"The worst of a bad thing," said the mild Bolles, "is having time to think about it, and we have been spared that."
"Here they come," said Drake.
They did come. But Drake's alert strategy served the end he had tried for. The drunken buccaroos swarmed disorderly to the door and halted. Once more the new superintendent's ways took them aback. Here was the decent table with lights serenely burning, with unwonted good things arranged upon it—the olives, the oranges, the preserves. Neat as parade drill were the men's places, all the cups and forks symmetrical along the white cloth. There, waiting his guests at the far end, sat the slim young boss talking with his boarder, Mr. Bolles, the parts in their smooth hair going with all the rest of this propriety. Even the daily tin dishes were banished in favor of crockery.
"Bashful of Sam's napkins, boys?" said the boss. "Or is it the bald-headed china?"
At this bidding they came in uncertainly. Their whiskey was ashamed inside. They took their seats, glancing across at each other in a transient silence, drawing their chairs gingerly beneath them. Thus ceremony fell unexpected upon the gathering, and for a while they swallowed in awkwardness what the swift, noiseless Sam brought them. He in a long white apron passed and re-passed with his things from his kitchen, doubly efficient and civil under stress of anxiety for his young master. In the pauses of his serving he watched from the background, with a face that presently caught the notice of one of them.
"Smile, you almond-eyed highbinder," said the buccaroo. And the Chinaman smiled his best.
"I've forgot something," said Half-past Full, rising. "Don't let 'em skip a course on me." Half-past left the room.
"That's what I have been hoping for," said Drake to Bolles.
Half-past returned presently and caught Drake's look of expectancy. "Oh no, boss," said the buccaroo, instantly, from the door. "You're on to me, but I'm on to you." He slammed the door with ostentation and dropped with a loud laugh into his seat.
"First smart thing I've known him do," said Drake to Bolles. "I am disappointed."
Two buccaroos next left the room together.
"They may get lost in the snow," said the humorous Half-past. "I'll just show 'em the trail." Once more he rose from the dinner and went out.
"Yes, he knew too much to bring it in here," said Drake to Bolles. "He knew none but two or three would dare drink, with me looking on."
"Don't you think he is afraid to bring it in the same room with you at all?" Bolles suggested.
"And me temperance this season? Now, Bolles, that's unkind."
"Oh, dear, that is not at all what—"
"I know what you meant, Bolles. I was only just making a little merry over this casualty. No, he don't mind me to that extent, except when he's sober. Look at him!"
Half-past was returning with his friends. Quite evidently they had all found the trail.
"Uncle Pasco is a nice old man!" pursued Drake. "I haven't got my gun on. Have you?"
"Yes," said Bolles, but with a sheepish swerve of the eye.
Drake guessed at once. "Not Baby Bunting? Oh, Lord! and I promised to give you an adult weapon!—the kind they're wearing now by way of full-dress."
"Talkin' secrets, boss?" said Half-past Full.
The well-meaning Sam filled his cup, and this proceeding shifted the buccaroo's truculent attention.
"What's that mud?" he demanded.
"Coffee," said Sam, politely.
The buccaroo swept his cup to the ground, and the next man howled dismay.
"Burn your poor legs?" said Half-past. He poured his glass over the victim. They wrestled, the company pounded the table, betting hoarsely, until Half-past went to the floor, and his plate with him.
"Go easy," said Drake. "You're smashing the company's property."
"Bald-headed china for sure, boss!" said a second of the brothers Drinker, and dropped a dish.
"I'll merely tell you," said Drake, "that the company don't pay for this china twice."
"Not twice?" said Half-past Full, smashing some more. "How about thrice?"
"Want your money now?" another inquired.
A riot of banter seized upon all of them, and they began to laugh and destroy.
"How much did this cost?" said one, prying askew his three-tined fork.
"How much did you cost yourself?" said another to Drake.
"What, our kid boss? Two bits, I guess."
"Hyas markook. Too dear!"
They bawled at their own jokes, loud and ominous; threat sounded beneath their lightest word, the new crashes of china that they threw on the floor struck sharply through the foreboding din of their mirth. The spirit that Drake since his arrival had kept under in them day by day, but not quelled, rose visibly each few succeeding minutes, swelling upward as the tide does. Buoyed up on the whiskey, it glittered in their eyes and yelled mutinously in their voices.
"I'm waiting all orders," said Bolles to Drake.
"I haven't any," said Drake. "New ones, that is. We've sat down to see this meal out. Got to keep sitting."
He leaned back, eating deliberately, saying no more to the buccaroos; thus they saw he would never leave the room till they did. As he had taken his chair the first, so was the boy bound to quit it the last. The game of prying fork-tines staled on them one by one, and they took to songs, mostly of love and parting. With the red whiskey in their eyes they shouted plaintively of sweethearts, and vows, and lips, and meeting in the wild wood. From these they went to ballads of the cattle-trail and the Yuba River, and so inevitably worked to the old coast song, made of three languages, with its verses rhymed on each year since the first beginning. Tradition laid it heavy upon each singer in his turn to keep the pot a-boiling by memory or by new invention, and the chant went forward with hypnotic cadence to a tune of larkish, ripping gayety. He who had read over his old stained letters in the homesick afternoon had waked from such dreaming and now sang: "Once jes' onced in the year o' 49, I met a fancy thing by the name o' Keroline; I never could persuade her for to leave me be; She went and she took and she married me."
His neighbor was ready with an original contribution: "Once, once again in the year o' '64, By the city of Whatcom down along the shore— I never could persuade them for to leave me be— A Siwash squaw went and took and married me."
"What was you doin' between all them years?" called Half-past Full.
"Shut yer mouth," said the next singer: "Once, once again in the year o' 71 ('Twas the suddenest deed that I ever done)— I never could persuade them for to leave me be— A rich banker's daughter she took and married me."
"This is looking better," said Bolles to Drake.
"Don't you believe it," said the boy.
Ten or a dozen years were thus sung.
"I never could persuade them for to leave me be" tempestuously brought down the chorus and the fists, until the drunkards could sit no more, but stood up to sing, tramping the tune heavily together. Then, just as the turn came round to Drake himself, they dashed their chairs down and herded out of the room behind Half-past Full, slamming the door.
Drake sat a moment at the head of his Christmas dinner, the fallen chairs, the lumpy wreck. Blood charged his face from his hair to his collar. "Let's smoke," said he. They went from the dinner through the room of the great fireplace to his office beyond.
"Have a mild one?" he said to the schoolmaster.
"No, a strong one to-night, if you please." And Bolles gave his mild smile.
"You do me good now and then," said Drake.
"Dear me," said the teacher, "I have found it the other way."
All the rooms fronted on the road with doors—the old-time agency doors, where the hostiles had drawn their pictures in the days before peace had come to reign over this country. Drake looked out, because the singing had stopped and they were very quiet in the bunk-house. He saw the Chinaman steal from his kitchen.