Blue Kingdom by Max Brand Page B

“A good thing for me that I slammed that feller on the nose,” he resumed,as he came back with his burden. “I’d’ve got a whanging from Cousin Bill, otherwise.”
    â€œDoes he whang you when you come in without any game?”
    â€œSure he does. He knows how, too. He’s been a tanner.” The boy laughed carelessly. “It don’t do me no harm,” he said. “Along about last year I learned not to holler, and that takes a lot of the pleasure away from Bill, when he don’t hear me yap.”
    â€œIt toughens you up, I suppose,” said Tankerton, rather wonder-stricken by the philosophy of this lad.
    â€œDon’t it, though?” said James Larren brightly. “When I get into a fight with some of the other kids, don’t seem like I can feel it when they punch me. They can wear ’emselves out punchin’ me, but I knock their teeth down their throats in the finish, darn ’em.” He grinned, and his white teeth flashed.
    â€œBill isn’t your uncle, then?” said Tankerton.
    â€œHim? He ain’t much more related to me than a swaller is to a bald eagle, though both of them is birds. There was never but one Ogden that went out and got himself famous by bustin’ in and marryin’ with a Larren. And there ain’t never gonna be another. But girls is funny, Mister Tan . . . Timberline, as maybe you’ve noticed once or twice yourself. They go a lot more by faces than by fun.”
    â€œAh, but I’ll wager that you have your share of ’em, Jimmy? They know a man, even in the making.”
    â€œThanks,” said Jimmy, flushing with pleasure. “But I don’t have nothin’ to do with ’em. A lot o’ gabbin’, gabberin’, squealin’, wo’thless things that keep a boy mindin’ that his shoes is wore out at the toes, and keepa man from readin’ his paper peaceful of an evenin’.” He looked down and wiggled his toes thoughtfully as he said this. They were visible through great ragged gaps at the end of each shoe.
    Tankerton laughed again. “You don’t have much fun in Harpersville, I take it,” he said.
    â€œAw, things is all right, because you can get shut of the town so quick and have this for your main street,” said the boy. He waved to the great chasm of the cañon, and smiled at it with an air of possession. “But lately,” he said, “things has been lookin’ up, since the new man come.”
    â€œWho is that?”
    â€œCarrick Dunmore. He is a man,” said the boy, his voice softening with awed admiration. “You’d oughta see the stone he lifted. He’s got Chuck Harper lookin’ like he’d just been licked. And by Missus Harper’s face, you’d think that she was just from seein’ a ghost.”
    â€œA hard sort of a fellow, is he?” asked Tankerton with interest.
    â€œHim? He ain’t hard at all. He’s soft. He’s so soft you can’t break him with a hammer, and he’s so hard you can’t cut him with a knife. That’s him.”
    Tankerton drew out a dollar, and tossed it. It winged high in the air, but was caught by the unerring hand of the boy. “Will you do something for me?”
    â€œI’ll do a dollar’s worth, and that’d be about five years’ pay, according to the lights of what Bill Ogden pays me.”
    â€œGo to Harper. Tell him that I’ll meet him on this trail. No one else needs to hear what you have to say.”
    The keen eyes of the boy flashed. He nodded, andwas instantly off up the path at a run. Tankerton watched the sturdy legs flying, and thanked the providence that had furnished his kingdom with such man material as this.

F IFTEEN
    Tankerton dismounted now, but, even so, he did not relax his precautions, but rather redoubled them. He left the horse in the center of the thicket, where the perfectly trained animal