A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's, and Other Stories Part 22

"Half drowned. Yes! and I might have been hull drowned for that matter.

The back water of the Fork is all over Watson's, and the bridge is gone.

I stumbled onto this end of it in the dark, and went off, head first, into twenty feet of water! Tried to fight my way out, but the current was agin me. I'd bin down twice, and was going down for the third time, when somebody grabbed me by the scruff o' my neck and under the arm--so!--and swam me to the bank! When I scrambled up I sez: 'I can't see your face,' sez I, 'I don't know who you are,' sez I, 'but I reckon you're a white man and clear grit,' sez I, 'and there's my hand on it!'

And he grabs it and sez, 'We're quits,' and scooted out o' my sight.

And," continued the old man staring at their faces and raising his voice almost to a scream, "who do you think it was? Why, THAT SNEAKIN' HOUND OF A BROTHER OF YOURS--JIM! Jim! the scallawag that I booted outer the ranch five years ago, crawlin', writhin' back again after all these years to insult his old father's gray hairs! And some of you--by G.o.d--once thought that I was hard on him!"

The sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly the next morning as the young editor halted the up coach in the now dried hollow. As he was clambering to a seat beside the driver, his elbow was jogged at the window. Looking down he saw the face of Jim.

"We had a gay talk last night, remembering old times, didn't we?" said the prodigal cheerfully.

"Yes, but--where are you going now?"

"Back to Australia, I reckon! But it was mighty good to drop in on the old homestead once more!"

"Rather," said the editor, clinging to the window and lingering in mid-air to the manifest impatience of Yuba Bill; "but I say--look here!--were you QUITE satisfied?"

Jim's hand tightened around the young editor's as he answered cheerfully, "Yes." But his face was turned away from the window.