clothes, tied up in the back of it. He was
drivin' the team he brought over with him from Muscogee. They'll be
hard to overtake right away."
"And which--"
"I was goin' on to tell you. They left on the Guthrie road; but
there's no tellin' which forks they'll take--you know that."
"All right, Jim; much obliged."
"You're welcome, Sam."
Simmons rolled a cigarette and stabbed his pony with both heels.
Twenty yards away he reined up and called back:
"You don't want no--assistance, as you might say?"
"Not any, thanks."
"I didn't think you would. Well, so long!"
Sam took out and opened a bone-handled pocket-knife and scraped a
dried piece of mud from his left boot. I thought at first he was
going to swear a vendetta on the blade of it, or recite "The Gipsy's
Curse." The few feuds I had ever seen or read about usually opened
that way. This one seemed to be presented with a new treatment.
Thus offered on the stage, it would have been hissed off, and one of
Belasco's thrilling melodramas demanded instead.
"I wonder," said Sam, with a profoundly thoughtful expression, "if the
cook has any cold beans left over!"
He called Wash, the Negro cook, and finding that he had some, ordered
him to heat up the pot and make some strong coffee.
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